Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
With Griner in prison, Russia raises prospect of prisoner swap again
One day after lawyers confirmed that U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner had been transferred to a penal colony outside Moscow, Russia on Friday reiterated its openness to a prisoner exchange with the United States involving notorious convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.
The fate of Griner, who was arrested on drug charges in a Moscow airport days before Russia invaded Ukraine, has been intertwined with a confrontational tug of war between Moscow and Washington. U.S. officials have accused Russia of using Griner and other Americans in Russian custody as bargaining chips.
The Biden administration has been under pressure from Griner’s wife and supporters to work more aggressively to secure her release.
In July, the administration proposed a prisoner swap that involved trading Bout for Griner, but Russian officials said it was premature to discuss a deal until the legal process was completed. Griner’s transfer to a penal colony marked that milestone.
On Friday, Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, told journalists that Moscow and Washington were “working professionally along the specifically designated channel” and that he hoped the prospect of a prisoner exchange involving Bout “not just remains but also strengthens.”
Bout is serving a 25-year sentence in a U.S. prison for conspiring to sell weapons to people who said they planned to kill Americans. Since his arrest in 2008, Russia has repeatedly made efforts to secure his release.
The harshness of Griner’s sentence — nine years in prison after she pleaded guilty to a drug charge related to hash oil found in her luggage — led the U.S. government and Griner’s supporters to decry the case as politically motivated. In recent years, Moscow has been accused of collecting foreign prisoners to be used in potential exchanges for Russian inmates abroad.
In addition to Griner’s case, the Biden administration has been working to secure the release of Paul Whelan, a former Marine sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in a high-security prison on espionage charges.
Ex-CEO sentenced: A federal judge on Friday sentenced disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes to more than 11 years in prison for duping investors in the failed startup that promised to revolutionize blood testing but instead made her a symbol of Silicon Valley’s culture of audacious self-promotion.
The sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila was shorter than the 15-year penalty requested by federal prosecutors but far tougher than the leniency her legal team sought for the mother of a year-old son with another child on the way.
Holmes, who was CEO throughout the company’s turbulent 15-year history, was convicted in January in the scheme, which revolved around the company’s claims to have developed a medical device that could detect a multitude of diseases and conditions from a few drops of blood. But the technology never worked.
Baltic pipeline probe: Investigators found traces of explosives at the Baltic Sea site where two natural gas pipelines were damaged in an act of “gross sabotage,” the prosecutor leading Sweden’s preliminary investigation said Friday.
Mats Ljungqvist of the Swedish Prosecution Authority said the investigators carefully documented the area where the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines ruptured in September, causing significant methane leaks. The parallel undersea pipelines run from Russia to Germany.
Investigators in Sweden, Denmark and Germany are looking into what happened. Danish officials confirmed in October that there was extensive damage to the pipelines caused by “powerful explosions.”
The governments of Denmark, Germany and Sweden have refrained from speculating over who may be behind the sabotage, saying only that there’s no sufficient proof yet to identify the perpetrator. But some Nordic and other European media outlets have pointed a finger of blame on Moscow, hosting military experts suggesting that Russia has all the resources to carry out such a precise attack requiring careful advance planning.
Puerto Rico shootout: Federal authorities filed drug trafficking charges Friday against three men allegedly involved in a deadly shootout with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents off the coast of Puerto Rico.
One agent was killed and two more were injured after men traveling on a boat headed toward Cabo Rojo on a key smuggling route exchanged fire with a routine patrol, according to an FBI statement Friday. The agency is leading the investigation into the shooting.
The three men, identified as Edgardo Luis Matos Santos, Osvaldo Hernandez Camacho and Nelson Rivera Suarez, were charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine while on board a covered vessel.
The injured agents are being treated in a nearby hospital. As of Thursday, CBP reported they were in stable condition.
Flu season fears: As Americans head into the holiday season, a rapidly intensifying flu season is straining hospitals already overburdened with patients sick from other respiratory infections.
More than half the states have high or very high levels of flu, unusual this early in the season, the government reported Friday. Those 27 states are mostly in the South and Southwest but include a number in the Northeast, Midwest and West.
This is happening when children’s hospitals already are dealing with a surge of illnesses from RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, a common cause of coldlike symptoms that can be serious for infants and the elderly. And COVID-19 is still contributing to more than 3,000 hospital admissions each day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Colo. House seat: Democrat Adam Frisch conceded Friday in his U.S. House race against Republican Lauren Boebert that is likely headed to a recount, but highlighted how his surprisingly strong showing revealed that voters in the sprawling Colorado district are tiring of Boebert’s brash style.
With nearly all votes counted, the incumbent Boebert led Frisch by about 0.17 percentage points, or 554 votes.
“America is tired of the circus, tired of the lack of respect for our institutions and democracy, and tired of the lack of civility in our discourse,” Frisch said.
The Democrat added that he hasn’t ruled out another bid for the seat in 2024.