In Lesotho, women say they're finding their abortions on Facebook
Story by Rossalyn Warren, for CNN
Illustration by Nathalie Lees
Mpho, who asked that CNN not use her real name, didn't know who she was talking to. She found the phone number on a Facebook post while searching for "abortion pills, Lesotho" online. The person reading her messages claimed to be a doctor.
In Lesotho, a remote country home to just 2.2 million people and surrounded by South Africa, abortion is strictly illegal, apart from in life-threatening cases.
Women who have abortions in Lesotho face being outcast from their communities, or arrested.
As a result, many are driven to the anonymity of the Internet. Mpho, 27, found contact details on Facebook for several men claiming to be doctors, all hawking abortion pills.
Myanmar government is rogue and evil, says Bangladesh minister
Finance minister doubts hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees can go home
A senior minister in Bangladesh has condemned the Myanmar government as “evil” and said he did not believe the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees could be repatriated.
More than 700,000 Rohingya live in camps on the Bangladesh border of Myanmar after fleeing a campaign of violence by the military across Rahkine state. Many of their homes and villages were burned to the ground, thousands of people were killed and hundreds of women raped.
Bangladesh has insisted Rohingya will be sent back but speaking on Tuesday, the finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, admitted this was looking increasingly unrealistic.
Forgotten Women: How one woman is fighting against the brutal Uganda land grabs
The lives of ordinary women behind extraordinary stories
Women are often disproportionately affected by global issues, from education to healthcare, work to sexual violence.
Yet even in the darkest of situations, there are real women working, learning, loving and laughing.
By looking at the lives of individuals you can see the reality behind broader issues more clearly.
It’s not easy to hear marginalised women through the noise, so Forgotten Women, a brand new Independent column, hopes to shed light on their stories.
Poland marks 50 years since 1968 anti-Semitic purge
In 1968 the Polish Communist party declared thousands of Jews enemies of the state and forced them to leave Poland. On the campaign's 50th anniversary, historians and witnesses warn of a revival of Polish anti-Semitism.
Jozef Lebenbaum was a reporter with the Workers' Voice newspaper in Lodz, Poland's second-largest city, when he was forced to leave the country in August 1968. The reason: he was Jewish. Anti-Semitism was ablaze back then in Poland, and the regime sought various, often absurd, excuses to get rid of the Jews.
He was 38 at the time, in the middle of his career, Lebenbaum tells DW. "Suddenly, my work was gone, my colleagues, my apartment, and the Polish culture I had grown up with," he remembers.
Financial regulator punishes 7 cryptocurrency exchanges after hack
By Toru Yamanaka
Japanese authorities Thursday ordered two cryptocurrency exchanges to suspend operations as part of a clampdown following a massive hack that saw thieves steal hundreds of millions of dollars in virtual currency.
The Financial Services Agency (FSA) said in a statement it had ordered FSHO and Bit Station, exchanges based in Yokohama and Nagoya, to temporarily halt their operations for a month from Thursday.
The agency alleged that FSHO "does not have a proper system to monitor trading and has not given training to its employees," while an employee of Bit Station "diverted digital currency deposited by clients for his personal use."
Russian spy: Police seek to identify nerve agent source
Counter-terrorism officers are working to uncover the origin of the nerve agent used in the attempted murder of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury.
The pair were found unconscious and are critically ill in hospital, along with a police officer who went to their aid.
A source told BBC News the chemical used on Sunday was likely to be rarer than Sarin or VX nerve agents.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd is expected to make a statement in the Commons.
Speaking on ITV's Good Morning Britain, Ms Rudd said the police officer remained in a very serious condition but was "talking and engaging" so she was "optimistic" for him.
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