News Headlines - 26 February 2021

▽Head of Russian prisons confirms Navalny sent to detention centre | Al Jazeera

Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny has been moved to a detention centre where he will serve his more than two-year-long jail sentence, the head of Russia’s prison service told state media on Friday.
Alexander Kalashnikov, head of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), confirmed Navalny had been transferred out of the maximum-security jail in the capital, Moscow, where he had been held, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

▽Japan to lift pandemic emergency for 6 prefectures | NHK WORLD

Japan's prime minister says coronavirus conditions in six prefectures have improved enough to lift a state of emergency on Sunday. But, the declaration will remain in place for Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures... Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Fukuoka, Aichi and Gifu will all be released early from the state of emergency at the end of this month.
But Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba will wait until March 7.

▽Survivors of fatal house fire in Japan sue Apple for $1.3M, blame blaze on iPhone - The Mainichi

Survivors of a house fire that killed a couple in the central Japan prefecture of Aichi filed an approximately 140-million-yen (about $1.3 million) lawsuit with the Nagoya District Court on Feb. 25 against Apple Japan Inc., blaming an iPhone for the blaze.
The survivors are demanding compensation based on the Product Liability Act... According to the complaint and other sources, the fire occurred in the living room on the first floor of a two-story house in the prefecture in around autumn 2019.

▽Italian ambassador died in gunbattle in DRC, not execution, prosecutor says - CNN

The two Italians killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday died in a gunbattle, and were not killed execution-style, prosecutor Alberto Pioletti told CNN on Thursday.
Italian Ambassador Luca Attanasio and Italian carabiniere, or paramilitary police officer, Vittorio Iacovacci, died on Monday after their car was attacked as they traveled in a UN convoy in the eastern part of the Central African country. A third man, Congolese driver Moustapha Milambo, was also killed.

▽Hillary Clinton is co-writing a mystery novel with writer Louise Penny

One of the world’s better known fans of mystery novels, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is now writing one.
Clinton is teaming up with her friend, the novelist Louise Penny, on “State of Terror,” which has a plot that might occur to someone of Clinton’s background: A “novice” secretary of state, working in the administration of a rival politician, tries to solve a wave of terrorist attacks. The novel comes out Oct. 12, and will be jointly released by Clinton’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, and Penny’s, St. Martin’s Press.