A federal judge has released whistleblower Chelsea Manning from jail following a suicide attempt and a year behind bars, while ordering her to pay more than a quarter-million dollars in contempt of court fines.

After spending seven years in prison under draconian conditions for exposing US war crimes, Manning was re-imprisoned one year ago in an attempt to coerce her to testify in a grand jury related to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. When Manning continued to refuse to testify on a principled stand of opposition to the unjust and corrupt practice of secret grand juries, she began getting slammed with fines of $1,000 per day in an attempt by judge Anthony Trenga to "coerce" her into testifying.

Those fines now amount to $256,000 as Trenga finally orders her release, stating that "the business of Grand Jury 19-3 had concluded" and "the Court finds that Ms Manning's appearance before the Grand Jury is no longer needed."

The measures include the closure of all educational institutions from nurseries to universities, the cancellation of cultural and sporting events, a ban on serving food, and even travel restrictions for healthcare professionals.

In light of the coronavirus outbreak, the Norwegian government has introduced a set of preventive measures Prime Minister Erna Solberg called "the strictest and most invasive" imposed on Norwegians since World War II, national broadcaster NRK reported.

"We have gone from an outbreak to an epidemic", said Doctor Camilla Stoltenberg, the head of Norway's public health institute, the sister of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and part of the Stoltenberg family, which has long held top positions in the Labour Party. She pinned the spread in Norway on traditional "skiing holidays" when schools are closed in late February and early March. Many spent the holidays in the Alps of Northern Italy, where the virus has become widespread.

The measures, effective for at least the next 14 days and likely to be extended, are aimed at containing the coronavirus outbreak.

All daycare centres, schools, colleges, universities, and other educational institutions will be closed. All cultural and sporting events, both outdoors and indoors, will be closed or cancelled. A ban on the serving of food, including buffet services at hotels and company canteens, is in place, with the exception of eateries where guests can be seated at least a metre from one another. All hair salons, barbershops, massage, health, and beauty parlours are closed.

Saudi Arabia has put dozens of Palestinian activists on trial, accusing them of supporting the Gaza-based rulers Hamas.

According to Arabic press reports, 68 Palestinian and Jordanian citizens faced the "special terrorism court" in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, beginning on Sunday.

Families of the accused said their relatives were being prosecuted without legal representation. The detainees were arrested by Saudi secret police in April of last year.

Among those arrested was Mohammed al-Khudari, 81, a long time Palestinian resident of Saudi Arabia and a retired physician suffering from colon cancer, according to his family who spoke by phone from Gaza.

US District Judge Anthony J. Trenga ordered whistleblower Chelsea Manning released from detention on Thursday, a day after she attempted to take her own life. However, he did not release her from the fines she incurred as punishment, which total a quarter of a million dollars.

"Upon consideration of the Court's May 16, 2019, order, the motion, and the court's March 12, 2020, order discharging Grand Jury 19-3, the court finds that Ms. Manning's appearance before the grand jury is no longer needed, in light of which her detention no longer serves any coercive purpose," Judge Trenga wrote in a Thursday court order.

"The court further finds that enforcement of the accrued conditional fines would not be punitive but rather necessary to the coercive purpose of the court's civil contempt order."

Italian citizens and any persons traveling from Italy have been banned from entering Russia, starting from midnight on Friday. With 1,016 dead and 15,000 infected, Italy remains the European country hardest hit by coronavirus.

The only exception to Moscow's exclusion is for the citizens of the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia), plane crews, official delegations and for holders of residence permits in Russia, the government announced on its website.

The majority of the 28 Russians who got infected with Covid-19 are tourists who had recently traveled to Italy.

Earlier this week, Austria forbade Italians from entering the country unless they have a proper medical certificate. Vienna also halted all railway traffic with its neighbor.

More than 4,600 people have died since the coronavirus epidemic began in Wuhan, China, in late December and spread all over the world. Over 126,000 people have been infected so far, but more than a half have already recovered.

The cascade of bans and cancellations caused by coronavirus around the globe has sent US stocks to their worst losses since the 'Black Monday' of 1987, with Wall Street officially falling into bear market territory.

The S&P 500 plummeted by 9.5 percent on Thursday. The index that was at an all-time high in February has lost a whopping 26.7 percent since, meaning that the record 11-year-long bull market run has come to an end.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank by 10 percent for its worst day since the nearly 23 percent drop on October 19, 1987, known as 'Black Monday.'

European markers also had one of their worst days ever, losing a whole 12 percent despite assurances of help from the European Central Bank.

Market panic was in part due to a series of cancellations over the coronavirus pandemic, which included US President Donald Trump's suspension of most travel between the US and Europe, as well as competitions put on hold in the NHL and the UEFA Champions League.

Spanish hotels are battling to survive, with occupancy rates falling drastically and having received "no new bookings" due to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a top official at Spain's hotels federation.

CEHAT Secretary General Ramon Estalella told Reuters on Thursday that the impact of coronavirus on his industry was so bad that the crisis had reached existential levels for Spanish hotels and tourist accommodation.

A tsunami has arrived. A meteorite has fallen on us and we have to see how we survive.

Estalella called on the Spanish government to take bold measures to avoid highly damaging bankruptcies and job losses at hotel companies.

For the Palestinians of the northern occupied West Bank, putting your life on the line to defend your land is just a part of life.

Countless Palestinians have paid the highest price for attempting to fend off Israeli settlers and soldiers from their cities, towns and villages. On Wednesday, another Palestinian was added to that list.

15-year-old Mohammed Abdel Karim Hamayel succumbed to his wounds on Wednesday, hours after he was shot by Israeli forces, along with dozens of other young men from his hometown of Beita, south of Nablus.

Hamayel was shot when dozens of armed Israeli troops stormed Jabal al-Arma, or al-Arma Mountain, on the outskirts of Beita, and began violently confronting crowds of Palestinians who were staging a sit-in on the mountain.

The Colorado River Basin is the setting for some of the most drawn-out and complex water issues in the Western U.S. In 2019, the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan — a water-conservation agreement between states, tribal nations and the federal government for the basin, now in its 20th year of drought — passed Congress. This year, it goes into effect.

2020 will also see the start of the renegotiation of the Colorado River Interim Guidelines. The guidelines, which regulate the flow of water to users, were created in 2007 without tribal consultation and are set to expire in 2026. The 29 tribal nations in the upper and lower basins hold some of the river's most senior water rights and control around 20% of its annual flow. But the tribes have often been excluded from water policymaking; around a dozen have yet to quantify their water rights, while others have yet to make full use of them. Most of the tribal nations anticipate fully developing their established water rights by 2040 — whether for agriculture, development, leasing or other uses. Drought and climate change are still causing shortages and uncertainty, however. Already, the Colorado River has dropped by about 20%; by the end of this century, it could drop by more than half.

High Country News spoke with Daryl Vigil (Jicarilla Apache, Jemez Pueblo and Zia Pueblo), water administrator for the Jicarilla Apache Nation. Vigil, the interim executive director of the Ten Tribes Partnership, helped co-facilitate the Water and Tribes Initiative, coalitions focused on getting increased tribal participation on Colorado River discussions. Those efforts are critical, Vigil says, "because left to the states and the federal government, they've already proven that they will leave us out every time."

HCN and Vigil spoke about "the law of the river" — the colloquial term for the roughly 100 years of court cases, treaties, agreements and water settlements that govern the Colorado — as well as tribal consultation and climate change.

WhatsApp has said its lawsuit against the Israeli spyware maker NSO Group encountered an unusual delay because of a legal holdup involving the government, raising questions about whether Israel will play a role in the company's case.

WhatsApp filed its lawsuit in October, alleging that NSO Group had hacked 1,400 of its users, including journalists, senior diplomats, government officials and human rights activists.

In a recent series of legal filings, NSO Group - which only recently hired a lawyer in the case - accused Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, of lying to court when it said it had served its lawsuit against the group under the protocols of a legal process known as the Hague Convention. The convention allows litigants to serve defendants with legal documents in foreign countries.