NEW DELHI- Indian police raided the offices and homes of two top human rights lawyers today in an investigation into foreign funding for their NGO, prompting criticism they were being targeted for political reasons.

The Central Bureau of Investigation conducted searches relating to a case filed against the non-profit Lawyers Collective and its president, Anand Grover, for allegedly violating laws on foreign funds, a police official said.In a statement issued in June, after the CBI registered a complaint against the group, Lawyers Collective said it was being targeted for taking up sensitive cases against Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and some of its leaders.

Founded in 1981 by Grover and prominent human rights lawyer Indira Jaising, Lawyers Collective is among the thousands of foreign-funded charities hit by increased scrutiny by the Narendra Modi government. “The searches are ongoing,” said the CBI official, who declined to be named. Grover told Reuters CBI conducted raids at his offices and homes in Delhi and Mumbai. The CBI alleges that Lawyers Collective and Grover have violated the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA), aside from other wrongdoing, which the group has denied.(Reuters)…[+]

CASSANDRA Brown, after having two daughters, was over the moon when she was told during a prenatal clinic visit that she was having a boy. But that joy turned into sorrow 21 months later when her son, Neymar Facey, perished in a fire that left 14 children and 11 adults homeless on Bay Farm Road in Kingston, Tuesday evening.

Admitting that she had no intentions of having a fourth child, the 38-year-old mother said she was anticipating Neymar’s second birthday in October. “If me did come and see him face mi wouldn’t feel so. If mi come see him alive mi would a walk way and hug him,” she said yesterday as tears rolled down her cheeks.

Insisting that the baby was usually with her, she said shortly after she had given him a bath he had fallen asleep, so she asked her older daughter, now 18, to watch him while she went to a shop. “Mi did plan fi walk wid him go down the road go buy weh mi a buy but you know when baby body cool dem drop asleep, so mi put him on his belly and turn the fan on him and tell mi big daughter to give an eye on him fi mi, please,” she explained.(Jamaica Observer)…[+]

The gang rape of an 18-year-old woman in Germany has sparked a dispute about lowering the age of criminal responsibility. Two of the suspects in the western city of Mülheim are aged 12 and the other three are 14. Germany does not prosecute children under 14.

All five have been suspended from school and so far one 14-year-old has appeared before an investigating judge. The victim, found in bushes late on Friday, was taken to hospital. A police spokesman said the assault involved “considerable violence” and went on for a long time. The head of the police force union, Rainer Wendt, said “for years we’ve been demanding that the age of criminal responsibility be lowered in Germany”.

However, Jens Gnisa, head of the German Association of Judges, argued that “the equation ‘more punishment equals less criminality’ does not work with youths”. He said the educational rules established in German law were working well to tackle juvenile crime. The Mülheim rape case, in Germany’s industrial Ruhr region, requires action by the Youth Welfare Office to address the suspects’ behavioural issues, a senior Child Protection Agency official said.(BBC)…[+]

GENEVA – U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet is “appalled” at the conditions in which the United States is keeping detained migrants and refugees, including children, her office said in a statement today.

“As a paediatrician, but also as a mother and a former head of state, I am deeply shocked that children are forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate healthcare or food, and with poor sanitation conditions,” the statement quoted Bachelet as saying. U.S. President Donald Trump has made a hardline immigration stance a key issue of his presidency and 2020 re-election bid.

Democratic lawmakers and civil rights activists who have visited migrant detention centres along the U.S.-Mexican border have described nightmarish conditions marked by overcrowding and inadequate access to food, water and other basic needs. Last week the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general published photos of migrant-holding centers in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley crammed with twice as many people as they were meant to hold. “In most of these cases, the migrants and refugees have embarked on perilous journeys with their children in search of protection and dignity and away from violence and hunger,” Bachelet said.(Reuters)…[+]

Police are probing reports that scores of bank accounts were hit over the weekend, leaving some customers broke. And it appears that it is the work of thieves using skimming devices again – this time gaining access to accounts at Republic Bank, CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank and Scotiabank. The crooks seemed to have struck in St James where a number of the victims said they had used a sometimes isolated ATM to access accounts from the banking institutions.

The alarm was raised from the voice note of a woman who recounted her horror of trying to withdraw money, only to realise that it was gone. In reporting the matter to the bank and police, she then found out there were several others, including pensioners, who had fallen victim to the thieves. (Barbados Nation) …[+]

An Asian couple who tried to conceive through IVF has claimed that a mix-up at a California fertility clinic left them pregnant with the wrong children. A lawsuit filed by the couple in New York states that the couple was shocked to give birth to two boys who were not of Asian descent, US media reported.

The lawsuit says DNA tests confirmed the children were not related to the couple and they relinquished custody. The fertility clinic has not commented on the allegations. The couple – identified in the lawsuit only as AP and YZ to minimise the “embarrassment and humiliation” – say they tried for years to get pregnant before spending more than $100,000 (£80,000) on the IVF, or in vitro fertilisation, including medication, laboratory fees, travel and other costs.

IVF is the process of fertilising an egg outside of the woman’s body, before returning it to the womb to grow and develop. The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of New York last week, accuses CHA Fertility and two men identified as its co-owners and directors of offences including medical malpractice and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

It reportedly notes that after giving birth on 30 March, the couple “was shocked to see that the babies they were told were formed using both of their genetic material did not appear to be”. There were earlier signs that things were amiss when a scan revealed they were expecting boys, despite the fact that the doctors had said they did not use male embryos during the treatment.(BBC)…[+]

KABUL– U.S. and Taliban officials will reconvene on Tuesday to continue peace talks described as the “most productive session” by a top U.S. negotiator leading the discussions with the hardline Islamists group to end the Afghan war.

The warring sides started a seventh round of peace talks last week, aiming to hammer out a schedule for the withdrawal of foreign troops in exchange for Taliban guarantees that international militant groups will not use Afghanistan as a base for launching attacks. In a tweet yesterday, U.S envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been holding peace talks with the Taliban to end the 18-year war in Afghanistan since last year, said the latest round of discussions were the “most productive session” to date.

He said substantive progress had been made on all four parts of a peace deal: counter-terrorism assurances, troop withdrawal, participation in intra-Afghan dialogue and negotiations, and a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire. About 20,000 foreign troops, most of them American, are in Afghanistan as part of a U.S.-led NATO mission to train, assist and advise Afghan forces. Some U.S. forces carry out counter-terrorism operations. (Reuters)…[+]

DAYS AFTER the Barbados Sea Turtle Project sent out a warning about the dangers of fire pits, 25 pounds of rusty nails were collected from a few square feet of one of the island’s most popular beaches Sunday. And deputy director of the Sea Turtle Project, Carla Daniel, is warning that the practice of lighting bonfires poses a danger not only to turtles who come up to nest, but to people and children using the beach.

Sunday, seven volunteers and Daniel combed the popular Drill Hall beach in the wake of a call, from Daniel, to join her in a clean-up of fire pits there. Before their arrival, she had marked at least eight fire pits which showed obvious signs of nails. “One of the problems is that people have been using pallets to burn (in the bonfires) and these pallets are full of nails and screws,” she told the DAILY NATION. (Barbados Nation) …[+]

Germany and the Netherlands are battling many infestations of oak processionary caterpillars, whose tiny toxic hairs can trigger allergic reactions and skin irritation.

The mild winter and warm spring this year boosted caterpillar numbers. In Louvain, Belgium, firefighters had to destroy nests of the invasive species before a rock concert. The caterpillars turn into pupae, then moths in late July, and the threat diminishes. Germany’s western Ruhr region is densely populated and among the worst affected by the caterpillars. Some schools and parks have been closed to allow specialists to attack the nests in oak trees.

The caterpillars – measuring 2-3cm (about one inch) – march in long processions to the treetops at night, and can wreak havoc in oak trees, as they feast on the young leaves. One mature caterpillar has up to 700,000 hairs, which can be spread by the wind. The Fredenbaumpark in Dortmund was closed for three weeks, as nearly 500 trees were found to be infested there, broadcaster Deutschlandfunk reported.

“The oak processionary infestation this year is very intensive – much more than last year,” said the park’s manager Frank Dartsch. Special teams there and elsewhere have donned protective gear and used firefighters’ lifts to reach the treetops, where they have attacked the caterpillar nests with blowtorches or big vacuum cleaners.(BBC)…[+]

The UK’s largest modern slavery ring, which forced more than 400 people to work for a pittance while their criminal masters earned £2m, has been smashed. A three-year police investigation uncovered an organised criminal gang led by the Brzezinski family, which preyed on homeless people, ex-prisoners and alcoholics from Poland.

The ring lured and then trafficked vulnerable people to the UK with the promise of good money, but instead housed them in squalor and used them as what a judge described as “commodities”. Victims were paid as little as 50p for a day’s labour and in one case a worker was given coffee and a chicken as payment for redecorating a house. Another man had to wash in a canal because he had no other access to water, while one house was so rundown that a leaking toilet had to be plugged with a duvet. One victim said: “I would say some homeless people here in the UK live better than I lived after I arrived over here.”

Hungry victims went to soup kitchens and food banks and many made their own cigarettes from butts off the street. Meanwhile, the gang’s bosses wore lavish clothes and drove luxury cars, including a Bentley.After the end of two trials, it can now be reported how five men and three women, all originally from Poland and all convicted of modern slavery offences and money-laundering, exploited their destitute victims for “greed”.(theguardian)…[+]