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Intrigue

Daily flyovers

Latest news for 16 February 2026

Quick hits of consequential news from all corners of the world.

  1. 01

    RUSSIA

    Dart frog poison.

    London and several other European capitals have accused Russia of using a rare toxin from a dart frog to murder opposition figure Alexei Navalny in 2024. (BBC)

    Comment: The headline is not that Putin killed him, but how: the labs say they found on Navalny an ultra-rare toxin only produced by dart frogs, in the wild, in tiny amounts, and only when eating a specific diet.

  2. 02

    JAPAN

    Have him.

    Authorities have released on bail the captain of a China-based fishing vessel that reportedly refused an inspection order in Japanese waters. (Japan Times)

    Comment: Maybe not ordinarily the stuff of headlines, but this comes just after Japan’s hawkish PM scored a historic electoral win, plus it has echoes of a 2010 incident that triggered China’s first rare earth export controls (and the West’s ongoing scramble to de-risk). But unlike that 2010 case, this one didn’t involve disputed islands, and China paid the captain’s bond, so it’s de-escalated relatively quickly.

  3. 03

    NORWAY

    Don’t try this at home.

    Remarkably, a Norwegian government-linked scientist has secretly built and zapped himself with a pulsed-energy weapon in an attempt to disprove it could cause the ‘Havana Syndrome’ symptoms afflicting various Western officials. But instead, he ended up developing his own Havana Syndrome symptoms. (Washington Post $)

    Comment: Combined with stunning reports the US secretly bought a similar device as part of its own probe, there’s a growing sense those suffering from Havana Syndrome are getting closer to some kind of vindication. Though no word yet on when US spymaster Tulsi Gabbard might release a long-running US probe.

  4. 04

    MYANMAR

    Time to leave.

    Myanmar is giving Timor-Leste’s top local envoy a week to leave, after Dili appointed a prosecutor to investigate the junta’s war crimes. (The Straits Times)

    Comment: You might wonder why tiny Timor is investigating distant Myanmar: as a matter of principle, the Timorese have long voiced solidarity with Myanmar’s minorities given Dili’s own experiences seeking independence from Indonesia; and as a matter of law, Timor now claims universal jurisdiction over certain grievous crimes.

  5. 05

    COLOMBIA

    Outside opinions.

    President Petro has accepted a proposal from rebel group ELN to launch an independent commission into the group’s alleged drug trafficking ties. The group says it taxes drug traffickers, but doesn’t run the drugs itself. (AP)

    Comment: Surely that’s an academic distinction at this point — the ELN has been pushing to expand its control over lucrative drug trafficking routes, leaving dozens of Colombian security personnel dead in the process.

  6. 06

    ISRAEL

    Nope.

    Israel has charged a reservist and a civilian for allegedly using classified information to place bets on military operations via online prediction markets. (FT $)

    Comment: The theory is these markets reflect crowd intelligence, but it’s getting hard to differentiate intelligence from insider info at this point. We wonder if these were the guys we flagged last month (placing a massive bet on Israel hitting Iran again).