A New Zealand man was sentenced yesterday to 24 years in prison for committing the first murder on Norfolk Island since the tiny South Pacific outpost was settled by descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers 151 years ago.
In a Sydney court hearing televised live to the island's court house 1,900km away, former chef Glenn McNeill, 29, was sentenced to 24 years in prison, with a minimum of 18 years to be served behind bars, for the brutal murder of 28-year-old hotel manager Janelle Patton in 2002.
SHOCKED
The discovery of Patton's battered body shocked the island's tight-knit population of 1,600 and triggered a four-year police investigation that finally ended with McNeill's arrest on DNA evidence in New Zealand last year.
McNeill denied the murder but was convicted by a Norfolk Island Supreme Court jury in March.
Australian Federal Court judge Mark Weinberg, who was appointed the island's chief justice to hear the case, passed sentence yesterday.
He said McNeill could be released after 18 years if he agreed not to commit a criminal offense for another six years and paid a US$4,400 bond.
NO JAIL
With no jail on the island, an Australian territory, McNeill will serve his sentence in an Australian prison.
McNeill's lawyer, John Brown, described the sentence as "a disappointment," and foreshadowed appeals against both the conviction and severity of the punishment.
Norfolk Island was settled in 1856 by 194 descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers after Pitcairn Island, their first sanctuary, grew too crowded.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
RSS