Eurasia

A lingering dispute over Afghanistan’s presidential election and an outbreak of coronavirus in the country appear to have complicated further an already troubled effort the United States is making to help find a negotiated end to nearly 19 years of war.

The blueprint reportedly stipulates the development of the Hypersonic Cruise Missile (HCM) and the Hyper Velocity Gliding Projectile (HVGP) which are expected to enter service in the early 2030s.

Israel plans to deploy electronic counterterrorism measures to track the movements of people who might be infected with the coronavirus, officials said, a confluence of crime fighting and public health that could become more common even as it sparked civil liberty concerns.

A Turkish court ordered the imprisonment of four relatives of slain ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi for joining the terrorist group.

There is “credible” evidence British airstrikes against the Islamic State group have killed civilians in Iraq and Syria, the US military has said.

Prosecutors in the Austrian state of Carinthia have started a trial against an alleged Hezbollah commander who spent 13 years in the central European country while reportedly being involved in financing terrorism.

A likely Iranian-backed militant group called “League of the Revolutionaries” published a video Sunday claiming responsibility for recent attacks against a base housing American-led coalition troops in Iraq.

Pro-Kremlin media outlets are actively spreading disinformation about coronavirus in an attempt to “undermine public trust” in Western countries, according to an internal European Union document.

A glance at a global map tracking the spread of the coronavirus just one week ago would have shown a large blank space south of Russia, north of Iran, and west of China as an area completely free of the virus.

With hundreds of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Balkans, a few people have taken on the burden of keeping the public calm and well-informed. BIRN takes a look at some of them.