🇲🇺 Curfew extended two more nights as the state hardens its hand

Curfew extended two more nights as the state hardens its hand

PM Ramgoolam went on national television on Wednesday night to extend the overnight curfew through Friday morning and to widen it to two more towns, Saint-Pierre and Quartier-Militaire, which brings 17 regions under the 20:30 to 05:00 order.

Cabinet says the 94 people arrested since the trouble began, 84 of them on Tuesday alone, include 16 minors and one serving officer. Seven officers were hurt. Looters, arsonists and anyone caught with explosives will be charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act where it fits, and a faster channel agreed with the chief judge and the Director of Public Prosecutions is meant to move those cases quickly.

Ministers are also weighing a change to the Children's Act that would drop the age for detaining and charging minors from 14 to 12, given how many teenagers turned up in the tally. It is only a proposal. The curfew can buy quiet nights; what it cannot do is answer the shooting that set all of this off.

Two of the harder moves, terror charges and a lower arrest age, land on the young and the poor first.

Economists put the unrest bill as high as Rs 200 million

Lost business, wrecked shopfronts and stalled transport could cost the economy between Rs 40 million and Rs 200 million, economist Bhavish Jugurnath estimates, counting damage and activity that may never be clawed back. The curfew on its own runs Rs 15 million to Rs 75 million a night.

Set against a nominal GDP of roughly Rs 873 billion for 2026, about Rs 2.4 billion a day, no single night erases a full day of output. Most of the pain lands on shops, restaurants and stranded workers. Jugurnath's real worry is narrower: a longer shutdown, or shaken tourism confidence, is what moves the number.

A constable is caught with three sabres and a bat at La Gaulette

A routine curfew check on the main road at La Gaulette turned up three sabres, three balaclavas and a baseball bat, all of it in a car driven by a constable of 28. Officers seized the lot.

The constable, posted to L'Escalier station and just off a morning shift, now faces questions over carrying an offensive weapon and breaching the curfew. Asked why he had them, he reportedly said only this: 'Me, I am a policeman.'

Fires take out 11,000 tonnes of cane in three days

About 11,000 tonnes of sugarcane burned between Monday and Wednesday morning, Chamber of Agriculture says, much of it cane that had not yet ripened. Expect 500 to 800 tonnes of sugar from it against the usual 1,000. Ratoons burned as well, and damaged irrigation means next year takes a hit too.

A drive to keep the evening lights steady this summer

From October to April the authorities are pushing a fresh campaign to save power, aimed squarely at the evening peak, when demand jumps and the risk of shortages climbs. The ask is simple, shift the heaviest use off those few hours so the grid has room to breathe through the hot months.

Shorts

Élodie Thomas is off the respirator – The woman shot at Camp-Levieux can now speak softly and no longer needs breathing support.

New limits on buying fuel in cans – From midnight, petrol or diesel in a container means a minimum of 20 litres and an ID at the pump.

No class Thursday or Friday, exams stay – Schools stay shut two more days, though SC and HSC papers go ahead as planned.

Two inmates slip out of Barkly post – As rioters stormed the Barkly police post two held there used the chaos to escape.

Kobita Jugnauth faces a third FCC session – She spent three hours at the Financial Crimes Commission in the Rs 114 million suitcases probe.

Rs 5.4 million

swept out of a Roche-Bois firm when a crowd of more than 50 people forced into Fast Food Ltd and stripped it during the unrest.

2 million

Somali children under five could be acutely malnourished by June, aid analysts warn, as displacement grows and relief funding thins out.

$1.2 billion

US regulators fined Bank of America this much over lax money laundering checks and unreported suspicious transfers.

Congo's Ebola outbreak crosses 9,000 cases as Kenya finds a second

Congo's Ebola outbreak, already the worst on record, has passed 9,000 cases with more than 4,000 deaths since early this month, and health officials say too many of those deaths are happening in villages, far from any treatment.

Next door, Kenya has confirmed a second case, a relative of the man who was its first Ebola death, and the border town of Busia is screening harder as people cross in from Uganda.

Scores killed as communities clash in South Sudan

Fighting between rival communities in South Sudan's Lakes State has left scores dead and hospitals overwhelmed with the wounded, officials say.

Gunman kills four at a South Africa memorial

A gunman opened fire on mourners leaving a local politician's memorial in South Africa, killing at least four and wounding three, police said.

Trump throws Greenland open to oil, gas and mining

President Trump says a sweeping hunt for oil, gas and minerals will begin in Greenland, tied to a new security pact and plans for two American military bases on the island.

Greenland sits on rare earths and hydrocarbons Washington wants, and a bigger military footprint there feeds the Arctic contest with Russia and China. Denmark, which still runs Greenland's defence, has watched the US circle for a year.

Turkey seizes opposition broadcaster Halk TV

Turkish police has raided opposition broadcaster Halk TV, arrested 11 people and installed a trustee to run it, drawing an outcry over press freedom.

An OpenAI engineer is accused of bugging the office

Why plant a bug at your own employer? The FBI has arrested a Saudi engineer at OpenAI, accused of hiding a recording device to capture colleagues' conversations.

Tupac's killer is sentenced, 29 years on

Nearly three decades after shots rang out on a Las Vegas strip, a court has given Duane 'Keffe D' Davis 40 years to life for orchestrating the 1996 drive-by that killed rapper Tupac Shakur.

Davis, a former Los Angeles gang figure, had talked about that night for years, in interviews and a memoir, until the story he sold as legend became the case that put him away.

🙏 Merci, à demain! 👋

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