The three Russian oil refineries targeted are in the cities of Ryazan, about 130 miles southeast of Moscow; Kstovo, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, nearly 300 miles east of the capital; and Kirishi in Russia’s northwest. The trio of facilities are among Russia’s largest refineries, the source said.

It marked the second consecutive day of Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy sites, and the locations targeted represent a spate of attacks well within Russia’s territory.

They came after a chaotic day on the Russian side of the Ukrainian border, during which pro-Ukrainian groups of Russian fighters said they launched cross-border attacks and claimed to have gained control of the village of Tyotkino in Russia’s Kursk region.

Russia’s defense ministry said Wednesday its air defenses destroyed 58 Ukrainian drones overnight, including some that traveled as far as the Leningrad region, which borders Finland, supporting Kyiv’s claims.

The regional governor in Ryazan, Pavel Malkov, said a fire broke out at the facility there but has since been extinguished. He said two people were injured.

Social media video from the refinery complex, one of Russia’s largest, showed a large plume of smoke billowing from a building in the distance.

A day earlier, Russian authorities reported at least 25 drone attacks, with local officials in the Oryol and Nizhny Novgorod regions reporting hits to fuel and energy facilities.

No casualties have been reported from either Tuesday or Wednesday’s attacks.

But an apparent cross-border incursion on Tuesday saw attacks launched in the village of Odnorobovka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, and in the nearby Russian villages of Nekhoteevka and Spodariushino in Belgorod, according to Russian authorities.

Russia’s Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said 10 civilians were injured and six were hospitalized in the region on Tuesday.

As well as targeting Russia’s deep oil reserves, Kyiv’s latest strikes may be partially intended to bring home to Russians the impact of the war just as the country prepares for a presidential election.

The vote is essentially certain to hand Putin a fifth term, extending his rule into the 2030s. Voting will take place over three days from Friday, with the president sailing towards another spell in power in a ballot that is not considered free or fair and in which he faces no genuine competition.

During a lengthy interview on state television channel Rossiya 1 on Wednesday, Putin said Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and Kursk are happening amid Kyiv’s “failures” on the battlefield.

“All this is happening against the backdrop of failures on the line of contact, on the front line. They did not achieve any of the goals they set for themselves last year,” Putin said. “Against the backdrop of those failures, they need to show at least something, and, mainly, attention should be focused on the information side of the matter.”

Pro-Ukrainian groups of Russian fighters claimed to have launched cross-border attacks in two regions of Russia on Tuesday, hours after Kyiv fired a wave of drones at targets across the country.

The group, comprising a few hundred battle-hardened, anti-Kremlin Russian volunteers fighting as part of Ukraine’s armed forces, also said it had destroyed an armored personnel carrier inside Russia.

A separate pro-Ukrainian group of Russian fighters, the Siberian Battalion, wrote Tuesday on Telegram: “Well, we’re home at last. As promised, we are bringing freedom and justice to our Russian land.”

A third group, the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), also claimed to be involved in the fight.

The Russian defense ministry said “Ukrainian terrorist formations” with tanks and armored vehicles tried to cross the border from three directions early Tuesday, but claimed the attacks had been “thwarted.”

The ministry said the attacks were launched in the village of Odnorobovka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, and in the nearby Russian villages of Nekhoteevka and Spodariushino in Belgorod.

“The enemy was struck by aviation, missile forces and artillery,” the ministry said. It claimed to have “eliminated” five tanks an armored personnel carrier in Nekhoteevka and Spodariushino.

The ministry also said its forces had killed 60 Ukrainian soldiers near Odnorobovka as they attempted to cross into Russia.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said 10 civilians had been injured and six were hospitalized after Ukraine attempted to break through Russian territory Tuesday. He added that Ukrainian fighters were not presently in the Belgorod settlements.

Russia’s Belgorod region has suffered several cross-border attacks since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago, as Kyiv has sought to bring the effects of war home to Russia.

In May 2023, the Freedom for Russia Legion claimed responsibility for an incursion into Belgorod. In the following months, Ukraine began to target the region with shelling and drone strikes, prompting the Kremlin to pledge to improve Belgorod’s air defenses.

Drone strikes

Earlier, Russia’s defense ministry said its air defenses had intercepted and destroyed two drones over Moscow, seven over Belgorod, 11 over Kursk, two over Oryol and one each over Leningrad, Bryansk and Tula regions.

One of the drones struck an oil depot in Oryol region, causing a fire that the governor there said had been extinguished. No casualties were reported.

Belgorod’s governor accused Ukraine of using a drone to drop four explosives over the region. He said there were no casualties but there was damage to the power line, leaving seven settlements without electricity.

School children in Kursk will also move to online learning due to “safety concerns,” the governor of that region announced Tuesday. The decision will affect more than 4,500 students across 34 schools in the Sudzhansky and Glushkovsky districts. Similar measures will be in place in various districts of Belgorod.

Later Tuesday, Russia reportedly fired back at the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, President Volodmyr Zelensky’s hometown. At least three people, two women and one man, were killed and 40 injured – including 10 children – by missile strikes that left several multi-story buildings ablaze.

The head of the Defense Council of Kryvyi Rih Oleksandr Vilkul said nine people had been rescued from the rubble so far.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his condolences to the families and friends of the victims in a Telegram post on Tuesday, saying the rescue operation would continue “as long as needed.”

Russian military plane crashes

In what appeared to be a separate incident on Tuesday, a Russian military plane crashed hundreds of kilometers northeast of Moscow after its engine caught fire, Russian state media RIA Novosti reported, citing the defense ministry.

Eight crew members and seven passers were on board the Ilyushin IL-76 when it crashed in the Ivanovo region while taking off, according to RIA.

Tuesday’s incident was the second IL-76 crash inside Russia this year. Russia blamed Ukraine for the January downing of an IL-76 over Belgorod, saying all 74 people on board were killed, including dozens of Ukrainian servicemen being transported for a prisoner swap.

A 12-year-old Palestinian boy was shot and killed by a border police officer in Shuafat refugee camp in occupied east Jerusalem, according to hospital officials and an Israeli police spokesperson.

The Israeli police spokesperson said police forces responded to a “violent disturbance” at the refugee camp and a border police officer fired “towards a suspect who endangered the forces while firing aerial fireworks in their direction.”

The shooting came on the third night of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which has been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in previous years.

The police spokesperson said individuals on Tuesday night also threw Molotov cocktails and fired fireworks directly at security forces.

No security forces are visible in the video of Al Halhouli holding the firework, but the boy appears to be standing in front of the West Bank separation barrier.

In a second video filmed from above the scene after he is shot, the boy is lying on the ground as several people gather around him, while a woman screams and calls his name.

Israeli police said it was the second night in a row that Palestinians in Shuafat aimed Molotov cocktails and fireworks at police forces.

“Reinforced and undercover Border Guard forces were deployed to neutralize threats and prevent violent disturbances of order in the area,” the spokesperson said.

There were no casualties among the Israeli forces who dispersed the demonstrators at the Shuafat camp, the police spokesperson said.

In a Telegram post, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir applauded the soldier who shot and killed the boy.

“I support the Border Guard fighters who are operating at this time and are risking their lives now against dozens of Arab rioters in Shu’fat,” Ben-Gvir said.

“I salute the soldier who killed the terrorist who tried to shoot fireworks at him and the troops – this is exactly how you should act against terrorists – with determination and precision,” he said.

When NASA’s Europa Clipper aims to launch on its highly anticipated mission to an icy moon in October, the spacecraft will carry a unique design etched with names, poetry and artwork symbolizing humanity.

The US space agency has a long history of sending names and meaningful designs aloft aboard missions, including the Voyager probes, the Perseverance rover and Parker Solar Probe. Now, it’s Europa Clipper’s turn to carry on the tradition of ferrying a design that illustrates why humans are driven to explore the cosmos.

This latest mission is headed to Jupiter’s moon Europa, one of several lunar ocean worlds considered to be the best places to search for life beyond Earth. Scientists estimate that a global ocean with more than twice the amount of water in Earth’s oceans exists beneath Europa’s thick icy shell. Earth’s oceans contain about 321 million cubic miles (1.3 billion cubic kilometers) of water, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Decorated on both sides and made of the rare metal tantalum, the triangular plate will seal the spacecraft’s sensitive electronics inside a vault to protect them from Jupiter’s harsh radiation.

On the inside of the vault is a silicon microchip stenciled with more than 2.6 million names submitted by the public. The microchip is at the center of a design that shows a bottle floating within the orbit of Jupiter and its moons to symbolize that it serves as a cosmic message in a bottle.

Technicians at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used electron beams to stencil the names at a size smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair.

Below the bottle, the design features the original poem “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón, etched in her handwriting, as well as a portrait of the late planetary sciences pioneer Ron Greeley, an Arizona State University professor who played a crucial role in laying the foundation for the development of a mission to Europa.

The side of the plate facing the inside of the vault also includes an etching of the Drake Equation, developed by the late astronomer Frank Drake of the University of California Santa Cruz in 1961 to estimate the possibility of finding advanced life beyond Earth. The equation remains an important part of astrobiological research as scientists search for evidence of life beyond our planet.

The external side of the plate carries waveforms, or visual representations of sound waves, that depict the word “water” in 103 languages from around the world. At the heart of the spiral is a symbol that means “water” in American Sign Language. The audio of the spoken languages collected by linguists for NASA is available on its website.

A planetary legacy

Early NASA probes such as Pioneer 10 and Voyager have continued to inspire the artwork that travels aboard other planetary science missions.

When NASA’s twin Voyager probes lifted off to explore the solar system just weeks apart in 1977, they carried identical golden records designed as the first recorded interstellar message from humankind to potential intelligent life in the cosmos. The records had both audio and visuals that aimed to capture Earth’s diversity of life and culture, including greetings in 59 human languages and 115 images of life.

Europa Clipper’s plate was designed with that spirit in mind to honor the potential connection between the moon’s ocean and Earth’s oceans, according to NASA.

“The content and design of Europa Clipper’s vault plate are swimming with meaning,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, in a statement. “The plate combines the best humanity has to offer across the universe — science, technology, education, art and math. The message of connection through water, essential for all forms of life as we know it, perfectly illustrates Earth’s tie to this mysterious ocean world we are setting out to explore.”

After a 1.6 billion-mile (2.6 billion-kilometer) journey to Europa, Europa Clipper will spend the next few years flying by the ice-covered moon to see whether the ocean beneath it could support life. Europa Clipper is set to make nearly 50 flybys of Europa, eventually coming within 16 miles (25.7 kilometers) above its thick ice crust to survey almost the entirety of that moon.

The spacecraft will use cameras, spectrometers, ice-penetrating radar and a thermal instrument to understand how the moon formed and whether it’s possible for life to exist on icy ocean worlds.

“We’ve packed a lot of thought and inspiration into this plate design, as we have into this mission itself,” said Robert Pappalardo, project scientist at JPL, in a statement. “It’s been a decades-long journey, and we can’t wait to see what Europa Clipper shows us at this water world.”

As China grapples with a struggling economy and an intensifying tech war with the United States, its leaders had one message for the thousands of political elites gathering in Beijing: the country will stay the course in becoming a high-tech powerhouse under the helm of one man – supreme leader Xi Jinping.

That note of confidence was echoed throughout a week of highly choreographed meetings of China’s rubber-stamp national legislature and top political advisory body, which concluded Monday with a ceremony in the cavernous Great Hall of the People.

The event, held largely without Covid restrictions for the first time in years, is a rare chance for the world to glimpse into an increasingly opaque political system under Xi.

Here are the major takeaways from the gathering:

Tightening control

The closing day of the National People’s Congress legislature on Monday was missing a key event – a press conference conducted by the Chinese premier. For decades, this curtain-closing “two sessions” tradition had offered foreign media and the Chinese public a rare opportunity to get first-hand insight into the thinking of the country’s nominal No. 2 official, who is charged with running its economy.

However, Beijing made the surprise announcement that it was scrapping the event last week, in a move that generated concern among observers about the ever-shrinking transparency of the Chinese government.

The more recent tradition of collective leadership, a model that came to the fore after the chaos of Mao Zedong’s strongman rule, has taken a backseat once again under Xi. The Premier and his State Council, which functions as China’s cabinet, have been increasingly sidelined in recent years as Xi ramped up the party’s role controlling the government and the messages it sends.

That was further underscored on Monday, when delegates rubber stamped an update to a law governing the organization of the State Council. Observers say the changes further formalized the body’s role as carrying out the directives of the Chinese Communist Party.

High-tech push

An overarching theme of the gathering was a push to focus China’s economic model on technology innovation and transform the country into a high-tech powerhouse.

In an address last week Premier Li called for boosting “self-reliance and strength in science and technology,” spelling out a push to upgrade industrial supply chains and enhance China’s position as a high-tech innovator. That included a boost to China’s annual budget for science and technology by 10% to an unprecedented 370.8 billion yuan ($51.6 billion).

Also highlighted was a new policy buzzword “new quality productive forces,” a term coined by Xi last year to refer to high tech sectors such as new energy vehicles, artificial intelligence, renewable energy and advanced manufacturing – signifying the leader’s desire to push the country ahead in the global race for critical technologies.

The emphasis on self-reliance in science and technology comes after the United States tightened control over the export of cutting-edge technologies to China, especially in the field of AI, which Washington said could be used to strengthen the Chinese military.

On the sidelines of the “two sessions,” Foreign Minister Wang Yi accused the US of “devising various tactics to suppress China” and slammed Washington’s trade and tech controls as reaching “bewildering levels of unfathomable absurdity.”

Restoring economic confidence

The economy was in the spotlight this year as China has been roiled by a property sector crisis, hefty local government debt, deflation, a stock market rout and tech friction with the US — all fueling public frustration and a loss of investor confidence.

Chinese leaders presiding over the event were keen to project confidence in the economy, rolling out an ambitious economic growth target of around 5% for 2024, but without announcing any major stimulus measures to increase flagging consumption.

That appeared to disappoint investors who’d been closely watching the gathering – with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index tumbling 2.6% on Tuesday after the targets were announced. The index has fallen by about 1% so far this week and has lost nearly 20% over the past 12 months.

Li conceded in his remarks that hitting that target “will not be easy,” given that a Covid-battered 2022 had provided a lower base of growth for last year, but he also vowed that China would make industrial upgrading a priority while leaning into tech innovation.

No new appointments

The annual meeting of the National People’s Congress disappointed some observers who were hoping to see certain key personnel appointments made at this year’s gathering – a move that would fill senior State Council roles left vacant for months after an abrupt shake-up in the ranks of Xi’s hand-picked ministers.

Foreign Minister Qin Gang was abruptly removed from his post without explanation in July followed by the removal of Defense Minister Li Shangfu months later, also without explanation. Both men had first vanished from public view and have been replaced.

Some observers expected that Beijing could appoint a new Foreign Minister at this year’s gathering. The role has been filled, in what many expected to be a temporary capacity, by senior diplomat and former Foreign Minister Wang Yi since Qin’s ouster.

Two high-ranking posts in China’s cabinet previously occupied by Li and Qin remain open. But Beijing declined to fill those posts at this year’s event.

India said Monday it had joined the world’s top nuclear powers by mastering the ability to put multiple warheads atop a single intercontinental ballistic missile.

The successful test of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) technology on the indigenously developed Agni-V ICBM puts India in a club that includes the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom.

Neighboring Pakistan has also claimed to have MIRV technology, but experts say the claim is unverified.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the country’s scientists for the development, one of a series announced by his government months before a national election. The prime minister is seeking a rare third consecutive term in power.

“Proud of our DRDO [Defence Research and Development Organisation] scientists for Mission Divyastra, the first flight test of indigenously developed Agni-5 missile with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology,” Modi said X on Monday.

Indian scientists conducted the test at a facility on Abdul Kalam Island in the Bay of Bengal, off India’s northeast coast, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

“Various Telemetry and radar stations tracked and monitored multiple re-entry vehicles. The Mission accomplished the designed parameters,” the statement said.
India did not give an exact number of reentry vehicles released during the Agni-V test, but MIRVed missiles can carry a dozen or possibly more MIRV warheads.

Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh congratulated scientists and the team behind the test. “India is proud of them,” he wrote on X.

Home Minister Amit Shah called it a “a momentous day for our nation,” adding that the technology will “further accelerate” Modi’s vision of a “self-reliant Bharat (India).”

Each warhead, once released in space from the rocket that missile that carried it aloft, can be programmed to hit separate targets up to 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) apart, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation.

Overall, the Agni-V missile has a range of more than 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles), according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies Missile Defense Project. That puts India rivals like China and Pakistan well within range of the weapon.

A decades-old technology

MIRV technology is not new. The United States first deployed it in 1970 with the Minuteman III ICBM, according to the National Museum of the US Air Force.

The Minuteman III was designed to carry three warheads, but the US missiles now only carry one to comply with arms control treaties with Russia.

MIRVed missiles present a problem for ballistic missile defenses because interceptor missiles have to contend with a number of warheads traveling to targets hundreds of miles apart.

They are also considered “destabilizing” weapons, according to experts, as they present tempting first-strike targets.

“This creates a ‘use them or lose them’ scenario—an incentive to strike first in a time of crisis. Otherwise, a first strike attack that destroyed a country’s MIRVed missiles would disproportionately damage that country’s ability to retaliate,” according to a website posting from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

India’s announcement of MIRV capability comes as rival China has been expanding its nuclear forces in a similar fashion.

The US Defense Department’s 2023 report to Congress on China’s military said Beijing “is developing new ICBMs that will significantly improve its nuclear-capable missile forces and will require increased nuclear warhead production, partially due to the introduction of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) capabilities.”

China and India share a disputed border in the Himalayas, where deadly clashes have occurred as recently as 2020.

Controversial internet influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have been detained in Romania on Monday over UK sex offense charges, Romanian police said on Tuesday.

Officers from the country’s Criminal Investigation Service and officers from the town of Voluntari “executed two European arrest warrants issued by the UK judicial authorities for the commission of sexual offences and exploitation of persons on the territory of Great Britain,” police said in a statement.

The two men were presented to the public prosecutor of the Bucharest Court of Appeal, who ordered their detention for 24 hours in the Bucharest Police Headquarters, the statement added.

Tate’s spokesperson Mateea Petrescu said in a statement Tuesday: “This bewildering revival of decade-old accusations has left the Tate brothers dismayed and deeply troubled.

“They categorically reject all charges and express profound disappointment that such serious allegations are being resurrected without substantial new evidence,” Petrescu said.

Tate and his brother spent three months in police custody in Bucharest last year and were then placed under house arrest pending a criminal investigation for alleged abuses committed against seven women, accusations they have denied.

They were released in August and put under judicial control, with a ban on leaving the Municipality of Bucharest and Ilfov county without prior approval from the court.

The two are awaiting trial in the country on separate charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal group to sexually exploit women.

Mars may be around 140 million miles away from Earth, but the red planet is influencing our deep oceans by helping drive “giant whirlpools,” according to new research.

Scientists analyzed sediments, drilled from hundreds of deep-sea sites over the past half century, to look back tens of millions of years into Earth’s past, in a quest to better understand the strength of deep ocean currents.

What they found surprised them.

The sediments revealed that deep-sea currents weakened and strengthened over 2.4 million-year climate cycles, according to the study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Adriana Dutkiewicz, the study’s co-author and sedimentologist at the University of Sydney, said the scientists didn’t expect to discover these cycles, and that there is only one way to explain them: “They are linked to cycles in the interactions of Mars and Earth orbiting the Sun,” she said in a statement. The authors say this is first study to make these connections.

The two planets affect each other through a phenomenon called “resonance,” which is when two orbiting bodies apply a gravitational push and pull on each other — sometimes described as a kind of harmonization between distant planets. This interaction changes the shape of their orbits, affecting how close to circular they are and their distance from the sun.

For the Earth, this interaction with Mars translates to periods of increased solar energy — meaning a warmer climate — and these warmer cycles correlate with more vigorous ocean currents, the report found.

While these 2.4 million-year cycles affect warming and ocean currents on Earth, they are natural climate cycles and not linked to the rapid heating the world is experiencing today as humans continue to burn planet-heating fossil fuels, said Dietmar Müller, professor of geophysics at the University of Sydney and a study co-author.

The authors describe these currents, or eddies, as “giant whirlpools” that can reach the bottom of the deep ocean, eroding the seafloor and causing large accumulations of sediments, like snowdrifts.

The scientists were able to map these strong eddies through “breaks” in the sediment cores they analyzed. Deep-sea sediments build in continuous layers during calm conditions but strong ocean currents disrupt this, leaving a visible stamp of their existence.

If today’s human-caused warming continues on its current trajectory, Müller said, “this effect will dwarf all other processes for a long time to come. But the geological record still provides us with valuable insights about how the oceans operate in a warmer world.”

The authors suggest it is possible that these eddies could even help mitigate some of the impacts of a potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a crucial ocean circulation which works like a huge conveyor belt transporting warm water from the tropics to the far North Atlantic.

Scientists have been increasingly sounding the alarm about the health of this critical system of currents. There are fears it may even be showing early signs it is on course to collapse, as global warming heats up oceans and melts ice, disrupting the delicate balance of heat and salt that determines the AMOC’s strength.

A collapse would have catastrophic climate consequences, including temperatures plunging rapidly in some places and rising in others.

“Our work does not say anything about what may or may not happen to AMOC,” Müller said. “Our point is, rather, that even if AMOC were to shut down, there are still other processes to mix the ocean, even though their effects would be quite different.”

There are fears that an AMOC shutdown would mean oxygen-rich surface waters would no longer mix with deeper waters, leading to a stagnant ocean largely devoid of life. “Our results suggest that more intense deep-ocean eddies in a warmer world may prevent such ocean stagnation,” he said

Joel Hirschi, associate head of marine systems modeling at the National Oceanography Centre in the UK, who was not involved in the research, said the study’s finding of the existence of a 2.4 million-year cycle in sea sediments was noteworthy. The methodology is sound and a link with Mars is possible, he added.

Satellite observations have shown that these eddies have become more active in the last decades but the currents don’t always reach the bottom of the ocean, he said, meaning they would not be able to prevent sediment build-up.

It remains unclear exactly how different processes affecting deep-ocean currents and marine life will play out in the future, the study’s authors said in a statement, but they hope this new study will help build better model future climate outcomes.

An American man has been sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a tourist and the attempted murder of her friend – both US citizens from Illinois – in a gruesome attack near one of Germany’s most popular tourist sights.

A German court convicted the 31-year-old tourist from Michigan, identified as Troy B., for the attack on the two women near Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria.

In Monday’s sentencing at the court in the southern town of Kempten, Judge Christoph Schwiebacher said the offense was one of “particular gravity” and ruled that the man will not receive automatic parole after 15 years, as is custom in Germany.

The attack took place on June 14 2023, when Troy B. befriended the two women near the historic Marienbrücke bridge, a popular viewpoint for Neuschwanstein Castle, before luring them away from the public path with the promise of an even better vantage point.

The victims, Eva Liu, 21, and Kelsey Chang, 22, were American tourists who had recently graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The man was previously unknown to them.

The perpetrator first assaulted Liu. When Chang attempted to intervene, he pushed her down a slope. Prosecutors said the man then throttled Liu and raped her, before also throwing her down a slope after he was discovered by other tourists who arrived at the scene.

The two victims were rescued from the ravine by the Füssen mountain rescue service in a helicopter. Liu later died of her injuries in hospital. Police officers arrested Troy B. near the scene of the attack.

Alexander Stevens, a lawyer representing Troy B., told journalists at the court on Monday: “As things stand now, our client will have to serve his sentence in the prison in (the German city of) Straubing if the judgment becomes final, as it has been established that there is a severe gravity of guilt.

“If it stays that way, our client will definitely have to spend 15 years in Germany before he is extradited. This would and could only be different if the USA itself were to submit a corresponding extradition request or if our client were to do so. We have of course advised our client not to do this.”

The lawyer said his client is yet to decide whether he will appeal the court’s decision.

Neuschwanstein Castle, about 65 miles (105 kilometers) southwest of Munich, is one of the most popular destinations in Europe, attracting some 1.4 million visitors a year and around 6,000 visitors a day in the summer.

There is an inevitability about the outcome of Russia’s looming presidential election.

Like it or not, Vladimir Putin, the man driving a catastrophic war in Ukraine, a brutal crackdown on dissent, and a lurch toward isolation in Russia, now the most sanctioned nation on earth, is poised to win a fifth term in the Kremlin and appears as much in control of Russia as at any time over the past 24 years.

You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, given the unprecedented scenes of defiance across Russia in the weeks before the vote, as thousands turned out at makeshift memorials to Alexey Navalny, the prominent Russian opposition leader who died suddenly in an Arctic penal colony last month.

Hundreds were detained, according to one human rights group, for simply laying flowers in his memory.

The crackdown didn’t stop thousands of determined people attending his funeral in Moscow either and even now, as Russia goes to the polls – with nationwide voting taking place Friday to Sunday – a steady stream of mourners meanders past his grave site in a small but continuing act of defiance to the Kremlin.

“I will go to vote, but now maybe just write his name,” he added, suggesting he will spoil his ballot.

One young woman named Yulia, who had just laid flowers on Navalny’s grave, said she remained optimistic there would be change in Russia, though not soon.

“Even though Alexey Navalny is dead, there is always hope,” she said, “I think there are always people who do not support Vladimir Putin,” she added.

But there are also plenty of Russians who do, at least for now.

‘He made Russia a much better country’

Putin’s pariah status in the West, where the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes, the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine that is estimated to have inflicted hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides, and even the hardships and brutal suppressions at home seem hardly to have dented his approval ratings.

The latest polling, from the respected Levada Center in Moscow, puts public trust in Putin at an astonishing 86%.

Of course, in a country where critics are routinely jailed, exiled or killed, public opinion polls are flawed. Another factor is the constant pro-Kremlin propaganda pumped out on state-controlled media, where most Russians get their news.

But as this election approaches, you can’t discount what so many ordinary Russians tell you, face to face.

In the suburbs of northern Moscow, a vast Soviet-era exhibition park is staging “Russia” – a showcase of the country’s achievements in industry and agriculture, the arts and warfare.

And while Navalny’s funeral was attended by notable numbers, this one exhibition center attracts tens of thousands of people every week, many of them domestic tourists with their families visiting the capital, like pilgrims, from Russia’s distant corners.

“We will definitely vote for Putin, he made Russia a much better country,” said Dmitry, a 41-year-old real estate worker from the Komi Republic, in Russia’s far north, who was visiting Moscow with his wife.

Asked about the war in Ukraine and if he held Putin responsible for Russia’s involvement, he replied: “No, we support him in it. Victory will be ours and if it is needed, I will go and fight too.”

Sergey, a 25-year-old office worker, said he felt his job was secure and stable, with good health benefits. He rejected any suggestion that international sanctions on Russia had made the country poorer.

“I just don’t feel any impact of sanctions as an ordinary Russian citizen,” he insisted.

Artyom, a 30-year-old design engineer and an enthusiastic Putin supporter, said the war in Ukraine and the tensions with the West had put Russia on the right path.

“Russia needs to be acknowledged in the world arena; we are not a second-class country,” he said.

Unexpected challenges

It is an insecurity that Putin has long been able to successfully tap, and his efforts to bolster Russian pride, as well as to boost living standards in the country, have delivered genuine popular support over many years.

What is unclear now, though, is how much longer that support will last, especially if Russian war casualties mount, crackdowns on dissent gather pace and economic hardships dig in.

Already there have been serious and unexpected challenges.

Even before the public mourning of Navalny, thousands of Russians came out to support the nomination of an anti-war presidential hopeful, Boris Nadezhdin, whose candidature was ultimately rejected by the Russian election authorities.

But his collection of tens of thousands of signatures of support was a sharp reminder that while the result of the upcoming presidential election in Russia may be inevitable, Putin’s popularity among ordinary Russians could eventually face a serious challenge.