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Three mauves go solo: the MMM has cracked wide open
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What exactly is Paul Béranger playing at? That question has been hanging over Mauritius's political landscape all Easter weekend, after the former Deputy Prime Minister confirmed he, his daughter Joanna and fellow MP Chetan Baboolall will take seats as independent backbenchers when parliament resumes Tuesday April 7. They will sit positioned between the official opposition and the governing Alliance du Changement. Seated neither with the government nor against it. Just close enough to matter.
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After resigning as MMM (Mouvement Militant Mauricien) leader, Béranger plays from sidelines: visible enough to weigh in, distant enough to avoid accountability. Within the party, Secretary General Rajesh Bhagwan is fighting back, calling Béranger's claims about a "bidon" delegates list a manufactured crisis designed to justify his own absence from the upcoming party Assembly. The alliance partner Adrien Duval, of the PMSD (Parti Mauricien Social Démocrate), is also demanding explanations about the departure, making this a governing coalition headache, not just a mauve family squabble.
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Tuesday's parliamentary session will be the first real test. Béranger flanked by Joanna and Baboolall on the independent benches, the MMM formally in opposition, and the Alliance left trying to hold its majority together while explaining a fracture in one of its founding parties. All eyes on the hemicycle.
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Franco Quirin says he was pushed out, not gone voluntarily. The mauves have more splinters than a shipwreck.
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Mauritius faces cost-of-living crunch as the war bites
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A March 2026 UNDP report lands hard: Mauritius imports 100% of its refined petroleum. With crude oil above $109 per barrel and the Strait of Hormuz blockade showing no sign of lifting before Tuesday's deadline, every rupee-per-litre at the pump is a policy decision with real consequences. The report estimates a 50% oil price spike would push local inflation up by an additional 3.6 percentage points.
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The pain is not evenly shared. The poorest Mauritians spend 40.4% of their household budget on food. The wealthiest? Just 22.8%. A 10% food price increase cuts purchasing power by 4 percentage points at the bottom and barely 2.3 at the top. With 99% of merchandise travelling by sea through disrupted routes, the island is structurally exposed in ways that go beyond the next fuel pricing decision.
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The UNDP prescription: chosen sovereignty through renewables and local food production. Easier said than financed.
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Rents climbing, the most vulnerable left holding the bill
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Rental costs across Mauritius are climbing steadily, with landlords able to demand more in a tight housing market. The Construction Price Index, the measure of how much it costs to build, has made owning your own home a stretch, those who cannot buy are stuck renting, and in an inflationary environment, the cost keeps moving upward.
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For lower-income households, rent eats a disproportionate slice of already-thin budgets. A new build, once a realistic five-year plan for many families, is drifting into the category of distant dreams.
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Phone and smartwatch ban hits schools this week
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From this week, phones, tablets and smartwatches are banned on school premises. Education Minister Dr Mahend Gungapersad confirmed the new regulations are ready, developed with the Attorney General's office, with exceptions for medical and educational use only. The regulations were developed with the State Law Office, they now await Cabinet sign-off. The minister wants the rules applied without delay: "save our children" was his phrase.
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Minister says no fuel or bread price rise has been decided
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Rumours circulated Saturday morning: petrol up Rs 5 per litre, bread up Rs 1.40. Minister of Commerce and Consumer Protection Michaël Sik Yuen dismissed them flat. 'Nothing has been finalised,' he said. The speed with which those rumours spread tells you exactly how primed people are for a price shock right now.
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🗞️ SHORTS
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Shark injures child at Tamarin – A 10-year-old was bitten in the thigh in the Tamarin lagoon on Sunday; police are urging swimmers to exercise caution in the area.
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650 drink-driving cases since January – PM questioned in parliament: 650 people caught driving under the influence since January, prompting calls for tougher enforcement.
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Boxer drowned at Le Morne – Ken Dylan Prosper, 21, a CJSOI gold medallist from Rodrigues, drowned at Le Morne on Easter weekend while retrieving fishing traps.
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India protects pre-2017 Mauritius deals – India confirmed GAAR anti-avoidance tax rules won't apply to investments made through Mauritius before April 1, 2017.
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Van driver arrested over teen assault – A school van driver was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 17-year-old special needs student in Flacq on April 3.
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$109.24 per barrel: OPEC+ voted Sunday to add 206,000 barrels per day to global supply, covering roughly 1.7% of what the Strait of Hormuz blockade has already removed. JPMorgan warns that if the waterway stays shut into mid-May, crude could crack $150. Every tank filled at a Mauritius petrol station reflects this number.
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$4,678 per ounce: Gold closed there on Sunday, up 6.58% in a single day. War fear, inflation hedging and dollar uncertainty have sent it to levels that would have seemed fantastical two years ago. In Mauritius, gold is woven into weddings, savings and family security. That jewellery in the drawer is worth more today than almost any point in living memory.
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97.3%: Mauritius's commercial openness ratio, with 99% of goods moving by sea and those routes under pressure from the Iran conflict. A UNDP report last month found a 50% oil price spike would add 3.6 points to local inflation, and the poorest households, who spend 40% of their budgets on food, would feel it most.
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Africa's growth forecast takes a hit from the Iran war
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0.2 percentage points. That's what the African Union and AfDB project the Middle East conflict will carve off Africa's 2026 GDP growth if fighting runs longer than six months. The Middle East accounts for 15.8% of the continent's imports, fuel and food included, and 10.9% of its exports. Twenty-nine African countries have already seen their currencies depreciate, raising debt costs and making imports more expensive.
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Some outliers benefit. Nigeria gains from higher oil prices. Mauritius, South Africa and Namibia are picking up extra trade as shippers reroute cargo around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Strait.
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Mauritius's port handling more rerouted cargo is real; it still can't offset the fuel cost hit on everything else.
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Worst supply chain crisis since COVID, and the aid can't get through
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The UN is calling this the biggest supply chain disruption since COVID, with shipping costs on rerouted journeys up 20%. For aid organisations, that means fewer doses or fewer meals. UNICEF is paying 20% more to deliver vaccines. The International Rescue Committee has $130,000 of pharmaceuticals stranded in Dubai. In Sudan, where 19 million people face acute food insecurity, those delays cost lives.
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Cameroon's 93-year-old leader finally gets a deputy
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Parliament in Cameroon voted Saturday to create the country's first ever vice president position. President Paul Biya, 93, has governed without deputy since 1983, his eighth successive term in office. Opposition members says the VP post is less about governance and more about succession planning. At 93, they are probably right.
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Airman rescued from Iran, but Tuesday's deadline could change everything
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A US F-15E was shot down over southern Iran on Friday. One pilot ejected immediately; the second, a colonel, had gone missing for 48 hours in mountainous Kohgiluyeh province while Iran offered a $60,000 reward and mobilised nomadic tribes to find him. Sunday morning, President Trump announced the rescue: "one of the most daring Search and Rescue operations in US History." Iran claims its forces downed two C-130 aircraft and two Black Hawk helicopters during the operation. Trump's version differs.
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With the airman recovered, Trump's self-declared deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was now active. Tuesday is the stated date for US strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure if the waterway stays shut. Former Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has proposed a peace roadmap: nuclear limits and an open Strait in exchange for sanctions relief. Oman is mediating quietly behind the scenes. Whether Tuesday passes as a deadline or a strike date is the most consequential question in global politics right now.
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Oil at $109, gold at $4,678, a downed fighter jet, and a Tuesday deadline. Welcome to Monday.
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Israeli strikes kill 11 in Lebanon, Syria border forced shut
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Airstrikes on Beirut and southern Lebanon on Sunday killed at least 11 people, including a family of six, and wounded dozens more. Israel also forced the closure of Lebanon's main border crossing with Syria. Hezbollah fired projectiles at northern Israel in return as Israeli troops pushed deeper into the south. Easter in Lebanon's southern cities was marked against evacuation orders and hospital damage reports.
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Pope Leo's first Easter address: renounce conquest, end the wars
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Pope Leo XIV addressed thousands gathered in St Peter's Square on Easter Sunday in his first major address as pontiff. His message was direct: a condemnation of what he called "the violence of war that kills and destroys," and a call on world leaders to lay down arms and renounce conquest. The backdrop was the US-Israel war on Iran and Russia's continuing campaign in Ukraine. A new pope, inheriting a world on fire.
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The rat who cleared 100 landmines gets a statue
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His name was Magawa. An African giant pouched rat trained by Belgian NGO APOPO to detect the scent of TNT in landmines, he worked the fields of Cambodia for years, sniffing out more than 100 mines and other unexploded ordnance, clearing land so farming communities could safely return. He died in 2022 having earned a gold Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross.
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Cambodia has now unveiled a statue in his honour. The right response to a rat who cleared minefields is apparently a monument, and honestly, they're right.
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Magawa cleared more mines than most human demining units in the same period. Small animal, enormous legacy.
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