Watchdog

At least 105 Iraqi civilians were killed in a U.S. air strike in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul in March, a U.S. military investigation has concluded.

The bomb dropped on March 17 targeted two IS snipers from the extremist group Islamic State (IS), the lead investigator, Air Force Brigadier General Matthew Isler, said on May 25.

However, the strike detonated explosives that militants had placed in the building, he said.

Isler said 101 civilians who had gathered in the lower floors of the building were killed when it collapsed, while another four died in a nearby building.

Thirty-six civilians remain unaccounted for.

The United States had previously acknowledged it "probably" had a role in the deaths but said this was unintentional.

In October, Iraqi government forces launched a major offensive backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes to recapture Mosul, the main IS stronghold in the country.

Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and the BBC

CHEBOKSARY, Russia -- A coordinator for Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's headquarters in the Chuvashia region has been fined for extremism after reposting a portion of the popular U.S. television show Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.

In a May 25 decision, a court in Chuvashia's capital ruled that Semyon Kochkin distributed extremist material and fined him 1,500 rubles ($27).

In 2015, Kochkin posted a clip from an episode of Oliver's political satire show in which he discussed an Al-Jazeera report that three women from Russia's Chechnya region tricked members of the extremist group Islamic State (IS) into sending them money.

According to the report, the women communicated with IS fighters via the Internet and promised to join them in Syria, but shut the social-network accounts they had used after receiving money for the trip.

The court said that Kochkin, 23, is guilty because the excerpt included what it said were Islamic State symbols, which are banned in Russia.

Kochkin said that he was afraid that he could have been incarcerated as propagating extremism can be punished by up to 15 days in jail.

He said that Navalny’s supporters will organize an anticorruption rally in Cheboksary on June 12.

Rights activists say Russian President Vladimir Putin's government uses antiextremism legislation to prosecute Kremlin critics on false pretenses.