One of the largest rounds of conscription to Russia’s military for several years is underway, as President Vladimir Putin pushes ahead with an expansion of the country’s military at a crucial moment in the war in Ukraine.

Putin signed a decree authorizing the latest phase of the country’s twice-yearly conscription effort, with the new window beginning Tuesday and running until July 15.

It will see 160,000 men between 18 and 30 join Russia’s armed forces – an increase of 10,000 on last year’s spring drive, and a rise of more than 15,000 compared to three years ago, according to Russian state media outlet TASS.

The conscription push is not new, and TASS reported that the rise is caused by Putin’s efforts to increase the size of Russia’s military as a whole; the country had 1 million military personnel three years ago, but now has around 1.5 million.

But the new push also comes at a vital crossroads in Russia’s war in Ukraine. Moscow has been relying on assistance from North Korean soldiers to push back Kyiv’s advances in the Kursk region of Russia, and has been steadily advancing on the ground in eastern Ukraine, while the US attempts to broker talks that would end the conflict.

Russian law prohibits sending conscripts drafted for mandatory service to active combat zones without proper training. While the official stance is that conscripts are not sent to Ukraine, reports have surfaced of conscripts being pressured or misled into signing contracts that result in their deployment to the front lines in Ukraine. Others found themselves under attack when Kyiv launched its surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024.

Russian troops have continued sustained attacks in the Pokrovsk area of Donetsk in recent weeks, and have launched aerial assaults against Ukrainian cities, even while discussions with the US continue.

Senior Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev is meanwhile expected to visit Washington this week to meet with top Trump official Steve Witkoff for talks on strengthening relations between the two countries as they seek to end the war in Ukraine, according to a US official and two sources familiar with the plans.

His visit will mark the first time a senior Russian official has visited Washington, DC, for talks since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and marks a further step in the marked warming in relations between the two countries since President Donald Trump returned to office in January.

Trump acknowledged in an interview with Newsmax last week that Russia may be “dragging their feet.”

Putin not only rejected Trump’s recent call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine but also added conditions – including the lifting of US sanctions – for a ceasefire on fighting in the Black Sea after last week’s latest negotiations wrapped up and the moratorium had been announced by the White House.

Myanmar’s ruling military government has announced a temporary ceasefire in operations against armed opposition groups to aid recovery efforts following Friday’s devastating earthquake.

The truce will run from April 2 to April 22, state-run MRTV said on Wednesday.

More than 2,700 people have died in Myanmar following Friday’s quake, the government says. Hundreds more remain missing, meaning the death toll is expected to rise.

The country has also been embroiled in civil war for four years sparked by a bloody and economically destructive military coup, which has seen junta forces battle rebel groups across the country.

The coup and ensuing conflict has battered its health infrastructure, leaving it ill-equipped to deal with major natural disasters.

Swathes of the country lie outside the control of the military junta and are a run by a patchwork of ethnic rebels and militias, making compiling reliable information extremely difficult.

MRTV also reported Wednesday that chairman of the State Administration Council (SAC) Min Aung Hlaing will attend a regional summit in Thailand on April 3-4 to discuss the respinse to the earthquake.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has commuted the death sentences of three Americans convicted of attempting a coup to life imprisonment, days before US government officials are due to visit the central African country.

The Americans, Marcel Malanga, Tyler Thompson Jr., and Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun were among 37 people handed death sentences by a military court in September following last year’s failed coup attempt led by Malanga’s father, Christian.

The putschists had targeted the country’s presidential palace and the residence of Congolese politician Vital Kamerhe in an attempt to overthrow the government in May 2024.

At least six people, including Christian Malanga, an opposition politician who livestreamed the coup attempt, were killed in a gun battle with presidential guards.

Salama said the clemency decision was not made to placate the US, with whom the DRC has sought a minerals-for-security partnership. It comes as war rages in the country’s resource-rich eastern region between government forces and a Rwanda-backed rebel group.

“We have no deal with the Americans at this stage on any American intervention,” Salama said.

The new US Senior Adviser for Africa Massad Boulos and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Corina Sanders will travel to the DRC Thursday, the State Department announced this week.

The officials aim to ”advance efforts for durable peace in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and to promote US private sector investment in the region,” it noted. They also plan to visit neighboring Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.

A serial rapist who was convicted of raping 10 women in the United Kingdom and China last month also attacked dozens more victims before he was arrested, police said on Wednesday.

London’s Metropolitan Police Service said that 23 women came forward with new accusations against Zhenhao Zou following an appeal to trace other potential victims of the man described by the police as a “dangerous and prolific sexual predator.”

Zou, 28, was found guilty in March of 11 counts of rape, one count of false imprisonment, three counts of voyeurism and a number of other offenses, including the possession of extreme pornographic images and the possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offense.

Investigators said that evidence, including videos found on Zou’s devices, suggested there may be more than 50 other survivors who have not yet been identified.

Some of the women who contacted the police with new accusations against Zou are in the UK, some are in China, and some in other parts of the world, the police said on Wednesday.

Zou, who is originally from Dongguan in China, has lived in various parts of the world, including China, Belfast in Northern Ireland, and London.

The Metropolitan Police force has appealed for survivors and potential witnesses to contact officers through a secure portal.

The police and prosecutors said Zou, who also went by the name Pakho online, used WeChat and dating apps to meet other students of Chinese heritage. He would invite them for drinks, drug them and then assault them in his apartments in London and in China.

Prosecutors said many of his victims were “unconscious and rendered defenceless” by the drugs he had given them. He secretly filmed some of his attacks using a mobile device and hidden cameras, according to the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service. The police said he also took items from his victims, such as jewelry and clothing.

The police said Zou “manipulated and drugged women in order to prey on them in the most cowardly way.”

A PhD student at University College London, Zou was arrested in January 2024 after one of his victims reported him to the police.

Prosecutors said last month that the “courageous women who came forward to report Zhenhao Zou’s heinous crimes” have been “incredibly strong and brave” and that there was “no doubt” that their evidence led to his convictions.

Zou will be sentenced later this year, according to the police.

Former Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Óscar Arias says he has had his visa to enter the United States revoked.

Arias, 84, said he doesn’t know why his visa was canceled but accepts that the US has the right to make such a decision.

Miguel Guillén, the secretary general of Arias’ National Liberation Party, said the former president had received an email notifying him of the move.

“I don’t know if the revoking of my visa is the product of some sort of retaliation, because I say what I think (and) write what I say,” Arias told a press conference Tuesday.

In recent weeks, Arias had posted messages on social media that were critical of US President Donald Trump and his policies.

In one post, he compared Trump to “a Roman emperor” who tells other nations what to do. In another, he accused Trump and Vice President JD Vance of insulting and threatening Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a heated White House meeting in February.

“If someone wants to use a reprisal to silence me, well obviously they’re not going to silence me,” he said Tuesday.

Arias was Costa Rica’s president between 1986 and 1990 and again between 2006 and 2010.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his role in negotiating an end to the Central American conflicts of the 1980s.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is in Greenland for a three-day trip aimed at building trust and cooperation with Greenlandic officials at a time when the Trump administration is seeking control of the vast Arctic territory.

Frederiksen announced plans for her visit after US Vice President JD Vance visited a US air base in Greenland last week and accused Denmark of underinvesting in the territory.

Greenland is a mineral-rich, strategically critical island that is becoming more accessible because of climate change. Trump has said that the landmass is critical to US security. It’s geographically part of North America, but is a semiautonomous territory belonging to the Kingdom of Denmark.

After her arrival Wednesday, Frederiksen walked the streets of the capital, Nuuk, with the incoming Greenlandic leader, Jens-Frederik Nielsen. She is also to meet with the future Naalakkersuisut, the Cabinet, in a visit due to last through Friday.

“It has my deepest respect how the Greenlandic people and the Greenlandic politicians handle the great pressure that is on Greenland,” she said in government statement announcing the visit.

On the agenda are talks with Nielsen about cooperation between Greenland and Denmark.

Nielsen has said in recent days that he welcomes the visit, and that Greenland would resist any US attempt to annex the territory.

“We must listen when others talk about us. But we must not be shaken. President Trump says the United States is ‘getting Greenland.’ Let me make this clear: The U.S. is not getting that. We don’t belong to anyone else. We decide our own future,” he wrote Sunday on Facebook.

“We must not act out of fear. We must respond with peace, dignity and unity. And it is through these values that we must clearly, clearly and calmly show the American president that Greenland is ours.”

For years, the people of Greenland, with a population of about 57,000, have been working toward eventual independence from Denmark.

The Trump administration’s threats to take control of the island one way or the other, possibly even with military force, have angered many in Greenland and Denmark. The incoming government chosen in last month’s election wants to take a slower approach on the question of eventual independence.

The political group in Greenland most sympathetic to the US president, the Naleraq party that advocates a swift path toward independence, was excluded from coalition talks to form the next government.

Peter Viggo Jakobsen, associate professor at the Danish Defense Academy, said last week that the Trump administration’s aspirations for Greenland could backfire and push the more mild parties closer to Denmark.

He said that “Trump has scared most Greenlanders away from this idea about a close relationship to the United States because they don’t trust him.”

Hungary will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), its government said Wednesday, as the country’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban welcomed Israeli Prime Minister and ICC fugitive Benjamin Netanyahu to Budapest.

Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary marked the first time the Israeli leader stepped foot on European soil since the ICC issued an arrest warrant against him in May 2024. The court said it had “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu bears criminal responsibility for war crimes including “starvation as a method of warfare” and “the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”

The ICC doesn’t have its own law enforcement powers, so it relies on its member states to make arrests and transfer suspects to the Hague. As a signatory, Hungary is obliged to arrest Netanyahu.

Hungary’s State Secretary for International Communication and Relations Zoltan Kovacs said the country will begin the withdrawal process on Thursday, “in line with Hungary’s constitutional and international legal obligations.”

If it goes through with the withdrawal, Hungary will become the only European Union country not to be part of the ICC. Israel is not part of the court, alongside the United States, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other countries.

Arrest warrant

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and the former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza last May.

The move marked the first time the ICC targeted the top leader of a close ally of the United States, putting Netanyahu in the company of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, for whom the ICC issued an arrest warrant over Moscow’s war on Ukraine, and the Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, who was facing an arrest warrant from the ICC for alleged crimes against humanity at the time of his capture and killing in October 2011.

At the same time, it also issued warrants for three top leaders of Hamas: its leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Al Qassem Brigades, the group’s armed wing Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, better known as Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political leader. All three have been killed by Israel in the course of the war.

This is a developing story.