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Ukrainian officials say wife of Kyrylo Budanov has been hospitalised due to heavy metals poisoning.

The wife of Ukraine’s military spy chief has been poisoned with heavy metals and is undergoing treatment, a Ukrainian official says.

A spokesperson for the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, or GUR, said Marianna Budanova, wife of Kyrylo Budanov, was receiving treatment in hospital.

“Yes, I can confirm the information. Unfortunately, it is true,” GUR spokesperson Andriy Yusov told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday without clarifying when the poisoning occurred or who was responsible.

Budanov has become a celebrated figure in Ukraine for his role in planning clandestine operations against Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Yusov said this year that Budanov had survived 10 assassination attempts by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB.

While it is not immediately clear who was behind the suspected poisoning of his wife, the BBC’s Ukrainian service cited Yusov as saying that other GUR officials have experienced milder poisoning symptoms.

The suspected poisoning was first reported by Ukrainian media. There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities.

Russian media figures have speculated that the poisoning could be a result of infighting within Ukraine.

Russia has previously been accused of poisoning dissidents, including politician Alexey Navalny and two Russian exiles who attended a summit in Berlin organised by a critic of Russia.

Moscow has also blamed Ukraine for suspected involvement in the killings of a pro-war Russian blogger and a pro-war journalist on Russian soil, something Ukraine denies.

A critically endangered species welcomed the birth of a Sumatran rhino. With only a few dozen of these rhinos in the world, the newborn male calf is a sign of the success for the Indonesian government’s conservation efforts.

A legend of monks with cold heads, an angel holding a golden frying pan and a fictional Sint Pannekoek. Yes, today is Dutch pancake day!

While much of the world cooks their favourite sweet (and savoury, I guess) pancakes on Shrove Tuesday in the early months of the year, people in Rotterdam have a different tradition.

Every year, on 29 November, a number of Netherlands residents put pancakes on their heads in a quirky celebration that has gained traction.

Once the edible hat is in place, followers of the tradition say: “We wish you a happy and blessed Saint Pancake (Sint Pannekoek)!”

So, how did we get there?

The celebration was invented in 1986 in a cartoon by Dutch cartoonist Jan Kruis, in which a father comes home in the evening to find his family wearing pancakes on their heads.

Three decades later, Mr Kruis expanded the idea with The Gospel of Saint Pannekoek.

In this piece, he tells the tale of 12th-century monks in a monastery celebrating a young monk’s birthday and eating pancakes – but there is only enough for one each.

When the old abbott becomes cold, the young monk places his pancake upon the elder’s head.

At this, an angel descends from heaven holding a golden frying pan and flips a pancake onto the young monk’s head.

“The Lord has done us a miracle! We have a saint in our midst!” the others cry, and put their own pancakes on their heads.

Read more:
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To learn more about Sint Pannekoek, Sky News spoke to Dr Henriette Louwerse, a senior lecturer in Dutch at the University of Sheffield.

“It is totally made up of course, but apparently it has gained some traction,” she told us.

“I like the implicit criticism of ‘the holiness of traditions’. The tendency to suggest that if traditions change, a profound identity is somehow infringed.”

Thai nationals were the single largest group of foreign nationals held by Hamas in Gaza and the highest number killed in Israel – the fact that 17 were quickly freed is considered a diplomatic achievement.

Behind the scenes, Thailand officials have been quietly working away at trying to get their citizens freed, attending meetings in Qatar and Iran.

At the centre of the Thai negotiating team is Lerpong Sayed, a Thai Muslim who, in an exclusive broadcast interview, told Sky News Hamas was justified in taking hostages.

Dr Sayed in recent weeks has split his time between his home country and Iran, where he spoke to Hamas five times.

“We went there to negotiate as normal people, not politicians. Hamas saw this. They saw us as Thai Muslims,” he told me in an interview that provides a window into his high-level talks.

“They promised that if there was a ceasefire Thai people would be released in the first group.

“Now we can obviously see Thais are among the first citizens freed compared to 20 other nationalities.”

Dr Sayed is part of a small team of three people working on behalf of the Thai House Speaker, Wan Muhammad Noor Matha, and the Shia Muslim leader in Thailand, Syed Sulaiman Husaini.

Thailand’s population of 70 million people is predominantly Buddhist and has largely peacefully co-existed with its sizeable Muslim minority.

On Tuesday, the Thai foreign minister went to Israel to meet with the hostages who were freed last week – the first group of captives released by Hamas as part of a truce deal with Israel.

The hostages are due to return to Thailand on Thursday.

Most went to Israel to work as farm labourers. On 7 October, when Hamas launched its attack, many were working in farms on the border. Before the war, 30,000 Thai labourers worked in Israel, predominantly in the agricultural sector.

Dr Sayed says the Thai government’s talks with the Qataris partly helped secure the release of Thais, but he firmly believes it was Thailand’s historic relationship with Iran that proved critical.

Read more:
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Tensions run high in West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp

“I’d like to thank Iran – both the government and the people who have been supportive in negotiating with Hamas.”

Other analysts have suggested an agreement mediated by Qatar and Egypt was the pivotal factor in securing the release of hostages.

Iran has said it facilitated the release, while Hamas said it was due to the efforts of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

For his part, Dr Sayed is confident that the Thai hostages have been treated well.

He says he knows they’ve told their families “they were well taken care of, well looked after, given shelter, clothes, food and water and given mental support”.

The negotiator insists there were no conditions from Hamas on what the hostages could or couldn’t say, and dismisses the idea that the group, seen waving at hostages in increasingly highly produced videos, are using the hostage releases as a spectacle.

Controversially, he also says Hamas was justified in taking hostages.

It was, he argues, “to help the Palestinians”, citing the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons and decades of what he sees as Israeli occupation and mistreatment.

From what he has seen and heard from Hamas, he believes the rest of the Thais being held in Gaza will be released. According to the Thai government, there are 15 still being held in Gaza.

But he said Hamas had given him an ominous warning for the Thai people and the Thai authorities: “The border area is disputed land and it’s war time and Hamas will consider anyone who works there is working for the outlaws.”

They will be very alarming words for the many Thais who are now looking to return, and are financially dependent on the considerable extra money they make in Israel.

A convicted killer signed an extraordinary $50,000 contract with his victim’s family to reveal what happened to her body.

Nizamodeen Hosein had kept the secret of Muriel McKay’s fate for more than 50 years, long after his release from prison, until her family made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

But after signing an agreement that would have rescued him from a life of poverty, he turned down the money (the equivalent of £43,000) and told the family how and where Muriel died.

At his squalid, remote home in Trinidad he explained to their lawyer: “I don’t want the money. Money wasn’t my objective, it was peace of mind.

“Talking about it now breaks my heart. I was young, 22, I didn’t feel the pain like I’m feeling now.”

Hosein, aged 75 and in poor health, has offered to return to the UK, from where he was deported at the end of his life sentence in 1990, to show Mrs McKay’s daughter Dianne and her grandson Mark Dyer the site of Muriel’s remains.

He claims she died from a heart attack at a Hertfordshire farm owned by his brother Arthur a few days after they kidnapped and held her for a £1m ransom at Christmas in 1969.

Mr Dyer, a businessman who drew up the contract with lawyers, said: “It may seem odd to many people that we should pay Nizam Hosein for the information, but our offer unlocked everything after many years of his silence and our sadness and frustration.

“It seemed our last chance of ever finding out what happened to my grandmother.

“Nizam could certainly have made good use of the cash because he is living in a hut with rotting floorboards, no proper sanitation and poisonous snails climbing the walls.

“He seems to have rejected the money because he wants closure. He’s getting old and he’s frail and it was perhaps his chance to atone for what he did.

“Our lawyer gave him the first $500 and he just pushed it away. For me, that gave him legitimacy.”

Read more:
Deported killer offers to return to UK to show victim’s family where body is buried
Family of murdered Muriel McKay urge police to launch new search

Muriel was aged 55 and the wife of newspaper executive Alick McKay, deputy to press baron Rupert Murdoch – who had just bought the Sun and News of the World.

The bungling brothers mistook Muriel for Murdoch’s first wife Anna after following the wrong car, Murdoch’s Rolls Royce, to the McKay home in Wimbledon, South London.

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After days of playing cat and mouse with the police – and a bodged attempt to pick up a suitcase of ransom money – the kidnappers were caught and arrested at the farm.

However, there was no sign of Muriel and they refused to say what had happened to her.

They were jailed for life after one of the first murder convictions without the discovery of the victim’s body. Arthur Hosein died in prison in 2009.

Last year, Scotland Yard searched part of the farmland near the village of Stocking Pelham after talking to Hosein on a video link, but he later insisted they had dug in the wrong place.

Some of the farm buildings, fencing and gates have been changed in the intervening years since the murder, which gripped the public and made worldwide headlines at the time.

Detectives have sent Hosein a list of more than 80 questions in a bid to check his story and narrow down the true burial site.

They are in contact with the McKays and considering applying for a warrant for a new search at the farm.

The family has launched a petition calling on the Home Office to lift Hosein’s deportation order temporarily so he can revisit the farm.

He said: “If I go back to the farm, I will remember where I put the body. I am sure I can go to the spot directly.”