Doctors denied look at ailing Putin foe
MOSCOW -- Several doctors were prevented Tuesday from seeing Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a prison hospital amid his three-week hunger strike, and authorities stepped up actions against his supporters on the eve of protests called by his team.
Navalny was transferred Sunday from a penal colony east of Moscow to a hospital unit at a prison in Vladimir, a city 110 miles east of the capital after his lawyers and associates said his condition has dramatically worsened.
His lawyers visited him Tuesday at the hospital unit, which usually treats tuberculosis patients.
One of them, Olga Mikhailovna, said Navalny had been given an IV drip of glucose on Sunday but none since then because paramedics apparently weren't skilled enough to find a vein.
Navalny looked "extremely exhausted," she said. "He's very thin, he must have lost about [44 pounds]. He is very weak and appears to have difficulty speaking and sitting."
Reports about Navalny's rapidly deteriorating health have drawn international anger and concern.
Russia's penitentiary service insists that Navalny is getting all the medical help he needs.
China denies abuse after probe urged
BEIJING -- China's government on Tuesday rejected accusations of abuses in the Xinjiang region after a human-rights group appealed for a U.N. investigation into possible crimes against humanity.
Accusations of forced labor or detentions in the northwestern region are "lies and false information concocted by anti-China forces," said a foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin. He accused critics of trying to "undermine Xinjiang's stability and security and curb China's development."
On Monday, Human Rights Watch appealed to the U.N. Human Rights Commission to investigate reports of mass detention of Muslims, a crackdown on religious practices and other measures against minorities. It said they amount to crimes against humanity as defined by the treaty that established the International Criminal Court.
More than 1 million people have been confined to camps in Xinjiang, according to foreign governments and researchers. Authorities there are accused of imposing forced labor and birth control.
Beijing rejects complaints of abuses and says the camps are for job training to support economic development and combat Islamic radicalism. The government is pressing foreign clothing and shoe brands to reverse decisions to stop using cotton from Xinjiang over reports of possible forced labor.
Israeli protesters, police clash 2nd night
TEL AVIV, Israel -- Israeli police scuffled with protesters in an Arab neighborhood in Tel Aviv for a second night late Monday after the assault of a rabbi over the weekend.
The protesters, including Arabs and Jews, say Jewish nationalist religious groups are buying up property in the traditionally Arab district of Jaffa, which has rapidly gentrified in recent years as luxury housing has gone up.
Video taken by The Associated Press late Monday showed protesters and plainclothes police pushing and shoving as the police appeared to take a young Arab boy away in an unmarked squad car with flashing lights.
The police said a "young male" was briefly detained for setting off fireworks and then released "due to his age" without providing further details.
The latest tensions began Sunday when two Arab men punched and kicked Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, the head of a local yeshiva, while he was out looking at properties, according to local media. Police arrested the men, and right-wing politicians condemned the attack as a hate crime.
Spain hits pot operation; arrests at 65
BARCELONA, Spain -- Police in Spain said Tuesday they have dismantled one of the largest criminal gangs growing cannabis in the country and trafficking it across Europe.
At least 65 people, most of them Chinese nationals, were arrested in several Spanish cities, Portugal and the Netherlands, according to a joint statement from the national and Catalan regional police bodies.
Police identified the gang as "Bang of Fujian," in reference to the eastern Chinese province where the two main families that formed it originated.
Over 350 law enforcement agents, assisted by Europol, searched 29 large warehouses and other locations.
Police said officers dismantled 13 indoor plantations with nearly 40,000 marijuana plants whose harvested buds could have fetched $7.2 million in European markets.
The group is accused of making over 700 shipments of parcels to France, Portugal, Netherlands, Germany, Romania and Britain.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports