“The Supreme Court of Azerbaijan on Thursday rejected an appeal by a prominent opposition politician who is serving a nine-year prison sentence, his lawyer told Reuters. Tofig Yagublu, 65, is a member of the opposition Musavat party and has been jailed numerous times over three decades for protesting against the government of the South Caucasus country. Yagublu was arrested in December 2023 and convicted in March last year of fraud and document forgery. His supporters say the case is politically motivated, while the authorities maintain he was rightly convicted of crimes.” (04/02/26)
“Nah, it’s just Democrats who think that, because I won’t vote for their proposed constitutional amendment allowing the legislature to redraw my state’s congressional districts. The official question on the April 21 ballot reads: ‘Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?’ What, exactly, is ‘fair’ about this amendment?” (04/02/26)
“A woman in Arizona who went missing 32 years ago, when she was just 13 years old, has been found alive, authorities said this week. Christina Marie Plante was reported missing in May 1994 from Star Valley, Arizona, after she ‘vanished without a trace from her community,’ according to a statement released on Wednesday by the Gila county sheriff’s office. … At the time, her disappearance prompted an extensive search effort …. 32 years after her disappearance, the sheriff’s office announced on Wednesday that Plante had been ‘located alive.’ Investigators said that they have ‘confirmed her identify, and her status as a missing person has been officially resolved.’ The sheriff’s office added that ‘out of respect for Christina’s privacy and well-being, additional details will not be released at this time.'” (04/02/26)
“A failed wallpaper cleaner became a global toy — and a case study in job creation. Consumer tastes, not policy prescriptions, continually reinvent our economy.” (04/02/26)
“Hard times. Emerging from an apparently engineered pandemic, now in another war for ephemeral reasons, a resultant economic crisis that is exacerbating unmanageable debt, we find ethnic cleansing and inter-ethnic hatred are increasingly back in vogue. It’s easy to imagine a nefarious program is being orchestrated by a nasty and entrenched elite, aiming to plunder and enslave the rest of us. Such an idea is clearly not baseless, but nonetheless completely misleading in the solutions it suggests. ‘If only we could jail them, or have a Nuremberg Two, things would be better …’ However, Nuremberg One did not stop ethnic cleansing, targeting of religious groups, wars and mass death based on straight-out lies, or mass medical coercion for power and money. A couple of obvious reasons stand out for this.” (04/02/26)
Source: CounterPunch
by Masoud Pezeshkian, President, Islamic Republic of Iran
“The Iranian people harbor no enmity toward other nations, including the people of America, Europe, or neighboring countries. Even in the face of repeated foreign interventions and pressures throughout their proud history, Iranians have consistently drawn a clear distinction between governments and the peoples they govern. This is a deeply rooted principle in Iranian culture and collective consciousness — not a temporary political stance. For this reason, portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts. Such a perception is the product of political and economic whims of the powerful — the need to manufacture an enemy in order to justify pressure, maintain military dominance, sustain the arms industry, and control strategic markets. In such an environment, if a threat does not exist, it is invented.” (04/02/26)
“ICC member states have voted to pursue disciplinary proceedings against Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan after receiving reports regarding sexual assault allegations against him, according to a Wall Street Journal report. In a vote on Wednesday by a core group of member states, 15 voted in favour, two abstained and four voted against moving forward with the process, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Khan, who investigates war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, has taken leave of absence pending an inquiry into accusations of non-consensual sexual interaction with a lawyer in his office. He rejects any allegations of wrongdoing.” (04/02/26)
