FRANCE
Passengers face whip-round
The crew of an Air France plane that was rerouted via Damascus on Wednesday asked passengers how much cash they could stump up after Syrian authorities refused a credit-card payment to refuel the aircraft, the French airline said on Thursday. Ultimately it found an alternative arrangement, it said. The plane that was headed for Beirut on Wednesday night was diverted due to civil unrest in the Lebanese capital and it sought to go to Amman, but it was forced to land in Syria due to a lack of fuel. Air France stopped its flights to Damascus in March as fighting in the country escalated, and relations between France and Syria collapsed after Paris demanded that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down. On landing, the airport authorities said they could not accept a credit-card payment and would only take cash, an Air France spokeswoman said. “As a precaution, and in anticipation, the crew asked how much money the passengers had in cash to pay to fill up with fuel,” the airline spokeswoman said. She said the airline was eventually able to pay the bill without taking money from passengers, but she declined to say how it had paid or how much the fuel stop cost.
FRANCE
Minister sent severed finger
A prison inmate has mailed part of his own severed finger to the justice minister hoping the desperate gesture would help his plea to be moved to another prison, officials said on Thursday. An envelope containing the chunk of finger was delivered on Thursday to the offices of Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, accompanied by a letter arguing for a transfer to a jail nearer to the inmate’s family, a police official said. A Justice Ministry spokesman confirmed a piece of finger had been delivered. “It’s a sad affair, there are many inmates asking for transfers,” spokesman Olivier Pedro-Jose said. French jails are plagued by overcrowding, with the prison population hitting a record 67,000 this year compared with about 50,000 a decade ago, according to Justice Ministry figures.
NORWAY
Car misses moose, hits bear
A driver who swerved his car on a rural road to avoid running into a moose hit a bear instead, authorities said on Thursday. The driver spotted the moose on a country road near Hanestad, 225km north of Oslo, at about midnight on Wednesday and tried to go around the animal, not realizing that a bear was also nearby. “The driver had lost a bit of speed as he tried to avoid the moose, before hitting the bear,” said Svein Erik Bjorke of the local wildlife authority, who was out in the forest searching for the wounded animal. “We are currently tracking the bear and we have found traces of blood indicating internal injuries,” he said. The driver escaped uninjured, while his car suffered some damage.
UNITED KINGDOM
Killer spills grave location
Notorious jailed killer Ian Brady, who murdered five children in the 1960s, may have revealed the grave site of one of his victims to a long-term visitor, police announced on Thursday. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said in a statement that Brady, also known as the Moors Murderer, may have revealed the burial site of 12-year-old Keith Bennett, the only one of his victims whose body is yet to be found. The force also announced that it was questioning a 49-year-old woman after she was arrested in Wales on suspicion of preventing the burial of a body without lawful exercise. “On 30 July 2012, GMP received information that led officers to believe that Ian Brady had recently given details of the location of Keith Bennett’s body to one of his long-term visitors,” the GMP statement said. Officers made the arrest after working closely with Ashworth hospital, the psychiatric institution in northwest England where Brady, 74, is being held. Between 1963 and 1965, Brady and his partner Myra Hindley lured five children and teenagers to their deaths, burying four of them on remote moorland near Manchester. Hindley died in prison in 2002, aged 60.
UNITED STATES
Serial killer jailed
A Philadelphia man with a history of mental illness has been convicted of strangling three women during sex and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty against 23-year-old Antonio Rodriguez. DNA evidence linked Rodriguez with the deaths, which gripped the city’s Kensington neighborhood in late 2010. The victims have been described as struggling with addiction and sometimes working as prostitutes. Their half-nude bodies were found in trash-strewn abandoned lots or homes. Rodriguez did not testify at the non-jury trial. A judge also convicted Rodriguez on Thursday of a string of other charges, including the rape and abuse of a corpse.
UNITED STATES
Killer granny pleads insanity
Lawyers for a 73-year-old German woman accused of drowning her five-year-old grandson in a bathtub of a Florida Panhandle beach house say she was legally insane in part from injuries brought on by a World War II bombing raid. Marianne Bordt is facing a possible death sentence if she is convicted of murder in the death of Camden Hiers in January 2010. Her lawyer contends she is not guilty by reason of insanity, due in part to wartime psychological damage. The judge has encouraged lawyers to resolve the case by reaching a plea agreement.
UNITED STATES
Iraqi war donkey dies
Smoke, the Iraqi donkey whose journey from a desert battleground to a peaceful retirement in the US captured the attention of the world, has died in Nebraska. Smoke became lethargic and died this week after frolicking with miniature horses at Miracle Hills Ranch and Stable north of Omaha. Smoke had served as an equine therapy animal to help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. Smoke’s Facebook page has friends from around the world. Smoke was taken in by marines after he showed up malnourished and wounded at Camp Taqaddum in Anbar Province in 2008. Regulations prohibited keeping the donkey, but marine Colonel John Folsom of Omaha, then commander at the camp, found a navy psychologist to designate Smoke as a therapy animal because he reduced stress among marines. Folsom, now retired, said Smoke may have died of colic. “He was a great little donkey,” Folsom said.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the