A 13-year-old girl cannot set out on a solo, round-the-world sailing voyage on Tuesday, a Dutch court ruled yesterday.
The civil youth court ordered child protection authorities to be the temporary guardian of Laura Dekker, delaying her hopes of becoming the youngest person to sail solo around the world.
The judges said Dekker could continue living with her father, but would become the responsibility of the child care officials for two months while an independent child psychologist assesses whether the teenager’s trip around the world could harm her emotional, social and physical development
The girl was not in court but her father, Dick Dekker, listened to the decision from the three judges. Neither he nor the family’s lawyer made any immediate comment.
Richard Bakker, spokesman for the Council for Child Protection, welcomed the ruling.
“We are satisfied with this decision,” he said, appealing to the father “to cooperate with the investigation and ensure Laura’s safety.”
Dick Dekker, an experienced sailor who raised his daughter on a yacht for the first four years of her life, had supported her ambition to begin a round-the-world voyage next month.
Social workers had argued Laura Dekker was too young to weigh up the dangers of the two-year-voyage, and psychologists said the isolation it involves would be damaging at an important time for a young girl’s development.
Presiding Judge M. Oostendorp said the trip was clearly risky for a girl Laura’s age.
“She would be confronted with difficult situations that will challenge her mentally and physically,” Oostendorp said.
But the court rejected the youth protection services’ request to suspend altogether her parent’s custodial rights.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS