Incendiary devices that ignited in Germany and the United Kingdom in July were part of a covert Russian operation that aimed to start fires aboard cargo and passenger flights heading to the US and Canada, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Monday, citing Western security officials.

In July, device explosions at DHL logistics hubs in Leipzig, Germany, and Birmingham, UK, kickstarted a race to find the suspects, WSJ reported.

The devices, which were reportedly electric massagers implanted with a magnesium-based flammable substance, were sent to the UK from Lithuania and “appear to have been a test run to figure out how to get such incendiary devices aboard planes bound for North America,” the WSJ reported.

When the WSJ asked Russia for comment about the suspected Russian plot, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied the allegations. “We have never heard any official accusations” of Russian involvement, adding: “These are traditional unsubstantiated insinuations from the media.”” He said according to WSJ.

Polish authorities in October said four people had been arrested under suspicion of being involved in international sabotage and a sabotage group, according to a statement from the national prosecutor’s office. An international search has been initiated for two more suspects.

The Polish statement, which does not name the sabotage group, says “parcels containing camouflaged explosives and dangerous materials” were sent via courier to the UK and European Union countries and “spontaneously ignited or detonated during land and air transport.”

It adds that the group’s goal “was [also] to test the transfer channel for this type of shipments which were ultimately to be sent to the United States of America and Canada.”

The spokesperson added that the investigation is ongoing, and they are “liaising with other European law enforcement partners to identify whether this may or may not be connected to any other similar-type incidents across Europe.”

Multiple security officials across Europe describe a threat that is metastasizing as Russian agents, increasingly under scrutiny by security services and frustrated in their own operations, hire local amateurs to undertake high-risk, and often deniable, crimes on their behalf.

An American-Iranian journalist who once worked for a US-funded broadcaster is believed to have been detained in Iran, according to his former employer and multiple press freedom groups.

Reza Valizadeh was arrested in Tehran in September, a source close to his family told his former employer Radio Farda, the Iranian branch of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

Iran has not acknowledged detaining Valizadeh and the Iranian mission to the United Nations has declined to comment on his situation.

RFE/RL says it has had no official confirmation of the charges facing Valizadeh, who left Radio Farda in November 2022, but it is “profoundly concerned about the continued arrest, harassment and threats against media professionals by the Iranian regime.”

Reports of the journalist’s apparent detention come amid heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, whose Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday promised a “teeth-breaking” response to Israel and the United States after Israeli strikes targeted Iranian military sites late last month.

Pressured to return

In a post on his X account on February 20, 2024, Valizadeh suggested Iranian authorities had pressured his family to convince him to return to the country.

In a later post, on August 13, the journalist said he had arrived back in the Iranian capital on March 6, 2024.

“Before that, I had half-finished negotiations with the (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) Intelligence Organization. Finally, I returned to my country after 14 years, on my own responsibility and without a letter of amnesty, even verbally,” the post read.

RFE/RL said it was not clear under what circumstances Valizadeh had written the post.

Citing one of Valizadeh’s former colleagues, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fears of reprisal, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported in October that Valizadeh was being held without access to a lawyer in Iran’s Evin prison, which is notorious for housing critics of the Iranian regime.

The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which focuses on Iran, also believes Valizadeh is being held in Evin.

“Iranian authorities must immediately release journalist Reza Valizadeh and drop any charges levied against him,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim Middle East and North Africa program coordinator.

“I cannot say clearly enough to my fellow Americans what already appears on the Department of State’s website: ‘Do not travel to Iran, due to the risk of kidnapping and the arbitrary arrest and detention of US citizens.’ Simply put: Do not go to Iran,” the State Department spokesperson said.

Iran has a long history of using dual nationals as bargaining chips in its troubled relationship with the West. In 2023, it released five Americans designated by the US as wrongfully detained as part of a wider deal that included the US unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian funds.

It is currently marking the 25th anniversary of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, in which 52 US citizens were held captive for 444 days.

China’s air force is set to officially debut its new stealth fighter jet, the J-35A, giving observers the first look at a highly anticipated asset that adds to the country’s fast growing military capabilities.

The fighter, an image of which was released during an air force press conference Tuesday, will appear at an air show in the southern city of Zhuhai next week, officials said.

The development of the jet is widely seen as part of Beijing’s bid to match the United States’ stealth fighter capabilities – as it pushes to modernize its armed forces and assert its military might in Asia.

The J-35A is “designed mainly for air combat operations and can also conduct air-to-surface attack,” according to a report from a Chinese military-affiliated outlet.

If the aircraft is commissioned into operation, it would make China the second country after the US to have two types of stealth fighter jets, according to experts cited by Chinese state media.

China’s J-20 stealth fighter entered service in 2017, officials said at the time.

Stealth fighters are those that are designed to evade radar and other monitoring to conduct missions without being detected or intercepted.

The J-35 is likely to be designed as a series and may also be used as carrier-based aircraft in the future, Chinese military expert Li Li told state broadcaster CCTV. This would “greatly improve the overall strength of China’s sea and air combat,” she said.

The fighter’s debut follows what analysts at Janes global open-source intelligence firm have described as China’s “bolstering” of its forward theater commands with additional J-20s.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force between July 2023 and this June inducted more than 70 J-20s, bringing the force’s operational fleet up to approximately 195, according to a Janes report published earlier this year.

It’s not clear when the new J-35A fighter would be commissioned into military use and where the fighters would be deployed.

The sparse details released about the fighter so far also make it difficult to compare with other stealth fighters, including the US’ F-22 and F-35.

Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, said the J-35A, which has been in development for more than 10 years, was likely intended for the PLA Navy.

“The J-35 made its maiden flight in 2021, but as a derivative of an earlier prototype, it may be ready for production by early next year,” Schuster said, adding that the J-35A model likely improved on that earlier design with more powerful engines.

China’s development of stealth fighters has for years been dogged by accusations that it stole crucial stealth fighter technology from the US.

Beijing has vigorously denied those claims, which came to light with the 2015 publication by German magazine Der Spiegel of documents purportedly from US National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

The J-35A is a “new type of stealth fighter jet independently developed by Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC),” a Chinese military affiliated outlet said this week.

China’s J-35A is not the only technology that will be on show for the first time at next week’s airshow, which takes place in Zhuhai from November 12 to 17.

The H-19 surface-to-air missile system and new “reconnaissance and strike” UAVs will also have their public debut, Col. Niu Wenbo of the air force’s equipment department said Tuesday.

CCTV has also reported that Russia’s Su-57 stealth fighter would join the air show for the first time, among equipment from 49 different countries and regions that would be represented this year.

A French court on Friday convicted six teenagers in connection with the 2020 beheading of history teacher Samuel Paty, whose murder shocked the country.

The teacher had shown his pupils caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on freedom of expression, angering some Muslim parents. Most Muslims avoid depictions of prophets, considering them to be blasphemous.

Among those on trial was a teenage girl who had allegedly told her parents that Paty had asked Muslim pupils to leave the room before showing the caricatures.

The court found her guilty of having made false accusation charges and slanderous comments, as it was established that she was not in the class at the time.

The other adolescents were found guilty of charges related to taking part in a pre-meditated criminal conspiracy and helping to prepare an ambush.

Paty, 47, was killed outside his school in a Paris suburb by an 18-year-old assailant of Chechen origin, who was shot dead by police soon after the attack.

The court found those adolescents guilty of having pointed out Paty to the murderer.

Louis Cailliez, lawyer for Paty’s sister Mickaelle, told reporters his client was “satisfied with the full conviction,” but less so with the sentences, that she found “too lenient”.

Dylan Slama, a lawyer for one of the teenagers, said that though it was hard to talk about satisfaction in such tragic circumstances, there was a sense of relief for his client.

The heaviest sentence was given to an adolescent who was formally given a 6-month prison sentence, although he should be able to serve this at home while under electronic surveillance.

The girl who was found guilty of making false accusations and slanderous comments was given an 18-month suspended sentence and put on probation measures for two years.

All six teenagers’ suspended sentences are tied to them following a strict set of probation measures for two to three years.

Another trial in connection with Paty’s killing, involving adults this time, is set to take place at the end of next year.

High in the mist-shrouded Himalayas, a winding mountain road opens to a clearing in the pine forested valley, revealing rows of uniform Tibetan-style houses, each topped with a Chinese flag.

Construction is booming in this remote place. Piles of logs and other building materials line the road. On a nearby hillside, cranes tower over rising housing blocks.

“They are building resettlement houses here,” says the Chinese travel vlogger who captured these scenes last year, speaking into his phone on a roadside. “When people live and settle here, it undeniably confirms that this is our country’s territory.”

But the village – known as Demalong and formally founded in March last year with a community of 70 families, according to a government notice seen in the footage – is not only located in territory claimed by the world’s ascendent superpower.

It is one of a string of Chinese settlements that also fall well within the border shown on official maps of Bhutan – a Buddhist kingdom of fewer than 1 million people that’s never agreed on a formal international border with China.

For centuries, herders looking for summer pastures were the main presence in this harsh and inhospitable region some 14,000 feet (4,200 meters) above sea level in the eastern Himalayas. But now, there is a growing population as the Chinese government incentivizes hundreds of people to settle there from across Tibet, the region of China that borders Bhutan.

Those settlements show another, quieter front in China’s expanding efforts to assert its control over disputed, peripheral territories – also playing out in the South and East China Seas – as Chinese leader Xi Jinping seeks to bolster national security and enhance China’s position over its rivals.

Bhutan and China have been holding yet-unresolved border talks for decades. Looming in the backdrop of those discussions is India, China’s biggest regional rival and Bhutan’s close diplomatic ally.

The nuclear-armed neighbors have previously gone to war and more recently engaged in a series of skirmishes over their disputed 2,100-mile (3,379-kilometer) border, which straddles Bhutan – and, in Beijing’s eyes, makes the small Himalayan nation all the more critical to its national security.

A comparison of China’s official map of the Tibet Autonomous Region and Bhutan’s national map published in its 2023 Statistical Yearbook show this development is located in territory claimed by both countries.

Bhutanese authorities, however, have repeatedly rejected previous reports of Chinese encroachment, including in a foreign media interview last year when then-Prime Minister Lotay Tshering “categorically” denied that China had been building in Bhutan’s territory.

“The map of Bhutan covering the northern border will be finalized in accordance to the demarcation of the Bhutan-China border,” the ministry’s statement said. It also pointed to the two countries’ boundary talks and said Bhutan was “confident that the northern border will be finalized in the near future.”

“China’s construction activities in the border region with Bhutan are aimed at improving the local livelihoods,” a ministry statement said. “China and Bhutan have their own claims regarding the territorial status of the relevant region, but both agree to resolve differences and disputes through friendly consultations and negotiations.”

The construction has taken place in border regions in northeast Bhutan and the west of the kingdom – near the disputed border between India and China, according to the research. The findings, also described by Barnett in The Diplomat, add to his 2021 Foreign Policy magazine report on earlier construction in the same northern area – and document what the latest research describes as a new “surge” in building there since early last year.

High-altitude rivalry

The blurry boundaries through the Himalayan peaks and plateaus separating China and its southern neighbors are often relics of imperial era agreements and nomadic routes – now charged with the nationalist rhetoric and military might of New Delhi and Beijing.

Landlocked by both, Bhutan has long navigated carefully between India – its largest development and trading partner, which until 2007 effectively controlled its foreign policy – and China, an economic and military giant with whom it has no formal diplomatic ties.

Bhutan’s place in their dispute was thrown into the spotlight in 2017, when the kingdom accused the Chinese army of building a road “inside Bhutanese territory” in the Doklam area, near a strategic and disputed junction between all three countries along Bhutan’s west.

Then, Indian troops moved into the area to block China – sparking a tense, 73-day standoff that threatened to pitch the rivals into conflict.

Though not part of India’s territorial claims, Doklam is close to the so-called “chicken’s neck,” or Siliguri Corridor, a vital artery between New Delhi and its far northeastern states. China claims Doklam has been its territory “since ancient times.”

Ultimately diffused, the incident was one more reminder for Beijing of the volatility of the unresolved border.

India and China reached an agreement on military disengagement along a section of their disputed border earlier this month – in a step toward easing tensions there.

However, strengthening its position in that rivalry has been a driving force for Beijing, experts say, as it extends its foothold in lands traditionally claimed by Bhutan – and enlists its citizens to relocate there to press its counterclaim.

“Knowing India has a strong presence in Bhutan, China naturally becomes vulnerable in the bordering region,” said Rishi Gupta, assistant director at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New Delhi.

“This vulnerability compels China to enhance its influence in Bhutan and assert its territorial claims more aggressively, seeking to counterbalance India’s strategic partnerships in the area.”

One year prior to the 2017 standoff, Beijing was already starting a major bid to bolster its claims by building roads and villages in the Jakarlung valley – along another China-Bhutan frontier far to the northeast of Doklam.

The buildup follows what observers say were long-standing efforts by China to convince Bhutan’s leaders to cede their claims in the west around Doklam – in exchange for Beijing giving up its claims to the northern areas.

In 2016, China founded Jieluobu, its first official village in the Jakarlung valley. Two years later, Jieluobu was branded a model “border xiaokang village” – one of hundreds of such villages built or upgraded in recent years along China’s western and southern frontiers.

The “xiaokang” – or “moderate prosperity” – villages along China’s borders have been billed as part of Beijing’s scheme to eradicate poverty and improve living conditions in its far-flung frontiers.

But experts say these villages are also part of Xi’s vision to use civilian settlements to solidify control of China’s border, amid perceived threats of foreign encroachment and infiltration – and a growing obsession with security.

“Only when there are people can the border remain stable,” the leader is often quoted as saying by officials in frontier regions.

By 2022, more than 600 “border xiaokang villages” – including Jieluobu – had been completed in Tibet, boosting its border population by 10.5%, the regional government said in its annual work report.

“It is no doubt that the villages are aimed to strengthen China’s territorial claims and control of the border regions, especially the disputed areas,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

“Once the Chinese villagers are there, China has causes for stationing troops and performing administrative control. The strategy has a long history in China, tracing back as early as the Han dynasty,” she said.

No place anybody would choose

Chinese construction that began in the Jakurlung valley in 2016 has ramped up since last year relative to earlier periods, according to the research by SOAS’s Barnett, based on satellite imagery.

As of this summer, more than 2,000 residential units – estimated to have space for thousands of people – had been built in multiple settlements across both areas, according to the report.

That buildup has also been supported by an expanding network of roads, which geointelligence researcher Damien Symon says have progressed south from China into Bhutan over recent years.

“None of the roads connect into Bhutan, they start from the Chinese border and end in forest areas. There is no connectivity to existing Bhutanese roads or villages,” said Symon, of analysis collective The Intel Lab, who in a December 2023 report for London-based think tank Chatham House tracked new Chinese construction “across the contested border with Bhutan” in the north.

Road access is crucial for new settlements in the Jakarlung valley, which Chinese reports say used to be cut off from the outside world by heavy snow for half the year.

“These are not places anybody would normally choose to relocate to, because they are either extremely high or extremely exposed to the elements,” Barnett said.

To populate the cold, damp valley, officials in Tibet entice settlers from across the region with spacious new homes and generous subsidies.

In Jieluobu, the Tibetan herders moved into two-story houses with courtyards. Residents aged 16 and older are eligible for an annual subsidy of more than 20,000 yuan (about $2,800), state media reported.

Patriotic education is part of everyday life in Jieluobu. In 2021, the village held 150 study sessions on Xi’s speeches, party policies and history, Mandarin Chinese and border defense, state media reported. Since then, the village has also undergone a major expansion.

Meanwhile, in the southeastern part of the valley, Demalong has added 235 new homes since last year and aims to build a kindergarten and a clinic, according to government statements. It also has a military compound, the travel blogger’s video shows.

Since late September, a new wave of residents has moved into Demalong, Jieluobu, Semalong and Qujielong from as far as Nagqu, a city in northern Tibet some seven hours’ drive away, according to a local government notice and videos shared by relocatees on Chinese social media.

The new families, arriving in long columns of vans, coaches and trucks escorted by police cars, were greeted by red banners and traditional Tibetan dances, social media footage shows.

‘No intrusion’

Bhutan has repeatedly denied that Chinese construction has taken place in its territory.

Asked in March last year about reports of China building in the kingdom’s north, then-Prime Minister Lotay Tshering told Belgian outlet La Libre, “We are not making a big deal of it because it’s not in Bhutan.”

“We have said categorically that there is no intrusion as mentioned in the media,” he said. “This is an international border and we know exactly what belongs to us.”

In a separate interview with India’s The Hindu about six months later, the former prime minister, whose government was replaced in elections earlier this year, reiterated that “there are no real differences between China and Bhutan, but there is an un-demarcated border dating back to Tibet-Bhutan ties,” referring to the period before Tibet’s 1951 official annexation by Beijing.

As early as 2020, Bhutan’s ambassador to India said there was “no Chinese village inside Bhutan,” following Indian media reports about such development in the kingdom’s western borderlands.

That appears to be in sharp contrast to recent decades when Bhutan repeatedly protested what it claimed were incursions into its territory by Chinese soldiers and Tibetan herders. In 1997, Thimphu told Beijing that Tibetan herdsmen had been intruding into the Jakarlung valley and even constructed sheds there, according to Bhutan’s National Assembly records cited by Barnett.

In a 1998 pact, the two countries agreed to maintain the status quo in the border region as they continue talks to resolve the “boundary question.”

Observers say Bhutan’s rhetoric on this issue has become increasingly opaque in recent years, and some wonder whether the kingdom’s muted comments are because it’s already reached a tacit understanding with China to give up some territorial claims.

Others suggest Bhutan’s priority may be to keep relations stable so they can finally reach a deal – with the potential to ease the uncertainty of the countries’ power imbalance and bring the economic benefits of normalized ties.

“Most Bhutanese would love to see the borders demarcated and settled and a new chapter of friendly relations with China,” said Bhutanese scholar Karma Phuntsho.

But while Bhutan remains “keen to solve the border issues with China,” the remote border areas have little impact on Bhutanese peoples’ livelihoods, so, “the countries are taking time to reach the best mutually beneficial solutions,” he added.

Other observers take a more pointed view.

The Bhutanese “have realized that they have no way in which they can get back anything which the Chinese have occupied, and they lack the capacity … to police the border, let alone the military capacity to retrieve anything from the border,” said Manoj Joshi, a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

“So at one level, they have taken the position that they will try and resolve the border issue … pending that settlement, they don’t want anything to come up.”

Despite the negotiations over the decades, the kingdom has already shed land to China.

Bhutan’s official maps have lost a parcel of land to its northwest and the Menchuma valley and plateau in its northeast, according to Barnett. That northwest parcel, which includes Kula Kangri mountain, is often cited as covering some 400 square kilometers (154 sq miles).

“These areas fall north to the traditional boundary between Bhutan and China,” its statement said.

In 2021, Bhutanese and Chinese officials agreed to a “road map” to expedite settling their border. They picked up formal talks last October for the first time since the Doklam standoff, with Bhutan’s foreign minister making a rare visit to Beijing.

There, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi assured counterpart Tandi Dorji that Beijing was ready to “fix and develop China-Bhutan friendly relations in legal form.”

Regardless of how each side defines the location of these developments, they appear to be part of a long-term plan for China to strengthen its position and apply pressure along the yet un-demarcated border.

This year, a local government chief from a county in Tibet has visited the villages in the Jakarlung valley at least twice to inspect construction projects and check in with residents.

During a visit in April, the official reminded local cadres and residents of their mission.

“(We’re) lacking oxygen but not spirit, enduring hardship without fear, overcoming higher altitudes with an even higher sense of purpose,” he said, quoting a 2020 speech by Xi.