Latin America

On Friday, three members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison for staging a peaceful protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin inside an Orthodox church.

In his first public appearance since he took refuge two months ago inside Ecuador’s embassy in London, Julian Assange calls for President Obama to end his war on whistleblowers.

Ecuador received the unanimous support of the ALBA countries in its decision to grant asylum to Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, reported TeleSur from Guayaquil.

Daniel Ellsberg, the most famous whistleblower in the United States, praises Ecuador for granting political asylum to Julian Assange to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over sex crime accusations.

Britain is refusing to give Julian Assange of WikiLeaks safe passage out of the country even though Ecuador has granted him political asylum. On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Assange would be arrested if he left the embassy.

As Ecuador prepared to announce its decision on granting asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Britain threatened to raid the Ecuadorean embassy in London where Assange has taken refuge for the past two months.

Could Israel launch an attack on Iran before the U.S. election in November? On Friday, Israel’s largest-selling daily newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, published an article suggesting an Israeli attack could be imminent.

The escalating conflict in Syria has magnified the refugee crisis, both internally and in neighboring countries. More than 4,000 people entered Turkey in recent days, bringing the total number of Syrian refugees there close to 60,000. There are tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in neighboring Lebanon as well.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous reports on his recent trip to Zabadani, a besieged Syrian town near the Lebanon border. “[Zabadani] is basically waiting for some kind of solution to happen and is yet really on the receiving end of the majority of the violence,” says Kouddous, whose latest article, “On the Ground in Zabadani, a Syrian Town in Revolt,” was published in The Nation on Monday.