BAKKACIMA BLOG

Voting is ongoing now in a seven-day referendum on constitutional amendments that would allow President Vladimir Putin to run for re-election twice more and potentially remain in the top job for the next 16 years. Election officials said they were opening polls on Thursday across the country before the official July 1 vote to avoid overcrowding that could spread coronavirus infections. Meanwhile, masks and disinfectant gels are being made available to 110 million voters across 10 time zones, from the Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on the Pacific Ocean.

The workers were promised an additional $13 a month on top of their $72 monthly salary - those who did not accept were threatened with the sack. The men were allegedly not allowed to leave the mill in the northern city of Kano. Meanwhile, five managers at the Indian-owned mill have been arrested. The company, called Popular Farms, has not responded to BBC requests for comment. Police spokesman Abdullahi Haruna told the BBC that the plant had now been shut down and the owners were being investigated for "holding the men against their will". Some of the men say were forced to work most of the time during their incarceration, with little food. 28-year-old Hamza Ibrahim, one of those rescued, told the BBC's Mansur Abubakar in Kano, "We were allowed to rest for only a short time, no prayers were allowed, no family visits." The police were tipped off about the men's plight after one of them called a human rights organisation. "What I saw was heart breaking. W...

A young  woman from  Kazakhstan  has fallen more than 110 feet to her death just last weekend after posing for a cliffside photo to celebrate the end of the country's COVID-19  lockdown. It was her companion who called the emergency services, and her lifeless body was pulled out of the water and taken to the morgue of Antalya Forensic Medicine Institue for an autopsy. Authorities determined her death was an accident, according to her relatives.