Month: January 2019

Russia’s athletics federation says it would withdraw its appeal against its ban from international competition. …

Reuters is reporting that private military contractors working on behalf of Russia are in Venezuela to help embattled socialist President Nicolas Maduro strengthen security amid opposition protests and a competing claim to leadership. …

U.S. President Donald Trump says he has come to an agreement with Congressional leaders to reopen the federal government on a short-term basis without the funding he has demanded for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. …

U.S. authorities expect to soon hand down a sentence in the case of Maria Butina, the 30-year-old Russian woman now held in a U.S. jail who has pleaded guilty of conspiring to influence American politics, accused of conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent. VOA’s Ricardo Marquina-Montanana traveled to the Siberian city of Barnaul to …

Read more “Maria Butina: Naïve Idealist or Dangerous Conspirator?”

Pope Francis is bringing World Youth Day to Panama’s juvenile delinquents who can’t participate in the Catholic Church’s big festival of faith. On Friday Francis will celebrate a special penitential Mass inside the Las Garzas de Pacora detention center, which is Panama’s main youth lockup. In a twist, he will also hear the inmates’ confessions …

Read more “Pope Brings World Youth Day to Panama’s Detained Youths”

Sri Lankan rights activists, lawmakers and relatives of slain and disappeared journalists held a vigil over their abductions and killings, demanding the government expedite investigations. Freddie Gamage, an organizer of the vigil Thursday, said that despite being in power for four years, the current government “has miserably failed to fulfill its promise to punish those …

Read more “Sri Lankans Demand Justice for Slain, Missing Journalists”

The Greek parliament is expected to vote January 25 on a historic agreement to normalize relations with neighboring Macedonia. …

Sixteen civilians from the same extended family were killed in an air strike on a home in southern Afghanistan, an Afghan official said on January 24. …

A co-founder of the Afghan Taliban who was released from detention by Pakistan last year has been appointed as the leader of the militant group’s political office in Qatar. …

A court in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Thursday found former President Viktor Yanukovych guilty of treason and helping Russia annex the Crimean peninsula. The Kiev court began reading out the verdict in Yanukovych’s case, a process that is expected to take at least the whole day. The judge already declared Yanukovych guilty of treason …

Read more “Ukrainian Court Finds ex-President Guilty of Treason”

Iraq’s parliament on Thursday approved a vastly expanded state budget for 2019, after weeks of wrangling over how to apportion revenue among the country’s regions damaged by the war against the Islamic State group. The new budget, at 133 trillion Iraqi dinars ($112 billion), represents a 27 percent increase in spending over the previous year, …

Read more “Iraqi Parliament Approves Budget of $112 Billion For 2019”

Congo on Thursday was poised to inaugurate an opposition leader as its unexpected new president in the Central African country’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power since independence nearly 60 years ago. The 55-year-old Felix Tshisekedi , son of the late opposition icon Etienne, will be sworn into office at the Peoples’ Palace, the seat …

Read more “Congo Poised to Inaugurate New President From Opposition”

The European Union is taking action against Austria for tying the value of child benefits to the cost of living in the country where those children reside, saying it discriminates against EU citizens working in Austria. …

U.S. officials have held talks with Taliban envoys in Qatar for a fourth day, the militants said, as the two sides pursue a potential deal to bring an end to Afghanistan’s 17-year conflict. …

Pakistan’s Supreme Court will decide on January 29 whether to allow an appeal against its acquittal of a Christian woman at the center of a blasphemy row, a lawyer for the woman has said. …

A Russian prosecutor has asked a court to sentence a Danish man to 6 1/2 years in prison for his affiliation with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the U.S.-based denomination deemed by Russia to be extremist. …