🌏 Sri Lanka's President Resigns, A Salvadoran Woman Jailed For 50 Years For A Miscarriage And More
All the world news you need to know this week.
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Sri Lanka’s president has finally resigned, days after thousands of protesters stormed his residence and set the prime minister’s home on fire.
People across Sri Lanka have been holding mass protests since March demanding president Gotabaya Rajapaksa resign over his handling over the country’s worst economic crisis since independence in 1948.
Sri Lanka has been facing an ongoing economic crisis due to years of accumulated foreign debt, compounded by the 2019 Easter bombings and the COVID-19 pandemic, which ravaged the tourism industry, a major source of income for the country.
The accumulation of foreign debt has sent the economy spiraling, with citizens bearing the brunt of runaway inflation rates, fuel and medicine shortages and rolling blackouts.
The country is struggling to import essential goods, putting more than a quarter of the country’s 21 million population at risk of food shortages, according to the United Nations.
It has to repay $4 billion in debt this year, CNN reported.
Rajapaksa, whose family has dominated Sri Lankan politics for the last twenty years, has been accused of gross mismanagement of the country and widespread corruption.
On Saturday July 9, demonstrators converged on the capital of Colombo, breaking through police barricades to enter Rajapaksa’s residence.
By nightfall, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s home was set ablaze, despite his offer to resign and form an all-party government earlier in the afternoon.
On Sunday, Rajapaksa announced he would resign on Wednesday July 13.
Also Happening Around The World
đź‡đź‡° Hong Kong has jailed two activists – Koo Sze-Yiu, a 75-year-old Hong Kong activist who has terminal cancer and Alexandra Wong, a 66-year-old veteran Hong Kong activist known affectionately as Grandma Wong – for sedition and taking part in anti-government protests in 2019 respectively.
🇵🇹 Wildfires are tearing through Portugal as an intense heatwave scorches Europe.
🇨🇳 People in China are trying all sorts of creative ways to melt a luxury ice cream brand’s popsicles but nothing is working.
A Salvadoran woman has been sentenced to 50 years in prison after she had a miscarriage during a medical emergency.
Lesli Lisbeth RamĂrez RamĂrez, who was 19 years old at the time, had suffered an obstetric emergency and lost the baby while going to the bathroom at night in June 2020.
“She went to the latrine and at that moment she had a precipitous labor, expelling the child in gestation,” abortion rights group Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto said.
The head of the group, Morena Herrera, told Reuters RamĂrez came from a poor community and her home lacked electricity, so after the emergency she had tried cutting the umbilical cord in the dark.
At the time, RamĂrez had been unaware of her pregnancy and lacked sexual education to understand what was happening.
Panicking, she called her neighbors, who called the police to transport her to a hospital, but accusations of murder followed soon after.
Authorities accused her of stabbing her baby in the throat and killing it.
Abortion is illegal in El Salvador under all circumstances, including in medical emergencies that could threaten the woman’s life.
RamĂrez was given a 50-year sentence on June 20 for aggravated homicide.
This is the first time such a tough sentence has been applied to a woman suffering an obstetric emergency in the country.
The court refused to allow evidence that would have demonstrated RamĂrez’s innocence and to acknowledge the social context she lived and the sexual violence she endured, the group said.
This is a setback after abortion rights groups managed to slowly overturn the rulings of wrongfully convicted women over the past few years.
More Women You Should Know About
🇻🇦 Three women have been appointed by Pope Francis to the committee that helps oversee the selection of bishops around the world for the first time in the church’s history.
🇸🇾 Danielle Rezek, a Syrian woman who has dreamed of becoming a pilot just like her father since she was young, overcame the odds to make her dream come true.
Penguins at this Japanese aquarium are refusing to eat a cheaper type of fish and it’s hilarious.
As countries around the world feel the effects of rising inflation, the Hakone-en Aquarium in Hakone, Japan, has been looking for ways to mitigate increased prices where possible.
Home to over 30,000 marine life, the aquatic zoo has started purchasing cheaper food for the animals as a way to cut costs, and the animals are not having it.
Usually fed “aji” or horse mackerel, which has increased in price by 20 to 30 percent, the aquarium has had to switch to “saba” or common mackerel instead.
In a video captured by Japanese TV network All-Nippon News (ANN), king penguins at the aquarium are seen refusing to eat the saba, turning their heads away when being fed.
“They take it into their mouths at first, but then they decide they don’t like it and drop it,” aquarium head keeper Hiroki Shimamoto said. “They sense something is off.”
Aquarium workers have had to get creative, mixing the cheaper saba with the pricier aji in a bid to get the penguins to eat the new budget food option.
More Good News For Your Week
🇦🇺 The Australian Aboriginal flag will permanently replace the New South Wales state flag in flying next to the Australian flag on the Sydney Harbour Bridge after Cheree Toka, an Indigenous woman, campaigned for the change for five years.
🇦🇺 Also in Sydney, nearly 1,000 people wearing different colored clothing formed a giant Progress Pride flag on the steps of the Sydney Opera House to celebrate LGBT pride.
🇨🇳 A five-year-old girl leading adults in a dance in a town square in Changde, Hunan, has gone viral on Chinese social media, and people love her.
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