Month: April 2019

A toddler has died and his twin brother is fighting for his life at a Rome hospital after a botched home circumcision carried out at a migrant refuge on the outskirts of the city.

Italian police and local prosecutors have opened a murder investigation into the death of the boy who reportedly died of severe blood loss on Saturday when the procedure went wrong.

He and his brother, who have not been named, were born in Italy in January 2017 to a woman of Nigerian origin who is believed to have sought asylum in Italy.

The operation took place in a welcome centre with nine apartments provided by the nonprofit organization Arci and the local council in the town of Monterondo, a suburb of Rome.

"We are shocked to learn of the death of a child and the serious condition of his twin in Monterondo,” Arci’s Rome branch said in a statement published on its Facebook page on Sunday.

“The two children are hosted in a welcome centre that Arci has run with Monterotondo Council since 2009.  It is a tragedy that leaves us speechless! We are anxiously awaiting a medical update on the second child.”

Italian media reports said police were questioning the doctor, also believed to be of Nigerian origin, who had carried out the operation and had called for emergency assistance when the child began bleeding profusely. The baby’s twin brother is in intensive care at a Rome hospital.

 “We are waiting for investigators to ascertain the truth,” Arci said.

The organization said once investigators determine who is responsible for the death of the child it would be looking at taking its own civil legal action.

Local town officials said the mother of the twins had five other children in Nigeria and had given no indication that she was about to circumcise her twins.

“It is an absurd tragedy,” Antonino Lupi, the mayor of Monterotondo, told the daily Corriere Della Sera. “No-one outside the nuclear family is allowed to enter the building.

“Evidently the mother took the initiative without telling anyone, otherwise it would not have been at all allowed.”

Foad Aodi, founder of the association of foreign doctors in Italy (AMSI) and Co-mai, an organization supporting  the Arab community, said up to 35 percent of circumcisions in Italy were carried out at home in a clandestine manner.

“For years we have been committed to supporting legality and the right to good health and religious respect for all,” Mr Aodi said in a statement.

He appealed to the health ministry to allow circumcisions at public and private health institutions at an affordable price for Muslim and Jewish families.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rechristened three of the country’s island territories named after colonial officials, as part of a campaign by his Hindu nationalist government to disassociate itself from two centuries of British rule.

On a visit to the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago off India’s east coast in the Bay of Bengal on Sunday, Modi announced the renaming of Ross, Neil and Havelock Islands after freedom fighter Subhash Chander Bose.

Mr Bose, who was a radical Hindu nationalist, had raised a rebel army of Indian soldiers during WWII with the help of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, to fight the British.

His rag-tag Free India Army was defeated alongside the Japanese army advancing from Burma (Myanmar) into north eastern India and soon after Mr Bose died under mysterious circumstances, two years before Indian independence in 1947.  

Consequently, Ross Island, named after a Colonial marine surveyor will now be known as Subhash Chander Bose Dweep or island, while nearby Neil Island that commemorated a British military officer of the East India Company, becomes Shaeed or Martyr Dweep.  

Adjoining Havelock Island, that honoured a former British army general who crushed the 1857 mutiny by Indian soldiers against British rule, has been renamed Swaraj or Independent Island.

“When it comes to heroes of the freedom struggle, we take the name of Bose with pride and that is why the government has issued a notification changing the islands names” Mr Modi declared at a public function in the archipelagos capital Port Blair.  

He stated that re-christening the three islands was merely fulfilling Mr Bose’s demand made 75 years earlier on 30 December 1943, when he visited the Andaman islands after the Japanese had captured them.

Opposition parties have accused the BJP of ‘seeking revenge on India’s history’ through such name changing, which they also claim is an attempt by Hindu nationalist to extended their cultural and political influence. 

Ahead of a general election due by May, Mr Modi suffered a string of setbacks in December, with his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) losing power in three key states and boosting the Congress party opposition and its allies.

Yesterday Mr Modi insisted his party were in course to regain power. "No reason for morale down. We are confident and are moving ahead. In 2019, if there is one party which the country trusts and is connected with the people, it is the BJP," Mr Modi said.  

Rechristening the islands is part of the enduring crusade by several provincial governments of changing the names of several towns and places with British and Muslim association.

In October legislators from Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in northern Himachal Pradesh launched a campaign to rename the British colonial government’s former summer capital of Simla in the Himalayas in an endeavor to free the town from the "oppressive" mental slavery of the past.

Despite weeks of agitation to rename the town Shyamala, after the Hindu goddess of the same name, the move has for now, been deferred under public pressure but not abandoned.    

But that has not prevented the BJP administration in northern Uttar Pradesh state from rechristening Allahabad, one of regions larger cities named by India’s Mughal rulers in the 17th century.

Located on the banks of the holy Ganges river it has been renamed Prayagraj, which according to folklore is the spot where the four-faced Hindu creator god Brahma offered his first sacrifice after making the world.

The nearby Mughalserai (Mughal Hostelry) railway station, one of north India’s busiest also has a new name. It has been renamed after Deendyal Upadhya, an associate of the ultra Hindu right wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or National Volunteer Corps that provides spiritual guidance to the BJP.

The fundamental role of the 93-year old RSS is to keep Hinduism "pure" from outside influences like Islam and Christianity, a goal that the BJP has been avidly pursuing after assuming federal power in 2014.

The RSS, which Modi joined as a novitiate, has been proscribed twice since India’s independence in 1947, for its extremist beliefs. Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin subscribed to RSS tenets, murdering him for his secular approach towards India’s Muslims.

Meanwhile, Faizabad, 100 miles north of Allahabad, the seat of former regional Nawabs or Muslim chieftains since the 18th century, is now known as Ayodhya, a name associated with the birthplace of Rama, another Hindu god.

Sharad Yadav of the National Democratic Party said that by changing city names, the BJP was deflecting attention from its inability to rejuvenate the flailing economy, create jobs and improve India’s crumbling infrastructure.

“It is a feeble attempt by the BJP to try and hide its failures” he added.

The French finance minister warned that France’s worst street protests in decades were “an economic disaster” as burned out cars and debris were cleared from the streets of Paris and other cities on Sunday.

“It’s a catastrophe for trade. It’s a catastrophe for our economy,” said Bruno Le Maire, a conservative serving under Emmanuel Macron, the embattled centrist president who came to power last year promising to modernise France with sweeping pro-business reforms.

Mr Le Maire promised that the state and insurance companies would foot the repair bill. Tax payments due at the end of the year will be postponed for retailers whose shops were ransacked only two weeks before Christmas, he said.

Dozens of cars were torched in Paris on Saturday as protesters roared “Macron resign”. Clashes also broke out in Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon and Toulouse during the fourth consecutive weekend of protests.

Tourism has suffered a blow, with Paris hotel bookings over Christmas and New Year, normally a busy period, down by at least 20 per cent. 

Yellow vest protesters clash with police in Paris, in pictures

Emmanuel Grégoire, deputy mayor of Paris, said the damage to property was worse than in the previous weekend’s riots. “The protests spread over a much larger area, so many more places were hit,” he said. 

But there was less violence thanks to an increase in police numbers and more efficient tactics. Officers swiftly detained hooligans, arresting more than 1,700, a record for a single day in post-war France.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, the foreign minister, rebuked Donald Trump for a provocative tweet in which he appeared to back the protesters and claimed they were chanting his name on the streets of Paris. Telegraph reporters, placed across the city, heard no such chants.

“We do not take part in domestic American politics and we want that to be reciprocated,” Mr Le Drian said. 

Thousands of protesters continued blockading petrol stations and barricaded roads across the country on Sunday.

Thomas Lebrun, a 62-year-old pensioner demonstrating near Vierzon, in central France, said: “We won’t stop until our demands are met. We want action not words.”

The increasingly unpopular president is expected to make a televised address to the nation on Monday or Tuesday.

Under fire for remaining silent for the past week, Mr Macron’s approval ratings have plunged to record lows of below 20 per cent.

With critics accusing him of being arrogant and remote, he faces an enormous challenge in trying to win back public support amid the most serious unrest since students and workers rioted in May 1968. 

He has already scrapped increases in “green” taxes on fuel, but the protesters want further concessions such as tax cuts for people on low incomes and tax increases for businesses. 

Such measures would mark a humiliating U-turn for the president, who has been trying to attract foreign investors and entice banks and finance companies to relocate from London to Paris by offering tax breaks.

Benjamin Griveaux, the government spokesman, warned: “All the problems of the ‘yellow vests’ can’t be settled by waving a magic wand.” But he added that Mr Macron would make “important announcements”.

According to French media, he may raise the minimum wage and pensions, and  introduce a tax-free bonus for workers on low incomes.  

The “yellow-vest” movement, which takes its name from the high-visibility jackets worn by demonstrators, began as a  protest against fuel tax increases four weeks ago.

It has since widened to encompass a range of demands such as 40-per-cent increases in the minimum wage and benefits, and the re-introduction of a wealth tax on high earners, scrapped by Mr Macron as part of a drive to promote investment.

French intelligence is investigating claims that the movement, which began on social media, spread with the help of Russian trolls. Hundreds of social media accounts linked to Russia allegedly played a role in spreading disinformation, but officials said no evidence of Russian state involvement had been uncovered so far.

North Korea has issued a warning about the “negative impact” of mobile phones, blaming them for the spread of violence and pornography as the isolated state seeks to curtail illicit communications devices to control its population. 

The Rodong Sinmun, a paper known as the mouthpiece of the regime, published an article citing a ban on phones in French classrooms and reports of technology being used to enable cheating in Indian exams to show that phones were spreading “decadent and reactionary ideological culture”. 

According to South Korean newswire Yonhap, the paper quoted a foreign teacher as saying that excessive use of cell phones reduced students’ motivation and encouraged them to waste time. 

“Erotic notices, fictions and videos, as well as violent electronic games, are spreading through the mobile phones without limits,” the newspaper added. “This means that mobile phones are used as tools to instill unhealthy ideas in minors.” 

North Korea is deeply paranoid about the infiltration of both pornography and the Bible, which the regime fears may be used by foreign intelligence agencies to destabilise the country, and visitors entering the secretive state have their phones inspected for any ‘subversive’ material. 

Since 2008, North Koreans have been able to use tightly controlled internal mobile networks, enabling them to make local calls or to use the Mansulmang app to download games like Candy Crush or to do some online shopping. 

They can also access the heavily-vetted Mokran, a state-sanctioned answer to the Netflix streaming service, but calls or emails to foreigners must be registered with the authorities. 

However, defectors who have left North Korea report that many people secretly watch foreign media, especially South Korean entertainment.

Analysts say that Kim Jong-un faces a rising challenge to keep his people isolated from the global internet age to sustain his cult-like status.

In an earlier interview, Andrei Lankov, a professor at Seoul’s Kookmin university, told the Telegraph that the regime faced was fighting against inevitable change. 

“Information is getting in. Kim Jong-un is now taking it very seriously, he is doing what he can to prevent people from learning too much about the outside world. But he cannot fully stop it.” 

Japan’s Emperor Akihito delivered his final New Year’s address on Wednesday before his abdication later this year, telling tens of thousands of well-wishers that he was praying for peace.

The Imperial Palace said more than 114,600 people had flocked to the royal residence by early Wednesday afternoon, with more still arriving for a final chance to see the 85-year-old royal deliver his traditional annual greeting.

The emperor will become the first Japanese monarch to abdicate in around two centuries when he steps down from the throne on April 30, ending his three-decade reign.

"Happy New Year. I’m sincerely glad to celebrate the new year together with you under the clear sky," he told the crowd, many waving Japanese flags and shouting "Banzai", meaning "long live".

"I hope this year will be a good year for as many people as possible," the soft-spoken Akihito said in a dark suit, flanked by Empress Michiko and other family members.

"I pray for the peace and happiness of the people of our country and the world," he added.

The emperor delivers a brief New Year’s greeting every year, and was expected to appear five times on Wednesday to address as many well-wishers as possible.

Some in the morning crowd yelled "Thank you very much" as the emperor waved, while others sang the national anthem. One woman in the front row shed tears as she looked up at the balcony.

"I came here with my mother to imprint his last appearance as emperor in our memories," said Yume Nishimura, a university student, as she waited in a long queue to enter the palace.

"I want to tell him we appreciate his hard work for the country," she told AFP.

Kazuo Iwasaki, a 68-year-old pensioner, said: "I hope he will be able to spend his post-retirement years in a healthy and relaxing manner with Empress Michiko."

Akihito shocked the country in 2016 when he signalled his desire to take a back seat, citing his age and health problems.

His eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito, is set to ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne a day after his father’s abdication, continuing the rule of the world’s oldest imperial family.

The status of the emperor is sensitive in Japan given its 20th-century history of war waged in the name of Akihito’s father Hirohito, who died in 1989.

Akihito has keenly embraced the more modern role as a symbol of the state – imposed after World War II ended. Previous emperors including his father had been treated as semi-divine.

The palace, surrounded by stone walls and mossy moats, is opened to the public twice a year – on the emperor’s birthday and the second day of New Year – for the royal family to greet well-wishers.

In a rare emotional address to mark his 85th birthday last month, Akihito pointed to the "countless lives" lost in the war.

"It gives me deep comfort that the Heisei Era (his reign) is coming to an end, free of war in Japan," he said in a press statement.

Akihito has used his speeches and travels to express his strong pacifist views, which are sharply at odds with the aggressive expansionism Japan pursued under his father’s rule.

The emperor has also worked to bring the royal household closer to the people and frequently visited the disadvantaged and families hit by natural disasters.