Demonstrations over water and power cuts inspired by ‘gen-Z’ protests elsewhere have left at least 22 dead, says UN

Madagascar’s president, Andry Rajoelina, has dissolved the government after youth-led protests over water and power cuts in which the UN says at least 22 people have been killed and more than 100 injured.

Inspired by the “gen Z” protests in Kenya and Nepal, the three days of demonstrations are the largest the Indian Ocean island has seen in years, and the most serious challenge Rajoelina has faced since his re-election in 2023.

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Six separate mass shootings bring tally to 324 this year, underscoring continuing US crisis of gun violence

Sunday’s mass murder at a Mormon church in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, which left at least four worshippers dead and eight wounded, was just one of six mass shootings that erupted across the US over a weekend of gun horror.

The Gun Violence Archive, an online non-profit database which records mass shootings in America, added six fresh incidents over Saturday and Sunday. The concentrated bloodletting, spread out across four states, took the lives of nine people, including the suspect in Sunday’s shooting at Grand Blanc’s Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints church, as well as injuring at least 33.

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Inquiry hears of children exposed to pornography and suffering ‘grievous’ harm without protection of schools

The Covid pandemic disrupted the “very fabric of childhood”, the UK inquiry has heard, on the first day of a four-week session devoted to its impact on children and young people.

Clair Dobbin KC, counsel to the inquiry, said in her opening submission on Monday that some of the evidence drawn from the 18,000 stories and 400 targeted interviews would be “hard to listen to”.

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