Top UN court has ordered Syria to do all it can to prevent torture

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The United Nations’ top court on Thursday ordered the Syrian government to “take all measures within its powers” to prevent torture, in a case in which the Netherlands and Canada accuse Damascus of a years-long campaign of torturing its own citizens. The interim order is intended to protect potential victims while the case accusing Syria of breaching the torture convention proceeds through the International Court of Justice, a process likely to take years. The court’s President Joan E. Donoghue said the panel was ordering Damascus to “take all measures within its power to prevent acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Indian rescuers start drilling to reach 40 workers trapped in a collapsed tunnel

LUCKNOW, India (AP) — Rescuers in northern India supplied food and medicine to 40 construction workers on Thursday as officials started drilling through the rubble to reach the men who have been trapped since a portion of the tunnel they were working on collapsed over the weekend. Rescuers planned to insert wide steel pipes to create a passage to free the workers trapped since early Sunday in the mountainous Uttarakhand state. A new drilling machine was assembled after three Indian air force transport aircraft flew its parts in from New Delhi on Wednesday.

Russian artist who protested Ukraine war gets 7 years in prison

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A Russian court on Thursday convicted an artist and musician for swapping supermarket price tags with antiwar messages, sentencing her to seven years in prison in one of the highest-profile cases involving the recent crackdown on free speech. Sasha Skochilenko was arrested in her native St. Petersburg in April 2022 and charged with spreading false information about the military after replacing price tags with ones that decried Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Measles deaths worldwide jumped 40% last year, health agencies say

LONDON (AP) — Measles deaths globally spiked by more than 40% last year and cases rose after vaccination levels dramatically dropped during the pandemic, leading health agencies said Thursday. The highly infectious disease triggered epidemics in 37 countries last year, versus 22 countries in 2021. It sickened 9 million children and killed 136,00, mostly in poorer countries, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new report.