CNN
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Russia sent hundreds of drones towards Ukraine on Wednesday, causing severe attacks in four important regions, and President Volody Mie Zelensky’s hometown to face “large” fire, officials said.

The attack, which includes 400 long-range drones and one missile, was the biggest this week, according to the number of Ukrainian Air Forces.

Multiple cities – the hometowns of Zelensky Kryvyi Rih, Kharkiv, Vinnytsia – and parts of the Odesa area suffered from the heaviest artillery fire. The Air Force said the drone’s 345 has been intercepted or invalidated.

Krivii Li, of central Ukraine, added that “the largest attack since the start of the war…” in the face of the city’s military junta, Oleksandr Bilkul, is involved in ballistic missiles and 28 drones. The onslaught caused several fires and left the city parts without electricity and water, he added.

Zelensky said Russia was targeting the city’s energy infrastructure, where 15 people were injured.

“Russia has not changed its strategy. To effectively counter this fear, we need to systematically strengthen our air defense systems, more interceptors, more decisions,” Zelensky said in a post in X.

Ihol Telekov, mayor of the city of Karkiv in the eastern part, said his city was hit 16 times in just 14 minutes during the assault.

At Vinnytsia, southwest of Kyiv, eight people were injured and two infrastructure facilities sparked a fire during the attack.

Zelensky said response efforts are still underway in some areas covered overnight.

Three deaths have been recorded in Ukraine, officials said.

Russia’s latest wave of attacks on Ukraine comes just days after policy moves from the US administration, making President Donald Trump more and more annoyed by Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Trump announced Monday that Ukraine will receive patriot missile systems via NATO as part of a new package of US weapons, signaling an economically punitive stance against Moscow, threatening “secondary tariffs” in other countries buying Russian oil.

Complementing Putin, Trump seemed angry that his overture to end the war was largely ignored in Moscow.

“My conversation with him is very enjoyable and the missiles go out at night,” Trump said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that the threat of Trump’s sanctions was “very serious.”

“The US President’s statement is very serious,” Peskov told journalists during daily conference calls, claiming that Trump had “personally” addressed President Putin in his announcement.

“We certainly need time to analyze what was said in Washington, and if Putin thinks it needs it, he will definitely comment on it,” continued Peskov.

“For now, I can certainly say that such decisions made in person, such as Washington, the NATO countries, and directly appear to be perceived by the Ukrainian side as signals of continuing conflict, rather than signals of peace,” the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, many European foreign ministers welcomed Trump’s announcement on Monday.

“To achieve peace, we need to support Ukraine and put pressure on Russia,” said EU foreign secretary Kaja Karas, who arrived at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels on Tuesday.

“We also hope that Americans will move on sanction packages or tariffs, so that if we do so, we will put pressure on Russia to really stop this war,” Karas added.

The stolen civilian plane temporarily closed airspace over Canada’s busiest Vancouver International Airport on Tuesday.

Cessna 172 took off from Victoria International Airport, where it was used for flight training and began to fly about 40 miles north to Vancouver and turn.

“There’s an aircraft that’s hijacked and is located near the airport,” the Tower Controller warned other planes in a recording on the website liveatc.net. “You have the ability to move at your discretion, just in case something begins to move towards you.”

People on the ground saw the plane immersed low, and air traffic controllers moved the other aircraft out of the way.

One of those planes was the Westjet Airlines Boeing 737. This was directed to abort the landing so that “Rogue 172” crossed about four miles in front of them.

“He was making a fairly radical turn at low altitude,” witness Paul Henney told CBC, partner at the CNN News investigation. “I’m amazing, is he in trouble?”

The stolen plane eventually landed safely at Vancouver International and was soon surrounded by police. The suspect, not identified by the authorities, was the only person inside and was arrested.

“A security incident involving a small civil aircraft in the airspace near YVR has prompted a temporary ground stop for the arrival of the aircraft,” the airport said in a statement. The plane was stopped arriving for 39 minutes, and nine planes were converted to other airports.

Police and the airport did not provide any motivation or other explanations as to why the plane was stolen.

CNN’s Paula Newton contributed to this report.

Melbourne
AP
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Brad Legion Murdoch, known as the “outback killer,” who was found guilty of killing British backpacker Peter Falconio, who disappeared in central Australia 24 years ago, said he died Wednesday. He was 67 years old.

Murdoch passed away Tuesday night at the Palliative Care Unit at Alice Springs Hospital, according to a statement from the Northern Territory Corrections Department. He was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer in 2019 and was recently transferred from Alice Springs Prison to hospital.

His death did not solve the mystery of Falconio’s body’s location. Territory police did not immediately respond to questions from the Associated Press whether Murdoch provided clues before his death.

In 2005, Murdoch was convicted by the Supreme Court of Darwin’s territory in the 27-year-old murder of Falconio, 28, from Huddersfield, Yorkshire, at the age of 27, who attempted to lure Falconio’s girlfriend Jo Ann Leeds in 2001.

The crime attracted global attention and was one of the inspirations for the 2005 Australian horror film Wolf Creek, about a serial killer who caught a backpacker and left a witness who became a suspect.

Leeds, who wrote about her ordeal in her 2006 memoir, No Tunding Back, accused police of treating her as a suspect in the years before Murdoch was indicted.

The court’s orders feared it could prevent the release of the film in the Northern Territory during Murdoch’s trial and could affect the ju-decision. Murdoch, who was arrested in the case in 2003, was not charged with any other murders.

Maintain his innocence

Murdoch consistently maintained his innocence and did not help authorities search for Falconio’s body.

At the time of the murder, Murdoch was an interstate drug runner who used amphetamines to sleep on days of driving and marijuana.

On the night of July 14th, 2001, he tricked Falconio and Leeds into stopping the camper van on a dark, far-flung highway north of Alice Springs.

Leeds saw her boyfriend leave the van and inspected the exhaust pipe that was likely to spark. She heard the gun shot and testified that she had never met her boyfriend again.

Murdoch, 193cm tall (6 feet, 4 inches), tied his wrists with a cable tie before escaping in a desert scrub for hours. She testified that she was watching Murdoch looking for her with a flashlight and his dog.

Leeds later waved the truck and raised the alarm.

Last month, police doubled the reward for information that led to $500,000 ($330,000) in Falconio wreckage following news that Murdoch was in palliative care.

“The police hope that someone can provide some important information to assist in this search,” said police commander Mark Greave. He added that over the years he spent in prison, Murdoch had not revealed where his victim’s bodies were located.

Colleen Gwynne, a former police officer who led the investigation during Falconio’s loss of failure, said Murdoch may have panicked after Lees escaped and forgot what he had done with his body amidst the chaos.

“When that panic began… he might have disposed of his body somewhere.

In 2005, Murdoch was sentenced to life in prison for Falconio’s murder and ordered to serve at least 28 years ago, where parole could be considered. He was also sentenced to six years in prison to be served simultaneously to attack Leeds.

The earliest he could have applied for parole would have been in 2032, but it was unlikely that Murdoch was released without providing information about what he did with Falconio’s body. The territory passed the law in 2016 to prevent prisoners convicted of murder from being eligible for parole unless they provide police with the location of the victim’s body.

Murdoch was born in Geraldton, the west coast town of Geraldton, the third child of an auto mechanic and his wife, the hairdresser.

As a teenager, he was involved in a biker gang crime and was first sentenced to prison for being shot in 1995 by an indigenous group in Fitzroy Crossing, Western Australia. He was sentenced to 21 months, 15 months.

After judging Murdoch for Falconio’s murder, Judge Brian Martin said he doubted words that could express the trauma and fear that Reese had suffered.

“It must have been close to the worst nightmare you could imagine,” the judge said.

AP
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Thai police arrested the woman on Tuesday, but he seduced a string of Buddhist monks into sexual relations and then pressured them to make a massive payment to hide their intimacy.

Possible violations of monks’ single rule have rocked Buddhist institutions in Thailand in recent weeks and attracted the attention of the public. At least nine Abbotts and the senior monks involved in the scandal were stripped of the monkshood and kicked out, Thai police Central Investigation Bureau said.

In his mid-30s, Wilawan M-Sawat was arrested on charges of fear, money laundering and receiving stolen goods at his home in northern Tabri, north of Bangkok. Police say they traced the money transferred to her by a senior monk from a bank account belonging to his temple in northern Thailand.

Willawan has not made a statement since his arrest, and it was unclear whether she has a legal representative. Talked to local media before arresting her, she said she had admitted one relationship and gave the monk money.

Scandals involving the Ks surface several times a year in Thailand, but usually do not involve senior members of the clergy. The incident also highlights the large amount of money donated to temples controlled by Abbott.

Willawlang intentionally targeted the senior monks for financial gain, and police said they discovered that some monks had transferred large amounts of money after Willangang began a romantic relationship with them.

Wilawan’s bank account has received about 385 million baht ($11.9 million) over the past three years, but most of the money has been spent on online gambling websites, police said.

Jaroonkiat Pankaew, deputy committee member of the Central Bureau of Investigation, said the investigation was started after the abbot of a famous temple in Bangkok suddenly left the monk.

Investigators discovered that Abbott was allegedly threatened by Willawan about their romantic relationship. She told the monk that she was pregnant and asked him to pay him 7.2 million baht ($222,000) in financial support, Jarowkiat said at a press conference in Bangkok on Tuesday.

Police believed that “this woman is dangerous and we need to arrest her as soon as possible.”

Thai media reported that her mobile search revealed tens of thousands of photos and videos. We also reported many chat logs showing intimacy with some monks.

Thai monks are primarily members of the Teravada faction, who are single and require that they refrain from even touching women.

Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai ordered the authorities to consider and consider existing laws related to the transparency of the finances of monks and temples, particularly temples, to restore faith in Buddhism, government spokesman Jirayu Houngsub said on Tuesday.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has set up a Facebook page for people to report monks who are cheating, Jaroonkiat said.

“We will investigate monks across the country,” he said. “We believe the ripple effects of this study will lead to many changes.”