AUSTRALIA
Minister ‘liked’ ‘sneaky nuts’
A politician says he has learned a valuable lesson in social networking after he “liked” a Facebook photo without realizing that it showed a teenage prankster exposing himself. Western Australia Minister for Education Peter Collier said he clicked the “like” button under what he thought was an innocent photo of the then-16-year-old in late 2011. Collier apologized on Thursday and said he had no idea that the teen, who was otherwise fully clothed and posing alongside an older man, was playing a prank commonly known as “sneaky nuts.” The stunt was popularized by comedian Chris Lilley’s TV show Angry Boys, in which a character revels in ruining group photos by secretly exposing himself. Last year, administrators at a Catholic school in Canada scrambled to place stickers over a photo printed in all 1,300 class yearbooks of a student subtly exposing his genitals.
NORWAY
Couple raped their sons
A court on Thursday sentenced a couple to 17 years in prison for violence, rape and incestuous relations with their three sons, calling it the country’s worst sexual abuse case. A 39-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man had been accused of physical and sexual violence over two years, from a very young age, against the two boys born of their union and the third boy from a previous relationship by the mother. The boys, now aged six, seven and 17, live with separate foster families. The court in Oevre Romerike in southeast Norway based its guilty verdict on testimonies from the children given in about 20 hours of videos. The boys said they were denied food, beaten and locked up nude in the basement, raped and made to abuse each other.
GREECE
Russian boy stabbed
A young entertainer at an island hotel was charged on Thursday with attempted murder and theft for allegedly stabbing a Russian guest’s child 20 times after the 12-year-old confronted him over a theft. The savage attack at a popular resort on Crete drew broad condemnation in the tourism-reliant country, and hoteliers said they would cover the expenses of the boy’s family in Greece for as long as his treatment lasts. The Dutch suspect, who is 20, was formally accused by a prosecutor in the Cretan city of Iraklio and was jailed pending a court appearance next week. Police allege that the suspect on Tuesday stole the child’s laptop computer and cellphone. They say that when the boy saw him with the gadgets, the Dutchman allegedly led him to a parking area, repeatedly stabbed him and left him for dead.
RUSSIA
Babies’ corpses frozen
Police said on Thursday that they have detained a woman suspected of killing her newborn twins and hiding their bodies for five years in the walk-in freezer of a food store where she worked. Police in the Sverdlovsk region said they had detained a 30-year-old woman after finding the bodies of two babies in the industrial freezer of the central grocery store in the town of Verkhnyaya Pyshma, about 1,600km from Moscow. Investigators said the baby boys were apparently born alive, but died from freezing. The woman told investigators that the babies were born in 2008, but as she did not want them she placed them outside on her apartment balcony for a day and a night to kill them. She moved the babies’ bodies to the store’s freezer several weeks later, investigators said. The bodies were discovered on Tuesday by shop staff. The woman no longer worked at the store.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was