RUSSIA
Shoigu to meet Kim again
Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu yesterday met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for the second time in less than two weeks during a visit to North Korea, Interfax reported. Negotiations between Kim and Shoigu have begun, Interfax quoted the council as saying, but did not specify the subject of their talks. Shoigu previously visited Pyongyang and met Kim on March 21 and June 4. Kim and President Vladimir Putin signed a strategic partnership treaty last year, including a mutual defense pact. North Korea sent thousands of soldiers late last year to help Russia expel Ukrainian troops from its western Kursk region.
ITALY
‘Chair smasher’ wanted
A museum in Verona has launched a manhunt for the most unlikely of outlaws — two clumsy middle-aged tourists who managed to almost wreck a work of art while posing for photos. Video footage released by Palazzo Maffei showed the hapless pair photographing each other pretending to sit on a crystal-covered chair made by the artist Nicola Bolla — described by the museum as an “extremely fragile” work. While the woman squats, but does not seem to touch the work — known as Van Gogh’s Chair and covered in Swarovski crystals — the man is not so careful, sitting and then stumbling backward as the seat buckles under his weight. The pair can then be seen fleeing the room, in a post that went viral over the weekend. Describing it as “every museum’s nightmare,” the museum on Monday said it had file a complaint with the police. The incident happened fewer than four weeks ago and the chair has since been repaired, it said on social media on Thursday. “It was an idiotic thing to do,” Bolla told Italian magazine Fanpage. However, the artist added that he could also see a “positive side” to the incident. “It’s like a kind of performance. Ordinary people can do it, too, not just artists.”
INDONESIA
Murder suspects arrested
Two suspects allegedly involved in the murder of an Australian man at a villa in Bali were caught after a days-long manhunt, police said yesterday. Zivan Radmanovic, 32, was shot on Saturday. He was killed when two people burst into his villa in the tourist area of Canggu and at least one opened fire. A second man, 34-year-old Sanar Ghanim, was seriously wounded in the attack. One of the suspects was apprehended in the capital, Jakarta, while a second was on his way from abroad, National Police Chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo told reporters, without identifying the country or giving details about the suspects. The arrests were made following cooperation between Indonesian police, immigration authorities and the Australian Federal Police, he said. Witnesses, including Radmanovic’s wife, said the perpetrators who fled the scene after the attack were speaking in English with a thick Australian accent, a local police statement said.
UNITED STATES
Perry’s doctor to admit guilt
The main doctor charged in connection with the drug overdose of Friends star Matthew Perry is expected to enter a guilty plea in the coming weeks, the Department of Justice said on Monday. Salvador Plasencia “has agreed to plead guilty to four counts of distribution of ketamine, which carries a statutory maximum sentence of 40 years in federal prison,” it said in a statement. The second doctor in the case, Mark Chavez, pleaded guilty in October last year to conspiring to distribute ketamine in the weeks before the actor was found dead in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home in 2023. Plasencia allegedly bought ketamine from Chavez and sold it to the actor at hugely inflated prices. “I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Plasencia wrote in one text message presented by prosecutors. He went to Perry’s home to administer ketamine by injection, a plea deal published on Monday by the department showed. In total, Plasencia distributed 20 vials of ketamine over a roughly two-week period in autumn 2023, the document said. Perry had been taking ketamine as part of supervised therapy for depression.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
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