World

Belarus guard get 2-year sentence for teddy bears

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — A Belarusian court has handed out a two-year prison sentence to a border guard who failed to protect the ex-Soviet nation from foreign teddy bears.

Belarus Supreme Court said Monday the guard has been convicted of failure to report an intrusion of a light plane that dropped hundreds of teddy bears decked out in parachutes and slogans supporting human rights over the tightly controlled country of 10 million. The court wouldn't give his name or rank.

Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko, dubbed "Europe's last dictator" in the West, already sacked several top defense officials over the July 4 incident, in which two Swedish advertising agency employees piloted a light plane into Belarus' heavily guarded airspace in a show of support for Belarusian human rights activists.

Related Headlines

  • Igor Arinich

    For Belarusian artist, money is art

    Art is literally money for Belarusian artist Igor Arinich. For several years, Arinich has used Soviet-era banknotes to create artistic images. One work he is particularly ... 

  • Siarhei Androsenka

    Gays in Belarus face reprisals for activism

    Police in Belarus are going after gays, raiding their clubs and locking up clubbers overnight, and summoning gay activists for questioning. One activist accuses police of ... 

  • Stray cats dying in Belarus basements

    The plaintive meows haunt the people of Minsk in the dead of night. They come, activists say, from hundreds of stray cats who find themselves locked in basements by Belarus ... 

  • Mikhail Gorbachev

    Back in the USSR? Key Soviet document is missing

    The powerful Soviet Union may still exist after all — at least on paper. Former Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich says a historic 1991 document that proclaimed the death ... 

Find your future job here