M23 rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are holding civilians hostage for suspected collaboration with enemy militias as fighting erupted despite recent peace efforts, local sources told AFP on Monday.. - Fresh fighting - The reports came as local residents told AFP fighting between the M23, the army and self-defence militias continued on Monday after breaking out at the weekend.
A Belarusian court on Monday sentenced the country's former champion swimmer and government critic Aliaksandra Herasimenia to 12 years in prison in absentia, a rights group said.. Separately, a court in Minsk sentenced several trade union representatives including Alexander Yaroshuk to prison violating public order, Viasna said. bur/yad
Ruzan Hovhanisyan fears that she will have to ring in the New Year without her family in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh due to a blockade by arch-enemy Azerbaijan.. "My whole family is in Stepanakert," Hovhanisyan said, referring to Karabakh's main city.
A French pensioner suspected of fatally shooting three Kurds in Paris was due Monday before a judge who will decide on whether to charge him in the case that sparked angry protests.. Last year, he was charged with racist violence after allegedly stabbing migrants and slashing their tents with a sword in a park in eastern Paris.
Rescuers found the body of a woman in Spain's northwestern Galicia region on Monday, raising to seven the number who died after a bus plunged into a river on Christmas Eve, police said. . The regional La Voz de Galicia newspaper said the bus had plunged from a height of nearly 30 metres (nearly 100 feet) into the river.
Chinese President Xi Jinping urged officials on Monday to take steps to protect lives in his first public remarks on Covid-19 since Beijing dramatically loosened hardline containment measures this month.. "At present, Covid-19 prevention and control in China are facing a new situation and new tasks," Xi said in a directive, according to state broadcaster CCTV. "We should launch the patriotic health campaign in a more targeted way... fortify a community line of defence for epidemic prevention and control, and effectively protect people's lives, safety and health," Xi said.
A high-level Ethiopian team arrived Monday in the capital of rebel-held Tigray for a first official visit following a peace deal aimed at ending a brutal two-year conflict.. "The delegation is the first of its stature as a high-level federal government body heading to Mekele in two years," the statement said.
South Korea accused the North of flying several drones across their shared border on Monday, prompting Seoul's military to deploy warplanes to shoot them down -- with local media reporting one of the planes later crashed.. In 2017, Seoul's military fired warning shots at a flying object that entered the country's airspace from North Korea across the Demilitarised Zone.
A French pensioner suspected of fatally shooting three Kurds in Paris was due Monday before a judge who will decide on whether to charge him in the case that sparked angry protests.. Last year, he was charged with racist violence after allegedly stabbing migrants and slashing their tents with a sword in a park in eastern Paris.
A Myanmar junta court is expected to hear closing arguments for the last remaining charges against jailed democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Monday, after the UN Security Council called for her release.. Rights groups have slammed the trial as a sham, and on Wednesday the UN Security Council called on the junta to release Suu Kyi in its first ever resolution on the situation in Myanmar since the coup.
