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In an elegant apartment building in central Warsaw flying a red and white flag from its first floor balcony, a symbol of the Belarusian opposition, remnants of the anti-government media in Belarus are shrugging off a new wave of death threats.

Less than a year ago, Roman Protasevich, a 26-year-old blogger and opponent of veteran President Alexander Lukashenko, was sitting in the same office helping live stream anti-government protests around 300 miles (480 km) to the east which he hoped would topple Lukashenko.

His former colleagues recall how they all worked 24/7, slept on mattresses, and believed that Lukashenko's days were numbered.

On Sunday, a plane carrying Protasevich flying over Belarus en route to nearby Lithuania was forced to land in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, with the help of a false bomb threat and a MiG-29 fighter jet. Protasevich was arrested and is in a Minsk jail.

Protasevich's former colleagues at Warsaw-based Nexta, an anti-Lukashenko news outlet which reaches its more than 1 million subscribers on the Telegram messaging app, are anxious.

Outside their office perched on collapsible chairs, two Polish policemen keep watch.

"...After the incident with Roman's plane, we began to receive hundreds, already more than a thousand different threats," Stsiapan Putsila, Nexta's founder, told Reuters in an interview.

"(Threats) that they will shoot us, that our office will be blown up. Of course, this is worrying," he said, sitting in a large gaming chair that he said was used by Protasevich.

Putsila said the threats came in the form of anonymous emails and private social media messages.

"We're used to it because they have been trying to strangle us. For some years we've been one of the Telegram channel/news outlets which is inconvenient for the regime which cannot be blocked," he said.

Putsila said he and his team took security measures which they could not discuss publicly. His staff had been followed, he said, and people had tried to break into the office.

Police in Warsaw did not reply to a written request about the threats Putsila said Nexta staff had received. Lukashenko's press service could not be reached for comment and a spokesman for the Belarusian Investigative Committee, which investigates major crimes, did not respond to written questions from Reuters.

Inside Belarus, what is left of the opposition-minded media says it is being squeezed too.

Earlier on Tuesday, the popular news website TUT.BY reported that four of its employees had gone missing.

The last message from one of its reporters, Alya Burkovskaya, said a man was trying to get into her apartment in the guise of an electrician. Another, Anastasia Prudnikova, was arrested shortly after returning from maternity leave. They were all later freed.

TUT.BY said security forces detained 14 other members of its staff, including Marina Zolotova, its editor-in-chief, last week and blocked access to its website, in a tax evasion case that TUT.BY says is fabricated.

The State Control Committee, to which the financial investigation department reports, said a criminal case against unnamed staff had been opened over suspected tax evasion.

TUT.BY has sought to sidestep the crackdown by continuing to post news on its Telegram messenger feed.

Branding them a menace to society, Lukashenko's government has stripped many news organisations of their accreditation. Opposition-leaning journalists say they have faced raids, arrest, imprisonment or been forced to relocate abroad.

The Belarusian Association of Journalists says 477 journalists were detained in 2020.

Lukashenko had tolerated some opposition-minded and foreign media until mass protests erupted following a presidential election last August that his opponents say was rigged to keep him in power.

Lukashenko denies electoral fraud. He has accused the media of doing everything to "destroy people's trust in the state" and the government has accused some journalists of helping to orchestrate protests.

The state news agency BelTA has published comments on its website in support of the government's measures against journalists. On May 18, it quoted political scientist Alexander Shpakovsky's comments accusing TUT.BY of spreading falsehoods.

Television footage has shown journalists covering protests being hauled into a police van. Police have at times accused journalists of coordinating protests and of inciting what they call mass riots.

Those who still dare to do such work wear an extra pair of underwear or socks in case they are detained, say some Belarusian journalists still working there.

The authorities say they are battling foreign-backed terrorists and plotters intent on revolution and regime change.

"There has never been such a peak in repressions against journalists ... and freedom of speech in general in the entire history of Belarus," said Barys Haretski, deputy head of the Belarusian Association of Journalists.

"Over the past year, we have recorded 62 acts of violence against journalists - these are beatings by security officials during detentions and in isolation wards, and three cases when security officials fired at journalists with rubber bullets," Haretski said.

A day after Protasevich's arrest, the government introduced new measures to regulate media activities, including a blanket ban on covering protests or publishing opinion polls without prior authorisation from the government.

"Lukashenko destroys the press because it is a mirror in which the monstrous essence of the regime is reflected," exiled opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Tuesday.

Kirill Voloshin, the TUT.BY co-founder, said none of its 250 employees had quit since the crackdown and advertisers had stayed loyal.

"Even if one person remains, he will work. Even if everyone is taken away, we are sure that others will come to the place of those who are taken away," he said.

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An ambassador and trained facilitator under Eco Femme (a social enterprise working towards menstrual health in south India), Sanjina is also an active member of the MHM Collective- India and Menstrual Health Alliance- India. She has conducted Menstrual Health sessions in multiple government schools adopted by Rotary District 3240 as part of their WinS project in rural Bengal. She has also delivered training of trainers on SRHR, gender, sexuality and Menstruation for Tomorrows Foundation, Vikramshila Education Resource Society, Nirdhan trust and Micro Finance, Tollygunj Women In Need, Paint It Red in Kolkata.

Now as an MH Fellow with YKA, shes expanding her impressive scope of work further by launching a campaign to facilitate the process of ensuring better menstrual health and SRH services for women residing in correctional homes in West Bengal. The campaign will entail an independent study to take stalk of the present conditions of MHM in correctional homes across the state and use its findings to build public support and political will to take the necessary action.

Saurabh has been associated with YKA as a user and has consistently been writing on the issue MHM and its intersectionality with other issues in the society. Now as an MHM Fellow with YKA, hes launched the Right to Period campaign, which aims to ensure proper execution of MHM guidelines in Delhis schools.

The long-term aim of the campaign is to develop an open culture where menstruation is not treated as a taboo. The campaign also seeks to hold the schools accountable for their responsibilities as an important component in the implementation of MHM policies by making adequate sanitation infrastructure and knowledge of MHM available in school premises.

Read more about his campaign.

Harshita is a psychologist and works to support people with mental health issues, particularly adolescents who are survivors of violence. Associated with the Azadi Foundation in UP, Harshita became an MHM Fellow with YKA, with the aim of promoting better menstrual health.

Her campaign #MeriMarzi aims to promote menstrual health and wellness, hygiene and facilities for female sex workers in UP. She says, Knowledge about natural body processes is a very basic human right. And for individuals whose occupation is providing sexual services, it becomes even more important.

Meri Marzi aims to ensure sensitised, non-discriminatory health workers for the needs of female sex workers in the Suraksha Clinics under the UPSACS (Uttar Pradesh State AIDS Control Society) program by creating more dialogues and garnering public support for the cause of sex workers menstrual rights. The campaign will also ensure interventions with sex workers to clear misconceptions around overall hygiene management to ensure that results flow both ways.

Read more about her campaign.

MH Fellow Sabna comes with significant experience working with a range of development issues. A co-founder of Project Sakhi Saheli, which aims to combat period poverty and break menstrual taboos, Sabna has, in the past, worked on the issue of menstruation in urban slums of Delhi with women and adolescent girls. She and her team also released MenstraBook, with menstrastories and organised Menstra Tlk in the Delhi School of Social Work to create more conversations on menstruation.

With YKA MHM Fellow Vineet, Sabna launched Menstratalk, a campaign that aims to put an end to period poverty and smash menstrual taboos in society. As a start, the campaign aims to begin conversations on menstrual health with five hundred adolescents and youth in Delhi through offline platforms, and through this community mobilise support to create Period Friendly Institutions out of educational institutes in the city.

Read more about her campaign.

A student from Delhi School of Social work, Vineet is a part of Project Sakhi Saheli, an initiative by the students of Delhi school of Social Work to create awareness on Menstrual Health and combat Period Poverty. Along with MHM Action Fellow Sabna, Vineet launched Menstratalk, a campaign that aims to put an end to period poverty and smash menstrual taboos in society.

As a start, the campaign aims to begin conversations on menstrual health with five hundred adolescents and youth in Delhi through offline platforms, and through this community mobilise support to create Period Friendly Institutions out of educational institutes in the city.

Find out more about the campaign here.

A native of Bhagalpur district Bihar, Shalini Jha believes in equal rights for all genders and wants to work for a gender-equal and just society. In the past shes had a year-long association as a community leader with Haiyya: Organise for Actions Health Over Stigma campaign. Shes pursuing a Masters in Literature with Ambedkar University, Delhi and as an MHM Fellow with YKA, recently launched Project (Alharh).

She says, Bihar is ranked the lowest in Indias SDG Index 2019 for India. Hygienic and comfortable menstruation is a basic human right and sustainable development cannot be ensured if menstruators are deprived of their basic rights. Project (Alharh) aims to create a robust sensitised community in Bhagalpur to collectively spread awareness, break the taboo, debunk myths and initiate fearless conversations around menstruation. The campaign aims to reach at least 6000 adolescent girls from government and private schools in Baghalpur district in 2020.

Read more about the campaign here.

A psychologist and co-founder of a mental health NGO called Customize Cognition, Ritika forayed into the space of menstrual health and hygiene, sexual and reproductive healthcare and rights and gender equality as an MHM Fellow with YKA. She says, The experience of working on MHM/SRHR and gender equality has been an enriching and eye-opening experience. I have learned whats beneath the surface of the issue, be it awareness, lack of resources or disregard for trans men, who also menstruate.

The Transmen-ses campaign aims to tackle the issue of silence and disregard for trans mens menstruation needs, by mobilising gender sensitive health professionals and gender neutral restrooms in Lucknow.

Read more about the campaign here.

A Computer Science engineer by education, Nitisha started her career in the corporate sector, before realising she wanted to work in the development and social justice space. Since then, she has worked with Teach For India and Care India and is from the founding batch of Indian School of Development Management (ISDM), a one of its kind organisation creating leaders for the development sector through its experiential learning post graduate program.

As a Youth Ki Awaaz Menstrual Health Fellow, Nitisha has started Lets Talk Period, a campaign to mobilise young people to switch to sustainable period products. She says, 80 lakh women in Delhi use non-biodegradable sanitary products, generate 3000 tonnes of menstrual waste, that takes 500-800 years to decompose; which in turn contributes to the health issues of all menstruators, increased burden of waste management on the city and harmful living environment for all citizens.

Lets Talk Period aims to change this by

Find out more about her campaign here.

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A former Assistant Secretary with the Ministry of Women and Child Development in West Bengal for three months, Lakshmi Bhavya has been championing the cause of menstrual hygiene in her district. By associating herself with the Lalana Campaign, a holistic menstrual hygiene awareness campaign which is conducted by the Anahat NGO, Lakshmi has been slowly breaking taboos when it comes to periods and menstrual hygiene.

A Gender Rights Activist working with the tribal and marginalized communities in india, Srilekha is a PhD scholar working on understanding body and sexuality among tribal girls, to fill the gaps in research around indigenous women and their stories. Srilekha has worked extensively at the grassroots level with community based organisations, through several advocacy initiatives around Gender, Mental Health, Menstrual Hygiene and Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) for the indigenous in Jharkhand, over the last 6 years.

Srilekha has also contributed to sustainable livelihood projects and legal aid programs for survivors of sex trafficking. She has been conducting research based programs on maternal health, mental health, gender based violence, sex and sexuality. Her interest lies in conducting workshops for young people on life skills, feminism, gender and sexuality, trauma, resilience and interpersonal relationships.

A Guwahati-based college student pursuing her Masters in Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bidisha started the #BleedwithDignity campaign on the technology platform Change.org, demanding that the Government of Assam installbiodegradable sanitary pad vending machines in all government schools across the state. Her petition on Change.org has already gathered support from over 90000 people and continues to grow.

Bidisha was selected in Change.orgs flagship program She Creates Change having run successful online advocacycampaigns, which were widely recognised. Through the #BleedwithDignity campaign; she organised and celebrated World Menstrual Hygiene Day, 2019 in Guwahati, Assam by hosting a wall mural by collaborating with local organisations. The initiative was widely covered by national and local media, and the mural was later inaugurated by the events chief guest Commissioner of Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) Debeswar Malakar, IAS.

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Opinion: Megalomaniacs Want To Cut Down On Critics And Control The Internet - Youth Ki Awaaz

A coalition of news organizations and press freedom groups, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, announced Wednesday that they plan to challenge the RCMPs restrictions on media access at Fairy Creek watershed in court.

The coalition includes the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), National Observer, The Narwhal, Capital Daily, Ricochet Media, The Discourse, and IndigiNews.

Over the past week, weve repeatedly seen the RCMP shift the goal posts on how it plans to allow journalists access in order to cover this important public interest story, said Brent Jolly, CAJ president, in a statement.

The B.C. Supreme Court on April 1 granted an injunction to Teal-Jones Group following weeks of blockades by protesters and activists seeking to prevent the company from conducting old-growth logging in the Fairy Creek watershed.

However, the BC RCMP only started enforcing the injunction on May 17 and has set up a number of checkpoints leading to the Fairy Creek watershed in an effort to control and restrict access.

Media are allowed to observe enforcement of the injunction and subsequent protests although access is tightly controlled and journalists are required to register with the RCMP.

Since enforcement began, over 112 individuals have been arrested the majority of whom were arrested for breaching the injunction including a journalist who was not on the RCMPs list of accredited media.

According to the CAJ, the RCMP has denied journalists entry into the area of enforcement through a broad use of exclusion zones and whenever access is granted, journalists are restricted in ways that prevent them from doing their job.

Every day is a new day with new excuses from the RCMP about why access is limited. Enough is enough, said Jolly.

The announcement comes less than a week after the CAJ called on the court system to limit the RCMPs power when granting injunctions and less than 24 hours after they sent a letter to the RCMP requesting that media be provided fair access to the Fairy Creek watershed.

Journalists are not participants in the protests, or advocates for the protesters against whom the injunction is being enforced. It is not our intention to interfere with police operations in lawful execution of a court order. Our role is to serve democracy by documenting activities and conveying that information to the public, the letter reads.

READ: Journalist arrested after refusing to leave Fairy Creek checkpoint

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Media organizations to take legal action against RCMP over lack of access at Fairy Creek - CHEK

Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife, Asma, vote at a polling station during the presidential election Wednesday in Douma, near the Syrian capital of Damascus. Hassan Ammar/AP hide caption

Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife, Asma, vote at a polling station during the presidential election Wednesday in Douma, near the Syrian capital of Damascus.

It was a decision as symbolic as the Syrian presidential election itself.

On Wednesday morning, Syrians woke to local television footage of President Bashar Assad and the first lady, Asma Assad, casting their ballots. The pair were not in a loyalist stronghold but in Douma, the satellite town of Damascus whose residents proved some of the staunchest opponents to Syria's authoritarian regime.

In the early days of Syria's decade-long civil war, people from Douma formed some of the first armed groups against the regime. Civilians there also held mass protests, risking live bullets from government soldiers to call for an end to the regime.

They paid a heavy price. In 2013, the regime placed Douma and other satellite towns in these eastern suburbs of Damascus under a tight siege, blockading food, medical equipment and aid supplies. For five years, civilians survived on mostly scraps and some starved. The regime and its ally Russia hit the area with airstrikes and shellfire that rights groups say targeted homes, bakeries and hospitals.

A chemical weapons attack on Douma prompted then-President Donald Trump in 2017 to take the most concerted direct action of the war against the regime with airstrikes in government-held Syria.

Now, with Assad back in control of large parts of Syria, Wednesday's presidential election was a chance for the regime demonstrate the extent of its power.

"Assad casting his ballot in Douma is sending a message telling the opposition that we are celebrating through your demise. We are in power here, we are in control," says Danny Makki, a Syrian British journalist and analyst in Damascus. "It's a message about who is top dog within Syria."

This show of strength is visible in Damascus, where giant posters of Assad daub the walls of high-rise buildings, roundabouts and roadsides. In recent weeks, dinners and dances have been held in support of the Syrian president's campaign.

Many of these events are organized by Syrian businessmen and other citizens who see this presidential election the first in seven years as a way to ingratiate themselves with the regime. Assad's government, with its sprawling security apparatus, once again tightly controls almost every aspect of Syrian life from whom you can do business with to what you can say.

The U.S., along with Britain, France, Germany and Italy, released a joint statement calling the Syrian presidential election "neither free nor fair" and voicing support for civil society and Syrian opposition groups who have condemned the process.

Assad's two challengers in the presidential race are Abdallah Saloum Abdallah, a former deputy Cabinet minister, and Mahmoud Ahmed Marei, who leads a small opposition party approved by the government.

Meanwhile, known political opponents to Assad remain in exile, or are among the tens of thousands of people that the United Nations says have been arrested, tortured and disappeared into regime prisons since the start of the conflict in 2011.

The presidential candidates in this election have lacked both the funds and time to campaign. That means they have been unable to mount any significant challenge to Assad, whose family has ruled Syria with an iron fist for some five decades.

Makki says Syrian law allowed the candidates only 10 days to campaign, so many Syrians barely knew who Assad's challengers were. Instead of a serious presidential race, he says, the run-up to the election has been a "celebratory kind of pro-Assad great spectacle that has been played and replayed in every part of the country."

This fealty was also seen at the polls, with some voters pricking their fingers with needles at polling stations so that they could sign their support for the president with their blood. This was often coupled with the popular pro-Assad chant: "With our blood and soul we sacrifice our lives for you Bashar."

The vote took place only in parts of Syria that are back under government control. It excluded the millions of citizens living in the rebel-held province of Idlib and in the northeast of Syria that is controlled by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, which together make up almost a third of the country.

After 10 years of war, more than half of Syria's population has fled the country or been internally displaced. The war in Syria has left an estimated half a million people dead and has devastated entire cities.

Just as Syrians try to start to piece back together their lives in government-held parts of the country, they have been sent back into spiraling poverty by an economic crisis caused by the war, Western sanctions and the effect of the economic collapse in neighboring Lebanon.

In regime-held Syria, now mostly home to loyalists or people who lack the political or economic freedom to leave, it was expected that most of those going to the polls would cast ballots for Assad.

"The people inside Syria right now believe that the best solution for them is the current president," a Syrian businessman in Damascus tells NPR, asking not to be named because he fears that speaking with Western media could upset the regime.

He says Syrians want to use this election to be a starting point to "build a better Syria," and are desperate for stability and a new era of peace, even if it means living under the current regime. "People want hope."

The election result is a foregone conclusion, and does little to build relations with Western governments. But it is a useful tool for the Syrian regime to project legitimacy with governments in the region.

There are new signs of rapprochement between Syria and Saudi Arabia, which backed opponents of Assad in the war. Saudi's intelligence chief reportedly met with his Syrian counterpart in Damascus this month. Syrian state media say the country's tourism minister, Muhammad Rami Martini, is visiting Saudi Arabia for the first time in what is reportedly the first trip there by a Syrian regime minister in a decade.

Beyond the pomp and demonstrations of support for Assad, there are other Syrians for whom the election is symbolic of everything they have lost.

"The regime stole our lives. They destroyed our lives," a Syrian from the city of Homs tells NPR from the U.K., where he now lives. He fled there in 2011 after seeing his friends killed and arrested in government crackdowns on peaceful demonstrators.

He didn't want NPR to use his name for fear it could endanger his family members who still live in Syria.

"If you look at Syria's cities, they are in ruins, and these are really the ruins of our lives and dreams and hopes," he says. "People just wished for a better future to live in dignity, freedom and justice."

He says the regime has won at the cost of the country. In this collapsed economy, his family in Syria, like so many others, struggles even to put meals on the table. "The regime turned Syria into a society that is built on despair."

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Syrian Election Shows The Extent Of Assad's Power - NPR

The 2021 NASCAR Salutes Together with Coca-Cola campaign is more than just a military appreciation platform its a campaign that salutes heroes next door. Each week, NASCAR.com will highlight multiple individuals who have made a difference with their service both in the military and to their communities.

In the latest profiles, NASCAR.com is highlighting three 2020 USO Service Members of the Year: SGT Mary Ehiarinmwian (USO Soldier of the Year), PO2 Andrew J. Fleming (USO Coast Guard Guardsman of the Year and Sgt Nolan P. McShane (USO Marine of the Year).

RELATED: Learn more about NASCAR Salutes | Archer, Rahmans actions save lives

SGT Ehiarinmwian was driving to conduct Physical Readiness Training (PRT) at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. On her way to PRT, she was unknowingly driving behind a vehicle of a soldier from the same unit when that vehicle suddenly lost control and rolled over several times before coming to a rest, upside down, on a steel property gate almost impaling the driver.

She pulled her vehicle over and rendered assistance, seeing if the driver was injured before pulling the driver from the smoking vehicle and getting him to safety. Ehiarinmwian stayed with the driver until medical assistance arrived on site. She currently serves with the U.S. Armys 523rd Engineer Support Company and is from St. Robert, Missouri.

PO2 Fleming was conducting on-water booming operations off the coast of Georgia in his role as a marine science technician when a report of a capsized recreational finishing vessel came over his radio. He quickly directed his workboat to respond to assist in the recovery of two mariners from the capsized vessel. Upon his arrival at the scene, Fleming was able to pull the mariners from the water. One was unconscious and he successfully performed CPR and was able to resuscitate. While everyone was en route to Station Brunswick, he noticed the second mariners was showing signs of hypothermia and shock. Fleming moved quickly to remove the mariners soaked outer clothing and wrapped him in his own jacket to retain body heat as they made their way to the station.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fleming led the efforts to establish protocols for Sector New Yorks remote facility inspection program. This helped to safeguard branch personnel from exposure to the virus and planned operations to ensure that the 200 facilities within the area of responsibility remained compliant with protocols. He serves in the U.S Coast Guards Sector New York and is from Lawrenceville, Georgia.

Sgt McShane (pictured above) was honored for his quick thinking during a training exercise in Twentynine Palms, California. In the course of the exercise, a Marine become severely wounded and McShane moved quickly to control the chaotic site, while confirming tourniquet placement and inspecting the pressure dressings on the wounded Marine. His calmness, leadership and tactical knowledge were vital in stabilizing the Marine prior to the air medical evacuation to the local hospital. He currently serves with the U.S. Martine Corps 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion and hails from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The details of the honorees brave actions were provided by the USO.

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Trio of USO Service Members of the Year go above and beyond - NASCAR