Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, laid the foundation stone for a controversial Hindu temple dedicated to Ram in the northern city of Ayodhya where a mosque was demolished by Hindu mobs nearly 30 years ago.

Houses and other buildings close to the temple were painted yellow - Hindu colours - whilst Modi participated in a Hindu ceremony, marking a definitive milestone in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) efforts to shift India towards an overtly Hindu identity.

Myanmar’s military and 10 ethnic armed groups agreed to hold bilateral meetings during the state-level Joint Ceasefire Monitoring Committee (JMC-S) meetings to discuss the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), amidst hopes of a renewed peace process between the groups.

The military and armed groups have assented to meet individually to talk over troop deployments and territorial boundaries proposed in the NCA.

Hundreds of children asylum seekers, some as young as 8 months, have been rapidly expelled from the United States to overflowing Guatemalan shelters, citing COVID-19 risks.

Shelter operators are seeing a rising number of children being sent back to Guatemala with many of them unable to return home due to gang violence and abuse.

Photo of accused war criminal Zlatan Mijo Jelic

Croatian President, Zoran Milanovic, presented former general and alleged war criminal, Zlatan Mijo Jelic, an award for his service during the 1995 Croatian war of independence despite his involvement in the Bosnian genocide.

Over 135 people have been recorded as dead thus far and around 5,000 injured by two massive explosions that have torn apart the Lebanese capital of Beirut.

Recent protests took place in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal in opposition to oppose Hong Kong’s new national security law.

The new security law has outraged Chinese communities in Canada as it is seen as an erosion of basic freedom and as a further attack against Hong Kong’s independence movement.

^{Photo: Palestine Action} 

Members of Palestine Action – a network formed last week to raise awareness about the Palestinian struggle – stormed the central London office of Israel’s biggest private arms company to protest and highlight Britain’s complicit role in the Israeli apartheid.

“We are tired of being ignored.” said the group.

An umbrella group representing more than one million Brazilian medical professionals, filed a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) last week, citing Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro's government of being “criminally negligent in its management of the COVID-19 pandemic” and “risking the lives of healthcare professionals and of members of the Brazilian society.”

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was sentenced to 12 years in jail last week, after a Malaysia High Court found him guilty on all seven counts in the first of many multi-million-dollar corruption trials.

The case was centred around his involvement in the 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) – a sovereign wealth fund set up in 2009 when Najib Razak was prime minister. Razak, who was in office from 2009 to 2018, pleaded not guilty to the charges of criminal breach of trust, money laundering and abuse of power.

The European Union has blocked funding to six Polish cities, making up nearly a third of Poland, because of their attitude toward the LGBTQ community.

According to a statement from the EU’s commissioner for Equality, six towns in Poland have adopted homophobic policies, calling themselves ‘LGBT-free zones,’ directly contradicting the EU’s belief in equity for all people.