Spanish prosecutors dismiss sex abuse case against Julio Iglesias

Spanish prosecutors on Friday shelved a sex abuse and human trafficking complaint against veteran singer Julio Iglesias, saying Spain’s courts had no jurisdiction in the case. Two women — a domestic worker and a physiotherapist — alleged they had suffered sexual and other forms of abuse while working at Iglesias’s properties in the Dominican Republic and the […]

‘President Lula da Silva has revived Brazilian cinema’

Brazil’s latest Oscar-nominated thriller “The Secret Agent” has resonated with audiences around the world as a universal tale of authoritarian regimes using their power “to crush people,” director Kleber Mendonca Filho told AFP in an interview. Following on “I’m Still Here,” winner of last year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the new film about […]

Discarded newborns

Earlier this month, a newborn baby was found abandoned in a garbage bin in Lahore’s Allama Iqbal Town. Police have been informed and legal proceedings are expected, though the baby’s condition remains undisclosed. For a society that claims reverence for life, the image of a newborn discarded among refuse should have triggered outrage. Instead, it […]

Beyond budgets: structural crisis in Pakistan’s universities

Universities across Pakistan are under sustained stress but the fault lines are perhaps most visible in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. When the University of Peshawar, the province’s premier public institution, struggles to pay salaries and survives on emergency government grants and borrowing, it is tempting to frame the problem as a temporary financial shortfall. That framing is misleading. […]