Tuesday's world stories
North Korea releases imprisoned American student
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced this morning that American student Otto Warmbier, who attended UVA, was released from North Korea, per the AP.
Think back: Warmbier was imprisoned by North Korea last March after stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel while in the country on vacation. He was sentenced to 15 years in a hard labor camp.
More news: The Washington Post reports that Warmbier is currently in a coma and being medically evacuated. North Korea claims that he contracted botulism shortly after his trial last year and never woke up after being given a sleeping pill.
Worth considering: Former NBA star and noted Kim Jong-Un pal Dennis Rodman headed to North Korea yesterday, but WaPo's Anna Fifield calls the timing a "bizarre coincidence" and "perhaps a deliberate attempt by North Korea to distract."
U.K. government allegedly suppressing intel on death of Russian whistleblower
A investigation from BuzzFeed News has found the "British government is suppressing explosive intelligence" related to the 2012 death of Russian whistleblower Alexander Perepilichny, who was found dead in England with traces of a rare toxin in his stomach. Before he died, Perepilichny helped expose a Russian money laundering scam worth $230 million.
- Putin's role: U.S. intel officials said they passed intelligence to MI6, the British spy agency, that Perepilichny was likely "assassinated on direct orders from Putin or people close to him." The Office of the Director of National Intelligence last year asserted with "high confidence" Putin sanctioned the alleged murder.
- Similarly, French police are treating the death as a suspected organized assassination, but British police haven't cooperated with that investigation.
- Theresa May's government invoked national security powers in 2016 to withhold evidence from the inquest into his cause of death.
Putin's biggest critic gets 30 days in prison for unsanctioned protest
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been sentenced to 30 days in prison for his role in organizing nationwide protests against government corruption, per the AP.
What happened: Navalny had organized protests in more than 100 cities across Russia, but he called for the Moscow protest to be moved to Tverskaya, one of the city's main streets, instead of a location previously approved by the government.
The charges: Moscow handed down Navalny's prison sentence based on "repeated violations of the law on public gatherings." 1,000 others were arrested across Russia for taking part in the demonstrations.