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on September 3, 2025
Daniel Kebede (centre) has been outspoken on his political stances - including a statement after threats from Russian president Vladimir Putin against Ukraine where he criticised Nato involvement in the conflict
March 19 (Reuters) - The Philippines´ presidential candidates debating on Saturday agreed on at least one thing and that was the need to hold social media firms liable for the spread of disinformation as the country prepares for elections on May 9.
In November 2022, a video surfaced online that showed a former Wagner contractor Hamadi Bouta, a Syrian army deserter, getting beaten to death with a sledgehammer after he allegedly fled to the Ukrainian side and was recaptured.
The country's despot Alexander Lukashenko supports Putin's war and allowed a deployment of major Russian military units in the country. An unknown number of Russian troops moved south towards Ukraine's capital Kyiv from Homel.
With the coronavirus pandemic disrupting traditional campaigning, candidates and supporters are increasingly turning to social media to reach voters, prompting concerns about online hate speech and disinformation.
In December 2021, the European Union accused the group of 'serious human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings,' and of carrying out 'destabilizing activities' in the Central African Republic, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.
Now Belarusian medical staff in Homel, in southeastern Belarus, have described ‘overflowing' morgues, with one resident of the city Mazyr claiming: ‘Passengers at the Mazyr train station were shocked by the number of corpses being loaded on the train. After people started shooting video, Online Social Emotional Learning 7th Grade Tutoring the military caught them and ordered them to remove it.'
He vowed to push ahead with a controversial pension reform that would "progressively" raise the retirement age from 62 to 65, and suggested that people who start working at a young age would still be able to retire before 65.
Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that the company was using its access to gold and other resources in Africa to fund its operations in Ukraine.
Some Russian media have alleged Wagner's involvement in the July 2018 killings of three Russian journalists, who were shot dead in the Central African Republic while investigating the group's activities there.
According to one US intelligence estimate, 7,000 Russian troops including four generals have already been killed - more than the number of American troops killed in either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars at 4,825 and 3,576 respectively - and between 14,000 and 21,000 troops have been injured in the fighting.
Video posted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty shows military ambulances driving through the Belarusian city of Homel, with employees at the region's clinical hospital alleging more than 2,500 bodies have been shipped back to Russia
The estimated Russian death toll is of a scale similar to that of the Battle of Iwo Jima, where 6,852 US troops were killed and 19,000 were wounded during five weeks of fighting Japanese forces in the most intense phase of the Pacific theatre of World War Two
Pollsters said Macron's greatest challenge as the frontrunner may be a low turnout, with sympathizers not going to polling stations because they think he will win, while those angry at his policies would further mobilize.
'This is a very interesting sign that there's a degrading of their capabilities,' Candace Rondeaux, an expert on Wagner who is a senior director at New America, a Washington think tank, told the New York Times.
Boosting France´s growth must go through "investing more" and "working more," he added, vowing to achieve "full employment." The unemployment rate recently reached 7,4%, down from more than 10% when he came into power.
"It gives the impression that Macron in 2017 has been elected on a promise to renew (politics) and that Macron in 2022 wants to be elected on the promise of (having) experience," he said in an interview with French newspaper L´Opinion. Polls show most French, whether they intend to vote for him or not, consider he is up to the job, he stressed.
Video posted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty shows military ambulances driving through the Belarusian city of Homel in early March, with employees at the region's clinical hospital claiming more than 2,500 bodies have already been shipped back to Russia as of March 13.
Even though he formally announced he is running for a second term at the beginning of the month, Macron has not held any rallies yet. The two-round presidential election will take place on April 10 and 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Earlier, the corpses were transported by ambulances and loaded on Russian trains. After someone made a video about it and it went on the Internet, the bodies were loaded at night so as not to attract attention.'
<img src="https://picography.co/page/1/600"; style="max-width:410px;float:left;padding:10px 10px 10px 0px;border:0px;" alt="" />Western countries and United Nations experts have accused Wagner Group mercenaries of committing numerous human rights abuses throughout Africa, including in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mali.