■ AUSTRALIA
Lesbians get life sentences
Two lesbian lovers, one whom drank blood as part of a vampire culture, were sentenced to life in prison yesterday for what a judge said was the "evil" killing of a girl they bludgeoned to death with a concrete block. Jessica Stasinowsky, 21, and Valerie Parashumti, 19, pleaded guilty to murdering 16-year-old Stacey Mitchell in Perth in 2006 because she was annoying. Judge Peter Blaxell said the murder was "sexually perverse" and "evil," after the court was told the two women became sexually aroused as they battered the girl and then kissed while standing over her body as she lay dying.
■ AUSTRALIA
Socialite jailed for four years
A Swedish-born socialite was jailed yesterday for nearly four years for plotting to murder two witnesses in her boyfriend's drug trial. Charlotte Lindstrom, 23, who was a regular in the social pages of Sydney's papers, had pleaded guilty and agreed to give evidence against others involved in the case. She was accused of offering A$200,000 dollars (US$185,000) to an undercover policeman to kill two men who were scheduled to give evidence against her boyfriend Steven Spaliviero.
■ CHINA
Taxi gang detained
Police have broken up a Shanghai-based taxi gang accused of ripping off foreigners, state media reported yesterday. Eight members have been detained for allegedly blackmailing 13 passengers and stealing 50,000 yuan (US$7,000) in cash or goods, the China Daily said. The drivers are suspected of charging extremely high prices and then robbing or intimidating passengers that refused to pay. Complaints were first made in 2006, including one where a passenger paid US$1,000 for a ride that should have cost around 50 yuan, the report said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Welsh can write to EU
The people of Wales will be able to pen letters to the EU in their ancient tongue from later this year when Welsh is added to the EU's linguistic lexicon. The British government has agreed to make Welsh a "co-official language" in EU institutions, a spokesman for the Welsh Assembly said, prompting critics to say the translation money could be better spent. Wales sees Spain as a model. Three regional languages, Catalan, Galician and Basque, have "co-official" status. This means citizens can write to and receive a reply from the EU's council of member states, the European Parliament and the European Commission in their own language.
■ FRANCE
Dying not allowed here
The mayor of Sarpourenx has issued a decree banning residents from dying in his territory unless they own a spot in the overcrowded cemetery and warned of "severe punishment" for offenders. Mayor Gerard Lalanne said he had taken the radical measure to protest against a legal ruling preventing him from enlarging the burial ground in the village of 260 people. "The first dead person to come along, I'll send him to the state's representative," he said. Lalane said he had been inspired by the mayor of the village of Cugnaux, which had also outlawed death as a protest last year and thus won the right to enlarge the village's cemetery.
■ FRANCE
Girl fined for letter to mom
A letter sent by a 13-year-old girl in Macon to her late mother, addressed to "Paradise Street, Heaven," was returned to the sender with a postage fine slapped on, the Journal de Saone-et-Loire newspaper said on Thursday. On the second anniversary of her mother's death, Anais wanted to send her a "message of love, like a bottle in the ocean," the report said. But two days after she sent it, marked with her mother's name but no stamp, it was returned as a mistaken address -- along with a 1.35 euro (US$2) fine for unpaid postage. The post office said there really was a town in the area called Ciel, or Heaven, but the street was unknown.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Bottled water banned
The government said on Thursday it would ban bottled water at meetings and other official business, just weeks after a minister said shunning tap water was morally questionable. Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell wrote "to the head of every government department suggesting they should replace bought-in bottled water with tap water for all meetings in future," a statement said. A number of departments, including the environment and business ministries, have already stopped using bottled water at meetings, but the new extended policy is expected to come into effect later this year, the statement said.
■ GERMANY
Monk caught with porn
A Benedictine monk has been caught with about 230 pornographic films in his room in a monastery in Bavaria, the Abendzeitung newspaper reported on Thursday. The discovery was made after the monk was caught trying to steal four gay pornography DVDs from a sex shop in Wuerzburg, the paper said. After an assistant caught him stealing the films, the 49-year-old fled, throwing his loot in a rubbish bin before being caught by police. The monk lives at the 900-year-old Maria Laach Abbey in Rhineland-Palatinate.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
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