A Japanese justice ministry panel on Friday proposed raising the country’s age of consent, currently among the world’s lowest at just 13, as part of a major overhaul of sex crime legislation. The move to raise the age of consent to 16 is part of a package of reforms that would also clarify rape prosecution requirements and criminalise voyeurism. The recommendations presented to the justice minister come after a series of rape acquittals that sparked outcry and will form the basis for draft amendments that could be enacted by parliament later this year. Japan’s age of consent, the lowest among…
Author: Osas Monday
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The Chinese billionaire chairman of investment bank China Renaissance has gone missing, the firm said, as shares in the company plunged in Hong Kong on Friday. The post Chinese tech billionaire goes missing: company appeared first on The Guardian Nigeria News – Nigeria and World News.
President Joe Biden was declared “fit for duty” by his doctor Thursday after the final annual medical check-up before he is expected to declare he’s running for re-election in 2024, when he will be 82. The keenly awaited report after extensive testing found some relatively minor issues but said Biden was clear of serious physical and neurological problems. “President Biden remains a healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those of as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, said in a letter published…
The man accused of killing seven people and injuring another by opening fire on mushroom farms in northern California pleaded not guilty on Thursday, reports said. The post California farm mass shooting suspect pleads not guilty appeared first on The Guardian Nigeria News – Nigeria and World News.
Several German airports said on Thursday their websites were down due to suspected cyberattacks, the latest instance of online sabotage in the country. Airports in Duesseldorf, Nuremberg and Dortmund said they were affected, while at least two others were reported to have been hit. German news outlet Der Spiegel said a group of Russian hackers had claimed responsibility for the attack, although there was no comment from authorities about who was behind it. The sites were believed to have been targeted by so-called “distributed denial-of-service” attacks, designed to overwhelm the target with a flood of internet traffic, preventing the system…
Since the earthquake destroyed her home, Syrian teacher Suzanne Abdallah has lived in a small truck crammed with her family members, just a stone’s throw from where their house stood. “Ten of us pile into this truck. We sleep sitting up,” said the 42-year-old, wearing multiple layers of clothes and a wooled scarf wrapped around her head against the biting winter cold. Her infant boy was sleeping in a makeshift hammock made from a blanket that was swinging from the packed vehicle’s roof, as seven other children were sharing a basic breakfast inside. “Conditions are difficult, especially as I have…
China was Germany’s biggest trading partner in 2022 for the seventh year in a row, figures published Thursday showed, as policymakers worry about economic over-reliance on Beijing. Goods worth 297.9 billion euros ($318.9 billion) were exchanged between the two countries last year, up 20 percent despite the continuing impact of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the federal statistics agency Destatis. Germany’s trade deficit with China — the difference between the larger value of imports and smaller exports — hit 84.3 billion euros, the largest figure since the statistics body’s records began in 1950. Imports from China rose to 191.1 billion…
Voter registration ahead of year-end presidential elections got underway on Thursday in DR Congo’s troubled east, where armed groups control swathes of territory and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes. Electors in the North Kivu provincial capital of Goma lined up, some of them for hours, to obtain their voting card ahead of the December ballot, AFP reporters saw. “The army and police have been mobilised to secure the electoral process,” the province’s military governor, Lieutenant-General Constant Ndima, told reporters. “All displaced people will be registered according to their places of origin,” he said. The vast central African country…
A 6.1 magnitude earthquake rocked the central Philippines on Thursday, the US Geological Survey said, though there were no reports of casualties or significant damage. The strong and shallow quake struck just off the coast of Masbate province in the centre of the archipelago nation shortly after 2 am (1800 GMT). The epicentre was 11 kilometres (seven miles) from the coastal village of Miaga in Masbate’s Uson municipality, USGS said. The Philippine seismological agency said it had recorded more than 80 aftershocks. “It was a bit strong,” Masbate provincial police chief Rolly Albana told AFP. “I was sleeping when we…
At least 39 people, most of them undocumented US-bound migrants who had just survived a perilous jungle crossing, died in a bus crash in Panama on Wednesday, officials said. Maria Isabel Saravia, Panama’s deputy director of migration, said 28 people were also injured in the accident. The bus plunged down a ravine and hit a minibus about 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of the capital Panama City, the National Migration Service said in a media statement. It said the injured, including children, were being treated at various hospitals and clinics and the latest death toll was based on “preliminary information.”…