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Belarus says it has requested the extradition of exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who was forced from the country last year amid a crackdown on critics of leader Alexander Lukashenko.

A report by Aljazeera says Tikhanovskaya, who challenged Lukashenko in a presidential vote last August, which the opposition denounced as rigged, sought refuge in neighbouring Lithuania as Lukashenko moved to stifle dissent in the wake of his controversial election win.

The Belarus General Prosecutor’s Office said on Friday it had requested that Lithuania, a European Union member state, extradite her “to face prosecution for crimes against the governing order, public safety and the state”.

Investigators had earlier in the week accused Tikhanovskaya, who stood in the August vote in place of her jailed husband, of planning with associates to instigate riots and capture government buildings in Gomel, Belarus’s second-most populous city.

Tikhanovskaya has dismissed the allegations.

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis responded that his country “has been and will be a brick wall behind which all democratic forces persecuted by regimes will find refuge”.

“We can say only one thing to the Belarusian regime: hell will first have to freeze over before we consider your requests,” he said.

Belarus’s move to launch extradition proceedings came after Tikhanovskaya on Wednesday said she expected mass protests against Lukashenko to start up again in the spring following a bout of rallies that erupted in the immediate aftermath of last year’s election.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Finland, Tsikhanovskaya said a majority of Belarusians still thought Lukashenko should step down and they had spent the winter getting organised.

“The chair under Lukashenko is shaking,” she told Reuters news agency.

Lukashenko has been in power since 1994 and claimed a sixth term in office with 80 percent of the vote in August’s poll, according to official results.

Facing the biggest crisis of his rule since then, the 66-year-old has overseen a sweeping crackdown on the anti-government protests and dissent in the ex-Soviet republic.

Thousands were detained for taking part in the demonstrations, and journalists and rights defenders are facing a slew of legal cases, which have been condemned by international advocacy groups, for reporting on the crackdown.

The size of the protests dwindled over the winter and Lukashenko, who has promised to make unspecified reforms to the constitution, appears to have weathered the storm.

But Tsikhanovskaya said the opposition was talking to people in the Belarusian elites, the state administration and riot police, who “understand the [Lukashenko] is not the leader any more”.

“It is better for them to support the majority of Belarusian people,” she told Reuters.

“Lukashenko has put the country into a political, humanitarian and economic crisis.”

Lukashenko’s alleged vote-rigging and the crackdown on Belarusian protesters have prompted the United States and the EU to introduce sanctions against the country’s officials.

While in exile, Tikhanovskaya been meeting EU leaders and representatives of Western countries. Her team has also reached out to China and Japan.

The Belarus opposition is now “looking for friends everywhere”, she said on Wednesday.

Asked if she had tried to talk to Russia, which has played a key role in supporting Lukashenko, Tsikhanovskaya said the opposition had sent many messages since the August election but has not received a reply.

The FBI has arrested a former State Department aide from the administration of former President Donald Trump in connection with the January 6 storming of the United States Capitol, according to US media.

Federico Klein was charged with unlawful entry, violent and disorderly conduct, and obstructing Congress and law enforcement, the New York Times reported.

He is the first member of the Trump administration to be implicated in the storming of the Capitol by supporters of the former president in an attempt to overturn the results of the November presidential election that was disputed by Trump.

The newspaper reported that 42-year-old Klein had worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign and began working at the State Department shortly after Trump’s victory. The violence left five dead.

A former colleague told the Politico news site that Klein had worked with the office of Brazilian and Southern Cone Affairs before being transferred to the office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests.

The Trump appointee was seen in videos of the riot assaulting officers with a stolen riot shield, federal investigators said in court documents obtained by the Times.

He is wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat and is seen trying to push through a line of officers in a tunnel near the west terrace of the Capitol building and also tried to push through a doorway into the complex, “where he physically and verbally engaged with the officers holding the line”, the document says.

The FBI said Klein was still employed by the State Department at the time of the incident and maintained top-secret security clearance.

The buareau had previously released Klein’s photo and received tips identifying him.

Federal prosecutors have so far charged more than 300 people in connection with the US Capitol breach. Those include members of the far-right Proud Boys group and the Oath Keepers militia.

Trump was also impeached by the House of Representatives on the charge of “incitement of insurrection” for his campaign of disinformation leading up to the riot and a rally he gave moments before the Capitol breach.

He was later acquitted in a Senate trial. The former president could still potentially face federal and local charges for his alleged role in inciting the violence.

Libya’s prime minister-designate has submitted a proposed government lineup to parliament for approval, his office said, a key step towards unifying the country that descended into chaos after long-term leader Muammar Gaddafi was removed in 2011.

“In accordance with the roadmap of the political agreement, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah handed over to the speaker of elected parliament his proposals for ministerial portfolios,” his office said in a statement on Thursday.

Dbeibah was selected in early February in a United Nations-sponsored inter-Libyan dialogue, the latest internationally-backed bid to salvage the country from a decade of conflict and fragmented politics.

A significant oil producer, the North African country has been mired in chaos since the 2011-NATO backed uprising against Gaddafi.

Since 2015, it has been divided between two rival administrations: The UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and the House of Representatives (HOR) in the eastern city of Tobruk.

Names in Dbeibah’s proposed government were not made public, but the House of Representatives is slated to vote on the list on Monday in the central coastal city of Sirte, located roughly halfway between the two rival administrations.

Under the UN plan, the prime minister has until March 19 to win approval for a cabinet, before tackling the giant task of unifying Libya’s proliferating institutions and leading the transition up to December 24 polls.

Dbeibah, a billionaire from the western city of Misrata, had already sent to parliament his “structure and a working vision of a national unity government”, but had not provided names.

If approved, a new cabinet would replace a Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), set up in 2016 and headed by Fayez al-Sarraj, and a parallel administration in eastern Libya backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar.

An interim three-member presidency council – selected alongside Dbeibah – is to head the unity administration.

It faces the daunting challenge of addressing the grievances of ordinary Libyans, hit by a dire economic crisis, soaring unemployment, wretched public services and crippling inflation.

The UN’s special envoy for Libya, Jan Kubis, spoke to both Dbeibah and the influential parliamentary speaker Aguila Saleh on Thursday, where he “stressed the importance of moving forward” with the vote of confidence on the cabinet set for March 8.

The political process emerged from the latest bid for peace through the UN effort of the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF), launched in Tunisia in November.

But the process has been marred by allegations of vote-buying.

They centre on claims in a confidential report by UN experts that at least three participants were offered bribes of hundreds of thousands of dollars in November.

Dbeibah’s administration issued a statement on Tuesday demanding the UN experts publish the report, defending the “integrity of the process through which the new authority was selected”.

Meanwhile, this week an advance team of a UN observer mission flew into the capital, Tripoli, tasked with monitoring a ceasefire between the country’s rival armed factions.

According to the UN, some 20,000 mercenaries and foreign fighters were still in Libya in early December.

A January 23 deadline for their withdrawal passed without any signs of them pulling out.

The remains of a woman who went missing in the devastating 2011 Japan tsunami have been found and identified, police said on Friday, days before the 10th anniversary of the disaster.

“Skeletal remains including a skull were found on February 17 on a beach in the northeastern region of Miyagi, a local police spokesman told the AFP news agency.

Forensic dental and DNA analysis this week revealed her to be Natsuko Okuyama, a 61-year-old from Higashimatsushima who disappeared as the wave of black water swept ashore on March 11, 2011, he said.

The confirmed death toll in the 2011 quake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown stood at 15,899 in December 2020, according to Japan’s national police agency.

But more than 2,500 are officially still considered missing 10 years after the disaster.

That has left many families in limbo, feeling unable to fully process the loss of loved ones whose bodies have never been retrieved.

Local media quoted Okuyama’s son as thanking the person who found the remains.

“I’m extremely happy that my mother was found as the 10th anniversary is coming up,” the Kyodo news agency quoted him as saying.

“This will allow me to get my emotions in order and move forward.”

Outrage rippled through Afghanistan on Wednesday as funerals were held for three female media workers gunned down in the eastern city of Jalalabad with violence increasing as peace talks stall.

Journalists, activists and judges have recently been ambushed by gunmen or killed by explosives attached to their vehicles as surging violence forces many into hiding – with some leaving Afghanistan.

The three women were shot and killed in two separate attacks just 10 minutes apart after they left the Enikass TV station on Tuesday in what one colleague described it as an “orchestrated hit”.

An ISIL (ISIS) affiliate later claimed responsibility for the killings, saying its gunmen carried them out against what it called “journalists working for one of the media stations loyal to the apostate Afghan government”.

Friends and family gathered at the women’s funerals in Jalalabad where men took turns digging fresh graves with a shovel as others pleaded for an end to the deaths.

Rohan Sadat described his sister Sadia Sadat as “shy but active” who was also passionate about fighting for women’s rights and had planned to attend university and study law.

“We have buried her with all her hopes here,” Sadat told AFP news agency.

Another colleague at Enikass TV, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the station was reeling from the murders, saying the three victims were like “family”.

“Three innocent girls were shot dead in the daylight in the middle of the city. Nobody is safe any more,” said the colleague.

In December, another female employee working for Enikass TV was murdered in Jalalabad in similar circumstances.

Anger also simmered online with social media users lashing out over the latest killings.

“It seems this war is not for Islam, it is just for power through spreading fear and terrorism,” wrote Ghani Khan.

“These girls were working to help their families. They were not [at] war with the Taliban. They were poor, they just worked to feed their family,” said Rauf Afghan.

Afghanistan has long been ranked as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.

At least nine media workers have been killed since the peace talks with the Taliban started in September, according to the Afghan Journalists Safety Committee.

US officials have blamed the Taliban for the wave of violence, while the Kabul government said the armed groups routinely hide behind ISIL claims to cover their tracks.

The assassinations have been acutely felt by women, whose rights were crushed under the Taliban’s five-year rule, including being banned from working.

Intelligence officials have previously linked the renewed threat against female professionals to demands at the peace talks for their rights to be protected.

Many of the targeted hits are believed to take months of careful planning – to catch officials off-guard – and are increasingly more sophisticated than the formerly favoured suicide bomb used by armed groups.

The killings come as the US special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, returned to Kabul this week for meetings with Afghan leaders, in a bid to revive a flagging peace process as violence soars across the country and a deadline for US troop withdrawal draw closer.

Donald Trump’s administration, eager to end the US’s longest war tasked Khalilzad with negotiating with the Taliban, culminating in a deal signed in Qatar on February 29, 2020.

The accord states that the US will withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by May, with the Taliban promising not to allow the territory to be used by armed groups.

Speculation is rife over the US future in Afghanistan after the White House announced plans to review the withdrawal deal brokered by Khalilzad and the Taliban.

A fire incident has occurred at the Nigerian Army Headquarters complex in Abuja, destroying some properties.The fire which started around 10:30 am was said to have affected the second floor which also houses the office of the Chief Of Army Staff.

Director Army Public Relations Brigadier General Mohammed Yerima confirmed the incident in a statement, according to SaharaReporters.

“Electrical fault sparked a minor fire incident at the Army Headquarters Complex, Abuja, Tuesday morning,” he said.

“The incident which happened at about 10.15 am was as a result of minor electrical fault in one of the offices.

“The Army Headquarters complex is currently undergoing some renovation involving electrical rework.

“The Nigerian Army Fire Service Department has since put out the fire. No casualty was recorded during the incident and normalcy has since returned to the complex.”

A Pakistani court has granted bail to a Christian man convicted in 2018 while still a teenager of insulting Islam by posting a picture of Islam’s holiest site on social media, a defence lawyer said.

The court order in the eastern city of Lahore came more than four years after Nabeel Masih was arrested, at the age of 16, after a mob accused him of committing blasphemy by sharing a picture of Kaaba in Mecca on Facebook.

According to his lawyer, Naseeb Anjum, Masih was granted bail by the Lahore High Court. It was unclear exactly when Masih would be freed.

Blasphemy has long been a contentious issue in Pakistan. Domestic and international human rights groups say blasphemy allegations have often been used to intimidate religious minorities and to settle personal scores.

In 2018, Masih became the youngest blasphemy convict in Pakistan when the court sentenced him to 10 years in prison. Since then, the British Asian Christian Association has been supporting a legal battle for his release.

Anjum said he will try to complete the paperwork to free Masih, now 20, quickly. “I will continue this legal fight for his acquittal,” he added.

Ghulam Mustafa Chaudhry, a lawyer for the man who levelled the original accusation against Masih, confirmed that Masih was granted bail, but provided no further details.

Juliet Chowdhry, a trustee of the British Asian Christian Association, said in a statement she was happy Masih would be freed but noted that he “has lost many of his most important years of development”.

Chowdhry said Masih should be compensated for his false conviction to help him restore his life, and that the organisation would pursue this for him.

“We call on Christians everywhere to pray for him as we continue the battle,” she said.

A Punjab governor was killed by his own guard in 2011 after he defended a Christian woman, Aasia Bibi, who was accused of blasphemy.

She was acquitted after spending eight years on death row and left Pakistan to join her family in Canada after receiving threats.

Rights activists say the stringent blasphemy laws have been used against the followers of other religions as well as minority Muslim sects such as the Shia and Ahmadiya in the Sunni-majority country.

The laws are treated as sacred, but religious experts say there is no clear definition of “blasphemy” in Islamic jurisprudence, nor is there agreement on the punishment for it.

Since the 1980s, nearly 80 people have been killed by individuals or angry mobs even before their trials were concluded in courts.

Between 2011 and 2015, the latest period for which consolidated data is available, there were more than 1,296 blasphemy cases filed in Pakistan.

Twitter says it will start labelling misleading tweets about COVID vaccines and ban users who continue to spread such misinformation.

The microblogging platform introduced on Monday a “strike system” that will gradually escalate to a permanent ban after the fifth offending tweet.

“We believe the strike system will help to educate the public on our policies and further reduce the spread of potentially harmful and misleading information on Twitter,” the San Francisco-based company said in a blog post.

“Particularly for repeated moderate and high-severity violations of our rules.”

Twitter users, reports AP, will be notified when a tweet is labelled as misleading or needs to be removed for breaking the platform’s rules, earning a strike, according to the company.

The second and third strikes will each result in the violating account being blocked for 12 hours.

With a fourth violation, an account will be sidelined for seven days. A fifth strike will get accounts permanently suspended, Twitter said.

The social media company late last year began calling on users to remove dangerously misleading COVID-19 claims, including suggestions that vaccines are used to harm or control people.

The service also targeted baseless claims about the adverse effects of vaccines or questioning the reality of the pandemic.

Since then, Twitter has removed more than 8,400 tweets and notified some 11.5 million accounts worldwide about violations of its COVID-19 information rules.

The strike system is similar to what Twitter applies to election-related misinformation, which led to former US President Donald Trump being permanently banned for repeated violations, including language that the platform said could incite violence and questioning the integrity of the voting process.

COVID vaccination campaigns are taking place in many countries in an effort to keep people healthy and return to pre-pandemic lifestyles.

YouTube and Facebook are among the online platforms that have taken steps to fight the spread of lies about the pandemic and vaccines.

The fiancée of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is calling for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to be punished after the US intelligence report found that the kingdom’s de facto ruler played a role in the murder of the journalist in 2018.

Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post newspaper who was critical of Saudi policies under bin Salman, was killed and dismembered by a hit squad in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

 “It is essential that the crown prince… should be punished without delay,” Hatice Cengiz said on Twitter.

“If the crown prince is not punished, it will forever signal that the main culprit can get away with murder which will endanger us all and be a stain on our humanity.”

The US intelligence report on Friday found that the prince, popularly known as MBS, had approved the operation that led to the killing of Khashoggi. Former US President Donald Trump’s administration had held back the long-awaited report.

The report also cited MBS’s “support for violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi” among the factors the assessment was based on.

“Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization,” the report said.

The four-page report names 21 individuals who participated in or were otherwise complicit in Khashoggi’s murder.

Washington has imposed sanctions on some of those involved, but not Prince Mohammed himself.

The Saudi government, which has denied any involvement by the crown prince rejected the report’s findings.

US President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday imposed a visa ban on some Saudi officials believed to be involved in Khashoggi’s killing and placed sanctions on others that would freeze their US assets and generally bar Americans from dealing with them.

Asked about criticism of Washington for not sanctioning MBS directly, Biden said an announcement would be made on Monday but did not provide details, while a White House official suggested no new steps were expected.

Last month, the US ended its support to Saudi’s devastating war in Yemen as part of the new Biden administration’s efforts to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its human rights violations.

In his first call since becoming president, Biden spoke to Saudi King Salman last week during which he “affirmed the importance the United States place on universal human rights and the rule of law”.

“Starting with the Biden administration, it is vital for all world leaders to ask themselves if they are prepared to shake hands with a person whose culpability as a murderer has been proven,” said Cengiz, who has been campaigning to get justice for her slain fiancé.

The Saudi government, which initially said it had no information on Khashoggi later accepted responsibility for the killing but said it was a rogue operation that did not involve the prince.

Cengiz said that “following this report, there is no longer any political legitimacy for the crown prince”.

 “The truth – that was already known – has been revealed one more time, and it is now confirmed.”

But she said the US report did not go far enough.

“Yet this is not enough,” she warned, “since the truth can only be meaningful when it serves justice being achieved.”

China has pledged to deliver 400,000 doses of Sinopharm’s COVID-19 vaccine to Afghanistan, Afghan officials said, in a boost for the country’s immunisation campaign, which began last week.

“China’s ambassador to Kabul said in a meeting with health officials that his country would provide Afghanistan with 400,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine,” Ghulam Dastagir Nazari, the health ministry’s head of the immunisation programme told Reuters news agency on Monday.

China’s Sinopharm vaccine has been approved by the World Health Organization, but it is unclear when it will be delivered, Nazari said.

So far, just over 12,000 health workers have received the vaccine in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan, he said.

The vaccination of members of the security forces, according to Reuters, has also begun, according to another official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

Afghan government forces are facing intensified attacks, blamed on the Taliban armed group, since September, when the two sides entered US-brokered peace talks hosted by Qatar.

The Taliban has largely denied responsibility for the spate of violence. The group has also said it supports the vaccination campaign.

Afghanistan has already received 500,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from India, which enabled it to launch its vaccination drive last Tuesday.

Afghan health officials have said the international COVAX programme, which aims to improve access to COVID vaccines for developing countries would provide vaccines to cover 20 percent of the country’s population of 38 million.

Afghanistan has registered 55,733 infections and 2,444 deaths from COVID. But experts say cases are significantly under-reported due to low testing and limited access to medical facilities in the war-torn country.