The State Department criticized the Russian government over the sentencing of a 69-year-old woman and her son for being Jehovah’s Witnesses, calling the action “particularly cruel.” Valentina Baranovskaya, who is recovering from a stroke, was sentenced to a two-year term in a penal colony, according to a Thursday press release. Her son, Roman Bara...

A Scotland woman who faked a pregnancy following a one-night stand has been sentenced to community service after she pled guilty to “causing fear and alarm.”Sheriff Lindsay Foulis sentenced Jaclyn McGowan, 36, of Perth and Kinross, to 150 hours of community service. McGowan claimed in the summer of 2019 to have gotten pregnant and continued the lie...

The Dutch parliament passed a non-binding motion Thursday declaring China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims to be a genocide. The Netherlands is now the first European nation to have its legislature designate the Chinese treatment of Uighurs as a genocide, according to Reuters. It became the third country to do so globally, after Canada declared the s...

China denied making U.S. diplomats take anal-swab COVID-19 tests on Thursday after reports that local U.S. citizens had protested their use.  U.S. personnel had complained to the U.S. State Department that they were subjected to the anal testing last week, The Washington Post reported. Anal swabs were adopted in some Chinese cities after medi...

Facebook said Thursday that it banned Myanmar’s military from using the platform after it staged a coup and seized power on Feb. 1.The military staged the takeover after alleging that Myanmar’s Nov. 8 election was fraudulent, detaining State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and much of her party’s leadership. The coup has been met with weeks of mass demo...

A wild sheep that now goes by the name Baarack received a haircut — and lost 75 pounds in the process. Baarack was found and reported to Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary near Melbourne in Australia, according to Tuesday Reuters report. Kyle Behrend of the animal sanctuary told Reuters the sheep was probably owned by someone at some point, but had be...

Facebook pushed back Wednesday against media representations of their recent legal dispute with the Australian government and promised to invest $1 billion in the news industry. “The assertions — repeated widely in recent days — that Facebook steals or takes original journalism for its own benefit always were and remain false. We neither take nor ...

A woman in Iran was hanged after already dying from a heart attack while awaiting execution, according to The Times, a British publication. Zahra Ismaili reportedly watched as 16 other inmates were hanged before her and collapsed from a heart attack before it was her turn to be executed. Despite being dead, she was hung at Rajai Shar Prison in Teh...

A North Korean man crossed the heavily patrolled South Korean border and wandered around unnoticed for hours, causing public outrage in Seoul, the Independent reported. The unnamed man reportedly swam several kilometers before reaching the highly-protected border, making use of a wet suit and flippers that he stashed after coming ashore. He then wa...

A German court convicted a former Syrian intelligence officer Wednesday for complicity in crimes against humanity in a landmark case involving Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.Eyad al-Gharib, 44, was accused of helping to arrest pro-democracy protesters in 2011 who were later tortured and murdered, BBC News reported. Another Syrian, 58-yea...