RUTHFULLY YOURS

It has long been an open secret that Russian agents fatally poisoned Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy turned Kremlin critic, at a London hotel in November 2006. On Thursday a formal British inquiry went further. “Taking full account of all the evidence and analysis available to me,” wrote retired High Court Judge Robert Owen, “I find that the FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by [then FSB Director Nikolai] Patrushev and President Putin.”

Litvinenko, a veteran of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), fled Russia for Britain in 2000, after going public with evidence that Russian officials abused the state security apparatus for corrupt purposes. This infuriated Vladimir Putin, then director of the FSB and soon to be the Kremlin’s paramount leader.

In exile Litvinenko published a book accusing the Russian leader of having staged terrorist bombings in Moscow in 1999 as a pretext to reignite the war in Chechnya. (See David Satter nearby.) Litvinenko also likely cooperated with British intelligence. In July 2006 Russian legislators enacted a law authorizing the government to target state enemies abroad. An unofficial Kremlin hit list began circulating in Russian circles. Litvinenko’s name was on it.

The 2016 political season is churning with anti-immigrant vitriol and wariness of the outside world. But one group of American Christians—missionaries—continues reaching out instead of walling themselves off. They honor Christ’s message in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

The selfless work of missionaries was poignantly illustrated by the terrorist murder on Jan. 15 of 45-year-old Michael Riddering, an orphanage director in West Africa.

Riddering and his wife, Amy, left Hollywood, Fla., in 2011 to minister to impoverished children and widows in the landlocked nation of Burkina Faso. Unicef estimates that in the country of 17 million people, almost one million are orphans. The Ridderings, who brought their young daughter with them to the town of Yako, adopted two Burkinabe children; the orphanage cared for about 400 more.

Riddering was visiting Ouagadougou, the capital about 70 miles from Yako, late last week. He was meeting with a Burkinabe pastor in the Cappuccino Café when al Qaeda terrorists attacked the restaurant and two nearby hotels. More than two-dozen people, including Riddering and six Canadians in the country on short-term missions, were killed.

DAVOS — Here in this luxe Swiss ski town, dozens of world leaders are taking advantage of one another’s presence at the massive, multi-day economic summit to get together and talk shop.

But the annual conference also draws some leaders who’d prefer not to. On Thursday morning, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were spotted one floor apart at the InterContinental hotel.
Mr. Zarif was eating breakfast in the hotel restaurant, just a floor above where Mr. Netanyahu and Vice President Joe Biden met. Mr. Zarif left the restaurant about 20 minutes before Messrs. Biden and Netanyahu’s meeting started. Mr. Biden’s national security adviser was also two tables away from Mr. Zarif.

Mr. Netanyahu has been a fierce and vocal opponent of the Iranian nuclear deal and U.S. engagement with Tehran. He’s warned that the accord will strengthen and embolden Iran’s leaders, who he has said will funnel money to Israel’s regional foes such as Hezbollah and Hamas as well as Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad and shiite militias.

North Korea said Friday it was holding a U.S. student for committing an unspecified “hostile act,” the latest in a series of detained American tourists and missionaries that Pyongyang has at times used to try to win diplomatic leverage with Washington.

Otto Frederick Warmbier, an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, was accused of being manipulated by the U.S. government, according to a brief report from the Korean Central News Agency. The report provided no details of Mr. Warmbier’s actions other than to allege that he entered the country “for the purpose of bringing down the foundation of its single-minded unity.”

Mr. Warmbier was detained in Pyongyang on Jan. 2, according to Troy Collins of Young Pioneer Tours, the tour company that took him to North Korea. Mr. Collins declined to provide further details but said Mr. Warmbier’s family had been informed of his detention.

A deal that sent $1.7 billion in U.S. funds to Iran, announced alongside the freeing of five Americans from Iranian jails, has emerged as a new flashpoint amid a claim in Tehran that the transaction amounted to a ransom payment.

The U.S. Treasury Department wired the money to Iran around the same time its theocratic government allowed three American prisoners to fly out of Tehran on Sunday aboard a Dassault Falcon jet owned by the Swiss air force.

The prisoner swap also involved freedom for two other Americans held in Iran as well as for seven Iranians charged or convicted by the U.S.

The announcements coincided with the implementation of the nuclear agreement with Iran, lifting international economic sanctions in exchange for Iran curtailing its nuclear program.

The $1.7 billion financial settlement ended a 35-year legal saga that centered on a purchase of U.S. arms by Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, that were never delivered because of the Iranian revolution in 1979.

The White House described the settlement as a victory for taxpayers, arguing that the U.S. was likely to lose in arbitration under way in The Hague, Netherlands, and could have been held liable for billions more if the process had dragged on.