Two US officials have confirmed to CBS News, the BBC’s US media partner, that Russia has sent a submarine and other navy vessels to escort the tanker.

The US Coast Guard tried to board it last month in the Caribbean when it was believed to be heading towards Venezuela. The Coast Guard had a warrant to seize the ship over its alleged breaking of sanctions.

The vessel has since dramatically changed course and its approach to Europe has coincided with the arrival of around 10 US military transport aircraft as well as helicopters.

Russia says it is “monitoring with concern” the situation around the ship.

“At present, our vessel is sailing in the international waters of the North Atlantic under the state flag of the Russian Federation and in full compliance with the norms of international maritime law,” its foreign ministry said.

“For reasons unclear to us, the Russian ship is being given increased and clearly disproportionate attention by the US and Nato military, despite its peaceful status,” it said.

Two US officials told CBS News earlier on Tuesday that American forces were planning to board the ship, and that Washington preferred to seize it rather than sink it.

BBC Verify has been looking at footage released by Russia Today, reportedly taken onboard an oil tanker, which shows a ship in the distance matching the profile of a US Coast Guard Legend-class cutter.

It has also been monitoring the latest reported location of the Marinera. According to AIS location data from ship-tracking platform Marine Traffic, its location as of Tuesday morning was in the North Atlantic Ocean, about 300km (186 miles) south of Iceland’s shoreline.

Previous AIS tracking data suggests it travelled north, past the western coast of the UK over the past two days.

The survivor of a gang rape in the northern Indian state of Haryana has been discharged from hospital a week after her horrific assault, a police official told the BBC.

The 26-year-old mother-of-two was taken to hospital in Faridabad city on the morning of 30 December with serious head and facial injuries and several fractures.

Her sister said she was out visiting a friend and was waiting for transport just after midnight when two men in an ambulance offered her a lift. They drove her to a deserted place where they raped her and then threw her out of the speeding vehicle.

A police spokesman said they had acted swiftly and arrested the two men and seized the vehicle.

The woman was discharged by the hospital on Monday night following treatment and surgeries.

Senior police official Mukesh Kumar told the BBC that they have approached the court to allow her to visit the prison for an “identification parade”.

Once the court order comes, she would be asked to pick out the two suspects from a crowd of men.

The police said the crime took place on the intervening night of 29th and 30th December.

“The incident took place between 12.30 and 02:00. One stood outside the van and kept an eye on the surroundings while the other raped the woman inside the van,” Yashpal Yadav, public relations officer of Faridabad police, said.

Police had questioned the suspects, who were later produced in court and sent to prison, he added.

A doctor at the hospital where the survivor was treated had said that the woman was brought in “at around 05:30 on 30 December… she had a lot of injuries”.

Shalini Chopra, a social worker and an opposition politician, who spoke to the survivor after she was discharged from the hospital told the BBC that the woman was “better but still in pain”.

The case has provoked anger and outrage in India and drawn comparisons with the horrific gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman on a bus in Delhi in December 2012.

That crime had made global headlines, led to huge protests in Delhi and several other cities and forced the government to introduce tough new anti-rape laws that included the death penalty for the most gruesome attacks.

Four men convicted of the gang-rape and murder were hanged in 2020. One of the rapists died in prison while a juvenile was freed after spending time in a reform centre.

But despite the heightened scrutiny of sexual crimes since then, tens of thousands of rapes and sexual assaults continue to be reported every year.

According to latest police records, 29,670 rapes and 2,796 attempted rapes were reported in 2023. In addition, police also recorded 849 cases of child rapes and 94 cases of attempted rapes of children.

[BBC]

South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung has called for a “new phase” in ties with China as he met its leader Xi Jinping in Beijing on Monday.

Regional security and lifting Beijing’s unofficial ban on Korean pop culture is high on Lee’s agenda, as he continues his four-day trip in China. He is set to meet China’s Premier Li Qiang and the chairman of parliament, Zhao Leji on Tuesday.

It marks the first visit by a South Korean leader since 2019. Bilateral ties had soured under Lee’s predecessor, impeached ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol, who was very critical of China.

Xi, meanwhile, has appeared keen to shore up ties with South Korea amid a diplomatic row between China and Japan.

Xi noted that the “international situation is becoming more turbulent and complex”.

The meeting followed the US’s capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro over the weekend.

Xi urged Lee to “firmly stand on the right side of history and make correct strategic choices”, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.

He also brought up the two countries’ shared history of resisting Japan militarism, saying that China and South Korea should now “work hand in hand to safeguard the outcomes of the victory of World War Two and uphold peace and stability in Northeast Asia”.

Xi’s eagerness to meet Lee signals the pressure he faces in finding a regional ally, Park Seung-chan, professor of China studies at Yongin University told the BBC.

“China may beat around the bush but its demand is clear: side with China and denounce Japan.”

During his four-day trip to China, Lee is expected to hold a memorial service in Shanghai for activists who fought for Korea’s independence from Japan.

But while South Korea is “still showing all its deference towards China”, it wants to “strengthen its relationships with both Japan and China”, Mr Park said.

Lee is reportedly planning to visit Japan later this month to meet Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

Security on the Korean Peninsula has also been part of the discussions. Lee has sought to engage North Korea diplomatically, but there has been little progress so far. He needs Chinese cooperation in pressuring the North’s Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons. Beijing is one of Pyongyang’s biggest supporters, economically and diplomatically.

Lee vowed on Monday to work with China on “viable alternatives for peace on the Korean Peninsula”.

On Sunday Seoul’s military said Pyongyang fired ballistic missiles off its east coast. And on Monday the North’s state news agency said the country test-fired hypersonic missiles to assess deterrence capabilities following recent developments, in an apparent reference to the US’s seizure of Maduro.

It remains unclear how much Lee will be able to push China on North Korea. In September, Xi had pledged to strengthen Beijing’s “traditional friendship” with Pyongyang.

And Seoul and Beijing are not natural allies.

US troops have been stationed in South Korea for decades in case of an attack from the North, and last year the two sides agreed to cooperate on building nuclear-powered submarines. The announcement drew warnings from China.

Lee has also sought to put a stop to China’s build-up of maritime structures in waters between the two countries. Beijing says the structures are fish-farming equipment, but they have sparked security concerns in Seoul.

The two leaders agreed on Monday to continue “constructive” dialogue on the matter, South Korea’s presidential spokesperson said.

Another item high on Lee’s agenda is China’s unofficial restrictions on South Korean music and dramas that have been in place for a decade. K-pop and K-dramas are either unavailable or difficult to access on Chinese media platforms.

While China has never acknowledged a ban on Korean artists, it’s believed to be a protest against South Korea’s decision to deploy a US anti-missile system in 2016, which China sees as a threat to its military operations in the region.

China is a massive market for Korean entertainment, which is already a huge global success.

At a Korea-China business forum on Sunday, Lee encouraged deeper bilateral collaboration in beauty products, food and cultural content including movies and music.

A South Korean presidential spokesperson said on Monday that the two leaders agreed to discuss the gradual expansion of cultural exchanges – without specifying concrete commitments on K-dramas or K-pop.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson similarly told reporters on Tuesday that both sides have agreed to “carry out orderly, healthy, and beneficial cultural exchanges”.

Speaking before Korean residents in Beijing on Sunday, Lee said his visit would “serve as a new starting point to fill in the gaps in Korea-China relations, restore them to normal and upgrade them to a new level”.