Guatemala’s highest court has sentenced five former paramilitaries to 30 years in prison for raping dozens of indigenous Mayan women during the country’s civil war in the 1980s. The men were members of so-called Civil Self-Defence Patrols, armed groups formed and supported by the military. The 36 victims were aged 12-52 when the crimes happened, prosecutors said. “There were massacres. Many women were raped,” said Antonina Vale, a survivor. “It’s the pain we have in our hearts.” Around 200,000 people were killed or disappeared in the 1960-1996 conflict. Most of them were members of indigenous groups, who were targeted by the army and right-wing paramilitaries, accused of supporting left-wing guerrillas. The three-week trial at the Supreme Court in the capital, Guatemala City, included testimony from survivors and relatives of the victims of the Achi indigenous group. The rapes, they said, happened around the village of Rabinal, north of the capital. The area, which was targeted heavily during the war, is the site of a mass grave with the bodies of more than 3,000 people.(BBC)…[+]

A French surgeon faces legal action after he tried to sell an X-ray of one of his patient’s injuries as a digital artwork without her consent. The senior surgeon at a Paris hospital put the image of a woman’s forearm with a Kalashnikov bullet lodged near the bone up for sale online as an NFT. The listing said she had been shot in the arm during the 2015 Bataclan attack in Paris which left 130 people dead. Emmanuel Masmejean now faces legal action and possible misconduct charges. Mr Masmejean, an orthopaedic surgeon at the Georges Pompidou hospital, had also described the patient on the NFT website as a young woman who had lost her boyfriend during the 2015 massacre in Paris by Islamic State gunmen. Asked for comment by Mediapart, which first reported the story, Mr Masmejean reportedly said he acknowledged that the sale was “an error” and that he regretted not having sought permission from the patient.(BBC)…[+]

Millions of people were left for hours without electricity on Tuesday when a huge power blackout hit cities in three Central Asian countries. Areas of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan were affected when a shared power line was disconnected. It caused traffic jams, airport delays and other public transport disruptions across the ex-Soviet nations. The blackout happened in the late morning, with power restored in most areas by early evening. The power grids of the three countries are interconnected, and linked to Russia’s network via a Soviet-built power line that runs through Kazakhstan. It allows them to draw power from Russia’s grid when there are unexpected shortages. But due to “a significant emergency imbalance” there was a power surge and the connection was cut, grid operator KEGOC said.(BBC)…[+]