Cops kill man who set himself on fire outside synagogue
Tunis, Jan 25: A man set himself on fire in front of the Grand Synagogue in the Tunisian capital and was killed by police, the Interior Ministry said. A police officer and a passerby suffered burns.
The man started the fire after sundown on Friday, around the time the synagogue holds Sabbath prayers.
The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the man advanced toward a law enforcement officer while ablaze, and a second officer opened fire to protect his colleague. The officer was hospitalized with burns, as was a passerby, the statement said.
The ministry did not release the man’s identity or potential motive for his act, saying only that he had unspecified psychiatric disorders.
Tunisia was historically home to a large Jewish population, now estimated to number about 1,500 people. Jewish sites in Tunisia have been targeted in the past.
A national guardsman killed five people at the 2,600-year-old El-Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba after an annual pilgrimage in 2023. Later that year, pro-Palestinian protesters vandalised a historic synagogue and sanctuary in the southern town of El Hamma. And a garden was set ablaze last year outside the synagogue in the coastal city of Sfax.
Tunisia’s recent history was also marked by the self-immolation of a street vendor in 2010 in a protest linked to economic desperation, corruption and repression. Mohamed Bouazizi’s act unleashed mass protests that led to the ouster of Tunisia’s autocratic ruler and uprisings across the region known as the Arab Spring. (AP)
Spotlight on survivors on Auschwitz’s 80th anniv of liberation
Warsaw, Jan 25: The world’s focus will be on the remaining survivors of Nazi Germany’s atrocities on Monday as world leaders and royalty join them for commemorations on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
The main observances take place at the site in southern Poland where Nazi Germany murdered over a million people, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, gay people and others targeted for elimination in Adolf Hitler’s racial ideology.
The anniversary has taken on added poignancy due to the advanced age of the survivors, and an awareness that they will soon be gone, even as rising warfare makes their warnings as relevant as ever. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum says it expects about 50 survivors of Auschwitz and other camps to attend the events on Monday afternoon, joined by political leaders and royalty.
On this occasion, the powerful will sit and listen to the voices of the former prisoners, while there is still time to hear them. (AP)
Woman with functioning pig organ thriving
Washington, Jan 25: An Alabama woman passed a major milestone Saturday to become the longest living recipient of a pig organ transplant – healthy and full of energy with her new kidney for 61 days and counting.
“I’m superwoman,” Towana Looney told The Associated Press, laughing about outpacing family members on long walks around New York City as she continues her recovery. “It’s a new take on life.” Looney’s vibrant recovery is a morale boost in the quest to make animal-to-human transplants a reality. Only four other Americans have received hugely experimental transplants of gene-edited pig organs – two hearts and two kidneys – and none lived more than two months. (AP)