🇲🇺 Road toll hits 100 for the year as a tougher traffic bill heads to Parliament

Road toll hits 100 for the year as a tougher traffic bill heads to Parliament

A boy of 17 from Union Park became the 100th person killed on Mauritius roads this year on Friday, when the van he was driving hit a goods vehicle. His sister said he had just opened his own garage and was days from sitting his licence test. An autopsy will follow.

Cabinet had cleared the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill 2026 for the National Assembly hours earlier. It lets courts seize vehicles and impose driving bans for driving under alcohol, drugs or other intoxicants, and creates a new offence of road rage. Causing a death while driving unlicensed becomes a crime in its own right.

Penalties climb for causing death by dangerous or careless driving, and for street racing. The bill also brings digital licences, online fine payment, and a clampdown on screaming exhausts. Whether it slows the count depends less on the statute than on who enforces it.

Mithun surrenders to the drug squad in the 155 kg Reunion cannabis case

Shaan Kumar Choolun, 43, the man known as Mithun, gave himself up to the anti-drug unit at Rose-Belle on Friday morning. His lawyer stood beside him. He had been on the run since 19 August, wanted over an attempt to bring 155.7 kg of cannabis across from La Reunion, and appears before the Weekend Court on Saturday.

Officers arrested his wife a day earlier after finding live ammunition at their Le Morne home that she could not account for. Police already hold three other suspects. His name had surfaced once before, in the money laundering strand of the Franklin case.

SME Mauritius suspends its CEO while it digs into irregularities

The board of SME Mauritius, the state agency that backs small and medium firms, suspended its chief executive Ravin Rampersad on Friday, pending an investigation into irregularities it says need deeper checks. Rampersad has run the body since June 2018, he arrived from Innodis Poultry.

Raj Kishore Bunjun, a former permanent secretary in the SME ministry, steps in as interim officer in charge to keep operations moving while the inquiry runs.

Rodrigues deputy chief faces a dredging case at Baie-du-Nord

Police have established a prima facie case of illegal dredging against Johnson Roussety, the Deputy Chief Commissioner of Rodrigues, over an unauthorised excavation on the seabed at Baie-du-Nord. Investigators, backed by two scientific officers and a Coast Guard report, measured a pit 20 metres long and 16 wide, inspected at low tide.

Subron defends the new state pension as its app goes live

Social Security Minister Ashok Subron launched a mobile app for the State Age Pension, the SAP that replaces the Basic Retirement Pension from January, and hit back at what he called erroneous attacks on the reform. The tool lets people estimate what they would draw at 60, 62 or 65.

Shorts

Youth Parliament takes the PM's chair – The fifth National Youth Parliament opened at the Assembly, its stand-in premier warning on the drug scourge.

Ramdanee cleared for four trips abroad – A court gave businessman Sanjiv Ramdanee, under investigation, the green light for four foreign trips.

A WhatsApp favour costs a retiree Rs 20,000 – A woman of 64 thought she was helping a contact, then realised a scammer had taken Rs 20,000.

Coast Guard patrol boats are back at sea – Three Coast Guard patrol boats, donated by the US in 2010, are back at sea after a refit.

The 2027 public holidays are set – Cabinet has fixed the official public holiday calendar for 2027.

1,240,316

residents left in the republic, down 3,425 on a year ago; Statistics Mauritius says the population are shrinking in both Mauritius and Rodrigues.

34

the age at which Uganda's King Oyo of Tooro has died, crowned at three and once listed as the world's youngest reigning monarch.

$16.7 million

the no-bid contract ICE, the US immigration agency, handed out for 6,000 electric shock gloves to use on detainees and protesters, to lawmakers' dismay.

Police detain Zambia's opposition leader over treason charges

Police detained Zambia's opposition leader Mundubile on Thursday over treason allegations. He finished runner-up in this month's disputed presidential vote, which his camp says was rigged. The arrest lands as that camp presses for African Union monitors before handover, and it deepens a standoff that has kept the country on edge since polling day.

Libya sits in the dark despite its oil

How do you run an oil economy in the dark? Tripoli shoppers light the aisles with phone torches as fuel shortages and blackouts grip Libya in the summer heat.

Ceuta police clash with anti-migrant protesters

Police in Ceuta, Spain's enclave on the North African coast, clashed with anti-migrant protesters, a month after thousands crossed in from Morocco.

A glacial collapse kills hundreds on the Nepal border

A glacial collapse on the Nepal and Tibet border has unleashed flash floods and mudslides that killed at least 579 people, with more than 1,900 still missing. Helicopters are ferrying the injured out of the Trishuli valley, where bridges and whole stretches of road are gone. Rescue teams are still reaching villages that were cut off.

US eyes a stake in Venezuela's oil

Washington is in talks for an ownership stake in Venezuela's oil fields, a move to widen US influence and pad crude supplies.

Norway's King Harald V dies at 89, his son succeeds him

Norway's King Harald V has died at 89 after a long reign; his son takes the throne as King Haakon VIII.

Fifty-nine gold pieces, gone in four minutes

Thieves smashed into the museum in Villena, eastern Spain, and were out in about four minutes with 59 pieces of Bronze Age gold, a hoard valued at at least 1.7 million euros. The collection is some 3,000 years old, among the finest prehistoric goldwork in Europe.

No arrests yet. Whoever planned it knew which cases to hit, the part that should worry a museum more than the broken glass.

🙏 Merci, à demain! 👋

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