North Koreans dare to criticise 'vampire leader'
Speaking to ordinary citizens inside North Korea is almost impossible, with visitors heavily policed and communication with the outside world blocked. But two residents were willing to speak to the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme, despite the threat of death or imprisonment.
In North Korea, where leader Kim Jong-un has almost godlike status, to question him out loud is for many unthinkable.
Citizens are taught he is all-knowing, and told to inform on dissenters - including their own family members.
By speaking out, market trader Sun Hui - not her real name - knows she is putting her life at risk.
Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko shot dead in Kiev
Murder thought related to prominent journalist’s work, following threats that caused him to leave Russia in 2017
Andrew Roth in Moscow
A dissident Russian journalist has been shot at his apartment in Kiev in a high-profile murder that police said may have been tied to his reporting.
Arkady Babchenko, a veteran Russian war correspondent, was shot three times in the back as he left his apartment to buy bread. He was found bleeding by his wife. Babchenko, 41, died in the ambulance to the hospital, a government official said.
The killing appeared to be targeted. The gunman had apparently lain in wait for him outside his apartment. The head of Ukraine’s police force said that two motives were being considered: his “professional work and civil position”. Police on Wednesday evening had not named a suspect, but did post a sketch of a bearded man in a baseball hat.
Study shows that a large minority of Germans would not accept Jewish or Muslim family members
A new study shows intolerance toward Jewish and Muslim family members is most prevalent in Italy and Britain. Germany had one of the highest proportions of people not wanting Jewish family members.
Around a third of Germans would not accept a Muslim into their family, and a fifth would not accept a Jew as a family member, a study has found.
The results of the report by the US-based Pew Research Center, released on Tuesday, have come amid heightened anxiety about Islam and anti-Semitism in Germany.
What the study found
Turkish opposition calls for TVs to be turned off to avoid propaganda
Turks will head to the polls to choose their next president on June 24. Members of the opposition claim that the main media outlets, both public and private, are favouring the current government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is campaigning for re-election. In parallel, Turkish organisations and small parties are campaigning for something else – for Turks to openly debate the news.
At the beginning of May, millions of social media users believed President Erdogan when he said that he would resign if people wanted him to. The word "#Tamam" ["Enough" in English] started trending on social media. Today, the opposition is preparing to denounce what they say will be an unfair vote. In the past few years, the opposition has been subject to a series of purges and mass arrests, all after the attempted coup on July 15, 2016.
US-funded police linked to illegal executions in El Salvador
Story by and
The United States has quietly funded and equipped elite paramilitary police officers in El Salvador who are accused of illegally executing gang members, CNN has learned.
Successive US administrations have pumped tens of millions of dollars in to Salvadoran law enforcement and military to shore up the government’s “Mano Dura” or Firm Hand program, first launched in 2003 but redoubled in 2014 to tackle the country’s rampant gang problem.
Yet the country’s police will be broadly accused next month of “a pattern of behavior by security personnel amounting to extrajudicial executions” in a United Nations report, seen in advance by CNN, that will also call on Salvadoran security forces to break a “cycle of impunity” in which killings are rarely punished.
Another journalist has been killed in Mexico — the sixth this year
By KATE LINTHICUM
As a reporter for the Mexican newspaper Excelsior, Hector Gonzalez Antonio frequently chronicled the violence engulfing his home state of Tamaulipas.
Recent topics included one shootout that interrupted an Easter parade, another that killed six innocent bystanders and a group of people searching for disappeared loved ones. In January, Gonzalez wrote about the killing of a Tamaulipas journalist who was stabbed to death while waiting with his family at a stoplight.
This week, Gonzalez became another victim of what he once described as "the crisis of insecurity" in Tamaulipas. His corpse was found Tuesday on a dirt road in the state capital, Ciudad Victoria. He had been bludgeoned to death, according to the state prosecutor's office, which has not discussed possible motives.
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