A former soldier has been sentenced to more than 5,000 years in jail for his part in a massacre by the army in Guatemala.

Santos Lopez Alonzo was accused of belonging to the Kaibiles, an elite squad of troops which murdered residents in the northern town of Dos Erres in 1982.

The 66-year-old was deported from the US in 2016 to face the Guatemalan court where he was found “responsible as author” of 171 of the killings.

He was sentenced to 30 years for crimes against humanity and another 30 years for each of the 171 people, although the sentences are symbolic as the maximum someone can serve in Guatemala is 50 years.

He had also kidnapped and adopted a five-year-old boy, Ramiro Osorio Cristales, after the boy’s family had been killed in the massacre. Mr Osorio Cristales was one of those who testified at Lopez Alonzo’s trial.

According to a report of the trial from the International Justice Monitor, a forensic expert told the court that 171 human remains were recovered from a well in the village, where the military had thrown many of their victims.

Forty percent of the bodies in the well had been children aged under 12, the expert said.

Prosecutors said most of the victims were killed with sledgehammers.

Former Peruvian general Rodolfo Robles testified as an expert on military doctrine and structure and he told the court that the army unit, which consisted of 60 men, had acted in a planned and coordinated manner.

There was no evidence that any of the unit’s members opposed or tried to stop the killings, he said in testimony reported by the monitor.

Lopez Alonzo also testified, saying he had been at the massacre but did not take part in the killings or other crimes that took place.

The unit had been trying to find members of a guerrilla group that had ambushed a military convoy but they failed to find the guerrillas or the weapons.

The Dos Erres massacre took place during the rule of dictator Jose Efrain Rios Montt, who was indicted on charges of genocide and died in April this year.

Around 200,000 people were killed and another 45,000 disappeared during Guatemala’s civil war between 1960 and 1996.

Lopez is not the first member of the unit to have been convicted over the massacre: a handful of others have received prison sentences of more than 6,000 years.

Some others are in US jails for immigration-related offences and many others are believed to be living free in the US. (SkyNews)

The US is yet to reach a final conclusion on the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, officials say, despite reports the CIA believes it was ordered by the Saudi crown prince.

“Numerous unanswered questions” remain, a State Department statement said.

Sources told US media they did not believe the murder could take place without Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s approval.

Saudi Arabia has called the claim false and denied he had any knowledge.

Khashoggi, a prominent critic of the Saudi government, was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October to obtain a marriage document.

Saudi Arabia says Khashoggi was killed as the result of a rogue operation.

The public prosecutor has charged 11 people over the murder and is seeking the death penalty for five of them.

But after changing its account of the death, and amid suspicions of a high-level cover-up, the Saudi government remains under pressure over the killing. (BBC)

A judge in Washington DC has ordered the White House to return CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass after it was revoked by the US Secret Service.

The judge’s order says that the pass must be reinstated as a CNN lawsuit against Donald Trump continues.

Mr Acosta’s press pass was taken after he clashed with the president during a news conference earlier this month.

The judge said the White House decision likely violated the journalist’s right to due process and freedom of speech.

Speaking outside the court, Mr Acosta praised the decision and told reporters “let’s go back to work”.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said they would comply with the order, and would “also further develop rules and processes to ensure fair and orderly press conferences in the future”.

“There must be decorum at the White House,” she added.

The ruling forces the White House press office to temporarily return Mr Acosta’s “hard pass”, the credential that allows reporters easy access to the White House and other presidential events.

Mr Acosta’s lawyer called the ruling “a great day for the first amendment and journalism”. (BBC)

A Russian man, who chopped off both of his wife’s hands with an axe after accusing her of infidelity, was sentenced on Thursday to fourteen years in prison following a huge outcry in Russia.

Last December, after dropping off their two children at daycare, Dmitry Grachyov took his wife Margarita to a forest outside Moscow where he tied tourniquets around her arms and chopped off her hands with an axe.

Before hacking off her limbs he cut off her fingers.

After that he drove the bleeding woman to a hospital, giving medics a shoebox containing her severed right hand. He then gave himself up.

On Thursday, Grachyov was sentenced to 14 years in a high-security penal colony, said a spokeswoman for a court in the town of Serpukhov, located some 100 kilometres south of Moscow.

The man was also ordered to pay more than 2 million rubles ($30,000) as compensation for moral damages. He was earlier stripped of custody of their two children.

Margarita, 26, said she had wanted her ex-husband to be given life in prison.

“No sentence would bring back my hands,” said the woman, who has endured multiple surgeries. “I will have to live with this for the rest of my life,” she said in televised remarks.

Domestic violence is common in Russia and often goes unpunished but the young woman’s ordeal shocked the country.

Grachyov abducted his wife after the Russian authorities decriminalised some forms of domestic abuse such battery in a move that drew criticism from rights groups.

Just days before he hacked off her hands’ police dismissed her complaints about his violent behaviour.

Investigators say Grachyov, who claimed his wife was unfaithful, had carefully planned the crime buying an axe, tourniquets, bandages and iodine.

Margarita had told journalists her ex-husband did not want to bleed her to death, hoping to get away with a short prison sentence.

Doctors managed to save one of her hands after police found her left limb in the forest.

Supporters helped her buy an expensive modern prosthetic device.

In an October report titled “I Could Kill You and No One Would Stop Me”, Human Rights Watch said that Russian women were especially vulnerable in the face of domestic abuse.

The watchdog said it spoke to women who described being choked, beaten with wooden sticks and metal rods, burned, raped, pushed from balconies and having their teeth knocked out. (AFP)

The 2018 global family planning report revealed that Nigeria has recorded over 1.3 million unwanted pregnancies in 2018.

The report, which was unveiled at the ongoing International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Kigali, also indicates that 735,000 unsafe abortions happened in Nigeria during the year.

Unintended pregnancies, according to the family planning report  are “the number of pregnancies that occurred at a time when women (and their partners) either did not want additional children or wanted to delay the next birth”.

It is “usually measured with regard to last or recent pregnancies, including current pregnancies”.

The same report revealed that only 13.8 per cent of women aged 15-49 are using modern contraceptive methods in Nigeria, while one-in-four married women aged 15-49 have unmet need for modern contraception.

Contraceptives are methods, devices or drugs used among sexually active people for birth control.

According to the report, Nigeria’s domestic spending on family planning is worth $8.5 million (2016) as compared to $19 million in Kenya and $8.1 million in Burkina Faso. (Guardian Nigeria)