Human Rights

Ahmedabad, May 2 (PTI) A special CBI court here Thursday discharged former police officers D G Vanzara and N K Amin in the Ishrat Jahan alleged fake encounter case.

Vanzara and Amin had filed discharge applications in the court after the Gujarat government refused to grant sanctions to the CBI to prosecute the two former police officers.

Special CBI court judge J K Pandya said that since the government has not sanctioned their prosecution, their discharge pleas are allowed and proceedings against them will be dropped in the case.

1 May 2019; DW: Julian Assange was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison for breaching conditions of bail in London on Wednesday, but the WikiLeaks founder's focus is liable to be on his next date in court. 

This Thursday, Assange will appear before a British judge in an initial hearing on his possible, and controversial, extradition to the US.

1 May 2019; DW: A court in London on Wednesday sentenced Assange to 50 weeks in prison for jumping bail in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Assange, who was arrested last month after Ecuador revoked his political asylum, had raised his hand defiantly upon arriving at court in a prison van.

SUKHUM, May 1. /TASS/: The Abkhazian Foreign Ministry is calling on the leadership of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to stop making unfounded statements and show a balanced approach to assessing the situation in the republic.

KIEV, May 1. /TASS/: Ukraine’s authorities are not seeking to carry out a fair investigation into the tragedy that occurred in the southern city of Odessa five years ago, the political council chief of Ukraine’s Opposition Platform - For Life party, Viktor Medvedchuk, said on Wednesday.

CHICAGO (AP) — A multiday sentencing hearing began Monday in Chicago and focused on whether FBI agents manipulated a mentally fragile teenager to participate in a terrorist plot or whether he had long before shown an eagerness to kill.

Prosecutors called an FBI agent to the witness stand to tell Adel Daoud’s sentencing judge that Daoud posted social media comments inquiring about attacking non-Muslims more than a year before undercover agents ever engaged him as part of a sting.

UNITED NATIONS, April 30 (Xinhua): UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen on Tuesday expressed cautious optimism about the prospects of the political process in Syria.

"After eight years of conflict, this process will be long and difficult. But I think it is possible to move forward step by step," Pedersen told the Security Council in a briefing.

Many earlier differences over the constitutional committee, a key element in the Syrian political process, have been narrowed down, he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid a battlefield stalemate in Afghanistan, the U.S. military has stopped releasing information often cited to measure progress in America’s longest war, calling it of little value in fighting the Taliban insurgency.

The move fits a trend of less information being released about the war in recent years, often at the insistence of the Afghan government, which had previously stopped the U.S. military from disclosing the number of Afghans killed in battle as well as overall attrition within the Afghan army.

UNITED NATIONS, April 30 (Xinhua): The UN Security Council on Tuesday adopted a resolution to renew the mandate of the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) for another six months, till Oct. 31, 2019.

Resolution 2468 won the support of 13 of the 15 members of the Security Council. Russia and South Africa abstained.

The resolution emphasizes the need to achieve a realistic, practicable and enduring political solution to the question of Western Sahara.

Beijing, Apr 30 (AFP) China Tuesday rejected "any interference" in its internal affairs after UN chief Antonio Guterres raised the plight of ethnic Uighurs in the restive Xinjiang region during a visit to Beijing.

Guterres had been under pressure from rights groups to publicly confront Beijing over the mass detention of Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking minorities in Xinjiang during his trip.