Headlines
As more U.S. schools welcome children back for in-person lessons, epidemiologists are warning parents to watch for COVID symptoms. Meanwhile, researchers hope to learn more about coronavirus transmission among younger children
Much like most of the world, Afghanistan has seen its share of business losses due to the pandemic, with its agricultural sector being hit particularly hard
Tohti, a former professor of economics at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, was sentenced to life in prison for “separatism” by the Urumqi Intermediate People’s Court in the XUAR on Sept. 23, 2014, despite having worked for more than two decades to foster dialogue and understanding between ethnic Uyghurs and Han Chinese
A cathedral in Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh was damaged in fighting on October 8. Armenia has blamed Azerbaijan, which denies targeting any religious sites. Districts across Azerbaijan have also come under attack from the Armenian side. The violent conflict between the two sides, which resulted in a war in the 1990s, flared up
On the occasion of the World Day against the Death Penalty, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Center for Human Rights Defenders in Iran call on the Iranian authorities to put an end to capital executions which target in particular prisoners of opinion, of which journalists
Volunteers in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, say they have stopped attacks by looters amid a power vacuum in the Central Asian nation. The volunteers, who organized through social-media channels, said they had to step in to protect buildings and property as police had vanished from many areas. Kyrgyzstan’s government resigned after mass protests over parliamentary elections many saw as rigged
A new World Bank report says Ghana’s annual deforestation rate is around 3.51%, meaning the country loses at least 315,000 hectares of its forest a year, costing about $400 million annually. To help reverse the damage, a Ghana project is promoting sustainable forestry through timber, seedling and essential oil sales and educational tours
Turkey’s backing of Azerbaijan in the conflict with Armenia over the disputed Nagorno Karabakh enclave is coming under increasing scrutiny. Despite international pressure, Turkey is rejecting calls to back an unconditional ceasefire, as Ankara steps up its support of Azerbaijan’s military goals.
On Sept. 25, Chinese state media reported that Yao Qiang, an ethnic Han man who had been serving as Vice President of Xinjiang University in the regional capital Urumqi since March 2019, had been appointed as the school’s newest president three days earlier. This marks the first time since the founding of the XUAR by China in 1955 that a Han person has served as the head of the university, which is the flagship institute of higher education in the region
The political turmoil in Kyrgyzstan follows a period of relative calm in the country’s post-Soviet history, which is marked by revolutions in 2010 and 2005