Benjamin Hall

Thailand’s ousted former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, a leader once seen as a threat to the country’s wealthy elite, was released on parole on Sunday, after spending only a fraction of his original eight-year prison term in detention — in a hospital.Mr. Thaksin, who was removed in a coup and spent years in exile, made a stunning return to Thailand last year. He had been convicted in absentia on charges of corruption and abuse of power, and promptly sentenced when he was back in the country. But days later, the king commuted Mr. Thaksin’s sentence to one year, fueling speculation…

Follow live coverage of Manchester City vs Chelsea in the Premier League todayIce ages haven’t lasted as long as this.Kylian Mbappe to Real Madrid… it has been a thing for about a decade at least.The Athletic was not even in existence when the pair began courting each other. Twitter was still fun (and called Twitter), Taylor Swift hadn’t heard of American football and the closest thing we got to a global pandemic was from watching Contagion.It has been an inexorably long saga, the very worst kind of transfer saga in fact, with endless posturing, incessant lies and spin and thousands…

A United Nations agency that monitors and defends human rights was ordered on Thursday to leave Venezuela by the government of President Nicolás Maduro, an extraordinary move that will further strip the country of foreign oversight at a time when its government stands accused of intensifying repression.The announcement by Yván Gil, the foreign minister, comes just days after the detention and disappearance of Rocío San Miguel, a prominent security expert and human rights advocate.Following her detention, several U.N. entities issued online statements expressing concern about the arrest, some calling it part of a pattern in which the government tries to…