Sudan civil war sees RSF forces rape women and girls on a shocking "scope and scale," rights group says
CBSN
Johannesburg — Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, one side in a civil war that's torn the African nation apart for more than a year and created one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet, are accused of raping scores of women and girls and using some as sex slaves in a new report by Human Rights Watch. The New York-based rights group says the paramilitary forces' use of sexual violence in the country's South Kordofan state since September 2023 constitutes war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
HRW lays out the findings of an investigation based on the cases of almost 80 women and girls in a report published Monday, detailing horrific new allegations of abuse in Sudan, where both sides in the civil war had already been accused of war crimes.
Researchers gathered evidence on 79 women and girls between the ages of 7 and 50 whom HRW says were raped, with most incidents occurring at an RSF military base in Dibeibat, near the town of Habila in South Kordofan.
The United Kingdom indefinitely extended a ban on puberty blockers for people younger than 18, barring medication prescriptions used to treat gender dysphoria, the government announced this week. There will be exemptions for people who choose to participate in a clinical trial aiming to study the safety and effectiveness of puberty suppression, which is set to begin next year. Young people already prescribed puberty blockers are allowed to continue taking them, the government said.
A judge was shot dead Wednesday in Mexico's once-thriving beach city of Acapulco, local media and the state prosecutor's office said.
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More than 40 migrants are feared dead off Italy's Lampedusa after a lone 11-year-old survivor said the boat she was on capsized, a rescue group said Wednesday.
Italy's mafias make more than three billion euros a year from the tourism sector and are primed to pocket even more from large-scale upcoming events, a research institute warned on Tuesday.
Foreboding environmental milestones abounded again this year in the Arctic, where experts say dramatic climate shifts are fundamentally altering the ecosystem and how it operates. One recent turning point for the region involves its carbon footprint: Where conditions in the Arctic historically worked to reduce global emissions, they're now actively contributing to them.
Damascus – Syria's capital city was on auto-pilot Tuesday, with no new government in place in the wake of the dramatic rebel offensive that toppled longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad on Sunday. But as the former al-Qaeda offshoot that led that charge put some of its senior figures in charge of a self-declared transitional administration, many Syrians appeared determined to try to get on with business as usual.
Australian former world champion cyclist Rohan Dennis admitted Tuesday to a charge of creating a risk of harm in relation to the December 2023 road death of his Olympian wife Melissa Hoskins.
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An alleged drug trafficker wanted in connection with an international drug smuggling operation through the Belgian port of Antwerp has been arrested, Dubai police said Monday.
Melbourne — Australian police said Monday they are hunting for three suspects over an arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue, designating it a terrorist act. Mask-wearing attackers set the Adass Israel Synagogue ablaze before dawn on Friday, police said, gutting much of the building. Some congregants were inside the single-story building at the time but no serious injuries were reported.