Our daily trip around the world

🐋🇷🇺 A beluga whale previously suspected of spying for Russia resurfaced near Sweden on Sunday. The whale, nicknamed Hvladimir, was first sighted off the coast of Norway in 2019 wearing a harness fitted with a base for a small camera, with the words “Equipment St. Petersburg” printed on the strap. According to Norwegian officials, Hvladimir may have been trained by the Russian Navy for two main reasons: 1) he appears accustomed to humans, and 2) he’s spent the past four years swimming in waters that are geopolitically valuable for Moscow but hundreds of miles from the nearest beluga whale population.

🇹🇷 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was re-elected for an unprecedented third five-year term. Erdogan won 52.1% of the vote compared to 47.9% for opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in Sunday’s runoff election, which came after all four initial candidates failed to win a majority in nationwide elections held earlier this month. Erdoğan, who previously served as Turkey’s PM for 12 years before he was elected to his current role in 2014, is the first three-time president since the Turkish Republic was established in 1923.

🇯🇵 The Japanese government reached a deal to beam solar energy from space as early as 2025. The new public-private partnership will build on a first-of-its-kind breakthrough in 2015, in which Japan’s space agency successfully beamed 1.8 kilowatts of power – or enough to boil an electric kettle – 170 feet through the air to a small wireless receiver. Japan is one of several nations currently working on space-based solar power projects, along with the US, UK, China, and Russia. If successful, these projects would be able to capture and transmit far more energy than grounded alternatives due to the absence of clouds, atmosphere, and nighttime in space.