I was going to guess that there is a small benefit.  But really it's a guess. I would think it would count as a link.

Interesting question.  My gut instinct is that there is no SEO drawback to what is happening here.  There is nothing in the quality guidelines that I'm aware of that says you can't hotlink images from another site.  Now, if the content was duplicated then that's another issue.

Tom has given you good advice.  I'll put in my 2 cents' worth as well.

There are 3 main reasons for a site to fail at reconsideration:

1. Not enough links were assessed by the site owner to be unnatural.

2. Not enough effort was put into removing links and documenting that to Google.

3. Improper use of the disavow tool.

In most cases #1 is the main cause.  Almost every time I do a reconsideration request my client is surprised at what kind of links are considered unnatural.  From what I have seen, Google is usually pretty good at figuring out whether you have been manually trying to manipulate the SERPS or whether links are just spam bot type of links.

Here are a few things to consider:

Are you being COMPLETELY honest with yourself about the spammy links you are seeing?  How did Russian and porn sites end up linking to you?  Most sites don't just get those by accident.  Sometimes this can happen when sites use linkbuilding companies that use automated methods to build links.  Even still, do all you can to address those links, and then for the ones that you can't get removed, document your efforts, show Google and then disavow them.

Even if these are foreign language sites, many of them will have whois emails that you can contact.

Are you ABSOLUTELY sure that your good links are truly natural?  Just because they are from news sources is not a good enough reason.  Have you read all the interflora stuff recently?  They had a pile of links from advertorials (amongst other things) that now need to be cleaned up.