RUSSIA
Allies worried about Navalny
Opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s location inside the prison system remains unknown and he again did not show up at a court hearing by video link, Kira Yarmysh, his spokesperson, said yesterday. His allies on Monday said that Navalny had been removed from the penal colony where he had been imprisoned since the middle of last year and that his current whereabouts were unknown. They had been preparing for his expected transfer to a “special regime” colony, the harshest grade in the nation’s prison system, after he was sentenced in August to an additional 19 years in prison on top of 11-and-a-half years he was already serving. The process of moving prisoners by rail across the nation’s vast territory can take weeks, with lawyers and family unable to obtain information about their location and well-being until they reach their destination. Yarmysh on Monday said that staff at the IK-6 facility in Melekhovo had told his lawyer waiting outside that Navalny was no longer among its inmates.
SOUTH AFRICA
Court rejects Zulu ruling
The Pretoria High Court has overturned President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to recognize Misuzulu kaZwelithini as the king of the 15 million-strong Zulu nation in what might spark a lengthy battle for the throne. It ordered Ramaphosa to launch an investigation into objections by some members of the Zulu royal house that the correct processes were not followed in selecting kaZwelithini as the rightful heir to the throne. KaZwelithini was chosen as the new king last year after the death of his father, King Goodwill Zwelithini. He was recognized by Ramaphosa as the new king and handed a recognition certificate, but some of his siblings said that he is not the rightful heir to the throne and that due processes were not followed in choosing him.
JAPAN
Oldest person dies at 116
The nation’s oldest person passed away yesterday at the age of 116, officials said, offering their condolences for Fusa Tatsumi who lived through two world wars and multiple pandemics. Born in 1907, Tatsumi raised three children with her husband, a farmer, in Osaka, broadcaster MBS reported. “Tatsumi died aged 116 at a care facility in Osaka on Tuesday,” an official in Osaka’s Kashiwara City said. Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura offered condolences on the social media site X, recalling a party he attended to celebrate Tatsumi’s longevity in September. “I still remember how healthy Ms Fusa Tatsumi was,” Yoshimura said. “I sincerely pray for her soul.” In footage aired by MBS and other local media outlets she was seen in a wheelchair, mostly sleeping, at her 116th birthday celebration in April.
JAPAN
Zoo probes squirrel deaths
The Inokashira Park Zoo in Tokyo has launched a probe after apparently massacring 31 of its 40 squirrels by mistake with treatments meant to kill parasites, officials said. Zookeepers on Monday last week injected the animals with anti-parasitic medicine as part of a sanitary precaution, while also spraying insecticide over their nest boxes. One of the squirrels died soon afterwards and more perished over subsequent days, with 31 fatalities recorded by Monday morning. “The possibility of drug-induced poisoning cannot be denied,” the zoo said in a statement on Monday. “We’re currently investigating the cause of their deaths and observing the conditions of surviving individuals,” it said, adding that a pathological examination of the corpses was under way. “We offer our deepest apologies,” it said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
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