Environmental organizations

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin seems to have once again pulled off a PR “master stroke” by having a routine amnesty law expanded to free two groups at the center of global human rights protests, just before the Sochi Olympics. The world’s youngest nation, South Sudan, is suffering from renewed ethic violence. And the illegal practice of shark finning —stripping sharks of their fins — proves hard to end in Costa Rica. All that and more, in today’s Global Scan.