MOSCOW — The police in Moscow arrested more than 400 people who had gathered outside City Hall on Saturday to protest what they call unfair elections and demand that opposition candidates be allowed to run for city government.
Other prominent opposition politicians — including Ilya Yashin, Dmitry G. Gudkov and Ivan Zhdanov — have also been detained. A post on the Facebook page of Mr. Yashin, a street activist, said 10 masked police officers had removed him from his apartment in Moscow overnight before the Saturday demonstration.
The Moscow City Council has 45 seats and is responsible for a very large municipal budget. It is controlled by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. All of its seats, which have a five-year-term, are up for election on Sept. 8.
To compete in the elections, candidates not endorsed by a political party must collect about 5,000 signatures, depending on the size of their district. Election officials have so far registered nearly 200 candidates, all of whom are largely supportive of Mr. Putin.
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Law enforcement officers detaining a woman during the protest on Saturday.CreditMaxim Shemetov/Reuters
But Moscow’s electoral commission has refused to register several prominent opposition candidates, saying that they had failed to collect enough valid signatures to place them on the September ballot. The candidates, including allies of Mr. Navalny, said the signatures were genuine.
The decision by the electoral authorities to bar some opposition candidates has already sparked days of demonstrations this month. The election dispute comes as the Kremlin is struggling with how to deal with rising opposition in the capital of 12.6 million people.
The protest, which was called by Mr. Navalny, appeared intended also to raise the pressure on Russia’s tightly-controlled political system at a time when Mr. Putin’s rating has dropped because of discontent over years of falling real incomes.
The number of arrests, 435 by Saturday afternoon, was reported by OVD-Info, an independent monitor that tracks data from police precincts. The police could be seen using pepper spray on some crowds.
One of those detained, Alexander Latyshev, 45, told Reuters that he had come to Moscow from the nearby Vladimir region to discuss business with an associate and been randomly arrested by the police.
“I was just sitting on a bench” when they took him, he said from inside a police bus.
There was a heavy police presence at the Moscow mayor’s office on Tverskaya Street, one of Moscow’s main thoroughfares, with police trucks and buses parked in the building’s courtyard and other buses positioned nearby to take detainees away, according to The Associated Press.
MOSCOW — The police in Moscow arrested more than 400 people who had gathered outside City Hall on Saturday to protest what they call unfair elections and demand that opposition candidates be allowed to run for city government.
Other prominent opposition politicians — including Ilya Yashin, Dmitry G. Gudkov and Ivan Zhdanov — have also been detained. A post on the Facebook page of Mr. Yashin, a street activist, said 10 masked police officers had removed him from his apartment in Moscow overnight before the Saturday demonstration.
The Moscow City Council has 45 seats and is responsible for a very large municipal budget. It is controlled by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. All of its seats, which have a five-year-term, are up for election on Sept. 8.
To compete in the elections, candidates not endorsed by a political party must collect about 5,000 signatures, depending on the size of their district. Election officials have so far registered nearly 200 candidates, all of whom are largely supportive of Mr. Putin.
Image
Law enforcement officers detaining a woman during the protest on Saturday.CreditMaxim Shemetov/Reuters
But Moscow’s electoral commission has refused to register several prominent opposition candidates, saying that they had failed to collect enough valid signatures to place them on the September ballot. The candidates, including allies of Mr. Navalny, said the signatures were genuine.
The decision by the electoral authorities to bar some opposition candidates has already sparked days of demonstrations this month. The election dispute comes as the Kremlin is struggling with how to deal with rising opposition in the capital of 12.6 million people.
The protest, which was called by Mr. Navalny, appeared intended also to raise the pressure on Russia’s tightly-controlled political system at a time when Mr. Putin’s rating has dropped because of discontent over years of falling real incomes.
The number of arrests, 435 by Saturday afternoon, was reported by OVD-Info, an independent monitor that tracks data from police precincts. The police could be seen using pepper spray on some crowds.
One of those detained, Alexander Latyshev, 45, told Reuters that he had come to Moscow from the nearby Vladimir region to discuss business with an associate and been randomly arrested by the police.
“I was just sitting on a bench” when they took him, he said from inside a police bus.
There was a heavy police presence at the Moscow mayor’s office on Tverskaya Street, one of Moscow’s main thoroughfares, with police trucks and buses parked in the building’s courtyard and other buses positioned nearby to take detainees away, according to The Associated Press.
The Carabinieri police force said in a statement that the pair were arrested Friday night for "the crime of aggravated murder and attempted extortion."
Police named the suspects as Christian Gabriel Natale Hjorth and Elder Finnegan Lee, and said both were from San Francisco, California. Photos of the pair have not been released.
Italian police officer Mario Cerciello Rega was stabbed eight times at 2 a.m. local time on Friday, in the Prati neighborhood of Rome on Via Pietro Cossa, near the hotel where the two young men were staying, police said. Officer Rega was declared dead at 4:30 a.m.
The police statement said surveillance footage and witness testimonies had allowed the Capitoline Investigative Unit to identify the two responsible for the "heinous crime."
The two Americans were arrested inside their hotel room in Rome.
"They were already ready to leave the country," police said. "During the search of the hotel room, which was occupied by the two detainees, the murder weapon was found and seized, a knife of considerable size, cleverly hidden behind a ceiling panel, as well as the clothes worn during the crime.
"The two, once at the station, were interrogated by the Carabinieri, under the direction of the magistrates of the Public Prosecutor of Rome, in the face of overwhelming evidence, they confessed to the charge."
Only one of the men is accused of stabbing the officer, but both admit to taking part in the fracas, police said.
Police also noted that the Americans had stolen a backpack from an Italian citizen shortly before the murder. The suspects subsequently answered the owner's cellphone, which they had also taken, and told him "they would not return the backpack without 100 euros and 1 gram of cocaine," police added.
After police were contacted by the victim, officers met the American suspects under the guise of retrieving the backpack.
They subsequently identified themselves as law enforcement officers, upon which one of the suspects took out a knife and stabbed the officer eight times before fleeing the scene, police said.
The police said that the pair "did not hesitate to engage in a scuffle which culminated in the tragic deadly wounding of Mario Rega Cerciello."
Matteo Salvini, Italy's far right interior minister, expressed his condolences over the officer's death. "Mario, a police officer, a hero, a boy with all his life ahead of him, who had been married for just 40 days," he wrote on Twitter. "How much sadness, how much anger. A prayer, a hug to his loved ones."
Italian state police (Polizia di Stato, in Italian) also paid tribute to the murdered officer shortly after news of his death emerged, with a number of police cars sounding their sirens outside the Carabinieri headquarters in Rome.
The investigation into the officer's murder is ongoing.
CNN has contacted the US Embassy, which referred questions to the US State Department. CNN has not yet received a response from the State Department.
CNN's Matthew Robinson contributed to this report.
Hong Kong - In defiance of a police order, thousands of protesters in Hong Kong have convened in a small rural town where suspected gang members assaulted pro-democracy protesters and passersby last weekend.
What on Saturday began as a peaceful march to denounce the violence in Yuen Long slowly led to standoffs with riot police, who fired several rounds of tear gas and started advancing to disperse crowds. In some areas, there were clashes as protesters pushed back against police advances by throwing umbrellas and bottles.
Hong Kong Police said protesters "hurled bricks and hard objects" at them and repeated their appeal for people to leave the area by 7pm (11:00GMT).
The police this week came under heavy criticism for an apparent failure to stop the violence against the protesters on July 21, when an attack in Yuen Long by a mob of white-clad, rod-wielding men left at least 45 people, including members of the media, injured.
Twelve people were arrested after last Sunday's violence, including some with links to criminal groups known as the triads.
As the outcry over a now-suspended extradition bill that would allow criminals to be sent to mainland China for trial continues, protests are spreading into deeper pockets of the territory and reaching more remote communities.
Demonstrators use shields and umbrellas to protect themselves during a protest against the Yuen Long attacks [Edgar Su/Reuters]
Dubbed Take Back Yuen Long, Saturday's rally is taking aim at "terrorism", according to Max Chung, who applied to police on Tuesday for permission for the march to take place in the northern town.
But on Thursday, police issued a letter of objection for the rally, citing concerns for public safety and order.
"The march is triggered by the violent incidents last Sunday and protesters have shown hostility towards some Yuen Long residents," Anthony Tsang Ching-fo, the acting New Territories North regional commander, said on Thursday, according to the South China Morning Post.
"There is a fairly high chance for both sides to clash."
Demonstrators clash with police in Yuen Long, Hong Kong [Edgar Su/Reuters]
Protesters' demands
Despite losing the appeal on Friday, Chung, a 39-year-old native of Yuen Long,vowed to push on with the unlicensed assembly.
"It won't be stopped. One of the slogans is 'spreading the blossoms.' We plant all the flowers and they blossom. So until the government responds to the five requests, especially the independent investigation [into police violence], I don't see how anything can stop it."
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Since mass demonstrations began in early June, demonstrators' requests have included the complete withdrawal of the controversial extradition bill, which the city's embattled leader Carrie Lam has pronounced "dead" but has not officially retracted.
Other core demands include an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality, removing the "riot" label for the June 12 protests, the release of arrested demonstrators and the direct election of officials.
Following Sunday's attack, which appeared to target black-clad pro-democracy protesters returning home from a demonstration, police came under fire for arriving 39 minutes late to the scene.
Police flatly denied any accusations of collusion with the mobs and claimed they were strapped for manpower as another demonstration unfolded in the city centre 30km away, where protesters surrounded Beijing's liaison office and defaced the Chinese national emblem.
Police officers fire tear gas at demonstrators during Saturday's protest [Tyrone Siu/Reuters]
'Revenge'
Tensions have risen dramatically since, with state news agency Xinhua calling the act a "blatant challenge" to the central Chinese government.
Earlier this week, the spokesman for the Chinese defence ministry, when asked how China's forces would respond to the situation, referred to a law in the territory that states that the Hong Kong government may request the assistance of Chinese troops stationed in the city to maintain public order.
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Earlier this week, 11 universities in Hong Kong issued a statement urging students not to partake in Saturday's march citing safety concerns.
Phil, a 31-year-old protester planning to attend Saturday's march, described it as "revenge" against the gangsters.
"[Danger] always is a risk, but Hong Kong people need to do that otherwise things will become worse," he said. "Protesters have two different sides - peaceful and violent. But you can see being peaceful is not going to make the government do anything."
On Friday, hundreds of protesters occupied the arrival hall of Hong Kong's International Airport in an effort to spread the message of anti-extradition to travellers.
Police have placed further restrictions on another protest planned for Sunday billed as an anti-police brutality demonstration.
RCMP have released surveillance video showing two Port Alberni teens suspected of killing three people in northern B.C.
In the video, Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, and Kam McLeod, 19, can be seen walking through the aisles of a Co-op store in Meadow Lake, Sask., then leaving.
McLeod is wearing a black pants and blue T-shirt with a "Cathulu" image on it, while Schmegelsky is wearing a button-down camouflage shirt and camouflage pants.
McLeod and Schmegelsky are charged with second-degree murder in the death of 64-year-old Leonard Dyck of Vancouver. Dyck’s body was found at a highway pullout two kilometres from where the teens’ burned-out Dodge pickup truck was found on Highway 37 near Dease Lake on July 19.
The pair are also suspects in the killings of 23-year-old Lucas Fowler of Sydney, Australia, and 24-year-old Chynna Deese of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Their bodies were discovered July 15 beside the Alaska Highway, 20 kilometres south of Liard Hot Springs. Fowler and Deese had been exploring northern B.C. in Fowler’s 1986 blue Chevrolet van with Alberta licence plates, which was found at the scene.
Police said they released the video in the hope it would generate more tips.
LONDON — For the first time in Britain's tortuous Brexit saga, the true believers are running the show.
Boris Johnson became prime minister this week with a sweeping purge of the Cabinet and bringing in his own cast of Brexit hard-liners.
No sooner had he swept into No. 10 Downing St., Johnson started getting the band back together. His inner circle now bears a striking resemblance to the team that led the original 2016 Brexit referendum campaign to leave the European Union.
Some of these "euroskeptic" crusaders flanked Johnson in Parliament on Wednesday, cheering him on as he gave his first speech to the House of Commons.
Boris Johnson holds up a Cornish pasty — a traditional savory British pastry — during the launch of the Brexit campaign in Truro on May 11, 2016.Darren Staples / Reuters file
"Our mission is to deliver Brexit," the prime minister said in his trademark blustering style, which supporters say masks a sharp intellect. Leaving the E.U., Johnson promised, would help make "this country the greatest place on Earth."
So the Brexiteers finally own Brexit, taking the helm of the revolution they started three years ago. But will they fare any better than Theresa May, the former prime minister whose efforts ended in failure and humiliation?
Johnson will face many of the same intractable obstacles she did, and some commentators believe he will struggle to leave the E.U. on the current divorce date of Oct. 31. With that in mind, one theory is that the prime minister has built his team to trigger and win an early general election as soon as this fall.
"I think that strategy is entirely conceivable because it's hard to see what else he can do," said Anand Menon, director of The U.K. in a Changing Europe, a London-based think tank.
For years, Johnson and his allies criticized May, who repeatedly failed to persuade British lawmakers to support the plan she negotiated with Europe. As the Brexiteers often reminded her, she was a convert, campaigning in the 2016 referendum to remain in Europe, only switching sides later on.
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During the race to replace her, Johnson said he was willing to take the United Kingdom out of Europe without a deal, a commitment many experts decry as reckless in that it could lead to economic catastrophe, and shortages of food, medicine and basic supplies.
Johnson caused uproar across the political spectrum by suggesting he could force through this "no-deal" Brexit by temporarily suspending Parliament — a radical departure from democratic norms.
Once in power, he orchestrated what was one of the most brutal Cabinet reshuffles in decades, with 17 out of 30 ministers either being fired or jumping before they were pushed.
"This wasn't just a change of personnel, this was a regime change," Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, said. "The way it was done and the extent of the culling really was intended to make it clear to the public that there's a new kid in town who is going to do things very differently."
Nick Boles, who quit as Conservative lawmaker in April, went further, telling the BBC on Thursday that, "what this establishes beyond all doubt is that the Conservative Party has now been fully taken over, top to bottom, by the hard right."
Dominic Raab at the Foreign and Commonwealth building in London on WednesdayDan Kitwood / Getty Images
Johnson's new foreign secretary is Dominic Raab, who resigned as May's Brexit chief last year because he said her deal was too soft. He's perhaps better known for once calling feminists "obnoxious bigots."
The new interior minister is Priti Patel, another staunch Brexiteer, who at one time wanted to bring back the death penalty — an outlier opinion in Britain, which abolished capital punishment in 1965. She was forced to resign from a previous government role in 2017 after holding undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials while saying she was on vacation.
Michael Gove, who campaigned alongside Johnson in 2016, is in charge of "no-deal" preparation at the Cabinet Office. And Dominic Cummings, the cerebral, eccentric director of the Brexit campaign, who was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in a recent TV dramatization, is Johnson's de facto chief of staff.
The only "remainer" given a top job is the new chancellor of the exchequer, Sajid Javid, whose job it is to run the economy. But he now supports leaving the E.U., too.
The Cabinet has been praised for its racial diversity. Patel and Javid both have parents who emigrated to Britain in the 1960s, from Uganda and Pakistan respectively.
There are plenty in Johnson's team who did vote to remain in the referendum, but most were given minor roles.
They have less than 100 days to negotiate a new Brexit deal. May's plan took 18 months to thrash out, and European officials have said repeatedly it's their final offer.
If Johnson were to persuade the Europeans to change their minds, perhaps deploying the charisma his supporters adore, his next problem would be the British Parliament, which has so far blocked every course of action available.
Johnson's Conservatives are in a fragile position, governing with a majority of just three in the House of Commons. Perhaps not the best time, some have suggested, to fire more than a dozen moderates from his Cabinet, some of whom have already pledged to thwart Johnson's stated willingness for "no-deal."
Boris Johnson and members of his government during his first Cabinet meeting as prime minister on Thursday. Aaron Chown / AFP - Getty Images
By purging so many members of May's team, Johnson "may be making a rod for his own back," Meg Russell, a politics professor at University College London, said. "They will now have the freedom to vote against his policy."
"The hard-Brexit supporters are at one end of an ideological spectrum," Russell added. "But the people who he's fired are more centrist, and it's much, much easier for those people to join forces with the opposition."
These realities have led some to wonder whether Johnson is in fact not really focused on Brexit, but instead is preparing to call an early election.
Johnson knows he faces two major obstacles: European officials who say they won't budge on May's deal, and British lawmakers who won't let him leave without one.
Casting himself as a man "standing up for the British people" against these "twin evils" might be a potent electoral message, Phil Syrpis, a professor of E.U. law at Bristol University, said in a series of tweets.
This may well be nonsense (it was ever thus...); but PM Johnson seems to have a plan. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but it will be difficult to stop. 1/
Through this prism, Johnson's assembled band of Brexit devotees perhaps begins to make more sense.
In an election, they might prove effective at swallowing up millions of votes from those who voted to leave Europe three years ago. That would also effectively neutralize the Brexit Party, lead by Donald Trump favorite Nigel Farage, which has threatened to outflank the Conservatives from the right.
It might also steal a march on the opposition Labour Party, which is often criticized as having a confusing policy on Brexit, and other pro-E.U. parties who might split one another's votes.
The winner of any election would have almost no time to do anything before the Brexit deadline. It's far from certain that the 27 remaining E.U. leaders would grant Britain yet another extension, following 11th hour postponements in March and April.
"God knows what an election would do to the Brexit timetable," Menon, who is also a professor at Kings College London, said.
A 19-year-old US tourist has confessed to the murder of an Italian policeman, Italian media said on Saturday.
The tourist was travelling with an 18-year-old friend, who has also been arrested for alleged involvement in the killing.
Mario Cerciello Rega, 35, was stabbed to death in central Rome in the early hours of Friday morning, just weeks after returning from his honeymoon.
He was called to the scene after reports of a robbery.
Italian media initially said the murder suspects were North African.
What happened?
The young men were allegedly in the Trastevere area trying to buy drugs.
They are said to have stolen a rucksack from a drug dealer who had sold them fake product, according to Italian news agency Ansa.
They reportedly offered to bring it back to him, if he paid them $100 (£124; €111).
As they waited, they were approached by Rega and a colleague as part of a plain-clothed operation because the police had been tipped off about the bag exchange, Ansa reported.
A brawl ensued, during which Rega was stabbed multiple times. He was taken to hospital but died of his injuries.
The two Americans were picked up at a hotel by police on Friday morning.
Vice-Brigadier Rega had been married only 43 days and had returned from his honeymoon just this week.
"Mario was a lovely lad," Sandro Ottaviani, commander of Rome's Piazza Farnese Carabinieri station, was quoted as saying by Ansa.
"He never held back at work and he was a figurehead for the whole district. He always helped everyone. He did voluntary work, accompanying sick people to Lourdes and Loreto. Every Tuesday he went to Termini train station to feed the needy."
His funeral will be held on Monday, in the same church in which he was married.
The killing shocked Italy and prompted tributes from across the country.
