MOSCOW (AFP) -- Russia’s defense minister has arrived in Beijing for talks with China’s army leadership, Moscow said Monday, as the two countries ramp up military and economic co-operation. Defense Minister Andrei Belousov will “hold a number of negotiations with the country’s military and military-political leadership” during the visit, according to the Russian defense ministry. The two countries declared a “no limits” partnership shortly before Moscow launched its “operation” in Ukraine, and have carried out a series of military drills together since. President Vladimir Putin said in August that Russia’s economic and trade links with China were “yielding results”, and that the two were working on joint “economic and humanitarian” projects. Last month, Russian and Chinese warships carried out joint drills in the Sea of Japan, part of a major naval exercise that Putin said was the largest of its kind for three decades.

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NEW DELHI (Reuters) -- India said on Monday that a diplomatic communication from Canada suggesting the Indian High Commissioner and other diplomats were ‘persons of interest’ in a probe were “preposterous imputations” and part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s political agenda. “India now reserves the right to take further steps in response to these latest efforts of the Canadian Government to concoct allegations against Indian diplomats,” India’s foreign ministry said in a statement. The communication was received on Sunday, New Delhi said.

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KYIV, Ukraine (AFP) -- Kyiv said Monday its forces had destroyed a Russian military transport plane stationed at an airfield deep inside Russian territory over the weekend, the latest Ukrainian claim of an attack behind Moscow’s lines. Kyiv’s military intelligence agency said it had destroyed the Tu-134 transport aircraft overnight between Saturday and Sunday at a military airfield in the Orenburg region, which lies around 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the border with Ukraine. “These Soviet-built airplanes are used mainly to transport leadership of the Russian defense ministry,” the Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine said on social media. The agency posted footage of what Ukraine said was an arson attack, showing a blaze burning inside an aircraft, but it did not provide details of how the alleged attack was carried out. Since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has detained hundreds of people for alleged sabotage and arson attacks on military, railway and other infrastructure sites.

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LONDON (Reuters) -- A public inquiry into the death of a woman who Britain says was unwittingly killed by the Novichok nerve agent following the attempted murder of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal six years ago began on Monday. Dawn Sturgess died from exposure to Novichok in July 2018 after her partner found a counterfeit perfume bottle which police believe had been used by Russian intelligence operatives to smuggle the poison into the country. On Monday, an inquiry into Sturgess’s death finally opens, with hearings held initially in Salisbury. Its aim is to provide her family with answers to how her death came about, and it will hear some confidential evidence in secret from the government and the security services. While British police have charged in absentia three Russians, who they say are GRU military intelligence officers, over the attack on Skripal and his daughter, no formal case has been brought against them over the death of Sturgess, 44.

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COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka closed schools in the capital Colombo and suburbs on Monday as heavy rains triggered floods in many parts of the island nation. Heavy downpours over the weekend have wreaked havoc in many parts of the country, flooding homes, fields and roads. Three people drowned, while some 134,000 people have been affected by flooding, according to the country’s Disaster Management Centre. The center said rains and floods have damaged 240 houses and nearly 7,000 people have been evacuated. Authorities have cut electricity in some areas as a precaution. Navy and army troops have been deployed to rescue victims and provide food and other essentials. Local television channels showed flooded towns in the suburbs of Colombo. In some areas, waters reached the roofs of houses and shops. 

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BERLIN (AFP) -- A former East German secret police officer was sentenced to 10 years in jail for shooting dead a Polish man trying to flee to the West 50 years ago, in a landmark ruling Monday. The decision, almost 35 years after the Berlin Wall fell, marks the first murder conviction for a former Stasi officer for a homicide committed on duty, according to historians. The Berlin court found ex-Stasi officer Martin Naumann, 80, guilty of murder for killing Czeslaw Kukuczka at close range as he sought to flee through Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse border point in 1974. Judge Bernd Miczajka said the court had no doubt that Naumann was the gunman in the killing that was “carried out mercilessly” at the orders of the Stasi, adding that those who gave the order could no longer be brought to justice. Speaking ahead of the verdict, Daniela Muenkel, the head of the Stasi archives in Berlin, had said a conviction would have “great symbolic significance” in Germany’s efforts to atone for the injustices of the communist dictatorship.