Headline

Ex-Chadian PM Masra Jailed For Hate Speech, Xenophobia

Published

2 months ago

August 9, 2025

A court in Chad jailed former prime minister and opposition leader Succes Masra for 20 years Saturday, convicting him of hate speech, xenophobia, and having incited a massacre.

The court in N’Djamena jailed Masra, one of President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno’s fiercest critics, for his role in inciting inter-communal violence in which 42 people were killed on May 14.

Most of the massacre victims were women and children in Mandakao, southwestern Chad, according to the court. On Friday, the state prosecutor had called for a 25-year sentence.

“Our client has just been the object of a humiliation,” lead defence lawyer Francis Kadjilembaye told AFP.

“He has just been convicted based on an empty dossier, based on assumptions and in the absence of evidence,” he added.

What we had witnessed, he said, was the weaponisation of the courts.

Activists with their Transformers Party said they would put out a “special message” later Saturday.

Masra was arrested on May 16, two days after the violence, and charged with “inciting hatred, revolt, forming and complicity with armed gangs, complicity in murder, arson, and desecration of graves”.

He stood trial with nearly 70 other men accused of taking part in the killings.

– Presidential candidate –

Originally from Chad’s south, Masra comes from the Ngambaye ethnic group and enjoys wide popularity among the predominantly Christian and animist populations of the south.

Those groups feel marginalised by the largely Muslim-dominated regime in the capital, N’Djamena.

During the trial, Masra’s lawyers argued that no concrete evidence against him had been presented to the court.

He went on hunger strike in jail for nearly a month in June, his lawyers said at the time.

Like other opposition leaders, Masra had left Chad after a bloody crackdown on his followers in 2022, only returning under an amnesty agreed in 2024.

Trained as an economist in France and Cameroon, Masra had been a fierce opponent of the ruling authorities before they named him prime minister five months ahead of the presidential election.

He served as premier from January to May last year after signing a reconciliation deal with Deby.

Masra faced off against Deby in the 2024 presidential elections, winning 18.5 percent against Deby’s 61.3 percent, but claimed victory.

Of the May 14 killings, one local source said they were thought to have sprung from a dispute between ethnic Fulani nomadic herders and local Ngambaye farmers over the demarcation of grazing and farming areas.

Conflicts between pastoralists and sedentary farmers are estimated by the International Crisis Group to have caused more than 1,000 deaths and 2,000 injuries in Chad between 2021 and 2024.

AFP

Headline

UK Nursery Worker Jailed For Abusing 21 Babies

Published

17 hours ago

September 26, 2025

Editor

A judge on Friday jailed a nursery worker for eight years for a string of “gratuitous” and “sadistic” attacks on babies.

In one incident, Londoner Roksana Lecka, 22, kicked a little boy in the face several times.

Lecka, who blamed cannabis for her crimes, admitted seven counts of cruelty to a person under the age of 16 and was convicted after a trial of another 14 counts.

Sentencing her for attacks on 21 babies, Judge Sarah Plaschkes said she had committed “multiple acts of gratuitous violence” at two London nurseries where she worked.

“You pinched, slapped, punched, smacked and kicked them. You pulled their ears, hair and their toes. You toppled children headfirst into cots,” she said.

“Often the child would be quietly and happily minding its own business before you deliberately inflicted pain… Your criminal conduct can properly be characterised as sadistic,” she added.

Lecka’s cruelty was revealed in June 2024 after she was seen pinching a number of children.
Police were called in and found multiple incidents recorded on the nursery CCTV.

Victim impact statements submitted to London’s Kingston Crown Court from parents of Lecka’s victims told how they were left heartbroken and guilt-stricken by the attacks.

“These children were so innocent and vulnerable,” one mother told the court.

“They couldn’t speak, they couldn’t defend themselves and they couldn’t tell us as parents that something had happened to them,” she added.

“They were totally helpless and Roksana preyed upon them.”

The hearing was told that she had apologised to the parents in a letter to the court in which she said cannabis had turned her into a different person.

She had been addicted to the drug around the time of the offences, but had not told the nursery.
She was found not guilty of three further counts of child cruelty.

Headline

Italy Fines Six Oil Firms $1bn Fine For Restricting Competition

Published

19 hours ago

September 26, 2025

Editor

Italy’s antitrust regulator said Friday it has slapped Italian energy giant Eni and five other companies with fines totalling more than 936 million euros ($1.1 billion) for “restricting competition” in the sale of fuel.

The authority said in a statement that Eni, Esso, Ip, Q8, Saras and Tamoil “coordinated to set the value of the bio component factored into fuel prices”, which tripled between 2019 and 2023.

A probe following a whistleblower’s complaint revealed that “the companies implemented parallel price increases — largely coinciding — which were driven by direct or indirect information exchanges among them”, the authority said.

“The cartel began on 1 January 2020 and continued until 30 June 2023,” it added.

AFP

Headline

Trump Signs Order For TikTok’s Sale, Valued At $14bn

Published

21 hours ago

September 26, 2025

Editor

United States President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order declaring that his plan is to sell TikTok’s US operations to American and global investors.

As reported by Reuters on Friday, the order requires companies bidding for TikTok to meet the national-security requirements of the 2024 law that otherwise would ban the app unless its Chinese owners divest.

Speaking to reporters at an Oval Office briefing on Thursday, Vice President James Vance said the newly created US entity would be “valued around $14 billion.

“We actually think this is a good deal for investors, but they will make a determination about what they want to invest and what they think is the proper value,” he said.

The White House on Thursday pushed back the law’s enforcement date to January 20 to allow time for the transaction, investor commitments, and negotiations with Chinese authorities.

The publication of the executive order shows Trump is making progress on the sale of TikTok’s US assets.

However, details remain to be worked out, including how the U.S. company would handle TikTok’s most valuable asset: its recommendation algorithm.

“There was some resistance on the Chinese side, but the fundamental thing that we wanted to accomplish is that we wanted to keep TikTok operating, but we also wanted to make sure that we protected Americans’ data privacy as required by law,” Vance said.

According to Reuters, Trump’s order says the algorithm will be retrained and monitored by the U.S. company’s security partners, and operation of the algorithm will be under the control of the new joint venture.

Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping had indicated approval of the plans. “I spoke with President Xi,” Trump said. “We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing, and he said go ahead with it.”

Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. TikTok did not immediately comment on Trump’s action.

Trump has credited TikTok, which has 170 million U.S. users, with helping him win reelection last year. Trump has 15 million followers on his personal TikTok account. The White House also launched an official TikTok account last month.

“This is going to be American-operated all the way,” Trump said.

He said that Michael Dell, the founder, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies; Rupert Murdoch, the chairman emeritus of Fox News owner Fox Corp, and newspaper publisher News Corp, and “probably four or five absolutely world-class investors” would be part of the deal.