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The man who built the MMM just walked away from it
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Paul Bérenger, Joanna Bérenger, and Chetan Baboolall will take their seats in the National Assembly on Tuesday not as members of the Mouvement Militant Mauricien, but as independent backbenchers. Bérenger founded the party in the 1970s and has led it for most of the decades since.
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He announced the break at the MMM's Rose Hill headquarters on Saturday, flanked by both deputies. The decision was carefully considered, he said: "Nou finn tom dakor ki pou lemoman nou pou siez an indepandan ant lopozision ofisyel." For now, between the official opposition and the government. Nobody quite knows what that means for the party's future.
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The split comes as an internal MMM delegate assembly looms. Bérenger called the party's delegate list "bidon", meaning fake, and said it was assembled to exclude him. Secretary general Rajesh Bhagwan pushed back hard: "Mo met o defi, zame mo'nn manipil lalis." The invitation went out to everyone, including Bérenger. They chose not to come.
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A third voice complicates the picture. Franco Quirin, already sitting as an independent, says Joanna Bérenger's claim that he left voluntarily is "risible." A letter from the MMM secretary general to the Speaker formalised his departure, not his own choice. "Ce n'est pas moi qui ai décidé d'aller m'asseoir là-bas."
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Three independent deputies. A party leadership defending its legitimacy. Watch Tuesday.
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Bérenger has spent 50-plus years either inside the MMM or leading it. This is genuinely uncharted territory.
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No petrol or bread price hike yet, minister says
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A rumour spread Saturday that petrol prices would rise by Rs 5 per litre and bread by Rs 1.40. It moved fast, especially on WhatsApp. Minister of Commerce and Consumer Protection Michaël Sik Yuen moved quickly to deny it: "Rien n'a été finalisé à ce jour." Nothing decided, he said.
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The denial doesn't close the question. Brent Crude is at $109 per barrel, up roughly 40% since the Iran war started in February. At that price, the arithmetic of fuel subsidies gets harder every week. Whether prices stay flat much longer depends partly on whether the Strait of Hormuz reopens. Nobody, right now, is betting on Tuesday.
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Shark or boat? Nobody agrees after Tamarin lagoon scare
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What left a 10-year-old boy with a leg wound in the Tamarin lagoon on Sunday? He had been surfing near a hotel with his father when something cut into his leg. His father rushed him to a private clinic for emergency treatment.
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National Coast Guard officers inspected the lagoon and spotted no sharks. Their best guess: the child hit a vessel. "Peu probable qu'il s'agisse d'une attaque de requin," the National Coast Guard said. Some locals remained sceptical. Police told swimmers to stay close to shore while investigation continues.
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Phones out of class from next term: every school, every student
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First trimester ended Friday. When students return for Term 2, their phones stay outside.
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New Education Regulations 2026, developed with the Attorney General's office, will ban phones and connected devices from school premises during school hours. Two exceptions: supervised educational use, and medical emergencies. Cabinet approval was pending at publication. Primary school teachers said they were not consulted, a gap that may complicate the rollout.
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Rents keep climbing. Those at the bottom feel it most.
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Inflation, an unstable market, and what some are calling open profiteering: rents across Mauritius keep rising, and lower-income households are bearing most of the weight. Buying land isn't getting easier. The Construction Price Index shows building costs have surged, so the dream of owning your own home moves further out of reach each year.
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🗞️ SHORTS
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57% of new HIV cases hit workers aged 25 to 44 – Mauritius recorded 491 new HIV cases in 2025, down 10.6%, but over half fell in the 25-44 working-age group.
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School van driver held for assaulting 17-year-old – Police arrested a school van driver on Friday for allegedly assaulting a teenage girl with special needs in the East.
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CJSOI boxing champion drowns at Le Morne – Ken Dylan Prosper, 21, a gold medallist at the 2022 Commission de la Jeunesse et des Sports de l'Océan Indien Games, drowned at Le Morne on Easter weekend.
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Curepipe starts 1.6km drainage to cut floods – Works began Wednesday at NHDC Les Jasmins; Gamma Civic Ltd will build 1.6 kilometres of drains in the coming months.
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Rs 36 million: Loto's biggest Easter weekend win – Saturday's draw produced one jackpot winner; the ticket was sold at an undisclosed retailer.
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Gold closed the week at $4,678 per ounce, up 6.58% in a single session, its highest price in modern recorded trading. When investors pile into gold that fast, it usually means they have lost confidence in everything else. With the Strait of Hormuz shut, US forces trading fire with Iranian personnel over the mountains of southwestern Iran, and power plant strikes threatened for Tuesday, there is quite a lot of "everything else" to worry about right now.
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Brent Crude opened Sunday at $109.24 per barrel, up roughly 40% since the Iran war started in February. Six weeks ago it was below $80. That move gets paid for somewhere: in higher shipping rates, rising import prices, and eventually at the pump. The government has denied any imminent price hike. The maths doesn't get kinder the longer this war runs.
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The Stock Exchange of Mauritius index (SEMDEX) closed at 2,230.90 on Friday, up 7.70 points, a 0.35% gain on a week when global markets were rattled. Local investors appear to be sitting tight. Whether that calm survives Mauritius's next quarterly fuel import bill is another question.
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Africa's growth on the line as Iran war drags into its sixth week
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The African Union and the African Development Bank warns that Africa stands to lose 0.2 percentage points of GDP in 2026 if the Iran war runs past six months. The Middle East accounts for 15.8% of Africa's imports and 10.9% of its exports, leaving the continent deeply exposed to disruption in the Gulf. Currencies in 29 African countries have already depreciated since February, raising external debt servicing costs and squeezing import budgets. Fertilizer supplies are tightening as Gulf gas flows fall, and the critical planting window runs through May.
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That 0.2% number sounds small until you apply it to economies already running thin.
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Iran war cuts the supply chain for food and medicine worldwide
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"The most significant supply chain disruption since COVID" — that is how the United Nations describes what the closed Strait of Hormuz has done to global logistics. Aid groups report a 20% cost increase on shipments, with goods from Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi now rerouting around Africa, adding weeks to deliveries. The World Food Programme has tens of thousands of metric tons of food heavily delayed. The International Rescue Committee has $130,000 of pharmaceuticals stranded in Dubai meant for Sudan; 670 boxes of therapeutic food for malnourished children in Somalia are stuck in India.
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Who picks up the reins when a 93-year-old president can't govern? Cameroon just answered.
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Cameroon's parliament voted 200 to 18 on Saturday to create the country's first vice presidential post. President Paul Biya, 93, has ruled Cameroon since 1982. Never a deputy. Until now.
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Under the new amendment, the VP steps in automatically if the president dies, resigns, or becomes incapacitated, with no elections required. Opposition leader Maurice Kamto called it "an attempt at a power grab." Supporters say it strengthens institutional stability. At 93, the world's oldest sitting head of state now has a formal succession mechanism. Whose idea it was depends on who you ask.
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US rescues downed airman from Iran; Tuesday is 'power plant day', Trump says
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Roughly 48 hours after Iran downed his F-15E over southern Iran on Friday, a US colonel walked out of the mountains alive. President Trump described the rescue as "one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History," involving dozens of aircraft and a heavy firefight that stretched into daylight.
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Iran's Revolutionary Guard claimed it downed two C-130 transport aircraft and two Black Hawk helicopters during the operation. The US hasn't confirmed any losses.
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Trump's patience, such as it was, ran out online. "Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran," he posted. Iran wants war reparations and a new transit fee regime for the Strait of Hormuz before it reopens. Former Foreign Minister Zarif proposed a roadmap: nuclear limits for sanctions relief. Oman is mediating. Tuesday is the deadline.
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Across the Gulf, Iran's five-week campaign against regional infrastructure continued Sunday. Kuwait reported serious damage to two power and water desalination plants, critical infrastructure in a country where 90% of drinking water comes from those facilities. Bahrain and the UAE reported fires at energy sites.
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The Strait has been closed since February 28. Every day it stays shut, the cost of almost everything, everywhere, goes up.
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Pope Leo's first Easter: stop the wars, stop the conquest
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Pope Leo XIV celebrated his first Easter Mass as pontiff in St Peter's Square on Sunday, before thousands of worshippers. He condemned "the violence of war that kills and destroys" and called on global leaders to renounce conquest and choose peace. He singled out those who "wage war, abuse the weak and prioritise profits."
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No specific countries were named. The timing made the context plain: the Iran war enters its sixth week Monday, and Russian drones were hitting Ukrainian markets the same morning Leo spoke.
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Russia kills five at a Ukrainian market; Kyiv hits back at Russian oil
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A Russian drone struck a busy market in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Saturday, killing five people and injuring 21, the attack was part of an overnight barrage of 286 long-range drones of which Ukrainian air defences intercepted 260.
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Kyiv responded by targeting the Primorsk oil port and setting fire to the NORSI refinery in Nizhny Novgorod. Two conflicts, both escalating on Easter weekend.
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Russia launched 286 drones in one night. Ukraine took out a refinery. Good morning from 2026.
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Cambodia's most decorated minesweeper never wore a uniform
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Magawa was a rat. An African giant pouched rat, to be precise, trained by APOPO, a Belgian nonprofit that teaches rodents to detect landmines, to work the minefields of Cambodia. Over his career, he found more than 100 landmines and unexploded ordnance across 225,000 square metres of land, roughly 30 football pitches worth.
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In 2020, the UK's PDSA, which awards animal gallantry medals, gave him its gold medal for service. He died in 2022, aged eight. Cambodia has just unveiled a bronze statue in his honour. Not bad for a rat.
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The humans who laid those mines never thought a rat would outlast them in the history books.
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