(MOSCOW) — The woman convicted of being a covert Russian agent returned to her homeland on Saturday, deported by the United States after serving a prison sentence.

Maria Butina, a gun rights activist who sought to infiltrate conservative U.S. political groups and promote Russia’s agenda around the time that Donald Trump rose to power, was released Friday from a low-security facility in Florida. She had been in custody since her arrest in July 2018.

In brief comments to journalists at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport after arriving on an Aeroflot flight from Miami, Butina thanked her supporters. She was carrying a bouquet of flowers and rested her head on the shoulder of her father, Valery, who had come from their Siberian hometown of Barnaul to meet her.

“I am very, very, very happy to be back home. I am very grateful to everyone who supported me — all the Russian citizens who helped and wrote me letters and donated money for my defense,” she said.

The former American University gradu..

A Chinese orienteering team was disqualified for cheating this week during the 2019 Military World Games, which were hosted by China.

Orienteering is an endurance sport in which competitors navigate what is usually unfamiliar terrain using only a map and compass. While racing to the finish line, they must navigate to a series of check-points en route. In the women’s middle distance competition at the Games, Chinese orienteers had come close to sweeping the winners podium, with competitors in first, second, and fourth place. (A male Chinese orienteer placed second in the men’s race.) But an investigation into their conduct was kicked off after complaints from six other countries participating — Russia, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Poland and Austria.

After investigating the complaints, a jury decided to disqualify the competitors and void the results of their race from final tallies. In a statement, the International Orienteering Federation (IOF) decried that, “the middle fistance co..

(MOSCOW) — The Russian Defense Ministry says a soldier killed eight of his comrades and wounded two others in a shooting outburst at a base in Siberia before being apprehended.

The ministry said the attack happened Friday at a military base in the town of Gorny, 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of the border with Mongolia. Two of those killed were officers and the others were enlisted men. The two wounded soldiers reportedly were in serious condition.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had opened a murder case against the suspect, whom it identified as 20-year-old Ramil Shamsutdinov.

APThis undated photo shows Ramil Shamsutdinov, a Russian soldier who went on a shooting spree in Siberia on Oct. 25, 2019 at a military base in the town of Gorny in the Baikal Lake region.The Defense Ministry said the soldier apparently opened fire in a “nervous breakdown over personal problems unrelated to his military duties.” A deputy defense minister was heading to the base to conduct an invest..

(DHAKA, Bangladesh) — A court in eastern Bangladesh sentenced the principal of an Islamic school and 15 others to death on Thursday over the killing of an 18-year-old woman who was set on fire for refusing to drop sexual harassment charges against the principal.

Judge Mamunur Rashid of the Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal found Principal Siraj Ud Doula and the others guilty of either killing the woman or ordering her death in April.

The brutality of the death triggered nationwide protests. Tens of thousands of people attended Nusrat Jahan Rafi’s funeral prayers in her hometown, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina pledged that her family would get quick justice.

All of the defendants, including a local ruling party member and some students at the school, were in the court in handcuffs during the reading of the verdict. The principal, who had smiled as he was brought into the court, cried after the verdict was announced, local media reported. The defendants began shoutin..