Global Quickies: Compulsory Vaccination in Italy, Equality in Divorce in India, and Provisional Bonds
ITALY
“Italy’s first black minister has said she feels “vindicated” after winning a four-year court battle against a far-right MEP who made repeated racist slurs against her.”
MALI
“An unmarried couple have been stoned to death in public in north-east Mali, in the first such incident since jihadi groups were driven out of the region.”
ARGENTINA
“Details are emerging of long-standing sex abuse at a school for deaf children run by the Roman Catholic Church in the Argentinean city of Mendoza. The revelations come after the arrest on May 5 of a nun at the school, Kumiko Kosaka, on suspicion of helping priests sexually abuse children at the Antonio Provolo Institute, authorities said. She was also charged with physically abusing the students to identify the most submissive ones.”
CANADA
“Canada’s capital city has promised a review of its policies after a decision to raise the flag of an anti-abortion movement at Ottawa city hall prompted a heated backlash.”
BANGLADESH
“Police in Bangladesh have arrested 27 men “for homosexuality.” Same-sex relations are a crime in the conservative Muslim-majority country.”
INDIA
“India’s Supreme Court is expected to soon deliver its verdict on a contentious divorce practice that violates the right to gender equality of Muslim women. The issue pits constitutional rights against religious custom.”
ITALY
“Italy’s cabinet on Friday approved a law making vaccinations compulsory for children starting at state schools
. The law will apply to children aged up to six years old, and the number of vaccinations considered compulsory will rise from four to 12. The newly obligatory vaccines include those against measles and meningitis, cases of which have risen dramatically in Italy recently.”
ARGENTINA
“The recent spate of highly publicized murders of women in Argentina is due to the decline of matrimony, an institution that has become a “provisional bond,” according to the Archbishop of La Plata, Héctor Aguer, one of the most conservative members of the Roman Catholic Church in the South American country.”
INDONESIA
“Two men accused of having sex with each other were each sentenced on Wednesday to 85 lashes in public, the first case of people being punished for homosexuality in the Indonesian province of Aceh under a strict version of Shariah law.”
Featured image by Carlos Reusser Monsalvez