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Russian President Vladimir Putin would respond in kind if the new US administration showed willingness to talk, a Kremlin spokesperson said. Russian police detain a man during a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Moscow. Photo: AFP However, the spokesperson also accused the US of meddling in mass protests supporting detained Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The Kremlin downplayed the scale of Saturday's demonstrations, which saw police detain more than 3000 people and use force to break up rallies across Russia. Prior to the protests, the US Embassy in Moscow issued a "Demonstration Alert", warning US citizens to avoid the protests and naming the venues in Russian cities where protesters planned to gather. "Of course, those publications are inappropriate," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Rossiya 1 TV on Sunday, according to Interfax news agency. "And of course, indirectly, they are absolute interference in our internal affairs. So, this is a direct support of the breach in the Russian Federation's law." The US embassy, in emailed comments, said such warnings were a "common and routine practice" of many countries' diplomatic missions. "US embassies and consulates around the world regularly issue safety and security messages to our citizens," it said. The United States on Saturday called on Russian authorities to release protesters and journalists detained at the demonstrations, and condemned what it called "harsh tactics" used by the police against them. In central Moscow, where Reuters' reporters estimated up to 40,000 people had gathered in one of the biggest unauthorised rallies for years, police were seen roughly detaining people and bundling them into nearby vans. The authorities said just around 4000 people had shown up, while the foreign ministry questioned Reuters' crowd estimate. "No, only a few people went out, many people voted for Putin," Peskov said, according to TASS news agency. Peskov said Russians supported constitutional reforms proposed by the president. Changes to the constitution will allow Putin to stay in power until 2036. Relations lowest in years Russian President Vladimir Putin is reported to be willing to talk to US President Joe Biden. Photo: AFP Navalny called on his supporters to protest after being arrested last weekend, as he returned to Russia from Germany for the first time since being poisoned with a nerve agent he said was slipped to him by state security agents in August. Even before the friction over Navalny, relations between Moscow and Washington have been at their lowest since the end of the Cold War, with the two sides also at odds over Russia's role in Ukraine and allegations of its meddling in US elections, which it denies, among other issues. Peskov struck a more conciliatory tone earlier yesterday, when he said Russia was ready to set up a dialogue with the new US administration of President Joe Biden. "Of course, we count on success in setting up a dialogue," he was quoted as saying on TV by Interfax news agency. "This will be the dialogue where, of course, differences will have to be stated to a greater extent, points of differences. But at the same time, a dialogue is a possibility to find some rational kernels, the little parts where our relations are getting closer," he said. "And if the current US administration is ready for such an approach, I have no doubts that our president will respond in kind." Putin was one of the last global leaders to congratulate Biden on his victory in the US presidential election after the 3 November vote. One of the burning issues to be resolved by the two nuclear powers is the arms control treaty, known as New START, which is due to expire on 5 February. Last week, the White House said Biden would seek a five-year extension to the deal, while the Kremlin requested concrete proposals from Washington. The US was joined by the European Union and Britain in condemning the security forces' handling of Saturday's protests, while the foreign ministers of Italy and France both expressed support yesterday for sanctions against Moscow. - Reuters

Portugal's centre-right President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has won a second term, in an election marked by strict rules as the country battles a crippling third wave of Covid-19. Portugal's President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has won a second term. Photo: AFP Polls by leading TV stations TVI, RTP and SIC gave 72-year-old Rebelo de Sousa, a former TV commentator known for his warm persona and habit of taking selfies with supporters, 56 to 62 percent of the vote, more than his 52 percent win in 2016. Left-wing candidate Ana Gomes and far-right lawmaker Andre Ventura were vying for a distant second, with polls giving Gomes 13 to 17 percent of the vote and Ventura, whose Chega party garnered just 1.3 percent of the vote in a 2019 parliamentary election, 9 to 14 percent. The Portugese president holds a largely ceremonial role, but can veto certain laws and decree states of emergency, a power Rebelo de Sousa deployed often during the pandemic, following the parliament's lead. The Portuguese voted masked, socially distanced and using their own pens, as councils took extensive measures to prevent contagion during the voting process. Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa in a socially distanced queue of voters at an election booth. Photo: AFP Almost two thirds of Portuguese thought the election should have been postponed because of the pandemic, a poll last week by research institute ISC/ISCTE showed. "Since the date of the elections wasn't changed, I decided to come early," said Cristina Queda, 58, who arrived at her polling station in Lisbon as soon as it opened at 8 am to "avoid groups and queues". The country of 10 million people is reporting the world's highest seven-day rolling average of new Covid-19 cases and deaths per capita, according to Oxford University data tracker www.ourworldindata.org. The number of Covid deaths broke records for the seventh day in a row yesterday at 275, with hospitalisations also at an all-time high and ambulances queuing for several hours at Lisbon hospitals. Pollsters predict record numbers of abstentions, in part because 1.1 million voters from abroad were added to the electoral register for the first time - but also because hundreds of thousands of voters are themselves in quarantine. Casting his vote at a Lisbon school, Prime Minister Antonio Costa said "everything was done for people to be able to exercise their democratic right to vote", despite the country being at a grave stage of the pandemic. - Reuters

Rioters looted stores, set fires and clashed with police in several Dutch cities, resulting in more than 240 arrests, police and Dutch media reported. Demonstrators sprayed by police water cannon at Amsterdam's Museumplein at the protest. Photo: AFP The unrest came on the second day of new, tougher coronavirus restrictions, including a night curfew, which had prompted demonstrations. Police used water cannon, dogs and mounted officers to disperse a protest in central Amsterdam on Sunday afternoon, witnesses said. Nearly 200 people, some of them throwing stones and fireworks, were detained in the city, police said. National broadcaster NOS said riot police had been deployed in at least 10 cities and towns after a curfew went into effect at 9pm (2000 GMT). Vehicles were set alight, police were pelted with stones and public property was destroyed, it reported. Military police said on Twitter that they were supporting local police in at least two cities in the south. Images on Dutch television showed bands of youths looting shops, throwing bicycles and setting fires in the southern city of Eindhoven. At least 55 people were arrested in Eindhoven, the city said in a statement. The demonstration in the city's Museum Square, which violated a ban on public gatherings, came the day after the government introduced a nightly curfew for the first time since World War II. Police cleared the square after people ignored instructions to leave and detained those who attacked them with stones and fireworks in nearby streets, the mayor's office said. Parliament voted narrowly last week to approve the curfew, swayed by assertions that a variant of Covid-19 first identified in Britain was about to cause a new surge in cases. New infections in the country have generally been declining for a month, and fell again on Sunday, to 4924 new cases. There have been 13,540 deaths in the Netherlands from Covid-19 and 944,000 infections. On Saturday night, police had arrested 25 people across the country and handed out 3600 fines for curfew violations. Schools and non-essential shops in the Netherlands have been shut since mid-December, following the closure of bars and restaurants two months earlier. - Reuters

A man who was missing in Australia for 18 days has been found after surviving on mushrooms and dam water, police say. Robert Weber is cared for after his ordeal. Photo: Queensland police Search efforts launched after Robert Weber, 58, went missing in the state of Queensland were called off last week. But police said he had been found near a dam on Sunday by a "property owner", who has been identified in Australian media as a local politician. Weber was "suffering exposure to the elements" but otherwise safe and well, police said. Before Sunday, he had last been seen leaving a hotel in the town of Kilkivan with his dog on 6 January. He ran into trouble when his car got stuck in dirt on a farm road. Police said Weber spent three days in the car before running out of water and setting off on foot. He then became lost but remained near a dam where he survived by "sleeping on the ground, drinking dam water and eating mushrooms". An extensive air and ground search was suspended after failing to find him, but local property owners and police were told to keep an eye out. Local MP Tony Perrett and his wife were reported to have found Weber on Sunday just 3km from where his car had been discovered, after searching their cattle farm. "He was sitting under a tree near a dam waving at us," Perrett told ABC. "We'd been past this dam on numerous occasions over the last week and when we saw him there it was just quite extraordinary," he added. Weber's dog has not been found. - BBC

Chinese rescuers have pulled 11 gold miners to safety - 14 days after they were trapped by an underground explosion. A trapped miner is lifted from a gold mine in Qixia City, east China's Shandong Province. Photo: AFP State broadcaster CCTV's footage showed the first miner to be rescued, a black blindfold across his eyes, being lifted out of a mine shaft in the morning. The miner was extremely weak, CCTV said on its Weibo site. Rescue workers wrapped the barely responsive man in a blanket before taking him to hospital by ambulance. Over the next few hours, 10 miners from a different section of the mine, who had been receiving food and supplies from rescue workers last week, were brought out in batches. One was injured but several of the others were shown walking, supported by rescue workers and wearing black cloth over their eyes, before leaving the site in ambulances. Twenty-two workers were trapped about 600 metres (2000ft) underground in the Hushan mine by the January 10 blast in Qixia, a major gold-producing region under the administration of Yantai in coastal Shandong province. One miner has died. Officials said on Thursday it could take another two weeks to clear "severe blockages" before they could drill shafts to reach the group of 10 who had been receiving supplies of food from the rescue team. State media said earlier however that the more than 600 rescuers on site were hoping to reach the men in the mine's fifth section on Sunday. The men were said to be in good physical condition and had been receiving normal food since Saturday, after several days of living off nutrient solutions, according to Xinhua. -Reuters