HAITI: On a visit on Saturday, Kenya’s President William Ruto claimed progress for Kenyan police battling gangs in the troubled Caribbean country.

But he is contradicted by United Nations rights expert William O’Neill, who warned  on Friday that gang violence is spreading.

Earlier this month, about two dozen officers from Jamaica joined the 400 Kenyans; the security mission is expected to reach a total of 2,500 personnel, with the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin and Chad pledging to send officers.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Authorities said they freed 600 prisoners on Saturday to relieve overcrowding in Makala prison, Kinshasa, where an attempted jailbreak earlier this month left 129 people dead.

Congo’s largest jail has a capacity of 1,500 people but holds more than 12,000 inmates, including women and children, in poor conditions. Most of them are awaiting trial, Amnesty International has said.

GERMANY: A state election took place in Brandenburg today, three weeks after a far-right party made gains in two other states in eastern Germany.

Opinion polls showed the far-right Alternative for Germany to be neck-and-neck with the Social Democrats, the largest party in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-way German coalition government  and in power in Brandenburg since reunification in 1990.

INDONESIA: Phillip Mehrtens, a New Zealand pilot held hostage for more than a year in the restive West Papua region, was freed on Saturday by separatist rebels.

Indonesia has maintained a brutal and repressive rule over it most easterly province since it took control of the former Dutch colony after a sham ballot.