The ruling junta says the heavily restricted polls are a return to democracy but critics are wary

Five years after Myanmar’s junta ousted the country’s last elected government, triggering a civil war, voting is set to begin this week in national elections.

The junta claims the vote is a return to democracy, but in reality the one-sided and heavily restricted poll has been widely condemned as a sham designed to keep the generals in power through proxies.

In a 6-3 decision, the high court sided with a lower court ruling that blocked deployment of troops to the Illinois city

The US supreme court refused on Tuesday to let Donald Trump send national guard troops to the Chicago area, in an important reining-in of the US president’s efforts to expand the use of the military for domestic purposes in historic moves against a growing number of Democratic-led jurisdictions.

The nation’s highest court denied the US justice department’s request to lift a judge’s order in October that has blocked the deployment of hundreds of national guard personnel in a legal challenge brought by Illinois state officials and local leaders, who had opposed any federalization of those troops to offer backup to immigration enforcement.