In Spain, 14 Spaniards flown to Madrid now face mandatory quarantine at a military hospital. Another two evacuation flights are scheduled for Monday afternoon.

A separate flight with 26 passengers and crew – including eight Dutch nationals – arrived in the Netherlands on Sunday.

Earlier on Monday, Ukraine said four of its citizens would remain on board the MV Hondius as part of the crew to ensure the ship’s transfer to the Netherlands. Upon arrival, the foreign ministry said, they would be expected to quarantine at a medical facility.

Another Ukrainian national was expected to leave the ship as part of the partial crew evacuation on a flight to the Netherlands.

At present, no signs of illness have been recorded among the Ukrainians, the ministry added.

In a video message released on Monday by Oceanwide Expeditions, which operates the MV Hondius, the captain said the crew’s thoughts were “with the ones that are now longer with us”.

Jan Dobrogowski also said that “the past few weeks have been extremely challenging to us all”, while praising the patience, discipline and kindness shown on board the vessel.

During her update, the Spanish health minister also said that one of the police officers involved in the ongoing repatriation operation had died of cardiac arrest.

An elderly Dutch man was the first passenger who died on board the MV Hondius on 11 April. He had earlier developed symptoms – but is considered a probable case as no tests have been carried out.

His wife – a 69-year-old woman – left the ship on the island of St Helena on 24 April and flew to South Africa. She died two days later in a clinic in Johannesburg.

A German woman died on board the cruise ship on 2 May.

The two women are both confirmed cases.

The MV Hondius departed Argentina’s southern city of Ushuaia on 1 April, and is currently docked at the port of Grandilla, southern Tenerife.

[BBC]

For a man who spent most of the past 20 years in exile, and the past eight months in jail, the figure of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra still looms large over Thailand.

His release from prison at the age of 76 after serving part of a one-year sentence for corruption and abuses of power during his terms as prime minister from 2001 to 2006, was headline news in Thailand.

Hundreds of supporters wearing red cheered as Thaksin emerged from Bangkok’s Klong Prem jail on Monday, wearing a white shirt and short cropped hair.

Thaksin told reporters soon after his release that he was in good health and was “relieved”.

He was greeted outside Bangkok’s Klong Prem prison by family members, including his daughter and protege, former prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra.

Thaksin’s party Pheu Thai’s insistence that from now on he will remain in the background could not stop feverish media speculation over what role he might still play in Thai politics.

This is hardly surprising.

From the moment he swept to power in January 2001 Thaksin, a brash, self-made billionaire, has sought to reshape his country, winning devoted supporters and bitter opponents in equal measure. His parties kept winning elections, even after he was deposed by a coup in September 2006, but fear of his vaunting ambition in the powerful royalist establishment led to multiple court rulings against his allies, years of violent street clashes, and another coup in 2014.

Yet he refused to step back. He continued to run his party from abroad, and, after an apparent “grand bargain”, his conservative opponents allowed him to come home in 2023,  to direct it once it was back in government again.

His continued popularity was evident outside the prison where his supporters had gathered.

One of them – Maysa Lombuarot – had driven 700km (435 miles) to see him released.

“Today I brought him 20kg of lychees. I know he likes them. Now that he’s free, I want him to eat something good,” she told the BBC, adding that she hoped he would continue his political career.

“I want him to help the country, to help the people who are suffering so much right now… only he can deliver what he promised,” she said.

And Thaksin does seem incapable of taking a back seat, whatever he may say about spending more time with his grandchildren.

This time, though, it really could be different.

Thaksin was jailed ;ast September, after the Supreme Court ruled that the six months he spent in a police hospital after his return to Thailand had been a ruse to avoid serving his sentence.

This verdict followed the collapse of the Pheu Thai-led coalition government less than two weeks earlier, when the Constitutional Court dismissed his daughter Paetongtarn as prime minister over a leaked phone conversation she had had with the Cambodian leader Hun Sen over how to handle the border dispute between the two countries. Once again, the powerful, conservative courts were determining his party’s fate, as they have so often in the recent past.

While Thaksin was behind bars, Pheu Thai had its worst-ever result in the February general election. It was pushed down to third place behind the reformist People’s Party, and eclipsedby the conservative Bhumjaithai party, which benefited from a surge of nationalist sentiment after the border war with Cambodia. Pheu Thai has been forced to accept being a junior coalition partner in the new government.

“Thaksin emerges from prison to a new political environment”, says political analyst Ken Lohatepanont.

“Pheu Thai has been sidelined as just a mid-sized party. You can never count Thaksin out, but the challenge that he and his Party face is of a different magnitude to those he has faced in the past. Pheu Thai will have to decide whether a public comeback for Thaksin will boost the party, or whether the party might be better served by placing the spotlight on their newer generation leaders.”