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.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
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