🌏 Inside The Child Sex Abuse Pardon Scandal Rocking Hungary
All the world news you need to know this week.
Hello and welcome to the Almost newsletter, a weekly email to help you stay updated and make sense of important stories happening around the world including:
- 🌏 This Week’s Top Stories
- 👩 Women To Know
- 🙌 Good News For Your Week
Hungary’s president pardoned a man who covered up child sex abuse at an orphanage and people want justice.
In 2019, the director of an orphanage was sentenced to eight years in prison for forcing at least 10 boys in his care to perform sexual acts between 2004 and 2016.
His deputy was also sentenced to more than three years for helping him to cover it up by pressuring victims to retract their testimonies.
In February, an independent local news outlet revealed that Hungarian president Katalin Novák had pardoned the deputy director in April 2023.
The news prompted outrage, leading tens of thousands of people to march to Novák’s office to demand she step down.
Faced with ongoing mass protests, Novák announced on Feb. 10 she would resign, saying she had made a mistake.
The justice minister at the time then also resigned because she had approved Novák’s pardon.
The scandal is a massive blow to far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán’s government, which has long pushed conservative “traditional family values”.
Also Happening Around The World
🇹🇼 Hundreds of people in Taiwan held a protest for Ukraine on the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion.
🇬🇭 Ghana has passed a bill that would make it a crime to be LGBTQ.
🇸🇻 El Salvador re-elected the “world’s coolest dictator” for a second consecutive term.
🇮🇩 This feared general, who rebranded himself as a cute TikTok Grandpa, is set to become Indonesia’s new president.
🇩🇪 Germany legalized cannabis for recreational use for adults.
🇮🇳 Two restaurants in India are fighting over who invented butter chicken and now it’s gone all the way to Delhi’s high court.
A woman police officer in Pakistan is being praised for rescuing another woman who was harassed for wearing a dress with Arabic calligraphy.
On Sunday, Feb. 25, while visiting a restaurant with her husband in Lahore’s Ichra Bazaar, the woman was harassed by an angry mob who mistook the Arabic calligraphy for Quran verses.
The men accused her of blasphemy and demanded she remove the dress.
In Pakistan, where Islam is the predominant religion, blasphemy is a highly sensitive subject, and people accused of insulting Islam or its figures may face severe punishment, including the death penalty.
A viral video clip shows the woman, seemingly afraid, rushing into a nearby shop, covering her face with her hands as the crowd shouts at her.
Punjab police shared the video of the rescue, when the woman officer, Shehr Bano can be seen urging the crowd to refrain from resorting to violence.
Intervening swiftly, the woman officer, Bano then entered the shop and escorted the woman out in a burqa.
The police have denied that the woman committed blasphemy, stressing that the Arabic calligraphy on the woman’s dress spelled “Halwa,” which is not a sacred word.
Bano’s actions have been widely praised,including senior politicians.
Punjab police have also recommended her for the Quaid-e-Azam Police Medal, the highest gallantry award for law enforcement in Pakistan.
More Women You Should Know About
🇸🇴 Women in Somalia are holding protests to demand justice after three women were allegedly murdered by their husbands in one week.
A video of a boy in China jumping into the water to feed penguins at an aquarium has gone viral and people are loving it.
The incident happened on Tuesday Feb. 20 at an interactive “penguin feeding” activity at an aquarium in Sichuan in Chengdu, China.
As part of the activity, visitors are allowed to get a closer look at the penguins and hand feed them.
In a video shared on China’s TikTok, Douyin, the aquarium keeper can be seen handing the boy a fish and stepping back to take a photo.
The keeper then nods his head in the direction of water, indicating to the boy to walk forward to the edge of the water and feed the penguins.
Without hesitation and warning, the boy pushes past the penguins surround him on the surface, takes three steps forward and jumps straight into the water.
The aquarium keeper, visibly shocked, then rushes forward and scoops the child out of the water.
The boy’s mom later said in an interview that her son had explained afterwards that he jumped in the water because he wanted to feed the penguins in the water.
She added that the zookeeper then awarded her son with the feather from a real penguin for “being the bravest child.”
More Funny Stories For Your Week
🏴 A Willy Wonka immersive experience in Scotland was so bad that children cried and parents called the cops.
Thanks so much for opening this email. If you think a friend would like this, you can forward it to them! You can also follow Almost on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube. We also have a Chinese version.
Let us know your thoughts about this week’s news in the comments or by replying directly to this email ✨