US student found murdered in woodlands

A former US marine who vanished last week in Russia was murdered in woodlands by a man with multiple convictions for violent crime, police have said. Catherine Serou, 34, had been living in Bor, a small town 400km east of Moscow, since 2019. She was studying law near by at the university in Nizhny Novgorod. Serou went missing on Tuesday after hitching a lift. Police have charged a local man, Alexei Popov, 43, with her murder. He has previous convictions for rape, robbery and other sexually motivated violence, investigators said.