Vox Sentences: Putin’s latest move to suppress his domestic opposition

1. The other Navalny

Oleg (left) and Alexei (right) Navalny attend the verdict announcement in their fraud trial in Moscow. (Dmitry Serebryakov/AFP/Getty Images)

• Prominent Russian dissident Alexei Navalny and his brother Oleg have been convicted of what are widely believed to be bogus embezzlement charges.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub]

• Both were sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison; Alexei's sentence has been suspended, but Oleg's begins immediately.

• Alexei is already serving a five-year suspended sentence from last year.

  [Reuters / Maria Tsvetkova]

• "To be clear: Putin has imprisoned an innocent postal worker purely as a means of threatening his brother."

  [Vox / Max Fisher]

• Alexei, who has been campaigning against corruption and electoral fraud by Putin's regime since 2007, may be the most potent domestic opponent Putin faces.

  [Vox / Amanda Taub]

• Despite the delay in his sentence, Alexei was arrested and detained after breaking house arrest to attend a protest against his brother's imprisonment.

  [The Guardian / Anna Mentsova and Luke Harding]

• About half of Russians have heard of Alexei Navalny, and among those who have opinions are mixed.

  [Levada Center]

• Pussy Riot has already released a protest song about the Navalny brothers.

  [Pussy Riot via The Guardian]

• Navalny is a favorite of Putin critics in the West, but has a history of endorsing nationalist causes, calling in 2008 for all Georgians to be expelled from Russia.

  [The Atlantic / Robert Coalson]

2. Scalise, day two

Scalise (left) and John Boehner. (Melina Mara / Washington Post / Getty)

• Criticism of Steve Scalise, the number three Republican in the House, continued a day after his office acknowledged a speech he gave to a white supremacist group in 2002.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• The speech was to a group, the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), founded by former Louisiana state rep and KKK grand wizard David Duke.

• Duke has denied having a relationship with Scalise, but said Scalise was close with Duke's adviser Kenny Knight.

  [Washington Post / Robert Costa]

• Duke: "Kenny would keep Scalise up to date on my issues."

• Knight elaborates: "Steve was someone who I exchanged ideas with on politics. We wouldn’t talk about race or the Jewish question."

  [Washington Post / Robert Costa]

• Knight confirmed to the Washington Post that the speech took place, but reversed himself to Bloomberg, saying Scalise spoke to the local civic association, not EURO.

  [Bloomberg / Michael Bender]

• House Speaker John Boehner — and Louisiana politicians like Gov. Bobby Jindal and Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond — are standing by Scalise.

  [John Boehner]

• Once, in an interview, Scalise attacked Duke for not being electable but didn't condemn his anti-Semitic, racist, and other bigoted views.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

3. The Indonesia AirAsia crash

A Singapore Air Force serviceman, during a search operation. (ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/Getty Images)

• Debris and human remains from Indonesia AirAsia flight QZ5801 have been found in the Java Sea, confirming the plane crashed.

  [Vox / Joseph Stromberg]

• The area around where the plane was flying was experiencing intense thunderstorms at the time, which was likely a factor in the crash.

  [Mashable / Andrew Freeman]

• Recovery of the "black box" containing data and recordings from the flight is expected within a day or two.

  [Washington Post / William Wan]

• Air travel in East Asia has been growing rapidly, with low-cost carriers expanding their fleets considerably, which could make safety problems more likely.

  [WSJ / Susan Carey, Andy Pasztor, and Gaurav Raghuvanshi]

• If you want more background, here's a guide to what we do and don't know so far.

  [Vox / Joseph Stromberg]

4. Misc.

• The share of 25-54 year olds working has only risen by one percentage point in the past two years.

  [Center for Equitable Growth / Brad DeLong]

• The UN General Assembly voted to investigate the death of former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, whose plane crashed (after, some allege, being shot down) in Zambia in 1961.

  [Washington Post / Ishaan Tharoor]

• In a recent experiment, participants reacted more positively to someone when he was described as African-American rather than black.

  [The Atlantic / Joe Pinsker]

• You're more likely to die on your birthday, especially if you're in your 20s and it falls on a weekend.

  [Washington Post / Jason Millman]

• Surveillance cameras that can detect suspicious behavior, face-recognition software, and other technologies that are changing the nature of policing.

  [The Atlantic / Leon Neyfakh]

• Gang crime in Los Angeles has fallen by nearly half since 2008.

  [Pacific Standard / Sam Quinones]

5. Verbatim

• "China has only recently entered the income range at which continued authoritarianism is surprising."

  [Washington Post / Daniel Treisman]

• "In states like North Carolina and Georgia, the black share of registered voters remains low, nearly 50 years later, among the voters who reached voting age — then 21 years old — before 1965."

  [NYT / Nate Cohn]

• "Her middle name also starts with an M, and so she is MMM, and when you put those together, it’s ‘Mmmmmmmm,’ and sounds like a bee buzzing in my head, and that’s what she’s like: a bee."

  [Bryan Cranston on frequent Breaking Bad director Michelle McLaren via NY Mag / Matt Zoller Seitz]

• "What we have here, in other words, is a Progressive Era 'O.P.P.' — a song that insists, as Irving Berlin put it a few years later in spiritually kindred number, 'everybody’s doin’ it now.'"

  [Slate / Jody Rosen]