SEOUL (Reuters) -- South Korea, the United States and Japan staged joint naval missile defense exercises on Monday in a push to improve security cooperation and respond better to North Korea, Seoul’s navy said. Monday’s drills in international waters between Korea and Japan brought together South Korea’s 7,600-tonne Aegis destroyer Yulgok Yi I, the U.S. guided-missile destroyer Benfold, and Japan’s Atago destroyer, also equipped with Aegis radar systems. Separately, the air forces of South Korea and the United States began drills on Monday for a 12-day run. Also on Monday, South Korea and Japan resumed “two-plus-two” talks of senior diplomatic and security officials in Seoul after a five-year halt, as ties thaw after a years-long feud over issues of wartime history.

 

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TOKYO (AFP) -- Suspected gunpowder has been found at the home of a man accused of throwing an explosive at Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a campaign event, local media said Monday. Kishida was unharmed in the attack, in which a suspected pipe bomb was tossed towards him at a port in western Japan’s Wakayama, shortly before he gave a speech. Police spent over eight hours on Sunday searching the home of the man, who has been named as 24-year-old Ryuji Kimura, and local residents were temporarily evacuated over the threat of explosives. National broadcaster NHK said suspected gunpowder, as well as pipe-like objects and tools were found at the home, and investigators now believe the explosive thrown at the event was homemade.

 

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Outspoken Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was jailed for a quarter of a century by a Moscow court on Monday after it found him guilty of treason and other offences he denied. Kara-Murza, 41, a father of three and an opposition politician who holds Russian and British passports, spent years speaking out against President Vladimir Putin and lobbied Western governments to impose sanctions on Russia and individual Russians for purported human rights violations. State prosecutors, who had requested the court jail him for 25 years, had accused him of treason and of discrediting the Russian military after he criticized what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. In his final speech to the court last week, Kara-Murza had compared his own trial, which was held behind closed doors, to Josef Stalin’s show trials in the 1930s and had declined to ask the court to acquit him, saying he stood by and was proud of everything he had said.

 

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ROME (Reuters) -- Almost 2 tonnes of cocaine with a market value of more than 400 million euros ($440 million) were found floating at sea off eastern Sicily, Italy’s tax and customs police said on Monday. The Guardia di Finanza called it a “record” seizure. The drugs were stored in about 70 waterproof packages, carefully sealed, held together by fishermen’s nets and equipped with a luminous signaling device, the police said in a statement. The “peculiar packaging methods and the presence of a luminous device to allow tracking” suggest the haul was dumped at sea by a cargo ship in order for it to be recovered later, the statement added.

 

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SYDNEY (Reuters) -- An Australian man has been refused bail after being charged with a foreign interference offence for accepting cash from suspected Chinese intelligence agents, with a Sydney court saying his close ties to China made him a flight risk. Magistrate Michael Barko said Alexander Csergo was a “sophisticated, worldly businessperson” who had been on the radar of Australian intelligence for some time before his arrest on Friday. The prosecution had a strong case against Csergo, who had lived in China for decades, Barko said in refusing bail. Csergo is alleged to have arrived back in Australia this year with a “shopping list” of intelligence priorities he had been asked for by two people he had suspected since 2021 to be agents for China’s Ministry of State Security, the court heard. 

 

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YANGON (Reuters) -- Myanmar’s junta released 3,113 prisoners, including 98 foreigners, to mark the country’s traditional New Year on Monday, according to a statement from the military government published on pro-military Telegram channels. The military-led government has jailed thousands of opponents and pro-democracy activists since it seized power in 2021 and brutally put down protests, drawing global condemnation. Lieutenant General Aung Lin Dwe, a state secretary of the junta, said in a statement the amnesty is a “celebration of Myanmar’s New Year to bring joy for the people and address humanitarian concerns”. Ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi is serving 33 years in prison after a marathon of trials condemned internationally as a sham. The junta has also detained other senior members of her civilian government the military overthrew in the 2021 coup. At least 17,460 people remain in detention and 3,240 have been killed by the junta, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an activist group.