CNN – Russia saw protests at polling stations on Sunday on the final day of voting in an election set to extend Russian President Vladmir Putin’s long hold on power.

Lines at some polling stations in Russia grew suddenly at around 12pm local time Sunday, the hour at which supporters of the deceased opposition leader Alexey Navalny called on people to turn out collectively as a show of opposition support.

A CNN team at a polling station in Moscow said the line grew rapidly over a five- to ten-minute spell at around noon, and estimated 150 people had arrived.The CNN team said that police were letting people in batches through the gates to pass through security, with metal detectors and bags being checked inside the building.

A woman told the CNN team, “This is the first time in my life I have ever seen a queue for elections.” Asked why she had come at that hour, she simply replied: “You know why. I think everybody in this queue knows why.”

It’s unclear how many polling stations across the country saw an increase in people waiting at around noon. The Reuters and AFP news agencies also reported protests taking place.

Social media channels set up by supporters of Navalny showed video clips of lines in several places, including Moscow neighborhoods such as Nekrasovka and at Tservkaya Street and locations in St Petersburg. The Navalny team also posted an image from the city of Novosibirsk with the caption: “Today is #noon. The protest has already taken place in the first cities of Siberia. We are looking forward to seeing you.

More supporters of the Kremlin critic gathered around his grave to pay their respects on Sunday. Video shows dozens of people gathered around the grave at the Borisovsky Cemetery in Moscow, with some laying flowers while others stand in silence or take pictures.

Russians overseas also responded to the calls by Navalny’s supporters to protest at polling stations, forming long lines outside the Russian embassies in Berlin and London.    (CNN)…[+]

CNN -Populist firebrand Geert Wilders has conceded that he will not become the next prime minister of the Netherlands because his potential coalition backers have refused to back him.

Wilders’ far-right Freedom party PVV sent shockwaves through Europe after coming first in Dutch parliamentary elections late last year, securing 23.5% of the vote and 37 seats out of 150 available in what observers dubbed the Netherlands’ “Trump moment.” But, after weeks of negotiations, Wilders failed to reach an agreement with other parties and announced he would not lead the next government.“I can only become Prime Minister if ALL parties in the coalition support it. That was not the case. I would like a right-wing cabinet. Less asylum and immigration. Dutch number one,” Wilders wrote Wednesday on X.

Wilders had hoped to form a coalition with the center-right Freedom and Democracy Party VVD of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, which came third with 24 seats, and the newly formed New Social Contract Party, which came fourth with 20 seats.The conservative coalition would have commanded 81 seats  enough for a majority in the Dutch parliament. But Wilders’ path to the premiership was derailed when NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt last month withdrew from coalition talks with the PVV. Wilders said Omtzigt’s decision to “throw in the towel” was “incredibly disappointing.”

Despite a late surge in support for far-right parties before November’s election, Wilders’ inflammatory anti-Islam, anti-immigration, anti-European Union and Ukraine-skeptic platform was ultimately perceived to be beyond the pale for his potential partners.

The NSC’s and PVV’s refusal to cooperate with Wilders may represent the reassertion of the “cordon sanitaire,” a longstanding principle under which more mainstream parties refuse to cooperate with certain populist parties.

The cordon sanitaire has previously helped to keep extremists out of government. For instance, when the then-National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen father of Marine unexpectedly defeated the Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin in the 2002 French Presidential election, the Socialists swung their weight behind the center-right candidate Jacques Chirac, delivering him a landslide in the second-round runoff.   ( FotoPhoto: Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders speaks to reporters after announcing he will not become prime)…[+]

At least 21 people have been killed and 38 others injured after a bus collided with an oil tanker in the Gerashk district of Afghanistan’s Helmand province, officials said.

The crash on the Kandahar-Herat highway involved a motorcycle, a fuel truck and a bus travelling from Herat city to the capital Kabul, said Sher Mohammad Wahdat, head of the information department for Helmand’s provincial government.

The bus driver lost control after colliding with the motorcycle and crashed with an oil tanker travelling in the opposite direction from the southern city of Kandahar to Herat, sparking a fire.“On Sunday morning, 21 people were killed and 38 people were injured due to a collision between a tanker, a motorcycle and a passenger bus,” the provincial information department said in a post on X.An investigation into the accident was under way, said Qadratullah, a traffic official in Helmand.

Helmand police chief spokesman Hzatullah Haqqani said 11 of the 38 injured people were transferred to hospitals with serious injuries.

Images shared by the information department on social media showed charred, twisted metal scattered across the highway and the crushed cabin of the tanker.  (al Jazeera)…[+]

SOUTH AFRICA  –  Three Egyptian Coptic Orthodox monks have been stabbed to death in a monastery in South Africa.

A 35-year-old man was arrested in connection with the killings, police said, but they were still to establish a motive for the crime, in Gauteng province.

The suspect, whose name was not made public, was due to be arraigned in court yesterday.

The three monks were murdered inside the Saint Mark the Apostle and Saint Samuel the Confessor Monastery in Cullinan, a town 50km (30 miles) northeast of the capital, Pretoria, police said.

“Three victims were found with stab wounds while the fourth victim that survived alleged that he was hit by an iron rod on his hand before fleeing and hiding in one of the rooms,” the police statement said.

Nothing was taken from the scene, it added.

Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was “closely following the investigations into the killing of three Egyptian monks”.

The Coptic Orthodox Church said all three monks were Egyptian nationals as it named them as Hegumen Takla el-Samuely, Yostos Ava Markos and Mina Ava Markos.

“There is no doubt that it is a painful incident,” Pope Tawadros II said in a statement on Wednesday, calling the monks “martyrs” and saying that the church had sent a delegation to South Africa.

“There are many rumours, but so far the truth of the situation has not become apparent. We console their families, we console the church there, and we console ourselves.”

No date has been set for a funeral but the monks will likely be buried in South Africa where they served according to tradition, the pope added.

Deadly attacks on places of worship in South Africa are rare, however, the Coptic Orthodox Church, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, has been the target of assaults by Islamic fighters in Egypt and elsewhere.

The church had in recent months condemned Israel’s continuing war on Gaza. (Al Jazeera)…[+]

NORTH KOREA   –  Leader Kim Jong Un has joined North Korean soldiers training in operating a new battle tank, according to state media, as rivals South Korea and the United States wrapped up joint military exercises.

Sporting a black leather jacket, Kim watched live-fire “training march” exercises from a field command post before mounting the new tank and driving it himself, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported yesterday.

Kim expressed “great satisfaction” that the tank – first unveiled during a 2020 military parade – demonstrated its striking power in its inaugural performance display and told his troops to bolster their “fighting spirits” and complete “preparations for war”, KCNA said.

This was the third time Kim, who last week had also ordered heightened readiness for war, was reported to have observed military exercises in the past month. The other two drills he inspected were dedicated to artillery firing and manoeuvring exercises.

North Korea’s Ministry of Defense last week threatened “responsible military activities” in reaction to the South Korea-US training, which the North views as rehearsals for an invasion.

The US and South Korea have been expanding their training exercises, with the latest round involving a computer-simulated command post training and 48 kinds of field exercises.

North Korea’s military preparations follow a speech by Kim in January in which he pledged to rewrite the constitution to eliminate the country’s longstanding goal to seek peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula and cement South Korea as its “invariable principal enemy”.

He said the new constitution must specify North Korea would annex and subjugate the South if another war broke out.

The rolling of the new tank, which has a launch tube for missiles, a weapons system the former Soviet Union already operated in the 1970s, indicates that it is ready to be deployed but it remains to be seen whether it can be mass-produced, according to analysts.

Observers also say Kim likely wants to use his upgraded weapons arsenal to win US concessions like extensive relief of international sanctions on North Korea. They say North Korea is expected to extend its testing activities and ramp up warlike rhetoric this year as South Korea holds parliamentary elections in April and the US a presidential election in November.

“The South Korean-U.S. training is over, but the North’s isn’t over yet,” Yang Uk, an analyst at Asan Institute for Policy Studies, told The Associated Press news agency. “They won’t just stand still … they’ve been talking about war.”

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to visit South Korea next week to attend the third Summit for Democracy.

The top US diplomat will also hold a meeting with his counterpart, Cho Tae-yul, the second in a month. (Al Jazeera)…[+]

DENMARK  –  Denmark will call up women as well as men as it expands conscription to respond to Europe’s changing security climate.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the revised policy was designed to increase the number of young people doing military service.

Conscripts will also be expected to serve more time in the military – 11 months, compared with four months at the moment.

“We are not rearming because we want war, destruction, or suffering. We are rearming right now to avoid war and in a world where the international order is being challenged,” Frederiksen told reporters on Wednesday, indirectly referring to Russia’s military moves in recent years and months.

Denmark, a founding member of the NATO alliance, also plans to boost its defense budget by 40.5 billion Danish crowns ($5.9bn) over the next five years. Frederiksen said defence spending would amount to 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year and in 2025, above NATO’s target for member states.

The country scaled back its military capabilities after the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, but Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has reawakened concerns about security on the continent.

Last Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin said Russia would send troops to its border with Finland, which joined NATO last year as a result of the Ukraine invasion, as Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo warned Moscow was gearing up for a “long conflict with the West”.

The situation in Europe “has become more and more serious, and we have to take that into account when we look at future defense,” Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said. “A broader basis for recruiting that includes all genders is needed,” he said, adding it will create “a more versatile and more complete defense”.

Denmark currently has as many as 9,000 professional soldiers in addition to 4,700 conscripts undergoing basic training, according to official figures.

The government wants to increase the number of conscripts by 300 to reach a total of 5,000. Under the revised draft, conscripts will first spend five months in basic training, followed by six months in operational service along with supplementary training.

The new system will require a change in the law, which Poulsen said would happen in 2025 and take effect in 2026.

Currently, all physically fit men over the age of 18 are called up for military service, which is decided according to a lottery system.

Neighbouring Sweden introduced a military draft for men and women in 2017 amid concerns about the security environment in Europe and around Sweden.

The Scandinavian country, which joined NATO this month, had previously abolished compulsory military service for men in 2010 because there were enough volunteers to meet its military needs. Women had not been required to do national service before the law was changed.

Norway introduced a law applying military conscription to both sexes in 2013. (Al  Jazeera)…[+]