US President Barack Obama has called upon the Cuban government to free all of its political prisoners. The US President issued the statement while maintaining that he would like closer US-Cuban relations in the future if the communist country takes steps towards democracy. Read more here
German prosecutors have decided to take no action against an artist who created a garden gnome raising its right arm in a Nazi salute. They say the gold-painted gnome was mocking the Nazis rather than promoting their return. However, the prosecutors in Nuremburg, warned against any attempt to copy the idea behind the exhibit. Read more here
Andrei Kulagin, a Russian human rights activist, has been found dead in a quarry on the outskirst of Petrozavodsk more than two months after he went missing. Kulagin was the branch head of the rights organisation Spravedlivost (Justice) in Karelia, 600 miles north of Moscow. He was last seen alive on 14 May. “There is no doubt that he was murdered,” said the orgnaisations director.
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A former Ukrainian general suspected of carrying out the high-profile murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze has reportedly confessed to the killing. A senior police official said the former general, Oleksiy Pukach had also implicated senior political figures in the murder. Mr Gongadze’s decapitated body was found in a forest in September 2000. Read more here