AUSTRALIA
Man facing 145 sex charges
A man was charged yesterday with 145 sex offenses against at least 28 children, including rape, after allegedly using social media to groom them. Police claim the 47-year-old from Warwick, southwest of Brisbane, used several aliases online — including Jazz, Jazzman and David Bourne — to prey on children under the age of 16. His alleged crimes, including making and distributing child pornography, were committed between 2002 and this year, and involved victims in Australia. Police claim he asked the children for indecent photographs and then used them to extort and in some cases rape, film and photograph them. Detective Senior Constable Russell Joyce told the Warwick Daily News that a complaint was made in April last year, which sparked a lengthy investigation. “The reactions when we have found them have been everything from embarrassment to shock and in some respects relief,” he said. “We are still going and we believe there are more victims out there.”
JAPAN
Knife attack over smelly loo
A woman allegedly attacked her husband with a kitchen knife because of the terrible smell he had left in the toilet, police and reports said yesterday. Emi Mamiya, 29, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after apparently slashing her husband’s face with the knife, police said. Mamiya was reportedly incensed by the smell left behind after her 34-year-old partner emerged from the toilet. Her anger was further fueled when he tried to help their three-year-old son use the toilet “without washing his own hands first,” she said. “The toilet stinks so much that the child cannot even use it,” Jiji Press reported her as saying.
PHILIPPINES
Crewman kills two with knife
A crewman on a Chinese vessel has killed two of his colleagues with a knife, a coast guard official said on Sunday. One other crew member was wounded in the attack aboard the Liberian-flagged Quing May and has been taken to hospital. The suspect is believed to still be hiding aboard the massive transport ship, which is docked at the southern port city of Zamboanga, said regional coast guard chief Lieutenant Jimmy Verbo. The vessel was transporting iron ore from Australia to China when one crewman attacked the others with a knife on Saturday, Verbo said. Two ship’s officers were killed and an engineer was wounded.
LA REUNION
Teenager killed by shark
A shark attacked and killed a 13-year-old boy on Sunday as he surfed off the French Indian Ocean island, authorities said, the seventh such deadly attack since 2011. The shark tore off the right-hand side of the boy’s body off the west coast of the island. It was the 16th shark attack since 2011 and the seventh death. The boy, whose first name was given as Elio, was said to have been a talented surfer. A few hours after the attack, a tiger shark was captured and killed, but according to a medical examination of the boy’s body it was not the same shark.
FRANCE
Blind man bites dealer
A blind man told a court that it was he, not his guide dog, who bit a dope dealer selling him real grass rather than the stuff that gets you stoned. “I bit him. My dog didn’t do it. Guide dogs are not attack dogs,” Ouest France quoted the unnamed man as saying. The “lawn seller,” as the paper dubbed the dealer, was sentenced to four months in jail for hitting the blind man. He is to serve his jail sentence at home with an electronic bracelet.
GERMANY
Gunter Grass dies at 87
The nation’s most famous writer, Gunter Grass, best known for his 1959 novel The Tin Drum, but whose reputation was tarnished by an admission that he had served in Adolf Hitler’s Waffen SS, died yesterday aged 87, his publishers said. The Nobel laureate died in a hospital in Luebeck, the Steidl publishing house said on Twitter. Grass followed his debut and best-known novel with Cat and Mouse and Dog Years, all dealing with the rise of Nazism in his hometown of Danzig, now Gdansk, in Poland. He won a string of international awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999 and continued to publish into his 80s. Later in life, the novelist, poet, playwright and sculptor, often seen chomping on his pipe and sporting a walrus moustache, courted controversy with a provocative poem that painted Israel as the Middle East’s biggest threat to peace. Grass was born on Oct. 16, 1927. The Tin Drum was adapted into an Oscar-winning film by Volker Schloendorff.
UNITED STATES
Woman exits coma as mom
A Tennessee woman has awakened from a four-month-long coma that doctors had feared would be permanent and learned that she had given birth to a baby boy, her family said. Sharista Giles, 20, was four months pregnant when she was involved in a car crash near Nashville on Dec. 6 last year, according to information on a Facebook page managed by her relatives. Physicians told her family that she had only a 10 percent chance of coming out of the coma, it said. In late January, she gave birth to an 849g boy who the family calls “Baby L.” On Wednesday last week, Sharista opened her eyes for the first time since the accident, acknowledged her father, and saw a photograph of her son, who now weighs more than 2.7kg, the Facebook page said. “Sharista has her eyes open n blinking n squeezing our fingers when we ask her to. Praise the Lord! She was following her daddy’s voice n we showed her a picture of Baby L n she seen him!!!” the post read. Beverly Giles, Sharista’s aunt, told ABC News that the family remained positive, even though doctors had a grim prognosis for her recovery. “They already gave up hope. We never gave up. She’s fought this hard,” she said.
UNITED STATES
Dog rescued after plunge
A dog was recovering after falling down a steep cliff in Oregon, requiring a rescue by a team of volunteers who specialize in plucking pets out of danger, the Oregon Humane Society said. Ranger, a Great Dane and mastiff mix, received a broken leg, scrapes and other injuries in his 70m fall from a cliff along the Butte Creek Falls trailhead northeast of Salem, Oregon, officials said. After spotting the injured animal, his owner called the Sheriff’s Office, who routed the call to the Oregon Humane Society Technical Animal Rescue Team. Seven volunteers hoisted Ranger to safety and carried him out on a gurney. This was at least the seventh time in the past year the team has had to rappelled down a steep cliff to rescue a pet, society spokeswoman Barbara Baugnon said.
UNITED STATES
Toddler shoots one-year-old
Police in Cleveland, Ohio, said a three-year-old boy picked up a gun inside a home, shooting a one-year-old boy in the head and killing him. Police Chief Calvin Williams told reporters gathered outside the home after the shooting on Sunday afternoon that at least one adult was home when it happened. Cleveland.com said the boy’s mother could be heard screaming outside after learning her son had died.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number