Doctors refused access to see ailing Navalny
Several doctors have been prevented from seeing Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a prison hospital after his three-week hunger strike.
Mr Navalny was transferred on Sunday from a penal colony east of Moscow to a prison hospital in Vladimir after his lawyers and associates said his condition had dramatically worsened.
Reports about Mr Navalny’s deteriorating health have drawn international outrage. His personal doctor, Dr Anastasia Vasilyeva, led three other medical experts to try to visit Mr Navalny at the IK-3 prison. They were denied entry after waiting for hours outside the gates.
Mr Navalny, who is a fierce critic of president Vladimir Putin, has been on a hunger strike since March 31to protest over the prison officials’ refusal to let his doctors visit him and provide adequate treatment for his back pains and numbness in his legs.
Russia’s penitentiary service insists that Mr Navalny was getting all the medical help he needs.
Paris: There has been a “dramatic deterioration” of press freedom since the pandemic tore across the world, Reporters Without Borders said in a report.
The group’s new World Press Freedom Index, which evaluated the press situations in 180 countries, painted a stark picture and concluded that 73 per cent of nations have serious issues with media freedoms.
It says countries have used the pandemic “as grounds to block journalists’ access to information, sources and reporting in the field”.
This is particularly the case in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, the media group said.
Issues have also arisen from a drop in public trust in journalism itself.
The group said 59% of people polled in 28 countries claimed that journalists “deliberately try to mislead the public by reporting information they know to be false”.
New York: George W Bush has said the Republican Party he served as president has become “isolationist, protectionist and, to a certain extent, nativist” and added he is especially concerned about antiimmigration rhetoric.
He said:”it’s a beautiful country we have and yet it’s not beautiful when we condemn, call people names and scare people about immigration.”
The former US president did not mention Donald Trump, who aggressively curbed immigration during his tenure and sought to build a “big, beautiful wall” at the border with Mexico to keep out migrants.
Minneapolis: Former US vice president Walter Mondale, a liberal icon who lost the most lopsided presidential election after telling voters to expect a tax rises if he won, has died.
Mr Mondale’s family says he died on Monday in Minneapolis aged 93.
He served Minnesota as attorney general and US senator, and followed the trail blazed by his political mentor, Hubert H Humphrey, to the vice presidency, serving under Democrat Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.
Mr Mondale’s own try for the White House, in 1984, came at the zenith of Ronald Reagan’s popularity and his selection of Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate made him the first major-party presidential nominee to put a woman on the ticket.