Month: June 2022

Lawyers for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange are urging the Australian government to do more to gain the release of the Queensland-born activist. Assange is to be extradited from Britain to the United States to face espionage charges, in a move approved by the British government late last week. To his supporters, Julian Assange is a hero who, among other things, exposed U.S. wrongdoing in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. They insist his prosecution is politically motivated. But officials in Washington have for years said the confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables Assange’s Wikileaks website released had violated U.S. espionage …

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A British subsidiary of mining and trading giant Glencore on Tuesday formally pleaded guilty to seven counts of bribery in connection with oil operations in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and South Sudan. At a Southwark Crown Court hearing in London, Glencore Energy admitted to paying more than $28 million in bribes to secure preferential access to oil and generate illicit profit between 2011 and 2016. The company will be sentenced on Nov. 2 and 3, the U.K. Serious Fraud Office, or SFO, said. Glencore, a Swiss-based multinational, has already said it expects to pay up to $1.5 billion …

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Dmitry Muratov, editor of one of Russia’s last independent newspapers, auctioned off his 2021 Nobel Peace Prize medal on Monday, bringing in a record-shattering $103.5 million to benefit children displaced by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Organizer Heritage Auctions did not identify the winning bidder of the auction, which took place on World Refugee Day. The money is going to UNICEF’s humanitarian response for displaced Ukrainian children. Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with journalist Maria Ressa of the Philippines for their work to preserve free speech in their countries. The previous record price paid for a Nobel Prize …

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Two Americans detained in Ukraine while fighting on the Ukrainian side of the war were mercenaries who endangered the lives of Russian servicemen and should face responsibility for their actions, the Kremlin said Monday. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, interviewed by the U.S. television network NBC, also said U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, held in Russia for more than two months, was guilty of drug offenses and not a hostage. Peskov’s comments were the first formal acknowledgment that the two men, identified in U.S. reports as Andy Huynh, 27, of Hartselle, Alabama, and Alexander Drueke, 39, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, were being …

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According to United Nations estimates, since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, some 2.5 million Ukrainians have crossed the Polish border and gone back to Ukraine. Iryna Martynenko was among those who returned to her native city of Sumy, in the northeast. Olena Adamenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera and video editing by Mykhailo Zaika. …

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Two months after French President Emmanuel Macron won reelection, his second term is now threatened with gridlock and a possible political crisis after his centrist party lost its ruling majority in the lower house of the National Assembly Sunday. Legislative vote saw a surging far left and far right — and near-record abstention. France’s Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne acknowledged the message from Sunday’s vote that gave the centrist Ensemble or Together coalition the largest number of seats in the lower house — but stripped it of a ruling majority. She called the situation unprecedented and vowed to cobble a working …

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The tooth of assassinated Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically elected leader, is scheduled to be handed over to his family Monday. The Belgium government will hand over the tooth to Lumumba’s family in an official ceremony in Brussels. Lumumba elected as Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister in 1960 and was hugely popular with his countrymen and largely unpopular with European and American powers. The Congo had been a Belgium colony. At his inauguration ceremony in 1960, Lumumba spoke in graphic detail about the atrocities the Congolese people had suffered under their Belgium colonizer, angering Belgian King Baudouin who was …

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