RUSSIA
Navalny detained on release
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was yesterday detained on his release from prison after serving a 30-day sentence for an unauthorized protest, his spokesperson said. “Alexei Navalny was detained outside the detention center,” Kira Yarmysh wrote on Twitter, adding that the politician was taken to a central Moscow police station. Yarmysh said Navalny was accused of violating a different protest law and faces up to 20 days in prison. He is due to appear in court later in the day, she said. Navalny was in jail for a month for a protest he organized on Jan. 28, violating strict laws that forbid any public event without city hall’s authorization.
GERMANY
Spy head made an adviser
Leaders of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition on Sunday reached a deal to resolve a standoff over the future of the head of the domestic BfV spy agency, Hans-Georg Maassen. The coalition leaders agreed to make Maassen a “special adviser” at the Ministry of the Interior with responsibility for “European and international issues,” instead of deputy minister. He is to remain at his current pay level. A deputy interior minister and expert on construction issues, Social Democrat Gunther Adler, will now keep his job rather than make way for Maassen.
RUSSIA
Leak reveals spy tactics
A leak of government data about the suspects in the Salisbury, England, poisoning may provide a rare insight into how the military intelligence agency provides cover identities for its agents abroad. Investigative journalists have unearthed what appears to be a series of passports with similar numbers belonging to suspected intelligence officers, including the Salisbury suspects Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov. The passport holders include a former military attache who was expelled from Poland for espionage in 2014 and is alleged to be tied to an attempted coup in Montenegro.Other men with similar passport numbers identified by the St Petersburg-based Fontanka news site listed their address as Khoroshevskoye Shosse 76 B, the Moscow headquarters of the Main Directorate. Their travel records could be tied to recent diplomatic incidents in Europe and, in at least one case, matched the details of a foreign trip taken by President Vladimir Putin, Fontanka said.
ITALY
Artist hit with painting
A man has hit performance artist Marina Abramovic on the head with a painting at a Florence museum. Palazzo Strozzi director Arturo Galansino tweeted that Abramovic was unhurt in the attack on Sunday in the courtyard of the palazzo, which is hosting a retrospective about her. Media said the wood-framed painting is a portrait of Abramovic done by the attacker. Galansino said Abramovic, who uses her body as an art medium, wanted to ask the man why he did it.
UNITED KINGDOM
Key ring sets off alarm
A man, who on Sunday sparked an alert at the visitors’ entrance to Buckingham Palace when he was arrested for being in possession of a stun gun, just had a key ring, the Metropolitan Police said. The 38-year-old tourist from the Netherlands was detained at the palace at lunchtime after he was found with a “Taser-type device,” but was released without charge a few hours later. “Officers were satisfied that his possession of the device — which was low-powered and part of a key ring — was a genuine error on his part, and that he posed no threat,” police said.
INDIA
Injured sailor rescued
A French ship yesterday rescued an injured navy commander in the southern Indian Ocean during a round-the-world solo Golden Globe Race, officials said. Minister of Defense Nirmala Sitharaman tweeted that it was “a sense of relief to know that naval officer” Abhilash Tomy, 39, was “rescued by the French fishing vessel. He’s conscious and doing okay.” She said the ship would shift Tomy to a nearby island yesterday evening and that later an Indian navy frigate would take him to Mauritius for medical attention. Australian officials earlier said the French fisheries patrol boat Osiris headed 740km to Tomy after his yacht, Thuriya, lost its mast in a storm on Friday in Australia’s search and rescue zone and he said he had suffered severe back injuries.
CHINA
New outbreak of swine fever
Inner Mongolia has reported a new outbreak of African swine fever, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said yesterday, as authorities struggle to contain the highly contagious disease. A slaughterhouse in the capital, Hohhot, reported the outbreak, adding that four pigs were infected with African swine fever and two had died.
INDONESIA
Rescued teen returns home
A teenager has survived about seven weeks adrift at sea after the floating wooden fish trap he was employed to mind slipped its moorings. The parents of 18-year-old Aldi Novel Adilang and the Indonesian Consulate in Osaka, Japan, said he was rescued by a Panamanian-flagged vessel off Guam on Aug. 31 and returned home earlier this month. Adilang was employed as the keeper of a rompong — a wooden fishing raft with a hut on top — moored about 125km off the coast of North Sulawesi.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not