Pussy Riot members visit Occupy activist Cecily McMillan in prison
• Campaigner is awaiting sentence for assaulting police officer
• Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova 'appalled and saddened' by case
Cecily McMillan, the Occupy Wall Street activist convicted of assaulting a New York police officer, received a celebrity endorsement of sorts on Friday when two members of the Russian punk collective Pussy Riot visited her in prison.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, who spent almost two years imprisoned in Russia after their group performed a “punk prayer” attacking President Vladimir Putin at an Orthodox cathedral in Moscow, met McMillan at Riker’s Island jail in New York, where she is being held awaiting sentencing.
McMillan, 25, faces up to seven years in prison after being found guilty of deliberately elbowing Officer Grantley Bovell in the face as he led her out of a protest at Zuccotti Park in Manhattan in March 2012. She was denied bail and is due to be sentenced by Judge Ronald Zweibel on 19 May.
Violence returns to birthplace of Mexican drug war
An estimated 80 people have been killed in street battles in Tamaulipas state since April
Jo Tuckman
A spate of extreme violence in Mexico’s northeastern Tamaulipas state has ended the relative calm in the region where the country’s drug wars began.
Officials say around 80 people have been killed in street battles that have broken out almost daily since April. This week the state’s top detective, Salvador de Haro Munoz, was among five people killed in a shootout. Ten police officers have been arrested for allegedly leading him into an ambush.
Fourteen people were killed in one day this month in a string of firefights between federal forces and unidentified gunmen in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.
Over-farming hits Himalayan wild plants
As global demand for medicinal remedies intensifies, Indian experts say many endemic species of wild medicinal plants from the Himalayas are being over-farmed. Some of the affected plants may never grow back they say.
The Ganges flows briskly through Rishikesh, a small town in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains in northern India. For many followers of Hinduism, Rishikesh is considered a pilgrimage site. The Beatles came here in 1968 to study meditation and write music. Today the town is filled with yoga studios, as well as healers who offer Ayurvedic therapies.
At an Ayurveda clinic about a dozen patients wait in line as pharmacologists in lab coats fill prescriptions in a cramped dispensary. They tap powders into paper wrappers and drop colored tablets into plastic jars.
The clinic's head doctor, Dr DK Shrivastava, describes Ayurveda as an ancient practice where doctors diagnose ailments by taking a patient's pulse and looking at his or her eyes and tongue.
US team arrives in Nigeria to help with hostage search
US experts have arrived in Nigeria to help rescue more than 200 schoolgirls being held hostage by Boko Haram Islamists, an embassy spokeswoman told AFP on Friday.
"They are here...the team is on the ground," Rhonda Ferguson-Augustus said, without specifying the precise make-up of the group.
US officials have previously said Washington would send military personnel as well as specialists from the Justice Department and the FBI.
Britain, France and China have also offered varying levels of assistance, including planning and coordination specialists as well intelligence and satellite imagery.
What will an Iranian nuclear deal look like? Here's one option.
Negotiators from Iran and the P5+1 have been mum about ongoing talks, but today's report, written by analysts with intimate knowledge of the negotiations, could give hints.
There has been no shortage of reports on the Iranian nuclear standoff. But among the most useful and timely is a report today by the International Crisis Group (ICG) that provides a blueprint for how a final nuclear deal can be reached. It comes only days before Iran and six world powers meet for a fourth time, with the July 20 deadline to conclude a deal looming.
Like negotiators, the Brussels-based ICG's report is playing the long game. Its timeline stretches out for as much as 19 years, acknowledging that for a deal to stick, the parties will have to overcome decades of mistrust with years of demonstrated goodwill – or at least joint adherence to a deal.
The report includes a detailed technical discussion of how to ensure that Iran will never be able to produce a nuclear weapon. But what sets it apart is that it takes into account the political hurdles, which have proven to be the most difficult issue to resolve, as well as the view from Iran.
'All Honour to You' - the forgotten letters sent from occupied France
The remarkable discovery of a box of letters in the archives of the BBC is shedding new light on conditions and attitudes in France during World War Two.
The letters - about 1.000 have survived - were sent to London from just after the French surrender to Germany in June 1940, through to the end of 1943.
They were addressed to the French service of the BBC, otherwise known as Radio Londres, which during the German occupation was a vital source of information and comfort for millions of French men and women.
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