UK peer accused of Islamophobia for ‘power of the womb’ comments in debate on counter-terrorism

Malcolm Pearson, whose peerage title is Baron Pearson of Rannoch and is now an unaffiliated peer, was speaking during a debate on the new Labour government’s plans to improve counter-terrorism measures at public venues. (Screenshot/Parliamentlive.tv/File Photo)
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Updated 30 July 2024
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UK peer accused of Islamophobia for ‘power of the womb’ comments in debate on counter-terrorism

  • Malcolm Pearson was speaking during a debate on the new Labour government’s plans to improve counter-terrorism measures at public venues

LONDON: A member of the UK’s House of Lords has been accused of expressing Islamophobic views after he said Islamist radicals planned to “take us over through the power of the womb and the ballot box.”

Malcolm Pearson, whose peerage title is Baron Pearson of Rannoch and is now an unaffiliated peer, was speaking during a debate on the new Labour government’s plans to improve counter-terrorism measures at public venues.

“The Shariah allows Muslim men to have four wives at a time, most of whom are having at least two children, so the Muslim population is going up 10 times faster than our national average,” he told the chamber last Thursday.

“On past trends, Birmingham and nine other English local authorities will be majority Muslim by 2031. The radicals’ plan is to wait until they can take us over through the power of the womb and the ballot box,” he added.

His comments were heavily criticized in the days afterward.

The Muslim Association of Britain and the Muslim Council of Britain said they will lodge formal complaints with the House of Lords Commissioners for Standards over the remarks, The Independent reported on Tuesday.

“Lord Pearson’s recent comments are outrageous and perpetuate classic Islamophobic tropes that demonize British Muslim communities. He appears indifferent to the impact of his words, despite the rise in Islamophobia-related hate crimes,” Zara Mohammed, MCB secretary general, told the newspaper.

“As a member of the House of Lords, Lord Pearson should be held accountable for his conduct. We will be writing to the House of Lords Commissioners for Standards and hope they investigate and take appropriate action,” she added.

Raghad Altikriti, chair of MAB, told The Independent that politicians had a duty to promote unity and respect and not resort to “racist dog whistles and Islamophobic tropes.”

He continued: “His comments and behavior fall far short of the expected standards of a member of the House of Lords, and we hope that the House of Lords Commissioners for Standards will look into this matter and take decisive action.”

When pressed by the newspaper to clarify his comments, Pearson said he was simply being “factual” and quoting a “projection of Office for National Statistics figures.”

He added: “Islamists … are quite open about using the ‘power of the womb and the ballot box’ to help them take over Western civilization; like communists before the (Berlin) Wall came down, they are a world domination movement.”

A House of Lords spokesperson confirmed that the House of Lords Commissioners for Standards would look into any complaint it received to first determine if it “fell within their remit to investigate.”


Power outage hits Cannes Film Festival and traffic in southeastern France

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Power outage hits Cannes Film Festival and traffic in southeastern France

CANNES: A major power outage struck southeastern France on Saturday, disrupting traffic and briefly halting events at the Cannes Film Festival as the prestigious event prepared to hand out its top prize.
About 160,000 households in the Alpes-Maritimes department lost electricity after a high-voltage line fell Saturday morning, electricity network operator RTE said on X. The outage came hours after a fire at an electrical substation near Cannes overnight had already weakened the grid.
Cannes Film Festival organizers confirmed the outage affected the early activities of Saturday and said the Palais des Festivals — the Croisette’s main venue — had switched to an independent power supply.
“All scheduled events and screenings, including the Closing Ceremony, will proceed as planned and under normal conditions,” the statement said. “At this stage, the cause of the outage has not yet been identified. Restoration efforts are underway.”
Still, screenings at the Cineum, one of the festival’s satellite venues, were briefly suspended, the festival added.
Traffic lights in parts of Cannes and the surrounding city of Antibes stopped working after 10 a.m., leading to traffic jams and confusion in city centers. Most shops along the Croisette remained closed, and local food kiosks were only accepting cash. Train service in Cannes was also disrupted.
Authorities said restoration efforts were ongoing and urged residents to remain cautious during travel.

Former Minneapolis police chief recalls ‘absolutely gut-wrenching’ moment of seeing George Floyd video

Updated 38 min 36 sec ago
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Former Minneapolis police chief recalls ‘absolutely gut-wrenching’ moment of seeing George Floyd video

  • What he saw conflicted with what his own people had told him about the deadly encounter
  • The video shows Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, pinning him to the pavement

MINNEAPOLIS: Former Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo vividly remembers receiving a call around midnight from a community activist. The caller told him to watch a video spreading on social media of a white officer pinning a Black man to the ground, despite his fading pleas of “I can’t breathe.”
The dying man was George Floyd. The officer was Derek Chauvin. And Arradondo was the city’s first Black police chief.
“It was absolutely gut-wrenching,” Arradondo, 58, recalled in an interview ahead of the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s murder.
What he saw conflicted with what his own people had told him about the deadly encounter, and he knew immediately it would mean changes for his department and city. But he acknowledged he didn’t immediately foresee how deeply Floyd’s death would reverberate in the US and around the world.
“I served for 32 years,” he said. “But there’s no doubt May 25th, 2020, is a defining moment for me in my public service career.”
The video shows Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, pinning him to the pavement outside a convenience store where Floyd had tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. Chauvin maintained the pressure for 9-1/2 minutes despite pleas from onlookers to stop, even after an off-duty firefighter tried to intervene and another officer said he couldn’t find a pulse.
‘Remnants of pain and anger’
Arradondo sat for the interview in a public library that was heavily damaged in the unrest that followed Floyd’s death. It’s on Lake Street, a major artery that saw some of the worst destruction, a street that he says still bears “remnants of the pain and anger of what occurred five years ago.”
Just down the block, there’s the empty shell of a police station that was torched during the riots. And within sight is a Target store and a Cub Foods supermarket that were looted. Storefronts remain boarded up. While some businesses were rebuilt, empty lots sit where others did not.
Arradondo still stands by his and Mayor Jacob Frey’s decision to abandon the Third Precinct and let it burn. Protesters breached the building, and police — who were spread thin — didn’t have the resources to hold it. So he ordered his officers to evacuate.
“During the most significant crisis we’ve ever experienced, arguably in the state, when it’s life or death, I’ve got to go on the side of keeping people alive and safe,” he said.
Police reform
Arradondo subsequently helped launch an overhaul of policing in the city despite a resistant police culture and a powerful officers union. He testified against Chauvin in his 2021 murder trial, a rare breach of the “blue wall” that traditionally protects officers from being held accountable for wrongdoing.
Five years on, Arradondo, who retired in 2022, said he believes law enforcement agencies nationwide have made progress on police accountability — albeit incremental progress — and that police chiefs and sheriffs now move faster to hold officers responsible for egregious misconduct.
Arradondo was promoted to chief in 2017, and his elevation was greeted with hope among local African Americans who affectionately called him “Rondo.” But his department had a reputation for being too quick to use force and many were angry about police killing young Black men in Minnesota and beyond.
Arradondo said he wishes he had made more changes to the police department before Floyd was killed.
“I would have pushed harder and sooner at trying to dismantle some of the toxic culture that allowed that indifference to exist that evening, on May 25th, 2020,” he said. “I certainly would have invested more time elevating the voices in our community that had been pleading with police departments for decades to listen to us and change.”
Making amends
Arradondo just published a book, “Chief Rondo: Securing Justice for the Murder of George Floyd,” that explores leadership, justice and race, the broader impacts of policing, and the challenges of working within a flawed system. He closes it with a letter dedicated to Floyd’s daughter, Gianna.
“I never had an opportunity to meet Gianna, but I wanted her to know that, even though I was not out there that evening, at that intersection when her father was pleading for help, that I heard him, and I was going to do everything I could to bring him justice,” he said.
He wanted to say the words that she has not heard from the four former officers who were convicted for their roles in George Floyd’s death:
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your father being taken from you.”


Fire in Nairobi informal settlement kills eight

Updated 37 min 10 sec ago
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Fire in Nairobi informal settlement kills eight

  • The fire in the city’s Makina area began at around 5:00 am
  • The cause has not been established

NAIROBI: A fire tore through an informal settlement in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Saturday, killing at least eight people, police said.

The fire in the city’s Makina area began at around 5:00 am (0200 GMT), said police official Patricia Yegon.


“Eight people were burnt to death, while several others were injured,” she said, without specifying how many were hurt.

The cause has not been established, but fires frequently occur in the capital’s overcrowded and impoverished informal settlements.

The Kenyan Red Cross said 40 houses were affected before firefighters contained the blaze with the help of the local community.


Bangladesh sounds alarm as ‘extreme desperation’ drives Rohingya into deadly sea journeys

Updated 24 May 2025
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Bangladesh sounds alarm as ‘extreme desperation’ drives Rohingya into deadly sea journeys

  • UNHCR says 427 Rohingya died in accidents off Myanmar’s coast in early May
  • Thousands of refugees have attempted perilous sea voyages in past few years

DHAKA: Bangladeshi authorities on Saturday raised the alarm over increasing numbers of Rohingya refugees taking risky boat journeys to flee the coastal district of Cox’s Bazar. 

Bangladesh hosts more than 1.3 million Rohingya Muslims, who, for decades, have fled neighboring Myanmar to escape persecution, especially during a military crackdown in 2017. The majority of them live in Cox’s Bazar in eastern Bangladesh, which has become the world’s largest refugee settlement.

Over the years, humanitarian conditions in Cox’s Bazar’s cramped refugee camps have been deteriorating, with aid continuously declining since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nearly one in five people attempting to flee the settlement by sea have been reported as dead or missing so far in 2025, according to UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency.

Two boats which capsized on May 9 and 10 were carrying a total of 514 Rohingya refugees from Cox’s Bazar and Myanmar’s Rakhine state, according to UNHCR, which estimates that at least 427 of them died.

“The ongoing funding crisis for the Rohingya is severely hampering the lives of Rohingya in the camps in Cox’s Bazar, which fueled the desperation for the perilous sea journey,” Mizanur Rahman, refugee relief and repatriation commissioner in Cox’s Bazar, told Arab News.

“Every aspect of their lives — food, livelihood, health, and so on — has been severely impacted. Most importantly, it has darkened their future also. They are at a loss what to do. The uncertainty in their lives triggered many of them to (undertake) the risky sea journeys towards unknown destinations.”

Over the past few years, UNHCR has documented thousands of Rohingya refugees embarking on deadly sea journeys from Bangladesh — and, to a lesser extent, from Myanmar — and reported hundreds dying or going missing.

The Rohingya, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority, lived for centuries in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state but were stripped of their citizenship in the 1980s. Since then, many of them have fled to Bangladesh, where they are almost entirely reliant on humanitarian aid.

Despite multiple attempts by Bangladeshi authorities, the UN-backed repatriation and resettlement process of the Rohingya has so far failed to take off.

In 2025, aid for the Rohingya faced another cut after US President Donald Trump’s administration announced it was eliminating most US aid globally. Washington was the largest donor of foreign aid to the Rohingya last year, contributing $301 million — 55 percent of all foreign aid received.

UNHCR requires $383 million in 2025 to “stabilize the lives of refugees and their host communities” across Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, as well as those displaced inside Myanmar. But, as of Friday, it had secured only 30 percent of that amount.

The deadly boat accidents earlier this month may have been fueled by “extreme desperation,” UNHCR said, highlighting that it occurred during the monsoon season, which is a particularly dangerous time for boat travel in the region.

“The dire humanitarian situation, exacerbated by funding cuts, is having a devastating impact on the lives of Rohingya, with more and more resorting to dangerous journeys to seek safety, protection and a dignified life for themselves and their families,” said Hai Kyung Jun, UNHCR director for Asia and the Pacific.

“The latest tragedy is a chilling reminder that access to meaningful protection, especially in countries of first asylum, as well as responsibility sharing and collective efforts along sea routes, are essential to saving lives.”


South Africa rescues all 260 miners stuck underground alive

Updated 24 May 2025
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South Africa rescues all 260 miners stuck underground alive

  • The miners were trapped underground on Thursday at the Kloof gold mine, 60 kilometers west of Johannesburg
  • The gold mine is one of the deepest operated by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed company

WESTONARIA, South Africa: Rescuers on Friday pulled out all 260 mine workers who had been stuck for more than 24 hours in an underground shaft in South Africa, the mine’s operator said.
The miners were trapped underground on Thursday at the Kloof gold mine, 60 kilometers (37 miles) west of Johannesburg, after a hoist used to access the shaft was damaged in an accident, the mining company Sibanye-Stillwater said.
The first phase of the rescue brought 79 people to the surface by 1:30 p.m. (1130 GMT) while the rest were rescued six hours later, it said in a statement.
“At no point was there any risk of injury to employees during the incident,” it said. A decision had been made against using the emergency escape routes which would have involved the miners walking longer distances, it added.
The gold mine is one of the deepest operated by the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed company.
Desperate relatives of the miners waited outside the site during the rescue efforts, most of them expressing shock at the incident, local television footage showed.
“All affected employees will also undergo thorough medical examinations, if required, while support has also been extended to employees’ families,” the mining company said.
The National Union of Mineworkers said the incident happened around 10:00 a.m. (0800 GMT) on Thursday. It expressed concern for the miners who had been “underground for almost 20 hours.”
Sibanye-Stillwater had said earlier that the miners would be brought to the surface around midday Friday.
“The employees are not trapped; it was decided to keep them at the sub-shaft station for now,” spokesperson Henrika Ninham said.
Mining employs hundreds of thousands of people in South Africa, which is the biggest exporter of platinum and a major exporter of gold, diamonds, coal and other raw materials. But accidents are common.
Dozens of mineworkers are killed each year, though the numbers have been falling as safety standards have been stepped up over the past two decades.
According to industry group Minerals Council South Africa, 42 miners died in 2024, compared to 55 the previous year.
Sibanye-Stillwater chief executive Neal Froneman said Friday they would not resume operations “until we are confident that all the necessary remedial actions have been implemented.”