Chen Siming, 60, commemorates the Tiananmen massacre in Hunan every year and has already been arrested for it. Threatened with internment in a psychiatric hospital in July, he escaped clandestinely to Laos and then to Thailand, countries that are no longer safe for Chinese dissidents. He applied for protection during a stopover in Taipei with a plane ticket to Guangzhou. Taiwan does not have a refugee law, more likely to accept the request from a third country.

Kadirov's illness and Azerbaijani Aliev's coup sweeping away the Armenian enclave dominated the week. While Baku makes Europe weigh the strength it has acquired at Moscow's expense in the gas market, the Kremlin leaves it at that, accusing the Armenians of having flirted too much with the West. Russia is trying not to lose the Caucasus, its 'Middle Eastern side' as well as Ukraine.

So far, 3,300 people have been reported dead in Derna, but the final toll might top 20,000. At least 43,000 have been displaced. The investigation by Libyan authorities suggests that the tragedy was compounded by the failure of a Turkish company to complete repair work on the collapsed dams. Turkey’s presence in Libya is but a small part of its growing economic and political footprint in Africa.

Some 500 people, mostly members of the country’s religious minorities, will stop eating to protest the failure of the ruling Awami League to protect minority rights, which is driving many out of the country. For Nirmol Rozario, a Catholic, the hunger strike is a way “to defend our existence”.

The new law, titled Saluting Women Power Act, reserves a third of lower house seats to women, but it is still not clear whether it will really improve women’s representation in politics. Reservation for women and disadvantaged groups impinged upon each other. Women play a major role in local politics, but are far fewer in higher levels of government because of the amount of time and money needed, and the role played by family connections.

From Algeria and Lebanon to Jerusalem to Morocco, bishops and young people of different faiths reach out to each other at a crossroads of migration to imagine new paths of coexistence, starting in La Solidarité, a neighbourhood where 90% of the residents are of North African and Sub-Saharan origin. The pontiff will be given the Manifesto for a Theology from the Mediterranean drafted by representatives from 17 institutions located on the five shores of the sea.