ATHENS (AFP) - At least eleven people died when a boat carrying migrants and refugees was shipwrecked off a small island in southern Greece, authorities have said. Greece’s coastguard on Friday said it had rescued more than 90 people after their sailing boat hit rocks north of the remote island of Antikythera the previous day. Seven bodies were initially recovered, and search efforts were continuing, it said. The death toll was later revised upwards, to 11. Those rescued so far included 27 children, 11 women and 52 men, a coastguard official told the AFP news agency. “It is still not clear how many were on the boat before it sank,” the official said.

***
MOSCOW (AFP) - A Moscow court slapped Google with an unprecedented hefty fine of nearly $100 million on Friday. Moscow has piled fines on the world’s biggest internet platforms, accusing them of not moderating their content properly and interfering in the country’s affairs. But so far fines on Facebook parent company Meta, Twitter, and Google have stretched into the tens of millions of rubles, not billions. However on Friday a Moscow court fined Google a record 7.2 billion rubles, ($98 million, 86 million euros), the court’s press service said on Telegram, for repeatedly failing to delete illegal content.

***
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Bosnian officials and religious leaders have denounced suggestions voiced by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his spokesman that the integration of Bosnia into the European Union will be challenging because of its large Muslim population. Orban’s spokesman Zoltan Kovacs has tweeted that “the challenge with Bosnia is how to integrate a country with 2 million Muslims.”

***
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in granted a pardon to former President Park Geun-hye, who was in prison after being convicted of corruption, the justice ministry said on Friday, amid a tight presidential race. Park, 69, became South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be thrown out of office when the Constitutional Court upheld a parliament vote in 2017 to impeach her over a scandal that also landed the heads of two conglomerates, including Samsung, in jail.

***
Nairobi (AFP) – Ethiopia’s government said on Friday that its troops would not advance further into the war-torn region of Tigray but warned that the decision could be overturned if “territorial sovereignty” was threatened. The announcement comes days after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) rebel group declared a retreat to their Tigray stronghold, and signals a pause in fighting following a series of battlefield victories claimed by the government. Although unconfirmed, the TPLF pullout from the Amhara and Afar regions had raised hopes there would be talks to end a 13-month conflict that has killed thousands and left parts of the country on the brink of famine.

***
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — A massive fire swept through a crowded river ferry in Bangladesh early Friday, leaving at least 39 people dead and 70 injured, officials said. Many passengers leapt from the vessel into cold waters to escape the blaze. It took 15 fire engines two hours to control the fire and another eight to cool down the vessel, according to fire officer Kamal Uddin Bhuiyan, who led the rescue operation. Afterward, the blackened hull of the ferry sat anchored at the river’s edge. Many anxious relatives gathered on the banks, while divers continued to search the waters.