Page 553 - Icks News Today

Belarusian authorities say a man in the eastern city of Mahilyou was handed a two-year prison sentence for online comments that insulted a KGB officer who was killed in a police shoot-out at a Minsk apartment that also killed an IT worker in late September.

Photos of soldiers in Almaty wearing UN peacekeeping helmets spark confusion, and a response from the United Nations.

Fresh data appears to show trade between the EU and Belarus has risen despite the bloc having joined the United States and other Western nations in slapping several rounds of sanctions on the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

With a week of talks over European security ahead and a Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s border, experts are divided if the unrest in Kazakhstan will give the Kremlin an excuse to pull back or dig in further. 

Here are some of the most compelling photographs from the second week of 2022 from around RFE/RL's region.

Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has made some incredible claims about recent popular unrest in his country, including that "foreign terrorists" were behind the violence. Now officials are trying to back up their narrative, but one of their first attempts seems to have gone wrong.

Britney Spears' first husband, Jason Alexander, was arrested last week.

With the announcement of the seven-phase polling for assembly elections for five states on Saturday, the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) has come into force with immediate effect.

While a brutal crackdown is being carried out against protesters in Kazakhstan after days of unrest, there are signs there is also a struggle within the government between President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev and his predecessor,” Nursultan Nazarbaev, who is known as “elbasy,” or leader of the nation. 

Each Friday, NHL Network and ESPN analyst Kevin Weekes will provide readers with three games he is looking forward to that weekend: