Biden expected to confront Putin on former Marines imprisoned in Russia
CBSN
President Biden is expected to raise the fate of two former U.S. Marines held in Russian prisons when he meets with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, according to White House officials.
Last year, Paul Whelan was convicted by a Russian court of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Whelan, who also holds British, Irish and Canadian passports, was arrested in Moscow in December 2018. Prosecutors alleged he was working for American intelligence and was caught receiving a USB drive containing classified information. Whelan has denied he was a spy and said he was set up. David Whelan, Paul's brother, sent a recorded statement from the imprisoned American to reporters on Tuesday ahead of the summit.Lawmakers in Poland have voted in favor of measures to ease the country's near-total ban on abortion, setting the stage for a potential clash over women's rights with the country's conservative president. With their vote on Friday, parliamentarians endorsed several proposals to relax the abortion restrictions, including one from newly elected Prime Minister Donald Tusk's party to decriminalize abortions up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy.
The last opportunity for U.S. nationals to flee violence-wracked Haiti on a government-chartered evacuation flight arrived Friday, with no sign of the chaos easing in the tiny Caribbean nation. The U.S. State Department said last week in an email to Americans in Haiti that charter flights were not scheduled to continue after April 12.
London - The wife of Julian Assange said Thursday that her husband's legal case "could be moving in the right direction" after President Biden indicated that the U.S. could drop charges against the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder. It came as supporters in several cities rallied to demand the release of Assange on the fifth anniversary of his incarceration in London's high-security Belmarsh prison.