Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof says he has fled his home country to an undisclosed location in Europe after a court in Iran sentenced him to prison on national security charges. Rasoulof condemned the Iranian government in an Instagram post on Monday, calling it a tyrannical and oppressive regime, and posting a video that showed him crossing the country’s mountainous ...
The United Nations on Monday clarified that the overall number of fatalities in Gaza tallied by the Ministry of Health in Gaza remains unchanged, at more than 35,000, since the war broke out between Israel and Hamas on October 7. The clarification comes after the UN humanitarian agency OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) published a ...
Georgia’s parliament is set to pass a highly controversial so-called “foreign agents” bill that has triggered widespread protests across the former Soviet republic nestled in the Caucasus Mountains. The vote comes after tens of thousands of people came out to protest the legislation in the capital, Tbilisi. Here’s what you need to know about the proposed law and the uproar ...
Russian President Vladimir Putin has replaced his defense minister Sergei Shoigu with a civilian, Andrey Belousov, citing the country’s rising military spending and the need for “innovation.” Shoigu had been “relieved” of his post of Minister of Defense by presidential decree and been appointed Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday night local time. Shoigu would ...
Three bewildered children sit on the roof of a mosque in Baghlan province, northern Afghanistan, their eyes blinking away mud that covers their entire bodies. Beside them, a rescuer lowers their baby brother, 2-year-old Arian, to the rooftop, a sheet tied around his waist that was used to pull him from the raging floodwaters below. “Take it, let’s get take ...
Barcelona, Spain — Spain’s Socialists won the biggest share of the vote in Sunday’s Catalan elections, dealing a serious blow to more than a decade of separatist governance and the independence dreams still nursed by some in the wealthy northeastern region. The Socialists, led locally by Salvador Illa, had 42 seats in the 135-seat chamber with more than 99% of ...
For Ukraine, May is turning out to be the cruellest month. The town of Vovchansk in the northern Kharkiv region, liberated from Russian occupation more than 18 months ago, awoke Friday to intense shelling and aerial bombardment. Russia has found another way of stretching Ukraine’s already thin blue line. President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials said that Russian efforts to advance towards the ...
Switzerland’s Nemo won a chaotic and politically fraught Eurovision Song Contest, triumphing in a competition in Sweden that was upstaged by controversy and booing over the presence of Israel. The typically jovial event – one of the most-watched in the world’s cultural calendar – descended into turmoil in recent days, as organizers tried and failed to contain anger aimed towards ...
Russia’s military claimed to have captured five villages in the Kharkiv region on the border with Ukraine as part of a new offensive, while Ukrainian authorities said it was repelling the attacks and “fighting continues.” Russia began its surprise cross-border attack on Friday, making two assaults inside northern Ukraine on Friday, in what President Volodymyr Zelensky called a “new wave of counteroffensive actions” by Russia. The ...
The northern provinces of Badakhshan, Ghor, Baghlan, and Herat have all experienced heavy flooding, which has also damaged nearly 2,000 homes, an IOM communications officer said in a statement, citing the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority. The IOM, who is providing emergency aid on the ground, said it expects the death toll to rise. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which is preparing ...