WISCONSIN  –  A US man who faked his own death and fled the country, leaving behind his family, has sent investigators in his home state of Wisconsin a video to prove that he is safe. Ryan Borgwardt, 45, vanished on 12 August while on a solo fishing trip, the Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office said in a news conference last Thursday. Police initially suspected that he had drowned and searched the lake for 54 days, before finding digital evidence that led them to suspect he had fled to Eastern Europe.

The authorities said Mr Borgwardt owes them $40,000 (£32,000) for the cost of their search and could be charged with obstructing the investigation into his disappearance. Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll told a press conference on Thursday that the authorities had been in contact with Mr Borgwardt since earlier this month, after contacting a woman who speaks Russian. She helped connect him to police. Law enforcement did not detail who the woman was or her connection to Mr Borgwardt. “The great news is he’s still alive and well,” Mr Podoll said. “The bad news is that we don’t know where exactly Ryan is, and he has not decided to return home.” The 24-second video that Mr Borgwardt sent to the authorities is shot selfie-style, and shows him in an apartment with white walls. “Good evening, it’s Ryan Borgwardt,” he says. “Today is 11 November. It’s approximately 10 am by you guys. I’m in my apartment. “I am safe, secure, no problem. I hope this works.”

During their near-daily exchanges, Mr Borgwardt allegedly revealed to police how he orchestrated his getaway. Police say that after sinking his kayak and mobile phone in the lake, he paddled a small child-sized boat to shore where he had stashed an E-bike. He cycled overnight to Madison, Wisconsin, then boarded a bus to Detroit and got on a plane in Canada to an unknown location. “We are continuing to verify this information, trying to put the dots together,” Mr Podoll said. “But we feel that this was Ryan’s way that he could tell the entire country how he did it.” Mr Borgwardt is thought to have acted alone. Mr Podoll added that he has not had any contact with his family since he left.

He left behind three children and his wife. In the days before his departure, authorities found he had taken out a $375,000 (£297,875) life insurance policy, had transferred funds to a foreign bank account, photographed his new passport, and altered his email address. He had also been in contact online with a woman in Uzbekistan.

When asked about his possible motivation for faking his own death, Mr Podoll said “he just had personal matters going on and he thought this was the right thing to do”. He added that police have been emailing Mr Borgwardt, “pulling at his heartstrings” in an effort to coax him back home and “clean up the mess that he has created”. The sheriff became emotional during last Thursday’s press conference, saying that his children will be without their father during the holiday season. “Christmas is coming up,” he said. “And what better a gift to give those kids than to be there for Christmas.” (BBC)

Photo: Ryan Borgwardt. (BBC)

Suspected methanol poisoning from tainted drinks has reportedly killed six tourists in a Laos holiday town in the past fortnight. A British woman, two Australian women, a US man and two Danish nationals have died. The deaths remain under police investigation, but reports suggest they may have consumed drinks tainted with methanol, a deadly substance often found in bootleg alcohol. Methanol poisoning has long been a well-known issue across South East Asia, particularly in the poorer countries along the Mekong river.

But despite foreign governments posting warnings about alcohol consumption in these places, there is still little awareness among the backpacker party scene. Flavourless and colourless, methanol is hard to detect in drinks and victims typically don’t see symptoms of poisoning straight away. And in countries like Laos – one of the poorest and least developed in Asia – the problem arises from alcohol suppliers exploiting an environment where there is low law enforcement and almost no regulation in food and hospitality industries. (BBC)

Photo: Towns like Vang Vieng in Laos – where the fatal poisonings took place – are known stops on the backpacking trail through South East Asia. (Getty Images)

LEBANON – Nearly 230 health workers have been killed in Lebanon since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza following the October 7 attacks last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday. In total, the UN health agency said there had been 187 attacks on healthcare in Lebanon in the more than 13 months of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict. Between October 7, 2023 and November 18 this year, “we have 226 deaths and 199 injuries in total,” Abdinasir Abubakar, the WHO representative in Lebanon, said via video link from Beirut. He said “almost 70 per cent” of these had occurred since the tensions escalated into all-out war in September. Saying this was “an extremely worrying pattern,” he stressed that “depriving civilians of access to lifesaving care and targeting health providers is a breach of international humanitarian law”. Abubakar said “a hallmark of the conflict in Lebanon is how destructive it has been to health care”, highlighting that 47 per cent of these attacks “have proven fatal to at least one health worker or patient” — the highest percentage of any active conflict today.

By comparison, Abubakar said that only 13.3 per cent of attacks on healthcare globally had fatal outcomes during the same period, pointing to data from a range of conflict situations, including Ukraine, Sudan and the occupied Palestinian territory. He suggested the high percentage of fatal attacks on healthcare in Lebanon might be due to the fact that “more ambulances have been targeted”.  “And whenever the ambulance is targeted, actually, then you will have three, four or five paramedics … killed”. The conflict has dealt a harsh blow to overall healthcare in Lebanon, which was already reeling from a string of dire crises in recent years. The WHO warned that 15 of Lebanon’s 153 hospitals have now ceased to operate or are only partially functioning. (Jamaicaobserver)

Photo: Rescuers evacuate an injured person from a building heavily damaged by an Israeli airstrike in the neighbourhood of Shayyah in Beirut’s southern suburbs on November 22, 2024. (AFP)

RUSSIA – Russia is estimated to have supplied North Korea with more than a million barrels of oil since March this year, according to satellite imagery analysis from the Open Source Centre, a non-profit research group based in the UK. The oil is payment for the weapons and troops Pyongyang has sent Moscow to fuel its war in Ukraine, leading experts and UK Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, have told the BBC.

These transfers violate UN sanctions, which ban countries from selling oil to North Korea, except in small quantities, in an attempt to stifle its economy to prevent it from further developing nuclear weapons. The satellite images, shared exclusively with the BBC, show more than a dozen different North Korean oil tankers arriving at an oil terminal in Russia’s Far East a total of 43 times over the past eight months. Further pictures, taken of the ships at sea, appear to show the tankers arriving empty, and leaving almost full. North Korea is the only country in the world not allowed to buy oil on the open market. The number of barrels of refined petroleum it can receive is capped by the United Nations at 500,000 annually, well below the amount it needs. Russia’s foreign ministry did not respond to our request for comment. (BBC)

Photo: The latest of 43 journeys made by North Korean oil tankers to Russia. (BBC)