Category: East Asia

A top Russian military general, accused of being involved in the 2018 Salisbury poisonings, was shot outside his Moscow apartment in an alleged assassination attempt.
An unidentified gunman fired several shots at Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, deputy head of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence arm, before fleeing the scene, the investigators said.
It is the latest in a series of assassination attempts Russia has blamed on Ukraine.
Mr Alexeyev, 64, has previously been recognised by president Vladimir Putin with a Hero of Russia award. His position meant he would have been closely involved in prosecuting Russia's war in Ukraine.
Mr Alexeyev is believed to have been behind the deadly Salisbury poisonings that caused the tragic death of mother-of-three Dawn Sturgess, 44, according to reports. The EU imposed sanctions on him over the poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018.
A UK public inquiry concluded in December that Mr ..

ClosePutin’s senior general shot ‘several times’ in Moscow by unknown suspectRussia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s energy system on Saturday, targeting electricity production and distribution, according to the country’s energy minister.
The government was forced to impose emergency power cuts across the country in response to the onslaught. “Russian criminals carried out another massive attack on Ukraine's energy facilities. The attack continues,” Ukrainian energy minister Denys Shmyhal wrote on Telegram.
It comes after Russia blamed Kyiv for the shooting of a senior military general outside a residential building in Moscow, state media reported.
The Kremlin claimed that Kyiv was responsible for the shooting of Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, without providing evidence. Ukraine has not commented on the attack.
The suspect is said to have fled the scene after shooting Lieutenant General Alexeyev several times in the Russian capital. He is currently in the hospi..

CloseNext round of talks on war settlement likely to take place in US, says ZelenskyA senior Russian general has been rushed to hospital after being shot in Moscow, state media reported on Friday.
Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev is deputy chief of the Main Directorate of the General Staff at the Defence Ministry.
When Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin staged a short-lived mutiny in June 2023, Alexeyev was one of the top officials who were sent to negotiate with him.
Several senior Russian military officials have been assassinated since the start of the war in Ukraine. Moscow has blamed the attacks on Kyiv.
The news came as the US and Russia said they would restart high-level dialogue between their militaries, a level of engagement that was suspended late in 2021 ahead of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
The agreement is one of the few tangible outcomes from much-anticipated trilateral peace talks between the US, Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi over the past two..

CloseSavannah Guthrie's brother issues new plea to mother's kidnappersPolice have confirmed that there are no suspects so far in the search for Today show host Savannah Guthrie’s mom.
Nancy Guthrie, 84, was first reported missing on Sunday morning with cops now believing that she vanished from her home at some point between Saturday evening and the early hours of the following day.
Speaking to reporters, Sheriff Chris Nanos confirmed that authorities had found traces of Nancy’s blood at her Tuscon, Arizona, home.
“The only DNA evidence we got back is on the porch,” he said. “We saw the importance of that blood. It came back to Nancy.”
He also warned Nancy’s potential kidnappers that the 84-year-old needs daily medication in order to survive.
“We also know that, this is day four or five, and we don't know that she's getting her medication,” he said. “That could, in itself, prove fatal.”
His warning comes as the deadline on an alleged ransom note runs out, with the se..

A dog in Greenland stole a journalist’s camera and hit the record button before sprinting away.

Police in South Australia have declared the disappearance of a four-year-old boy last year a “major crime” and identified a person who lived at the family’s property as a suspect.
Gus Lamont went missing on 27 September last year while playing outside his home in remote Oak Park Station near Yunta in South Australia.
His grandmother had left him unattended for around 30 minutes and found him gone, sparking one of the largest land and air searches in the state’s history. Gus, known for being adventurous yet shy, was last seen wearing a grey hat, light-grey trousers, boots, and a blue long-sleeved T-shirt with a yellow Minion design.
Search for Gus was scaled back on 3 October last year, and by 17 October authorities said they were concluding the latest effort to locate him.
Gus’s disappearance had captured national attention, with images of the boy with blond and curly hair circulating widely in the media. A number of fake images of the boy were also spread online, including several cl..

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the influential son of late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, was killed by “masked men” on Tuesday at his home in Libya, reports said.
The 53-year-old was shot dead in the northwestern town of Zintan in the northern African country, sources close to the family, his lawyer Khaled al-Zaidi, and Libyan media confirmed.
“Four masked men” stormed his house and killed him in a “cowardly and treacherous assassination”, his political team said in a statement. Mr Al-Zaidi also confirmed the death on Facebook, without providing further details.
open image in gallerySaif al-Islam’s death has been described as a ‘cowardly and treacherous assassination’ (AFP/Getty)Reports suggested that Gaddafi clashed with the assailants who had shut the CCTV camera at the house “in a desperate attempt to conceal traces of their heinous crimes”.
Gaddafi’s cousin, Hamid Kadhafi, said he had “fallen as a martyr”. He said the address of the compound was meant to be a secret.
Gaddafi was widely ..

Leer en EspañolParis prosecutors have raided the offices of Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter, as part of a cyber crime investigation, it said on Tuesday.
The tech billionaire has also been summoned to a “voluntary” hearing in April, following a year-long investigation into suspected abuse of algorithms by X and its executives.
Investigators later widened the probe to include complaints over the site’s AI chatbot, Grok. They will look into the creation of child abuse images and sexually explicit deepfakes without people’s consent.
The investigation, which an EU commission spokesperson said is being discussed between Brussels and Paris, will see tensions rise between Europe and the US over Big Tech and free speech.
open image in galleryMusk has been summoned to a French court for a ‘voluntary interview’ as part of an investigation into X (AFP via Getty)“At this stage, the conduct of this investigation is part of a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately e..