“CT scan reveals 1,000 yo mummy inside statue of Buddha”, “Britain to help train Ukrainian army to counter Russian threat”, “Saudi court gives death penalty to man who renounced his Muslim faith”, “15 Years Later, Questions Remain About Death Of The Man W

rt.com. “CT scan reveals 1,000 yo mummy inside statue of Buddha” - Dutch scientists have scanned a statue of Buddha, dating back to the 11th or 12th century, to reveal a mummy inside. They’ve also taken samples of the mummy’s insides and discovered scraps of paper with ancient Chinese characters on them. A human skeleton glows through the statue’s silhouette on the computed tomography scan, done in the Meander Medical Center in Amersfoort, the Netherlands.

reuters.com. “Britain to help train Ukrainian army to counter Russian threat” - Prime Minister David Cameron said on Tuesday Britain would send military personnel to Ukraine soon to help train its army, warning Moscow would move to destabilize other countries unless it was challenged.

reuters.com. “Saudi court gives death penalty to man who renounced his Muslim faith” - An Islamic court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to death for renouncing his Muslim faith, the English-language daily Saudi Gazette reported on Tuesday. The man, in his 20s, posted an online video ripping up a copy of Islam's holy book, the Koran, and hitting it with a shoe, the newspaper reported.

rferl.org. “15 Years Later, Questions Remain About Death Of The Man Who Made Putin” - Few municipal leaders are credited with changing the path of history. Anatoly Sobchak, the late reformist mayor of Russia's northern capital and political mentor to a young Vladimir Putin, is different. Sobchak rose to prominence as a charismatic voice for perestroika, a mayor who dumped his city's Soviet-era moniker of Leningrad and pushed for democratic reforms. But 15 years after his death, he's best remembered as the earliest champion of Putin, his onetime deputy, whom Sobchak once praised as "a man who really thinks about the state... not about his own interests and needs."