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*Nicaragua Silences Its Last Outspoken Critics: Catholic Priests*
A wave of government attacks on church leaders has extinguished the last independent voice in the Central American nation.
He was the most prominent voice of protest in Nicaragua, using his pulpit to denounce the government’s detention of opponents and suppression of civic rights. Then, last week, the government came for him.
Bishop Rolando Álvarez was arrested after the police raided his residence and put him under house arrest and eight of his companions in jail.
The shocking arrest of Bishop Álvarez on Friday, the most senior clergyman to be detained in Latin America for political views in decades, was the latest and most aggressive move by Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, against the Roman Catholic Church. Until now, it was the only institution that had escaped his control after 15 years of uninterrupted rule.
But as Mr. Ortega, 76, last year began to purge the few remaining dissidents in politics, civil society, news media, academia, business and culture, the Catholic churches in this deeply religious Central American nation assumed an increasingly pivotal role. More than sources of spiritual solace, they became the only places in the country where citizens could speak their minds and listen to speakers who were not appointed by the state.
*Najib Razak, Malaysia’s Former Prime Minister, Is Headed to Prison*
Mr. Najib, convicted in a scandal involving the disappearance of billions from the government investment fund known as 1MDB, has exhausted his avenues of appeal.
Malaysia’s former prime minister, Najib Razak, who was convicted two years ago of participating in a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal, was headed for prison Tuesday to start serving a 12-year sentence after the nation’s highest court rejected his final appeal.
A five-judge federal court panel, headed by the nation’s chief justice, unanimously upheld Mr. Najib’s conviction on seven corruption counts after finding that his appeal was “devoid of any merits.”
The prospect of Mr. Najib, 69, going to prison concluded a stunning fall for the British-educated son of one prime minister and nephew of another who spent nearly his entire adult life in politics and held numerous cabinet posts.
“This is a historic moment in Malaysian politics,” said James Chin, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Tasmania and an expert on Malaysian politics. “This is the first time a prime minister, or an ex-prime minister, has been found guilty of corruption and is actually going to jail.”
*Russia-Ukraine War U.N. Security Council Meeting Focuses on Threat to Nuclear Plant*
As United Nations officials pleaded for inspection and demilitarization of a battle-scarred nuclear power plant caught in Russia’s war on Ukraine, the two countries traded harsh accusations at a Security Council meeting and a path forward to avert a nuclear disaster remained unclear.
Fighting near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, has stoked alarm in recent days, amid fears that the transformation of the plant into a theater of war could lead to the risk of a catastrophic nuclear accident.
The Security Council held an emergency meeting on Tuesday at the request of Russia to discuss the situation around the plant. And despite contradictory narratives about responsibility for the escalating threat — Russia and Ukraine each blame the other — the council was unanimous in its alarm about the risks to the plant and calls for an end to the fighting.
Rosemary DiCarlo, the U.N.’s top chief for political and peace building affairs, addressed the council and urged Russia and Ukraine to provide secure and immediate access to inspectors from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or I.A.E.A.
“Agreement is urgently needed to reestablish Zaporizhzhia as purely civilian infrastructure and to ensure the safety of the area,” Ms.DiCarlo said. “We must be clear that any potential damage to Zaporizhzhia, or any other nuclear facilities in Ukraine, leading to a possible nuclear incident would have catastrophic consequences, not only for the immediate vicinity, but for the region and beyond.”
“To paraphrase the Secretary General’s blunt warning, any potential damage to Zaporizhzhia is suicidal,” she added.
The Russian military took control of the site in March but Ukrainian technicians still operate the facility. Fighting has continued near the plant including recent shelling that fell dangerously close to the reactors.
*Europe’s Rivers, Starved by Drought, Reveal Shipwrecks, Relics and Bombs*
The Danube River is running so low on water that the wreckage of German warships, sunk in 1944, has resurfaced, posing a danger to local ship traffic.
From the depths of the mighty Danube River, the hulking wrecks of more than a dozen German World War II ships have risen once again, exposed by a drought that has starved Europe’s rivers and led to some of the lowest water levels of the past century.
The exposed wrecks had been on the river’s bottom for nearly eight decades and emerge only when the water level is extremely low. An extraordinarily hot and dry summer rippling across Europe has dropped water levels precipitously, creating a hazard for local river transport and fishing on the Danube.
More broadly, the scorching weather has caused alarm across the continent as heat waves have increased at a faster rate, with scientists pointing to global warming and other factors as playing major roles.
*On the eve of Ukraine’s Independence Day, Zelensky vows to take back Crimea.*
He spoke with the same resoluteness and composure as he has almost every day for the last six months, the same furrow between his brows, the same conviction in his voice.
How does a country mark a day of independence, when its sovereignty is being threatened, when some of its people are living under occupation, when its land is being fought over, street by street? On the eve of Ukraine’s Independence Day, President Volodymyr Zelensky told his people the national holiday was all the more important because the nation was under threat.
“It happens at a time when we are fighting against the most dreadful threat to our statehood and at the same time when we have achieved the greatest national unity,” he said, clad in a olive-green version of the vyshyvanka, the traditional garb of Ukraine, embroidered with an armored vehicle and a tank.
“That is why we endured,” he added. “Because we united and united the world around true values.”
Echoing U.S. intelligence assessments and his own government’s warnings in recent days, he urged Ukrainians to prepare for Russia to escalate attacks on civilians around Wednesday’s holiday, which marks Ukraine’s break from the Soviet Union and coincides with six months since the start of Russia’s invasion.
*The F.S.B. has long faced suspicions that, rather than solving crimes, it stages or hides them.*
Three days before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, Moscow’s domestic intelligence agency accused Ukraine of shelling a house used by Russian border guards and released a short video showing a destroyed building dangling a Russian flag.
The claim by the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., of a Ukrainian attack, was quickly dismissed as a hoax. There was no crater in or around the building in the video, which looked more like an abandoned hut than a border guard shelter. The nearest Ukrainian military outpost was 25 miles away.
The episode recalled a series of events in 1939, when the Soviet Union shelled a village on its border with Finland. The Soviets blame Finland for the attack as a pretext to invade. That case helps explain why, on Monday, skepticism greeted claims by the F.S.B. that it had identified a Ukrainian woman as the culprit in a fatal car bombing near Moscow over the weekend.
The F.S.B. had seemingly solved the murder of Daria Dugina, the daughter of a notorious ultranationalist ideologue, with uncharacteristic speed. But the agency is less a serious law enforcement agency than a political tool. And like its Soviet-era predecessor, the K.G.B., the F.S.B. has been dogged for years by suspicions that it blames others for crimes it either committed itself, or had no real interest in solving because they involved well-connected Russians it dared not touch.
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