Uruguay’s former President José Mujica, a leftist icon known for his progressive social reforms, died on Tuesday at the age of 89.

“It is with profound sorrow that we announce the passing of our comrade Pepe Mujica,” Uruguay’s President Yamandú Orsi announced on X.

The folksy, former guerrilla is remembered for his modest lifestyle during his presidential term – famously shunning the presidential palace to carry out his duties from his rural farm.

He had been battling cancer for more than a year prior to his death, telling reporters in 2024 that he would fight on for as long as he could.

“I’ll continue to fight alongside my comrades, faithful to my way of thinking, and entertaining myself with my vegetables and my chickens,” he said. “For the rest, I am grateful, and after all, you can’t take away what I’ve had.”

A humble leader

“Pepe” Mujica, as he is more widely known, burst into the national scene in the 1960s as a leader of the leftist militant group Tupamaros, which waged an armed insurgency against the government in the 60s and 70s after being inspired by the Cuban Revolution.

The uprising was put down by government forces during Uruguay’s military dictatorship, and Mujica was subsequently imprisoned for nearly 15 years, enduring many forms of torture.

Mujica spoke of the horror of that period in 2020. “Being tied up with wire with my hands behind my back for six months; being thrown out of the truck for two or three days; going two years without being taken to the bathroom, having to bathe with a jar, a cup of water, and a handkerchief,” he said.

He was released from prison in 1985 after democracy was restored to the country. Four years later, he and other members of Tupamaros founded the Movement of Popular Participation (MPP), a party under which he won several legislative elections.

In 2009, he launched his bid for president, winning in a runoff with more than 50% of the vote.

Under his watch, between 2010 and 2015, Uruguay’s economy expanded, and he implemented several progressive reforms. Uruguay legalized abortion, gay marriage, and allowed the recreational use of cannabis, becoming the first country in the world to do so.

Mujica’s supporters regarded him as one of the humblest leaders the country has ever had, pointing to his decision to forgo the presidential palace and live in a rural farmhouse during his term.

His modest life led many to refer to him as the “world’s poorest president,” a moniker he took issue with.

In April 2024, Mujica announced he had been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his esophagus. After months of treatment, his doctor said in August that the cancer in his esophagus appeared to be in remission, but that he had developed a “kidney disease” due to radiation therapy to treat the tumor.

In January, he said the cancer had spread to his liver, telling the Uruguayan media outlet Búsqueda that he was “dying.” He chose to forgo additional treatment and asked to be left alone in the twilight of his life.

“I’m doomed, brother. This is as far as I go,” he said.

Latin America in mourning

Leaders across Latin America mourned the former president, saying the region had lost a beacon of hope and humility.

Alberto Fernández, former president of neighboring Argentina, praised Mujica’s modesty, calling him “an example of austerity in a society that rewards those who amass fortunes.”

Former Bolivian President Evo Morales, a fellow leftist leader who was in office roughly around the same time as Mujica, called him a “brother” full of wisdom whose teachings would continue to live on.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric echoed those sentiments, saying, “If you left us anything, it was the unquenchable hope that things can be done better – ‘step by step, so as not to go off the rails,’ as you used to say.”

Bangladesh’s Election Commission has cancelled the registration of the former ruling party of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, preventing it from participating in the next national election, which is expected to be held by June next year.

The decision on Monday came hours after the country’s interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus issued an official notification banning the Awami League party and its affiliated bodies from conducting activities online and elsewhere.

Monday’s formal notification from the Ministry of Home Affairs was issued two days after the interim Cabinet decided to ban all activities of the party under the country’s Anti-Terrorism Act until a special tribunal concludes a trial for the party and its leaders.

In the notification, the government said it outlawed all activities “including any kind of publication, media, online and social media” as well as “any kind of campaign, procession, meeting, gathering (or) conference until the trial of the leaders and activists … is completed.”

It said the decision was effective immediately.

Separately, the Election Commission said Monday it would not allow the Hasina-led party to contest the next election. Political parties must be registered with the Election Commission to take part in elections.

A government adviser said Monday that anyone who posts comments online in support of the Awami League party would face arrest.

On Sunday, the Awami League accused the interim government of “stoking division” and trampling on “democratic norms” by banning its activities. It said in a statement that the ban “stoked division within society, strangled democratic norms, fueled ongoing pogrom against dissenters and strangled inclusivity, all undemocratic steps.”

The Awami League is one of two major parties in Bangladesh, which has a fractious parliamentary democracy with a violent history of coups and political assassination.

Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh’s independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, fled the country on Aug. 5 last year and has been in exile in India since then along with many senior party colleagues and former Cabinet minsters and lawmakers. They have been accused of killing protesters during an uprising against Hasina’s 15-year rule in July-August last year.

The United Nations human rights office said in a report in February that up to 1,400 people may have been killed during three weeks of anti-Hasina protests. But the Office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights recommended in a report to “refrain from political party bans that would undermine a return to a genuine multi-party democracy and effectively disenfranchise a large part of the Bangladeshi electorate.”

The Awami League, which led a nine-month war against Pakistan for independence in 1971, has been under severe pressure since Hasina’s ouster. Protesters have attacked and torched many of its offices including its headquarters in Dhaka. It accuses the interim government of sponsoring mobs to attack the homes and businesses of their activists and leaders. It said thousands of its supporters have been arrested across the country and that many have been killed.

Yunus has said the next election will likely be held either in December or in June next year.

A man who spent nearly four decades in a British prison in the killing of a barmaid said he was not angry or bitter Tuesday as his murder conviction was overturned and he was released after being exonerated by DNA evidence.

Peter Sullivan put his hand over his mouth and wept as the Court of Appeal in London quashed his conviction and ordered his freedom after he had spent years fighting to prove his innocence.

Sullivan, who watched the hearing by video from Wakefield prison in northern England, said through his lawyer that he was not resentful and was anxious to see his loved ones.

“As god is my witness, it is said the truth shall take you free,” attorney Sarah Myatt read from a statement outside court. “It is unfortunate that it does not give a timescale as we advance towards resolving the wrongs done to me. I am not angry, I am not bitter.”

He was the longest-serving victim of a wrongful conviction in the U.K., Myatt said.

Sullivan, 68, was convicted in 1987 of killing Diane Sindall in Bebington, near Liverpool in northwest England. He was behind bars for 38 years.

Sindall, 21, a florist who was engaged to be married, was returning home from a part-time job at a pub on a Friday night in August 1986 when her van ran out of fuel, police said. She was last seen walking along the road after midnight.

Her body was found about 12 hours later in an alley. She had been sexually assaulted and badly beaten.

Sexual fluid found on Sindall’s body could not be scientifically analyzed until recently. A test in 2024 revealed it wasn’t Sullivan, defense attorney Jason Pitter said.

“The prosecution case is that it was one person. It was one person who carried out a sexual assault on the victim,” Pitter said. “The evidence here is now that one person was not the defendant.”

Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson did not challenge the appeal and said that if the DNA evidence had been available at the time of the investigation it was inconceivable that Sullivan would have been prosecuted.

Merseyside Police said it reopened the investigation as the appeal was underway and was “committed to doing everything” to find the killer.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission, which examines possible wrongful convictions, declined to refer Sullivan’s case to the appeals court in 2008 because it said testing at the time was unlikely to produce a DNA profile.

A commission spokesperson said that while it made the correct decision based on the evidence at the time, it regretted not identifying the potential miscarriage of justice in its first review.

Sullivan appealed in 2019 without the CCRC’s help and the court turned down his bid in 2021.

But the commission took up the case later that year and was able to use scientific techniques that hadn’t been available during the earlier review to find the DNA that set Sullivan free.

“In the light of that evidence, it is impossible to regard the appellant’s conviction as safe,” Justice Timothy Holroyde said.

Police said the DNA found in the subsequent investigation does not match anyone in a national database. They’ve ruled out as suspects Sindall’s fiancé, members of her family and more than 260 men who have been screened since they reopened the investigation.

Sullivan’s sister, Kim Smith, reflected outside the court on the toll the case had taken on two families.

“We lost Peter for 39 years and at the end of the day it’s not just us,” Smith said. “Peter hasn’t won and neither has the Sindall family. They’ve lost their daughter, they are not going to get her back. We’ve got Peter back and now we’ve got to try and build a life around him again.”

Former Olympic cyclist and world champion Rohan Dennis received a suspended sentence on Wednesday over what was termed a “tragic accident” that led to the death of his wife, fellow Olympian Melissa Hoskins.

The 34-year-old Dennis appeared in South Australia District Court after earlier pleading guilty to a charge of committing an aggravated act likely to cause harm.

Dennis was arrested after Hoskins, 32, was struck by his vehicle in front of their home at Medindie in Adelaide’s north on Dec. 30, 2023. Hoskins suffered serious injuries in the crash and died at Royal Adelaide Hospital.

The court was told that the couple had argued over kitchen renovations before Dennis left their home and drove away. The court also heard that Hoskins had jumped onto the hood of the car during the incident. His licence was also suspended for five years.

Dennis on Wednesday was sentenced to one year, four months and 28 days in jail, to be suspended for two years. The sentence was reduced from two years and two months because of his guilty plea and he’s been placed on a two-year good behavior bond.

The offense carried a maximum sentence of seven years in jail but lawyer Jane Abbey asked that her client receive a suspended sentence, which was not opposed by the prosecution.

During sentencing submissions in in April, Amanda Hoskins said her daughter had loved Dennis “and I know that you would never intentionally hurt her.”

“I believe this is a tragic accident. Your temper is your downfall and needs to be addressed,” she said.

Hoskins’ funeral was held in her home city of Perth, Western Australia and a public memorial service was held in Adelaide in February 2024. Dennis attended the service with their two children.

Hoskins competed at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics on the track in the team pursuit and was in the squad that won the 2015 world title. Dennis won two world titles in the road time trial, as well as silver in the team pursuit at the 2012 Olympics and bronze in the road time trial at the Tokyo Olympics.

The most intense clashes for years rocked Tripoli for a second night and continued into Wednesday morning, witnesses in the Libyan capital said, after Monday’s killing of a major militia leader set off fighting between rival factions.

The United Nations Libya mission UNSMIL said it was “deeply alarmed by the escalating violence in densely populated neighborhoods of Tripoli” and urgently called for a ceasefire.

The latest unrest in Libya’s capital could consolidate the power of Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, prime minister of the divided country’s Government of National Unity (GNU) and an ally of Turkey.

Libya has had little stability since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising ousted longtime autocrat Muammar Gaddafi and the country split in 2014 between rival eastern and western factions, though an outbreak of major warfare paused with a truce in 2020.

A major energy exporter, Libya is also an important way station for migrants heading to Europe and its conflict has drawn in foreign powers including Turkey, Russia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Its main oil facilities are located in southern and eastern Libya, far from the current fighting in Triopli.

While eastern Libya has been dominated for a decade by commander Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA), control in Tripoli and western Libya has been splintered among numerous armed factions.

Dbeibah on Tuesday ordered the dismantling of what he called irregular armed groups.

That announcement followed Monday’s killing of major militia chief Abdulghani Kikli, widely known as Ghaniwa, and the sudden defeat of his Stabilization Support Apparatus (SSA) group by factions aligned with Dbeibah.

The seizure of SSA territory in Libya by the Dbeibah-allied factions, the 444 and 111 Brigades, indicated a major concentration of power in the fragmented capital, leaving the Special Deterrence Force (Rada) as the last big faction not closely tied to the prime minister.

Mohammad Iqbal was working the nightshift at a power plant when he got a frantic call from his family saying artillery shells were exploding around their home.

But dawn brought no relief from the shelling that would continue for four days as India and Pakistan fought their most intense conflict in decades, raising fears of an all-out war.

Iqbal, 47, lives near the town Poonch in India-administered Kashmir, a stone’s throw from the de-facto border with Pakistan, an area of pine-clad foothills and flowery meadows, backdropped by towering, icy peaks.

But the idyll is illusory – Kashmir is one of the world’s most militarized regions and the trigger for multiple wars between India and Pakistan, who both claim the territory in full but control only in part.

Last week the nuclear-armed neighbors traded missiles, drones, and artillery shelling for four days following a massacre of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month that New Delhi blamed on its neighbor, which Pakistan denies.

Two hours after the firing started last Wednesday, Iqbal got news his brother-in-law’s home had been hit.

The shell had exploded at a nearby water tank, obliterating windows and sending shards of glass flying, hitting his brother-in-law and niece.

What followed was a frantic scramble to get the wounded to the nearest hospital.

“As people started evacuating there were a few people in the village with cars so people just poured into whatever vehicle they could find,” Iqbal said.

“For a few hours it was difficult to locate everyone. People got split up. But finally at the hospital my family came together.”

There, he found his brother-in-law, who works as a policeman, critically wounded and medical staff struggling to treat the influx of casualties.

Iqbal’s brother-in-law survived. But two of his neighbors did not.

Pakistan said on Tuesday that 40 civilians had been killed and 121 wounded in Indian firing, and that 11 members of its armed forces had been killed. India has previously said 15 civilians were killed and 59 wounded and that it had lost five soldiers.

For the roughly 15 million people living in the contested region, the latest bout of hostilities has appeared to push a political solution for their home further away than ever.

But the immediate concern in both sides of Kashmir is how long the skies will stay quiet.

“Markets are open again and some people who had left have slowly started coming back,” he said.

“There still is that anxiety about what might happen when night comes,” he added.

On the other side of the Line of Control, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Saima Ashraf shared those feelings.

“Uncertainty still prevails,” she said. “Many believe it (the ceasefire) is not a permanent solution.”

Others are unclear about when they can return to their homes and villages.

“Many of them are waiting to see how the situation develops before making a decision about returning,” Akhtar Ayoub, a local administration official in Pakistan’s Neelum Valley, told Reuters.

Raja Shoukat Iqbal, who lives near the de facto border, described the ceasefire as “essential for the people of Kashmir” who he said were paying a high price on both sides of the divide.

“This peace was also necessary on the international level because both countries are nuclear powers, any mistakes or anger of any country could cause the deaths of two billion people,” he posited.

Flashpoint

Kashmir has been a flashpoint since 1947, when British India was hastily divided into two by its former colonial rulers.

What followed was the birth of two nations: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Millions suddenly found themselves on the “wrong” side of the new border, leading to a frantic and bloody mass migration that tore communities asunder.

Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state led by a Hindu monarch, was in a unique position. Pakistan laid claim to the territory, while the prince chose India.

Both Pakistan and India, two nations gripped by fervent nationalism, believe that Muslim-majority Kashmir is an integral part of their countries.

For Pakistan – which was founded as a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims – Kashmir’s division is viewed as a grave historic injustice.

The country’s powerful military is run by the general Asim Munir, known for his hardline stance on India. Weeks before the latest conflict, he described Kashmir as Pakistan’s “jugular vein,” according to local media reports.

India has long accused Pakistan of funding terror groups in Kashmir, an accusation denied by Islamabad. Pakistan, meanwhile, seeks to position the cause of violence in the region as a result of New Delhi’s alleged “oppression.”

Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pushed a more uncompromising position on the contested land.

In 2019, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government split the former state into two union territories, giving the government in New Delhi greater control over the Muslim-majority region.

‘Our family is together’

India and Pakistan have both claimed victory from their latest conflict.

New Delhi says its strikes inside Pakistani territory – the deepest since one of their wars in 1971 – have eradicated terror camps used to plot attacks on India – including the massacre of tourists last month that sparked the conflict.

Pakistan says its air force shot down five Indian warplanes, including advanced French-made Rafale fighter jets.

On Monday, in his first remarks since the fighting started, Modi said India had “only suspended our responsive attack on Pakistan’s terror and military hubs.”

“In the coming days we will measure Pakistan’s every step,” he said.

Those on both sides of the border have long been living under the threat of shelling and strikes.

“We sat in silence, extremely petrified,” he said. “Praying the next target would not be our family or our home.”

“Smiles plastered across our faces, and we hugged,” he said.

“We now want this ceasefire to stay. Both countries need to find long-term solutions.”

Iqbal, the power plant worker, said he was trying to remain optimistic despite the damage done.

“We are lucky,” he said. “We have only homes to re-build and our family is together. I hope things don’t resume. But there’s no guarantee.”