(BAGHDAD) — Security forces fired live rounds and tear gas at anti-government protesters in a central Baghdad square Friday, killing three people, in bloody confrontations that continued despite an influential Shiite leader’s call for calm.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani emphasized support for the demonstrators in his weekly religious sermon, saying none of their demands have been met so far and that electoral reform should be a priority. He called for a new election law that would restore public confidence in the system and give voters the opportunity to bring “new faces” to power.

At least 320 people have been killed and thousands have been wounded since the unrest began on Oct. 1, when protesters took to the streets in the tens of thousands outraged by what they said was widespread corruption, lack of job opportunities and poor basic services despite the country’s oil wealth.

Renewed clashes broke out in Khilani square Friday afternoon. Soldiers and riot police began firing live ..

Boris Johnson said Friday that there was “no evidence” of Russian interference in British politics, just days after his government effectively blocked the publication of a secret report on the subject until after the U.K.’s upcoming general election.

Johnson is facing calls to release the classified 50-page report before the election, scheduled for Dec. 12. But he brushed off concerns on Friday that the delay was political, saying “normal procedures” were being followed.

“I cannot accept his explanation on this at all,” Dominic Grieve, the (now former) chair of the committee which produced the report, told TIME on Friday. “My committee produced a report. He chose not to publish it. And his explanations for not publishing it are in my view entirely untenable. But I’m not, I’m afraid, going to comment on the content of the report because I’m not allowed to. It’s classified.”

Grieve’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) met in secret, and was examining evidence of Russian interfe..

The circumstances of Bolivian President Evo Morales’s resignation Nov. 10 have sparked fierce international debate this week. But whether you believe the leftwing leader was forced out by a thinly veiled military coup, or that he resigned in disgrace after a popular revolt over election fraud—or that both could be true—there’s one man who bears much of the responsibility.

Luis Fernando Camacho quickly emerged as the leader of the anti-Morales protests that wracked Bolivia for three weeks following the country’s Oct. 20 election. International election observers from the Organization of American States say Morales tampered with vote tallies to avoid a run-off vote and claim a fourth presidential term outright.

A 40-year-old lawyer from the eastern province of Santa Cruz, Camacho centered his campaign on a desire to “bring the Bible back to the palace of government”—a promise he fulfilled literally when he hand-delivered a Bible to the presidential palace in downtown La Paz on Nov. 11,..

Protests have been roiling Hong Kong for the past five months, but a significant escalation this week has seen public transportation shutdowns, violent protests across the territory and, as of Wednesday, foreign universities recalling their students out of fears for their safety.

Thousands of arrests have been made, hundreds have been injured, and countless petrol bombs have been thrown since the start of the unrest. Schools were suspended this week and many universities—which have become literal battlegrounds between protesters and police—have cancelled lectures for the remainder of the semester.

Businesses have been badly affected. Scores of shops have been ransacked, vandalized and burned, including branches of Starbucks. Malls have also been attacked and routinely bring the shutters down early to avoid trouble.

The U.S. has raised the travel advisory warning for Hong Kong to level two, calling for visitors to exercise “increased caution.” Canada and Australia have also upped the..

On Tuesday night, an American exchange student in Hong Kong received an email from her university back in the States. “Urgent & Important,” read the subject field. It said that because of protests at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)—where 20-year-old Sandra had been living since August—her safety was in jeopardy and “mandatory repatriation” was being enforced.

In less than 24 hours, she and about a dozen other students from the same American university arrived at Hong Kong airport with their hastily packed suitcases. Soon after, they were on their flights home.

“In a snap second, everything changed,” Sandra says. The international business student had enrolled in a year-long exchange program at CUHK and was meant to be in Hong Kong until next summer.

Sandra is among the hundreds of foreign and mainland Chinese students in Hong Kong who are leaving the city amid a sharp escalation in protest violence. On Tuesday, CUHK was the site of some of the worst fighting Hong Kong has..

T.C. usually spends his lunch break eating in one of the many restaurants near his office with his law-firm colleagues, chatting casually about the cases they’re working on. But lately, he’s been skipping lunch altogether to join hundreds of other office workers in protests in Hong Kong’s financial district, where midday, flash-mob style demonstrations have brought the business hub to a standstill every day this week.

The lanky 22-year-old lawyer is hard at work overturning garbage cans onto a major road that skirts Central, as the financial quarter is called, when he stops to talk to TIME. He’s dressed for the office in black suit pants and a blue collared shirt, but a black t-shirt is wrapped around his face as a makeshift balaclava to hide his identity, and he has donned a pair of safety goggles, of the kind normally used by construction workers.

“We want to block the roads to stop the police from coming in, so they can’t get to the office workers,” he tells TIME. “Usually people ..