INDONESIA: A teenage boy has married his 73-year-old lover in a remote village on Indonesia’s Sumatra, officials said, after the unconventional couple threatened a double suicide if their match was thwarted.
The romance began when septuagenarian Rohaya Binti Kiagus Muhammad Jakfar took care of her neighbor Selamet Riyadi, 15, who was suffering from malaria, the local village chief said.
“Selamet is too young to marry but we married them anyway because he threatened to commit suicide,” village chief Cik Ani, told AFP, adding local officials also wanted them to “avoid the sin of adultery.”
“Since the boy is an underage, we have decided to carry out the marriage privately,” he said.
Riyadi’s father died several years ago and the boy was not properly cared for by his mother, who has remarried, Ani said.
Rohaya has been married twice before, both times to divorcees and has at least one child from the marriages, but this time “she got a virgin,” Ani added.
The marriage took place Sunday in the remote Karang Endah village in South Sumatra province, but sparked national interest when a video of the couple’s wedding vows went viral on social media outlets.
“He said he was madly in love. We love each other,” Rohaya told reporters after the wedding.
The video shows the unlikely couple reciting their vows in front of their relatives and friends.
Under Indonesian law, the legal age for marriage is 19 for a man and 16 for a woman.
Indonesian teenage boy weds 73-year-old bride
Indonesian teenage boy weds 73-year-old bride
USA Today Co., owner of the Detroit Free Press, says it will purchase The Detroit News
LANSING, Michigan: USA Today Co., which owns the Detroit Free Press, said Monday that it plans to acquire The Detroit News and bring both major metropolitan newspapers under its banner.
The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press recently ended an almost 40-year agreement that allowed the two papers to operate in the same city and merge aspects of their business operations.
According to a statement from USA Today Co., the newspaper publisher formerly named Gannett, both newspapers will continue to publish separately. The company provided little other information on the planned operation of the daily newspapers.
The statement also did not disclose a price of the sale.
USA Today Co., which publishes the largest chain of newspapers in the US, said the sale is being funded through cash and financing managed by Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm that funded New Media Investment Group Inc.’s 2019 acquisition of Gannett.
The deal is expected to close “at the end of the month.”
The two newspapers have both been in operation for over 100 years. The Detroit News has won three Pulitzer Prizes and the Detroit Free Press has won 10.
“Both companies have a mutual desire to ensure that these publications and their distinct journalism continue to serve the greater Detroit area,” Guy Gilmore, chief operating officer of MediaNews Group, the current owner of The Detroit News said in a statement.
In 1989, the two papers began a joint operating agreement, a deal established under the 1970 Newspaper Preservation Act which allowed failing newspapers to be exempt from certain antitrust rules. The two newspapers worked in competition but shared some overhead resources and business operations including advertising, printing and distribution.
The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News ended the agreement in December after 36 years.
In 2024, Gannett stopped using journalism produced by The Associated Press as financial struggles continued to mount on the news industry.
