Meet the dissident Russians living the ‘nightmare from which it is impossible to wake up’
For Andrei Soldatov and his friends, February 24 marked the end of Russia as they knew it.
In the early hours of that day, President Vladimir Putin announced that he had ordered Russian troops into Ukraine. “And all of a sudden, everything we still believed in got completely compromised,” Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who lives in self-imposed exile in London, told CNN.
Life in Russia had for many years been getting more difficult for dissidents, independent journalists and anyone speaking up against Putin’s regime, but Soldatov said people like him still had some hope to hold on to. The war changed that, he said.
Faint hopes that Taliban will relax ban on NGO women after UN condemnation
Security council’s rare display of unity adds pressure after most aid groups in Afghanistan suspend services
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor
Faint hopes exist that the Taliban may relax its ban on all women working for the non-governmental aid agencies in Afghanistan after the UN security council condemned the ban in a rare show of unanimity.
Almost all the large NGO aid agencies operating in Afghanistan have suspended almost all their work while talks continue to persuade the Taliban to rescind or clarify their decision. Tens of thousands of aid workers – many of them the chief breadwinners for the household – have been told to stay at home during the suspension, as the UN seeks to persuade the Taliban of the consequences for ordinary people in Afghanistan.
The aid agencies say under Afghanistan’s customs they cannot provide vital services to women in Afghanistan such as health advice without female staff or doctors.
Germany urges Kosovo Serb militants to remove barricades
Barricades erected by ethnic Serbs in the north of Kosovo are illegal and must be dismantled, Germany says. Berlin slammed "nationalist rhetoric" amid rising tensions in the Balkans.
The German government on Wednesday expressed alarm at the latest escalation of tensions between Belgrade and Pristina and said it was focusing on efforts to get Serb militants to dismantle barricades they have built near the Kosovo border.
Over the past three weeks, Serbs in northern Kosovo have set up more than 10 roadblocks in and around the city of Mitrovica partly in response to the arrest of a former Serb policeman accused of assaulting serving police officers.
I.Coast hands down four life terms for 2016 jihadist attack
A court in Ivory Coast on Wednesday handed down life terms to four men convicted of abetting a jihadist attack on a resort that left 19 people dead.
The court in Abidjan, the country's commercial hub, found the four "guilty of the deeds for which they are accused and sentences them to life imprisonment," Judge Charles Bini announced.
The March 13, 2016 assault was the first jihadist attack in Ivory Coast, one of West Africa's economic powerhouses.
Three men wielding assault rifles stormed the beach at Grand-Bassam, a resort town 40 kilometres (25 miles) east of Abidjan popular with Europeans, before attacking hotels and restaurants.
Netanyahu gov’t says West Bank settlement expansion top priority
Israel’s incoming far-right government made the announcement a day before it is set to be sworn into office.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming hardline Israeli government has put settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank at the top of its list of priorities, a day before it is set to be sworn into office.
Netanyahu’s Likud party released the new government’s policy guidelines on Wednesday, the first of which promises to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel – in the Galilee, Negev, Golan Heights, and Judea and Samaria” – the Biblical names for the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
Iran protests: 100 detainees facing death penalty - rights group
At least 100 people have now been sentenced to death or charged with capital offences in connection with the protests in Iran, a rights group says.
Five women were among those at risk of execution, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) reported.
The real number of protesters facing the death penalty was believed to be far higher because families were being pressured to stay quiet, it warned.
Two men were executed this month after what activists said were sham trials.
Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard, who were both 23, were found guilty by Revolutionary Courts of the vaguely-defined national security charge of "enmity against God".
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