(NEW DELHI) — A petition was filed Thursday in India’s top court challenging the communications blackout and security clampdown in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where people remained holed up in their homes for a fourth day.

State-run All India Radio said security agencies have arrested more than 500 people in the region apparently to prevent any outbreak of violence.

It also reported cross-border firing by Indian and Pakistani troops in the Rajouri sector of the Indian-controlled Kashmir late Wednesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address the nation on Thursday to discuss Kashmir.

India’s government this week revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and downgraded the Himalayan region from statehood to a territory. Muslim-majority Kashmir is claimed in full by both India and Pakistan, and rebels have been fighting Indian rule in the portion it administers for decades.

India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval visited Kashmir on Wednesday to assess the law a..

(NAIROBI, Kenya) — Some Kenyan lawmakers are protesting a decision by the temporary speaker of parliament’s lower house to eject their colleague who was holding her young child during a session of the legislature.

Zuleikha Hassan was ejected from the floor of the National Assembly on Wednesday with her 5-month-old baby.

Hassan, a mother of three, said she had to bring the baby to parliament because she wasn’t able to make other arrangements and didn’t want to miss work.

Christopher Omulele, temporary speaker of the National Assembly, said: “As much as she might want to take care of her child, this is not the place for it.”

Parliament orderlies forced Hassan to leave the chamber.

Several legislators walked out of parliament to protest her ouster, which, coincidentally, happened during World Breastfeeding Week.

An American human rights volunteer is reportedly in critical condition after he was shot four times in the Philippines.

Brandon Lee, 37, was attacked outside his home in Ifugao province in the northern Philippines on Tuesday after he was called an “enemy of the state” on social media, reports the Guardian.

Lee suffered cardiac arrest during a surgery to remove a bullet lodged in his jaw.

Lee is a volunteer for Ifugao Peasant Movement (IPM), a farmers’ group that actively opposes a hydropower project and the military presence in the Cordillera region, according to the Guardian. In 2008, an IPM staff member was killed in a similar attack.

Lee and other IPM staff had were labeled “enemy of the state” in posters that were put up around the province.

Another rights group, the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance, where Lee also volunteers, blamed authorities for the attack.

“We hold accountable the state security forces that the Duterte administration has let loose in the Cordillera regio..

The body of a woman believed to be a missing British scientist was discovered on the Greek island of Ikaria on Wednesday, just a month after an American scientist was murdered on another Greek island and left in a bunker built by Nazis during World War II.

Although authorities would not confirm any names, local media has identified the missing woman as 34-year-old British astrophysicist Natalie Christopher, who lived in Cyprus.

Volunteers found a woman’s body a little over half a mile from the house where she and her partner had been vacationing, says Theodore Chronopoulos, a press spokesman for the Hellenistic Police.

The Associated Press reported that Christopher was reported missing a few hours after she never returned from a morning run. Her partner told police that he spoke with her over the phone around 10 a.m., and later reported her absence around noon when she still was not back, Chronopoulos tells TIME.

The U.K. Foreign Office issued a statement confirming it is currently..

Fahad Shah is a Kashmiri journalist and the founder and editor of The Kashmir Walla, a weekly newspaper. He filed the piece below during the ongoing communications blackout in the Kashmir Valley. He can be found on Twitter: @pzfahad

Delivered on a bright Monday morning, Imaad Tariq was one of the first babies born into Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Naya Kashmir or new Kashmir. But most of his family has no idea he has been born. “Nobody knows that my wife delivered a baby boy,” says Tariq Ahmad Sheikh, 40, walking in the hospital courtyard the day after his son was born. “We couldn’t inform family nor is anyone able to reach here.”

Since Sunday, Delhi has entirely shut down the Internet, landline and mobile networks in the India-controlled part of the Himalayan region of Kashmir — leaving some 7 million people stranded without any way to contact family and friends. In an unprecedented bid to clamp down on its part of the disputed territory, the Indian government has closed s..

(TORONTO) — Police say they believe the two fugitives suspected of killing a North Carolina woman and her Australian boyfriend as well as another man have been found dead in Manitoba.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Assistant Commissioner Jane MacLatchy said Wednesday authorities located two male bodies in dense bush and they believe they are 19-year-old Kam McLeod and 18-year-old Bryan Schmegelsky. She says she is confident it is them but an autopsy will confirm the identities.

Police said Tuesday that items belonging to the pair were found along the Nelson River in Manitoba. The two bodies were located a kilometer from the items.

McLeod and Schmegelsky have been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Leonard Dyck and were suspects in the shootings of Australian Lucas Fowler and American Chynna Deese.