Arrests after attack on Hindu temple in Canada. Canadian authorities arrested three people on Monday after violence committed on Sunday near a Hindu place of worship in Brampton, near Toronto, and attributed to Sikh separatists. Images posted on social media showed clashes between people carrying the yellow flag of Khalistan, the state that Sikh separatists are calling for, and a group flying an Indian flag. The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, denounced a “deliberate attack”. The incident comes against the backdrop of a serious diplomatic crisis between New Delhi and Ottawa since the Canadian police implicated India in the assassination, in 2023, in Vancouver, of a Sikh separatist leader. “The divide between Canada and India raises questions about the consequences it could have on the deep trade and migration ties between the two countries,” note the site of the BBC, which reminds us that “bilateral trade represents billions of dollars” and that “Canada is home to nearly 1.7 million people of Indian origin.”
Deadly shipwreck between the Comoros and Mayotte. At least twenty-five people drowned between the archipelago and the French island during the night from Friday to Saturday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced on Monday. The boat was carrying around thirty people, including seven women, two children and two infants. According to the UN agency, the shipwreck was “provoked by traffickers”. Nassim, a survivor, told Comoros info that the intoxicated smugglers had deliberately caused the sinking by unscrewing a cap at the rear of the boat. “We pay 150,000 Comorian francs [300 euros] per capita, and nothing is certain”, underlines the survivor. Two other deadly shipwrecks “courses”, name of the Comorian canoes, have taken place over the last three months in the same area, where the Comoros and Mayotte are only 70 kilometers apart.
In Israel, new conscription orders for 7,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews. These calls for compulsory military service of thirty-two months for men aim to“achieve recruitment objectives”, the army said, as its numbers are under pressure after more than a year of war in Gaza. The conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews is a highly sensitive subject in the country: these clerics, who represent approximately 14% of Israel’s Jewish population, benefit from an exemption because they devote themselves to the study of the sacred texts of Judaism in under a rule established when the state was created in 1948. But in June, the Supreme Court put an end to it. The reluctance of the ultraorthodox towards military service is partly linked to the fear that it will prevent them from practicing their religion, explain Israel Hayom. “The IDF’s current strategy aims to challenge these perceptions by engaging with religious leaders” and by creating infrastructures adapted to the religious practice of this community.
