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■ AUSTRALIA

Euthanasia brings jail term

A 60-year-old woman was sentenced yesterday to spend her weekends in jail for nearly two years for killing her partner in a controversial euthanasia case. Shirley Justins had believed she was doing what 71-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer Graeme Wylie wanted but knew the former Qantas pilot lacked the capacity to decide whether to take his own life, Judge Roderick Howie said. He accused her of being “selfish and cruel” for denying Wylie’s daughters the chance to say goodbye in 2006 when she gave her partner of 18 years the drug Nembutal, a powerful barbiturate. Howie sentenced Justins, who was convicted of manslaughter, to at least 22 months of periodic detention, with a maximum term of 30 months.



■ FIJI

Conspiracy charges dropped

A court yesterday struck out charges against a businessman of plotting to kill military ruler Voreqe Bainimarama. New Zealander Ballu Khan and nine others were arrested last November and charged with conspiracy to kill Bainimarama. High Court judge Andrew Bruce put a permanent stay on the charges against Khan, citing the illegal treatment he received at the hands of the police and military after he was arrested. Khan was hospitalized for two months after being beaten by the police and military and the judge found his personal rights were breached when he was unlawfully detained after his arrest. The nine others charged in the case are still due to go on trial on charges of conspiring to kill Bainimarama and other leaders in the military regime.



■ HONG KONG

Couple’s battle kills one

An 81-year-old grandfather was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly murdering his 76-year-old wife in a fight, which left both of them with multiple injuries. The couple allegedly attacked each other in their home on Monday armed with a hammer and a meat knife when a dispute about their relationship became violent. Their 20-year-old granddaughter, who lives with them, called her father who arrived to find his mother with head injuries inflicted by a hammer and his father with knife wounds to his neck and head. A police spokesman said both husband and wife were taken to hospital and arrested. The woman later died of her injuries.



■ INDIA

Man dies for urinating

A man beat his neighbor to death for urinating against the wall of his house after a drinking binge, the Hindustan Times reported yesterday. Shri Pal, 35, died of his injuries after Durga Prasad erupted in fury and attacked him, the paper reported.



■ NETHERLANDS

Rwandan brought to court

Prosecutors sought a life sentence on Tuesday for a Rwandan ex-militiaman accused of murder and rape during the 1994 genocide of some 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in his homeland. The Hague district court will try Joseph Mpambara, 40, on five counts of war crimes. Mpambara stands accused of murdering seven occupants of an ambulance, women and children, according to prosecution documents. He is also charged with the killing and maiming of Tutsis seeking refuge at a church complex in Mugonero in western Rwanda. Other charges include: taking hostage and torturing a German doctor, his wife and their baby; the rape of four women and subsequent murder of three of them; and the abduction and murders of three children aged two, six and eight from one family.



■ RUSSIA

Baikalsk factory closes

After decades of campaigning, environmentalists are celebrating the closure of a notorious factory controlled by the billionaire Oleg Deripaska that pumped toxic waste into Lake Baikal. Since it was built more than four decades ago the Baikalsk paper and pulp mill has allegedly run off thousands of tonnes of dioxin and other harmful by-products into the world’s deepest lake. Generations of activists had seemed powerless to stop the pollution, but on Tuesday the mill announced it was halting production and laying off 1,400 workers.



■ UNITED KINGDOM

Holiday spending drops

Britons will spend about 7 percent less this year on Christmas gifts and festivities as the slowing economy saps confidence and increased bills force shoppers to cut back, research by Deloitte & Touche LLP shows. Consumers will spend an average of £655 (US$1,009) each on holiday gifts, socializing and food and drink, compared with £706 a year ago, Deloitte said in a report published yesterday.



■ RUSSIA

Presidential term reviewed

News agencies say the lower house of parliament is fast-tracking a bill that will extend the president’s term from four to six years. The legislation may pave the way for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to return to the presidency. ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti quoted lawmaker Vladimir Pligin as saying that the State Duma will waive the usual rules and consider the bill immediately in three readings tomorrow then vote on it. President Dmitry Medvedev submitted the bill to the Duma on Tuesday. A six-year term could mean 12 more years as president for Putin, who was barred from seeking a third straight term last spring. The Constitution does not prevent Putin from running again after a break.



■ RUSSIA

Submarine victims mourned

Komsomolsk-on-Amur, a port town in the far east, paid final homage yesterday to victims of an accident on the nuclear submarine Nerpa in the Sea of Japan that claimed 20 lives. The coffins were laid out open, in line with Orthodox tradition, surrounded by garlands of flowers. Nearly 3,000 people came to pay tribute to the dead. The accident happened on Saturday off Russian shores in the Sea of Japan, where the Akula-class submarine was being tested before it was to be leased to the Indian navy. Toxic freon gas was automatically pumped into the front section of the submarine after a fire alarm was triggered. Personnel in that section were starved of oxygen, officials said.



■ MEXICO

Gunmen kidnap 27 workers

Armed men kidnapped 27 farm workers on property owned by a suspected member of the Ciudad Juarez drug cartel, local state authorities said late on Tuesday. The men on Monday stormed the farm of La Guajira, in the municipality of Culiacan, officials in the north-western state of Sinaloa said. The property owner allegedly has family ties to Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a drug lord known as “The Viceroy” and a member of the Carrillo Fuentes clan that heads the powerful Ciudad Juarez drug cartel, the statement read.



■ BRAZIL

Widow killed by coffin

A woman was killed by the coffin carrying her late husband when the hearse they traveled in was hit by another vehicle, local media reported on Tuesday. Marciana Silva Barcelos, 67, was on the way to the cemetery to bury her husband, Josi Silveira Coimbra, 76, who died of a heart attack the night before at a dance, Folha de Sao Paulo daily reported. The hearse was hit from the rear by another car, causing the coffin to slam into the head of Barcelos, who was sitting in the front passenger seat. The accident occurred about 110km south of Porto Alegre in Rio Grande do Sul state.



■ UNITED STATES

Big purse stops bullet

The contents in an oversized purse saved Elizabeth Pittenger, a 22-year-old Middle Tennessee State University student, by stopping a bullet during an attempted robbery, police said. Pittenger was walking to her car on campus in Murfreesboro Thursday when a man confronted her and demanded her purse, cellphone and laptop, university police said. She fought the man off, but he fired a gunshot before fleeing. The bullet was found inside the purse, along with a calculator, umbrella and small case that had been punctured. Pittenger was not injured.



■ CANADA

Boyden wins Giller Prize

Joseph Boyden, a New Orleans resident who was raised in Toronto, has won the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize for his book Through Black Spruce. “I’m am so deeply humbled to be counted among the writers here,” Boyden, 41, told a packed ballroom as he accepted the C$50,000 (US$41,000) award in Toronto on Tuesday. Boyden’s book is a portrait of contemporary Aboriginal life and family struggles that ensue after a beautiful young woman goes missing. Boyden, a Canadian with Irish, Scottish and Metis roots, writes exclusively about Canada and First Nations people.



■ BRAZIL

Defrocking didn’t stop priest

Brazil’s Roman Catholic Church says it won’t recognize more than 400 marriages performed over the past 20 years by a defrocked priest. The archdiocese of the city of Goiania says in a statement Osiel Luiz dos Santos was forbidden to perform priestly duties when he got married in 1988. But Tuesday’s statement says he kept on celebrating mass and administering the sacraments. Couples married by Santos must now seek a “legitimate priest” to renew their vows.



■ MEXICO

Killer tiger put down

A tiger that escaped from its zoo cage and killed its keeper was caught and put down on Tuesday after wandering free for more than 24 hours, officials said. Around 150 state security officials, as well as vets, tried to capture the cat after it escaped from its cage in Bio Parque Estrella outside Mexico City on Sunday. The tiger’s cage had been left unlocked. It broke out and killed its 26-year-old keeper.


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