World

The US pullout from Afghanistan is at least 16 percent and as much as a quarter complete, the Pentagon's Central Command said Tuesday.

The US military has a deadline of September to remove the 2,500 troops, 16,000 civilian contractors and hundreds of tons of equipment that were inside Afghanistan at the beginning of this year.

US President Joe Biden and Russia's President Vladimir Putin will hold their first summit next month in Geneva, both sides said Tuesday, setting the stage for a new chapter in their fraught relationship.

The meeting in the Swiss city will be on June 16, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

French media and social networks were abuzz Tuesday with speculation about a mysterious offer to influencers and YouTube personalities asking them to publicly denigrate the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in return for money.

Those targeted by the campaign, who are active in the health and science fields, said they had received an email from an apparently UK-based communications agency offering them "a partnership" on behalf of a client with "a colossal budget" but who wanted to remain anonymous and also to keep any deal secret.

US top diplomat Antony Blinken on Tuesday vowed support to help rebuild the battered Gaza Strip and shore up a truce between Hamas and Israel, but insisted the territory's Islamist militant rulers would not benefit from any aid.

Blinken's tour, which started in Israel and will also take him to neighbouring Egypt and Jordan, comes as unrest still grips parts of annexed east Jerusalem after Friday's ceasefire ended 11 days of fighting in and around the Gaza Strip.

In a video posted online on Monday, Belarusian opposition blogger Roman Protasevich, detained when a Ryanair plane was forced to land in Minsk, says he is in good health and acknowledges having played a role in organising mass disturbances in Minsk last year.

The comments were immediately dismissed by Roman Protasevich's family and friends as made under duress.

At the beginning of the 19th century, aristocratic networks connected to the monarchy and the Tory party had effectively “captured" the institutions of the state and exploited them for their own advantage. Britain was blighted by people in official positions without duties, embezzlement of public funds, jobs for family, clients and friends, rampant over-manning and the failure to pursue the public good.

It caused social and political disruption and left social inequalities unaddressed. It even triggered the occasional military disaster – most notoriously in the loss of the American colonies, but also in successive setbacks during the wars with France between 1793 and 1815.

Belarus' authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has gone to extraordinary measures to cling to power in the face of the stiffest opposition to his rule in 26 years. Last weekend, this included the state-sanctioned hijacking of a passenger plane.

After Ryanair flight 4978 en route from Athens to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius was forced to land in Belarus, the 26-year-old journalist dissident Roman Protasevich was arrested.

In a move not so far removed from Soviet-era practices, the government's main security agency had put Protasevich's name on a list of terrorists last year. He now faces a possible death penalty.

According to Lukashenko's press service, the president personally ordered a fighter jet to escort the Ryanair plane to Minsk after a purported bomb threat from the Palestinian militant group Hamas. It was a brazen violation of international agreements, but fitting with Lukashenko's increasingly autocratic and isolationist style of rule.

Tireless campaign against government opponents

Belarus' law on the “fight against terrorism", enacted in 2002, defines terrorism as an

attempt on the life of a government or public official carried out in connection with his government or public activities with the aim of destabilising public order or exerting influence on decision-making of government bodies or hindering political or other public activity.

A rather vague definition like this can be malleable in the hands of a dictatorship. Belarus' laws are designed to vilify and incarcerate the opposition while protecting those in power. Lukashenko's actions are informed by a sense of survival – even if this is at the expense of global norms and human rights.

Less than a year ago, Lukashenko was declared the winner of a presidential election that was widely regarded to be rigged. A week later, an estimated 200,000 people marched around the country to demand he step down – the largest gathering in Belarus' history. The government immediately cracked down, arresting many opposition leaders and forcing others to flee abroad.

Police officers kick a demonstrator during a mass protest following the presidential election in Minsk.

AP

Protasevich helped organise the massive street protests from abroad by using the NEXTA channel on the social media platform Telegram.

The name of the channel comes from the Belarusian word Нехта(Nehta), which translates in English as “someone". The name refers to the thousands of anonymous tips that were sent to the channel by people within Belarus and then circulated.

The creation of the platform was an attempt to challenge Belarus' centralised media and foster a sense of free speech among opponents of the government. Even with this precaution, however, the price for challenging the state has proven to be high.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is the world's most influential energy forecaster. Providing in-depth policy advice to dozens of national governments, the IEA has long been a friend of fossil fuel executives, regularly encouraging evermore fossil fuel development, even in the face of evermore dire climate warnings. But all that started to change last week.

The IEA released a special report that represents the agency's first attempt at modeling an energy pathway that is compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement.