World Tour: Maldives elects pro-China president

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with our reporter in Nigeria, Onize Ohikere

SOUND: [Passengers boarding plane]

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Libya - Italy flights — We start today in Libya’s capital of Tripoli where some two dozen passengers boarded a commercial flight to Italy—the first in nearly a decade.

The Libyan-run Medsky Airways sent the first aircraft that arrived in Rome on Saturday. The airline will operate roundtrip flights between both cities twice a week.

Italy and other European nations suspended flights from Libya in 2014. That’s after Libya devolved into unrest, following the ouster of longtime autocrat Muammar Gaddafi. An EU ban on Libyan aircrafts still remains in place.

AL-ZANAD: [Speaking Arabic]

Hamdi al-Zanad—the MedSky airlines director—says Libyans who wanted to travel to Italy previously had to go through Tunisia because of the suspension.

Malta has also resumed flight operations to Libya.

AUDIO: [Church singing]

Armenia protests — In Armenia’s capital of Yerevan, church members pray for the hundreds of thousands of people, who have now fled the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Bells across the country rang out on Sunday as Armenians in the majority Christian country observed a national day of prayer for Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nearly all of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians residing in the region have fled. That’s after neighboring Azerbaijan launched an offensive to regain control of the territory.

WOMAN: [Speaking Armenian]

This woman says that women, children, and the elderly fled in any vehicle they could find.

AUDIO: [Protesters singing]

In Brussels, several thousand Armenians waved flags and sang in the streets to protest the situation. Similar protests have continued in Armenia and also took place in France and Greece.

A United Nations mission arrived in the region on Sunday, the first there in about three decades.

SOUND: [Celebrations]

Maldives election — Next, supporters are celebrating on the streets of the Maldives after an unexpected victory.

Mohamed Muizzu won the Saturday runoff presidential election with more than 53 percent of the votes. Incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih emerged with 46 percent of the vote.

MUIZZU: [Speaking Dhivehi]

Muizzu unexpectedly stepped in as his party’s candidate after the Supreme Court prevented his party’s first choice and the country’s former president from running due to money laundering and corruption charges.

The vote has also morphed into a regional power play between India and China for the Maldives, which strategically rests in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Muizzu had accused the ruling party of allowing India free rein access to the country.

Muizzu—widely viewed as pro-China—vowed to remove Indian troops from the Maldives and balance the country’s trade partners. His party lost to Solih back in 2018 over frustration with growing Chinese debt.

AUDIO: [Church singing]

Iraq funeral — We close today in Iraq where Christians are still mourning at least 100 people who died at a wedding last week.

Mourners wept inside the packed Al-Tahera Syriac Catholic church where portraits of some of the dead lined the stairs.

Hundreds of wedding guests were inside the reception center in a small Christian community in the Nineveh Plains. Authorities said indoor fireworks started the fire that quickly engulfed the center built with highly combustible material.

More than 100 people also suffered burns, smoke inhalation, and crush wounds.

ISHO: [Speaking Arabic]

Revan Isho—the groom—said he grabbed his wife, who struggled to run because of her dress.

ISHO: [Speaking Arabic]

He adds here that his wife can’t speak after she lost ten relatives including her mother and brother.

They plan to move away from the area.

Iraqi authorities have arrested 14 people, including the venue’s owner and people who set off the fireworks.

That’s it for today’s WORLD Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

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