TURKEY
Russian spy ship sinks
A Russian naval spy ship on Thursday sank in the Black Sea off Turkey’s coast after hitting a Togo-flagged vessel packed with livestock, but all of its 78 crew were rescued. The Russian military said the Liman — a former research ship refitted as an intelligence vessel — had a hole ripped out of its hull in the collision with the Youzarsif H. The collision, whose precise circumstances remain to be explained, took place in fog outside the northwestern entrance to the Bosphorus Strait. The Liman was struck at 11:53am with the ship sinking three hours later, Turkish and Russian sources said. Of 78 Russian personnel on board the ship, 63 were rescued by the coast guard and the other 15 by the Youzarsif H, the coast guard said.
UNITED STATES
Singaporean jailed
A Singaporean man was on Thursday sentenced to 40 months in prison for helping ship US-made radio frequency modules to Iran that were eventually found in improvised explosive devices in Iraq. Lim Yong Nam, 43, also known as Steven Lim, in December last year pleaded guilty in Washington to fraud charges related to sanctions violations by helping route 6,000 of the modules through Singapore to Iran. Lim and others he worked with had declared Singapore as the final destination for the electronics, but instead they were forwarded from the city-state in five lots to Iran, the Department of Justice said.
AUSTRALIA
Toddler walks after surgery
A toddler born with three legs was yesterday returning home to Bangladesh after a complex and rare surgery enabled her to walk and run, her doctor said. A team of surgeons spent several months mapping out a procedure to reconstruct her anatomy. “A twin had grown out of her pelvis, but the twin was only part of a twin... The problem is there’s no rulebook for this, because she’s a very unique individual, so you have to try and work out what was where,” Monash Children’s Hospital paediatric surgery head Chris Kimber told reporters.
ESTONIA
Police to carry teddy bears
Police will soon carry teddy bears in their patrol cars to comfort children caught up in accidents or distressing situations, the organizer of the charity Traumamommik (“Trauma Teddy”) told reporters. The plan is to see cuddly toys added to the equipment in the country’s 100 police patrol cars in time for Children’s Day, which is celebrated there on June 1. Additional bears are to be kept at police stations. “The teddy bears will hopefully help lift the spirits of these kids and be a support if the children need it,” said Kaur Vahtrik, the charity’s 25-year-old organizer.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened