How Will the West Respond to Navalny’s Prison Sentence?
A swift and forceful uproar might not translate into harsher sanctions. Western governments are working out how to respond to Russia imprisoning Alexei Navalny. Francisco Seco / AP / TASS
The sentencing of Alexei Navalny to two years and eight months in a penal colony on what is widely seen as a politically motivated charge has resulted in some of the swiftest and most forceful condemnation of the Kremlin’s behavior since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Western leaders have been near unanimous in calling for Navalny’s “immediate and unconditional release,” as the U.S. State Department said in a statement issued minutes after his sentence was read out in court Tuesday.
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Jan 11, 2021
BARCELONA – Less than half of countries that committed to strengthening their climate action targets in 2020 did so by the end of last year, as the pandemic slowed climate diplomacy and efforts to update national plans, a developing-nations group said on Friday.
A tracker run by the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) showed 73 nations submitted revised climate plans to the United Nations, meeting a 2020 deadline under the Paris Agreement to tackle global warming.
That was about 45% of the 160 nations that had earlier said they intended to submit plans called nationally determined contributions last year.
Of those that filed updated plans, 69 made more ambitious climate commitments, either to step up efforts to cut planet-heating emissions, adapt to more extreme weather and rising seas, or both.
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The competition regulator wants new rules to determine when social media behemoths can close accounts after Donald Trump was suspended from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, sparking warnings by some Coalition MPs that unclear self-regulation by the technology giants could limit freedom of speech.
The technology behemoths blocked the US President from using their websites last week after he posted messages that the companies said could encourage violence, following a riot by a mob of his supporters at the US Capitol on January 7. The online banishment has sparked renewed global debate over whether Facebook and Twitter are publishers or neutral platforms and focused attention on how social media has spread fake news and other forms of political misinformation since Mr Trump lost the presidential election in November.