Ugandan Olympic athlete dies after being set on fire by former partner
(From L to R) Kenya’s Rosemary Wanjiru, Israel’s Lonah Chemtai Salpeter, Uganda’s Rebecca Cheptegei and Kenya’s Selly Chepyego Kaptich compete in the women’s marathon final during the World Athletics Championships in Budapest on August 26, 2023. (FERENC ISZA/AFP via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — Ugandan long-distance runner Rebecca Cheptegei has died four days after being doused in petrol and set on fire by her former partner, authorities have announced.
Cheptegei — who had been receiving treatment at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret City, Kenya — succumbed to her injuries after sustaining burns to almost 80% of her body in the attack which occurred on Sunday.
Cheptegei was doused with a can of gasoline before being set on fire during an argument over land, according to a police report. Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital announced Cheptegei had passed away at the age of 33 after her organs failed on Thursday, according to hospital spokesperson Owen Menach.
“We have learnt of the sad passing of our Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei following a vicious attack by her boyfriend,” Donald Rukare, head of Uganda’s Olympics Committee, announced on Thursday writing on X. “May her gentle soul rest in peace and we strongly condemn violence against women. This was a cowardly and senseless act that has led to the loss of a great athlete. Her legacy will continue to endure.”
The Ugandan marathon runner had recently competed in the women’s marathon at the 2024 Paris Olympics, finishing in 44th place with a personal best time this season of 2:32:14, just a month before the fatal attack.
The Ugandan athlete had been living in northwestern Kenya, her father saying she recently bought land in Trans Nzoia County to build a home and be closer to Kenya’s athletics training centers.
Cheptegei’s Kenyan partner who carried out the attack — identified as Dickson Ndiema — is said to have sustained “serious burns” in the attack and is receiving treatment at the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital.
Uganda’s Athletics Federation said they are “deeply saddened” by the passing of Cheptegei.
“We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of our athlete, Rebecca Cheptegei early this morning who tragically fell victim to domestic violence,” the federation announced on Thursday. “As a federation, we condemn such acts and call for justice.”
The incident is the latest in a string of domestic violence cases against female athletes in Kenya.
In 2021, Kenyan distance runner Agnes Tirop was found stabbed to death in her home in Iten, in northwest Kenya. Just a few weeks earlier the rising athletics star had set a new women’s 10 kilometer road running record at the “Adizero: Road to Records” event in Herzogenaurach, Germany.
Tirop’s husband — Ibrahim Rotich — was subsequently arrested and charged with her murder. The case is currently ongoing.
Just a year later in 2022, Kenyan-Bahraini athlete Damaris Muthee Mutua, 28, was found murdered at her home in the same town, with Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations saying her cause of death was strangulation.
Kenyan police launched a manhunt for Mutua’s Ethiopian boyfriend — Eskinder Hailemaryam Folie — who is the main suspect in her murder and is alleged to have fled Kenya.
(LONDON) — Russia launched a major missile and drone attack into Ukraine overnight into Tuesday coinciding with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the U.S. this week, where the Ukrainian leader is seeking American and international support for Kyiv’s “victory plan.”
Ukraine’s air force wrote on Telegram that four missiles — one Iskander-M, two Kh-59/69s and one of undetermined type — were fired into northern and central Ukraine overnight,
Russia also launched 81 Shahed attack drones, the air force said, of which 66 were shot down and 13 blocked by radio jamming.
“The main direction of the attack is the north and center of Ukraine,” the air force wrote.
Ukraine’s Energy Ministry, meanwhile, noted that energy facilities in six regions of the country were attacked, resulting in local power outages.
Ukraine’s southern city of Zaporizhzhia also came under fire on Monday evening, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov. One person was killed, he wrote on Telegram.
The latest strikes come as Zelenskyy tries to bolster support for Kyiv’s war plan during his visit to the U.S. for meetings with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, D.C., as well as appearances at the U.N. General Assembly in New York City.
During a sit-down interview with ABC News’ Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts, Zelenskyy said the war with Moscow is “closer to an end” than many believe.
“The plan of victory is strengthening of Ukraine,” he added. “That’s why we’re asking our friends, our allies, to strengthen us. It’s very important.”
President Vladimir Putin, Zelenskyy said, is “afraid” of the recent Ukrainian occupation of parts of Russia’s western Kursk region.
“His people saw that he can’t defend — that he can’t defend all his territory,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukraine, Zelenskyy added, can only “push Putin to stop the war” from a “strong position.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded by saying that Russia will only end the war when its goals are achieved.
“Any war one way or the other finishes with peace,” Peskov told reporters, as reported by Russian state media. “For us there is no alternative to achieving our goals. As soon as our goals are achieved one way or the other, the special military operation will end.”
Ukraine is continuing its own long-range strikes against Russian military and industrial targets, while pressing its partners for permission to use Western-supplied weapons in such operations.
Russia’s Defense Ministry reported 13 “thwarted” drone infiltrations overnight into Tuesday — seven over Belgorod region, five over Kursk and one over Bryansk regions.
On the battlefield, meanwhile, Russian forces continued attacks in eastern Ukraine, increasingly threatening Ukraine’s hold on the city of Vuhledar in southeastern Donetsk Oblast, which Moscow has been attempting to seize since the early weeks of the invasion.
Ukrainian military bloggers reported that Russian forces may have broken through the defenders’ flanks near the city, which is already largely destroyed and empty of civilians.
Developments there reflect the broader difficult situation for Ukraine in the east, where its forces are trying to hold back a creeping Russian advance while inflicting heavy casualties.
(LONDON) — Julian Assange made his first public appearance since his release from prison, telling European lawmakers the United States had forced him to “plead guilty to journalism” to put an end to his years of captivity and that his case still set a dangerous precedent.
Assange addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, an international rights body, in the French city of Strasbourg on Tuesday.
He said he had eventually chosen “freedom over unrealizable justice” in agreeing to the deal that allowed him to walk free after 14 years spent in detention.
“I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism,” Assange said at the hearing, which was broadcast live.
Assange was released from Britain’s Belmarsh prison in June and flown to a U.S.-district court on the Pacific island of Saipan after accepting the deal. There he pleaded guilty to conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. documents and a judge sentenced him to 62 weeks in prison, the equivalent to his time spent in Belmarsh. The U.S. had been seeking to prosecute Assange on 18 counts under the Espionage Act.
The agreement ended the more than decade-long effort by the U.S. to prosecute Assange for his role in publishing thousands of classified materials, including diplomatic cables and some materials showing possible war crimes by American troops.
“I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source and I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else,” Assange said.
Assange was imprisoned in Belmarsh for five years while fighting extradition to the U.S. Prior to that, he spent seven years confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, facing arrest if he went outside.
“The experience of isolation for years in a small cell is difficult to convey,” Assange said on Tuesday. “It strips away one’s sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence. I am yet not fully equipped to speak about what I have endured.”
Since his release, Assange has been living with his wife Stella and their two young sons in his native Australia.
“I think everyone can tell that he is exhausted, that he is still very much in the process of recovering,” Stella Assange told reporters at the hearing. “And at the moment, the only concrete plan in the foreseeable future is that he will continue his recovery.”
Assange and his supporters have warned that the plea deal still sets a dangerous precedent for media freedom, making him the first journalist to be convicted under the Espionage Act. At the hearing, Assange said he was precluded from seeking justice over his detention, saying the U.S. had required the plea agreement to include a prohibition on his filing cases at the European Court of Human Rights.
He and his team are campaigning for a U.S. presidential pardon.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief, who also attended Tuesday’s hearing, addressed the precedent of Assange’s pardon with ABC News.
“You need to take away that dagger. It has now been bloodied once. And if there is no reaction and no push and no political desire to take that weapon out of any politician’s hand, it will be used again,” said Hrafnsson.
Asked if Assange had plans for work with WikiLeaks now that he was free, Hrafnsson said he had nothing to disclose for now.
“I’m certain there will be a role,” Hrafnsson said. “And of course there is a role for Julian. And of course there’s a role for the recognition of the work and the past and the legacy of Julian Assange’s and how he contributed in this massive manner to the history of journalism in this century.”
(LONDON) — Tens of thousands of Georgians took to the streets of the capital Tbilisi on Monday evening to protest what the opposition said were fraudulent parliamentary elections handing victory to the ruling Georgian Dream party.
Opposition leaders — joined by President Salome Zourabichvili — gathered with the protesters hoping to spark a new round of mass demonstrations against GD akin to those that swept the capital in 2023 and 2024 in response to the government’s proposed foreign agent bill.
Russia looms large over the showdown. Moscow occupies 20% of Georgian territory, and officials in Moscow have threatened war if Georgia continues on its professed path to NATO and membership. GD, the Western-facing opposition says, is at best sympathetic to the Kremlin — and at worst in thrall to it.
Mamuka Khazaradze — the leader of the Strong Georgia coalition — told ABC News on Tuesday that his compatriots will not stand for the electoral “irregularities orchestrated through a Russian special operation and a clear pattern of systemic fraud.”
“Over the past twelve years, the government of the Georgian Dream has operated in service of Russian interests, resembling a Russian-style clan syndicate, and has established a system of manipulation and influence that undermines the integrity of our elections,” Khazaradze said.
“Georgia is not a nation that will tolerate such actions,” he added.
The official results published by the Central Election Commission said GD secured almost 54% of the vote, with the combined share of the four opposition parties just under 38%.
The CEC said GD will therefore take 89 seats in the 150-seat parliament — one less than it secured in the last election in 2020. The four pro-Western opposition parties combined will take 61 seats. The CEC said Khazaradze’s Strong Georgia coalition won 8.8% of the vote and 14 seats.
International election observers reported “frequent compromises in vote secrecy and several procedural inconsistencies, as well as reports of intimidation and pressure on voters that negatively impacted public trust in the process.”
Leaders in Hungary, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Venezuela and China were quick to acknowledge the official results and congratulate GD. But the U.S., European Union and several individual Western states raised concerns about suspected electoral violations.
President Joe Biden said the contest was “marred by numerous recorded misuses of administrative resources as well as voter intimidation and coercion,” and called for a full and transparent investigation.
Bidzina Ivanishvili is GD’s billionaire founder, former prime minister and purported decision-maker behind the party. Ivanishvili is Georgia’s wealthiest person and made his fortune in post-Soviet Russia through an empire of metals plants, banks and real estate.
Ivanishvili and GD leaders like Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze framed the election as a choice between renewed war with Russia or peaceful co-existence. They repeatedly pointed to Ukraine as a cautionary tale for Georgians voting for pro-Western parties.
Opposition leaders see Moscow’s hand behind GD’s legislative agenda, particularly its 2023 and 2024 efforts to introduce legislation to curb foreign funding of media and civil society groups. Opponents dubbed it the “Russian law” given its similarities to a similar measure passed by Moscow in 2012.
“Ivanishvili and his government are governing this country in accordance with Russian directives; this assertion no longer requires extensive evidence — merely the existence of the Russian law suffices,” said Khazaradze, who also transitioned into politics after a successful business career.
Asked if there was concrete proof of Russian meddling, Khazaradze said “rigorous and qualified research” will be needed. “The substantial support of our international partners will be essential, as Russia is adept at obscuring its actions,” he added.
Khazaradze alleged that Russian influence operations have been ongoing in Georgia since long before Saturday’s vote.
“Over the past year, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has been actively disseminating narratives that align with the primary messages of the Georgian Dream’s campaign regarding the war,” he said.
“They have employed the most disreputable Russian tactics, with campaign materials closely mirroring” the rhetoric of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Khazaradze said.
Moscow has denied any involvement in the recent election. “This has become standard for many countries, and, at the slightest thing, they immediately accuse Russia of interference,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said this week.
“There was no interference and the accusations are absolutely unfounded,” he added.
The opposition is now hoping to stoke major protests while gathering evidence of electoral fraud and appealing to Western partners for their backing.
“We have a strategy in place, and we do not intend to disclose this plan in advance to the oligarchs who have usurped power,” Khazaradze said of the opposition’s next steps.
Khazaradze said he was “confident” that foreign nations “will play a pivotal role.”
“We are engaged in intensive communication with the diplomatic corps and are collaborating with international organizations to investigate reported violations,” he added.
“The West must implement effective mechanisms to curtail Russian influence in Georgia, which may include sanctions against those responsible for undermining the electoral process,” Khazaradze said.
He added, “Ultimately, the West remains our reliable and trustworthy partner, and the Georgian people have the full support of both European and American allies.”
The protests against the foreign agent bill in 2023 and 2024 saw violent scenes in the streets surrounding the parliament building in central Tbilisi. On Monday, large numbers of riot police descended on the area.
Khazaradze said the opposition would not be silenced.
“While resistance is anticipated, I firmly believe that no amount of water cannons or rubber bullets can deter the will of the Georgian people,” he said. “It is in Ivanishvili’s best interest to acknowledge the reality that his time in Georgia has come to an end.”
“I remain hopeful in the resilience of the Georgian people and the hundreds of thousands of voters who stand with us,” he said. “I assure you that the world will bear witness to our determination.”
