■ UNITED STATES
Couple faces filicide charges
A couple accused of killing their 13-year-old son by tying him to a tree for two nights for punishment appeared in a North Carolina courtroom on Monday to face charges of murder and felony child abuse. Brice McMillan, 41, and his wife Sandra McMillan, 36, of Macclesfield did not enter a plea. Arrest warrants said the child sustained “bruising to the wrist, cuts to entire body, missing flesh from buttocks, results from being tied to a tree for approximately 18 hours resulting in death.” An autopsy is pending.
■ UNITED STATES
Judge cuts dog's inheritance
Trouble, a white Maltese that inherited US$12 million from late hotel billionaire Leona Helmsley, will have to get by on a little less after a judge gave US$10 million of the bequest to charity and two Helmsley grandchildren. Judge Reena Roth ruled Helmsley was mentally incompetent when she made out her will, and decided to give US$4 million to charity and US$6 million to Craig and Meegan Panzirer, who were cut out of the will. Trouble lives at an undisclosed location in Florida, where she was taken in after receiving numerous death threats.
■ COSTA RICA
Cops detain 'banana buyers'
Two men caught with US$372,000 in cash near the Panama border are telling police they just wanted to buy bananas. Police say the pair appeared nervous when their car was stopped over the weekend. So officials searched the vehicle and found the cash in a briefcase. Police commander Freddy Hernandez said on Monday that the men told officials they were banana brokers. Police are holding them on possible money laundering charges.
■ BRAZIL
Soldiers held over killings
Eleven soldiers were arrested after allegedly turning over three shantytown residents to a drug gang that executed them and left their bodies in a garbage dump, police said on Monday. The killings touched off anti-military protests on Sunday and Monday in the Providencia shantytown, with residents burning city buses and throwing rocks at soldiers. The soldiers detained the three on Sunday on charges of disrespecting authority and later released them in a shantytown belonging to a rival gang, a police official said. The men’s bullet-ridden bodies were discovered at a garbage dump on Sunday.
RSS