Prominent women’s rights activists including Samar Badawi were in a Saudi court on Thursday over charges linked to their human rights activism.

Badawi is a Saudi lawyer and sister of blogger Raif Badawi who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2012 for criticism of officials in the kingdom.

It was the first time Samar Badawi appeared in court since her arrest on July 30, 2018. She was apprehended along with Nassima al-Sadah, a women’s rights activist from Saudi Arabia‘s Eastern Province, and Amal al-Harbi.

Ten people, including Loujain al-Hathloul, Eman al-Nafjan, and Hatoun al-Fassi, are facing the court. 

The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights said Thursday’s hearing was taking place in the Specialized Criminal Court, a counter-terrorism court that often tries activists and political dissidents.

Under Saudi Arabia’s Counterterrorism Law, the activists face 20 years in prison.

Amnesty International’s Philip Nassif told Al Jazeera he was concerned the activists won’t have fair trial or due process, and urged the United States to take action for their release.

“Among those detained are three American citizens,” Nassif told Al Jazeera.

“It is a travesty that the US administration under President Donald Trump has not held the Saudi authorities accountable for egregious human rights abuses.”

Breaking news

The so-called “Special Criminal Court” in Riyadh is holding at this time the first trial session for the human rights activist Samar Badawi, who is still under arbitrary detention since 31/7/2018 with no guilt. pic.twitter.com/nGhKskuMmQ

— Prisoners of Conscie (@m3takl_en) June 27, 2019

Legal representation remains unclear, though rights groups have said the activists’ lawyers were not present during previous court appearances or interrogations.

Saudi rights group ALQST said Badawi and other women activists had been subjected to “severe and brutal torture and sexual harassment” while being held.

Human Rights Watch described the arrests as part of an “unprecedented government crackdown on the women’s rights movement”, which began just weeks before the lifting of the women’s driving ban on May 15, 2018.

“ALQST has long expressed the concern about the profoundly unfair nature of trials in Saudi Arabia with complete lack of transparency and failure to adhere to international standards,” Drewery Dyke from ALQST told Al Jazeera.

“We believe Samar Badawi is a prisoner of conscience and we call for her unconditional release.” 

Torture?

Raif Badawi’s wife, Ensaf Haidar, and their three children live in Canada. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland condemned Samar Badawi’s arrest last year and called for her release – a move that riled Saudi authorities.

The Saudi government accused Canada of trying to “meddle with Saudi sovereignty” and recalled their ambassador from Canada while expelling Ottawa’s ambassador to the country.

The Saudi authorities accused the activists of “contact with foreign entities with the aim of undermining the country’s stability and social fabric”.

The Saudi press branded the activists “traitors” and supporters of the crackdown described them as “agents of embassies” on social media.

Rights organisations documented numerous cases of alleged torture and ill-treatment of the detained activists in recent months. 

Amnesty cited victims’ testimony that masked men severely tortured and sexually harassed some of the women.

Europe’s record-breaking heatwave is forecast to intensify further on Thursday with authorities on high alert as temperatures threaten to exceed 40 degrees Celsius in some parts of the continent.

The stifling heat prompted traffic restrictions in France, sparked forest fires in Spain, and fanned debate in Germany over public nudity as sweltering residents stripped down.

Meteorologists blame a blast of hot air from northern Africa for the heat this week, which has already set new records in Europe for June. According to reports, the high temperatures have already claimed the lives of three people.

Exceptional for arriving so early in summer, the heatwave will on Thursday and Friday likely send thermometers above 40C in France, Spain and Greece.

In Spain, hundreds of firefighters and soldiers, backed by water-dropping aircraft, battled on Wednesday to put out a wind-fuelled forest fire that erupted in Torre del Espanol in the northeastern region of Catalonia.

The worst is expected on Friday when 33 of the 50 Spanish provinces face extreme temperatures, which could reach 44C in Girona.

“Hell is coming,” one Spanish TV weather presenter tweeted.

In France, temperatures “unprecedented” for their timing and intensity since detailed surveys started in 1947 were expected to reach at least 39C over two-thirds of the country, said weather service Meteo-France.

Health official Jerome Saloman said the impact of the extreme heat was starting to be felt in France, with an increase in weather-related calls to emergency medical services.

Some schools were expected to close Thursday and Friday while several cities – including Paris and Lyon – restricted traffic to limit a build-up of air pollution.

French authorities were taking no chances after the August 2003 heatwave was blamed for 15,000 deaths in the country, with television and radio broadcasts issuing warnings.

In Greece, where about 100 people died in last year’s deadly fires at the Mati coastal resort, hospitals and officials were on red alert with temperatures of 45C.

Global warming raises risk

Scientists warn global warming linked to human fossil fuel use could make such scorchers more frequent.

“Global temperatures are increasing due to climate change,” said Len Shaffrey, professor of climate science at the University of Reading.

“The global rise in temperatures means the probability that an extreme heatwave will occur is also increasing.”

But French winemakers said the hot weather was more than welcome as it could produce a superior vintage.

“Two of three days of heatwave in Bordeaux at this time, it’s magic!” said Philippe Bardet, head of the Bordeaux Wine Council.

Temperatures above 40C would help burn off any of the mildew caused by residual damp, which is “very, very good for quality”, Bardet said.

The 70-year-old record for the highest temperature recorded for June was beaten in Germany as 38.6C was recorded in Brandenburg, the German Weather Service (DWD) confirmed Wednesday.

Meanwhile, police in Brandenburg cautioned a naked man for driving his moped wearing only his helmet and sandals.

And in Munich, security guards ordered a group of women sunbathing topless on the banks of the river Isar to cover up.

The move backfired, according to the Munich newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which quoted another sunbather as saying she and others took their tops off “out of solidarity”.

It said an urgent motion was introduced in a city council meeting to allow topless bathing.

Scores of people have drowned in Poland and Lithuania as they tried to cool off in lakes and rivers, authorities said.

The Polish weather institute IMGW said the country’s highest ever June temperature was recorded on Wednesday in the southwest: 38.2C.

The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute also recorded the country’s highest June temperature: 38.9C in the northern town of Doksany.

In Belgium, vastly different temperatures were expected with 19C on the north coast and 33C in the south, according to broadcaster RTBF.

The first of back-to-back nights of debate took place on Wednesday with 10 of the 20 US Democratic presidential candidates who qualified for the debate going head-to-head on a range of issues, including healthcare, immigration and US foreign policy towards Iran.

Senators Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, Representatives Tulsi Gabbard and Tim Ryan, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Representatives Beto O’Rourke and John Delaney and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro took the stage Wednesday night in Miami, Florida. 

Aside from technical difficulties, Wednesday’s debate offered few major surprises, but some heated exchanges, as the candidates sought to appeal to voters by highlighting individual platforms and points of divergence. 

From healthcare to immigration, and the economy to Iran what did the candidates say as the lead up to the 2020 race heats up?

Healthcare

One of the issues showcasing differences among the 10 candidates on stage was healthcare.

Candidates battled over whether to abolish private insurance and shift to a Medicare-for-All system.

Warren and de Blasio were the only two candidates to raise their hands in support of eliminating private insurance.

Warren, a leader of the party’s progressive wing who has been surging in opinion polls, said private insurance was taking advantage of Americans. She backs a government-sponsored Medicare-for-All approach and criticised those who say it is not politically feasible.

“What they are really telling you is they just won’t fight for it. Healthcare is a basic right, and I will fight for it,” she said.

Most of Warren’s rivals Wednesday night, including O’Rourke and Klobuchar, called for universal healthcare but also favoured preserving the private insurance market. 

Delaney, an outspoken critic of Medicare for All who supports a universal healthcare approach that includes private insurance, said Democrats should not throw away a system that some Americans are happy with.

“I think we should be the party that keeps what’s working and fixes what’s broken,” Delaney said.

De Blasio cast the debate as part of “the battle for the heart and soul of our party”. 

O’Rourke said private insurance was “fundamental to our ability to get everybody cared for,” but de Blasio cut him off.

“Congressman O’Rourke, private insurance is not working for tens of millions of Americans when you talk about the copays, the deductibles the premiums – it’s not working. How can you defend a system that’s not working?”

Inslee said he was the only candidate on the stage that had passed a public healthcare option and a law protecting a woman’s right to reproductive health and health insurance.

That drew a sharp response from Klobuchar.

“There are three women up here who have fought pretty hard for a woman’s right to choose,” she said, looking at Warren and congresswoman Gabbard.

Immigration

One of the more heated exchanges on Wednesday night came during the questioning about immigration.

O’Rourke and Castro battled over the separation of families and detention of migrants at the southern border. Castro said he would decriminalise border crossings by migrants, which he said led to the separation of families. He challenged O’Rourke and others to support him.

O’Rourke said that as a congressman he helped introduce a bill that would ensure that those who are seeking asylum and refuge in the United States are not criminalised. 

Castro responded: “I’m not talking about the ones that are seeking asylum, I’m talking about everybody else.” He accused O’Rourke of not doing his homework.

Candidates pointed to the recent deaths of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, who drowned while attempting to cross the Rio Grande River between the US and Mexico.

Several candidates blamed President Donald Trump and his immigration policies for their deaths. The family had grown frustrated over the long wait in Mexico to apply for asylum in the US.

“Watching that image of Oscar and his daughter Valeria was heartbreaking. It should also piss us all off,” Castro said.

De Blasio earned loud applause when he reminded citizens immigrants were not their enemies.

“For all the American citizens who feel you are falling behind and the American dream is not working for you, the immigrants didn’t do that to you!” De Blasio said. “The big corporations did that to you.”

Economy

All 10 Democrats railed against a national economy and Republican administration they said exists only for the rich.

“Who’s this economy really working for? asked Warren, who received the first question. 

“When you’ve got a government, when you have an economy that does great for those with money and is not doing great for everyone else, that is corruption, pure and simple,” the US senator and former Harvard law professor added. “We need to call it out.”

The Massachusetts senator said the economy is working well for “giant oil companies” and those who want to invest in private prisons, but not for those struggling and Americans facing the effects of climate change.

O’Rourke said in English that “this economy has got to work for everyone” and that, right now, it isn’t. Then he switched to Spanish, saying in that language that “we need to include everyone” in a booming national economy.

He added that the Trump administration has focused on helping the wealthy and large corporations over everyday Americans – echoing similar sentiments of the other Democrats on stage.

Iran

Booker was the only one of the 10 candidates on stage in Miami on Wednesday not to raise his hand when asked if he would sign onto the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran as originally negotiated. Under the agreement, Iran agreed to limit its enrichment of uranium and submit to UN inspections in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Pressed to explain his rationale, Booker said as president he would “do the best I can to secure this country”.

Trump pulled the United States out of the accord in May 2018 and has imposed increasingly tough sanctions to pressure Iran into a better deal. Since then tensions between the two countries have intensified, especially over the last month.

Gabbard offered strong words against Trump’s foreign policy, saying the president’s “chickenhawk cabinet” has “led us to the brink of war in Iran”.

Greatest threats to the US?

The 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls gave a range of answers about what they see as the greatest threat facing the US.

China was mentioned by Klobuchar, Castro, Ryan and Delaney.

Climate change was mentioned by Warren, Booker and O’Rourke.

Inslee, who’s made climate change the emphasis of his campaign, pointed instead to Trump.

Gabbard and Delaney pointed to nuclear war. Klobauchar also mentioned Iran.

And de Blasio said Russia because the country “is trying to undermine our democracy”.

Was Trump watching?

Despite flying to Asia Wednesday for the G20 summit, Trump tuned in from Air Force One and did not miss the chance to knock his would-be opponents on Twitter. 

His verdict as the evening got underway? “BORING!”

Who’s up for night two?

On Thursday, Senators Michael Bennet, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders, former Vice President Joe Biden, Representative Eric Swalwell, Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, former Governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper, entrepreneur Marianne Williamson and startup investor Andrew Yang will go head-to-head.

Protests were held in several Indian cities on Wednesday following the lynching of a Muslim man last week by a Hindu mob that suspected he was a thief.

Increasing anger about the killing in Jharkhand prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make his first comments on the matter on Wednesday, telling the upper house of parliament he was “pained” to hear about it and calling for “the strictest possible punishment to the accused”.

Mobile phone videos shared on local television channels showed 24-year-old Tabrez Ansari tied to a pole and begging for mercy as some men beat him with sticks and forced him to chant “Jai  Shri Ram” (Hail Lord Ram), a slogan increasingly used by Hindu far-right groups.

Is this the New Jharkhand and New India that are being talked of? Watch Tabrez Ansari being forced to chant Jai Shri Ram and Jai Hanuman. @HemantSorenJMM @ShoaibDaniyal @Dipankar_cpiml @drajoykumar @JharkhandNow @svaradarajan @sharmasupriya @KunalSarangi @karwanemohabbat pic.twitter.com/mOD5grSEsu

— Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha (@JharkhandJanad1) June 23, 2019

Ansari was caught by a group of villagers who suspected he was a thief in the Seraikela-Kharsawan area of Jharkhand on June 18, said Avinash Kumar, a deputy superintendent of police in the area.

Eleven villagers have been arrested and a special investigation team set up to probe the matter, Kumar said.

Villagers called the police and lodged a case against Ansari, and police took him to the hospital, but Ansari died due to his injuries while in custody four days later, Kumar said. Two police officers from the area have been suspended, police told local media.

Indian local media reports said Ansari’s wife has accused police of deliberately taking him to jail first – instead of a hospital – despite the critical injuries he suffered.

‘No more lynching’

Dozens of people gathered in New Delhi carrying placards calling for justice for Ansari’s killing. In Gujarat and West Bengal, hundreds took to the streets carrying posters that read ‘No more lynching in the name of religion’.

Protests were planned in about 50 cities. It wasn’t immediately clear how many took place.

Opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi termed the lynching a “blot on humanity”.

Hate crimes against minorities have spiked in India since Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014.

Dozens of Muslim men have been attacked or lynched by Hindu mobs since then, many on suspicion of slaughtering cows, which are considered holy in the Hindu religion.

Last year, the Supreme Court condemned “horrendous acts” of mob violence and asked the government to enact a new law to deal with an increase in incidents of lynchings.

Two days after Ansari’s killing, a Muslim religious school teacher in West Bengal’s Kolkata alleged he’d been pushed off a moving train when he refused to chant “Jai Shri Ram” as some Hindu men in the train demanded.

Stop Mob Lynchings…!!#IndiaAgainstLynchTerror pic.twitter.com/IrRnwobpYk

— Gulzar Ahmed (@abuariamomehdi) June 25, 2019

Many people took to social media to condemn the BJP-led government in Jharkhand state, where civil society groups have recorded at least 13 lynchings of minorities, mainly Muslims, in the past three years.

“An environment has been created across the country that enables and encourages this kind of violence,” said  Harsh Mander, a founding member of Karwan-e-Mohabbat (“a caravan of love”), a solidarity campaign for victims hit by hate violence, including lynchings.

“For perpetrators, such attacks are an act of heroism. Ansari was not only lynched by a mob, there was an obvious religious hatred in the manner it was done by asking him to shout Hindu slogans,” Mandar told Al Jazeera in a previous interview.

The United States last week released an annual report on international religious freedoms that said religious intolerance was increasing in India and extremist narratives had “facilitated an egregious and ongoing campaign of violence, intimidation, and harassment against non-Hindu and lower-caste Hindu minorities.”

India rejected the report saying it saw “no locus standi for a foreign government to pronounce on the state of our citizens’ constitutionally-protected rights.”

“Because he was a Muslim he was beaten so brutally,” Ansari’s wife Shaishta Ansari told the television channel NDTV.

“My husband was my only support. Who will I live for now? I want justice.”

Forces allied to Libya‘s UN-recognised government say they have retaken Gharyan, a strategic town south of the capital, Tripoli, although forces loyal to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar denied the claims.

Gharyan is the main forward base for the eastern-based Libya National Army (LNA) under Haftar which has been fighting to take control of Tripoli.

Mustafa al-Mejii, spokesman for forces loyal to the internationally-recognised Government of National Accord, told AFP news agency: “Gharyan is under our total control.”

Dozens of pro-Haftar fighters were killed and at least 18 were taken prisoner, he said.

The claim came after the spokesman for Haftar’s forces accused “sleeper cells” of allowing Government of National Accord (GNA) forces to enter part of Gharyan, 100 kilometres southwest of Tripoli, without admitting the loss of the town.

He said the fighting was ongoing and that the situation was under control.

Witnesses told Reuters that GNA troops seized the main operations room of the LNA in Gharyan, as well as LNA vehicles and other gear. The town hosts LNA field hospitals and is also where supplies arrive from the east. 

The LNA has set up a helicopter base outside the town.

Images were circulated on social media networks of GNA forces patrolling Gharyan and of prisoners said to be pro-Haftar fighters.

Mejii hailed what he described as a “significant victory” and said he now expected Haftar’s forces to “collapse”.

Libya has been mired in chaos since a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with a multitude of militias vying for control of the oil-rich country.

Haftar, a retired general who took part in the revolt against Gaddafi, unleashed an offensive in May 2014 to purge Libya of armed groups he branded “terrorists”.

After a rapid advance from the east and south of the country, Haftar seized Gharyan on April 2, and two days later launched an offensive on Tripoli where the GNA is based.

But counter-attacks by forces loyal to the GNA have resulted in a stalemate on the capital’s southern outskirts.

The battle for Tripoli has killed over 650 people, including combatants and civilians, according to the World Health Organization. More than 94,000 have been displaced by the fighting.