Bangladesh began voting on Sunday in an election guaranteed to give a fifth term in office to prime minister Sheikh Hasina, after a boycott led by an opposition party she branded a “terrorist organisation”.

Hasina has presided over exceptional economic growth in a country once beset by grinding poverty, but her government has been accused of rampant human rights abuses and a ruthless opposition crackdown.

Hasina’s party faces almost no effective rivals in the seats it is contesting but has avoided fielding candidates in a few seats, in an apparent effort to avoid the legislature being labelled a one-party institution.

Germany: Migrant dies in Mülheim after police scuffle

Police said the Guinean man attacked security staff at an asylum seekers’ reception center. He was tasered twice before being overpowered, only to lose consciousness. The man later died in hospital.

A 26-year-old man from Guinea has died during a police operation at an asylum seekers’ reception center in Mülheim in western Germany.

The Bochum police said Sunday they were investigating the circumstances leading to the man’s death. They took over the investigation from police in neighboring Mülheim.

What do we know about the incident?

Security services at the center alerted police on Saturday evening, saying that the man had gone on a rampage and attacked staff.

When officers located the man in his room, they say he assaulted them too.

Israel’s ‘refuseniks’: ‘I will never justify what Israel is doing in Gaza’

On December 26, Israel’s first conscientious objector since the start of its war against Hamas, Tal Mitnick, was sent to prison after refusing to serve in the army. Mitnick, however, is not alone. A small group of Israelis are refusing to take part in the “oppression of the Palestinians” by refusing to serve in the Gaza conflict. FRANCE 24 met with some of them in Israel.  

Young people refusing to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are known as “refuseniks” in Israel. The term dates from the Soviet era and once referred to Jews denied the right to emigrate to Israel from the Soviet bloc.

Although military service in the Jewish state is compulsory for both men and women – with many seeing it as an important part of their national identity – the refuseniks are increasingly speaking out.

“On February 25th (my enlistment date) … I will refuse to enlist and go to military jail for it,” Sofia Orr, an 18-year-old Israeli woman, told FRANCE 24 in the Pardes Hanna-Karkur municipality of the Haifa district.

Snow hinders rescues and aid deliveries to isolated quake-hit Japan communities

By HIRO KOMAE, AYAKA MCGILL and YURI KAGEYAMA

Rescue teams worked through snow to deliver supplies to isolated hamlets, six days after a powerful earthquake hit western Japan, killing at least 128 people. Heavy snowfall expected in Ishikawa Prefecture later Sunday and through the night added to the urgency.

After Monday’s 7.6 magnitude temblor, 195 people were still unaccounted for, a slight decrease from the more than 200 reported earlier, and 560 people were injured. Hundreds of aftershocks have followed, rattling Noto Peninsula, where the quakes are centered.

Taiyo Matsushita walked three hours through mud to reach a supermarket in Wajima city to buy food and other supplies for his family. The home where he lives with his wife and four children, and about 20 nearby homes, are among the more than a dozen communities cut off by landslides.

China feels the country isn’t patriotic enough. A new law aims to change that

On a brisk December day, junior high school students in Fuzhou, southeast China, converged at a country park to study the thoughts of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Unfurling a red banner that declared their outing a “walking classroom of politics and ideology,” they sought enlightenment by retracing the footsteps Xi took on his 2021 visit to the neighborhood, according to a state-affiliated local news outlet.

Another group of youngsters in the northern coastal city of Tianjin toured a fort to reflect on “the tragic history of Chinese people’s resistance to foreign aggression.”