INDIA
Witchdoctor held in death
Police said on Wednesday they had arrested a witchdoctor and his family over the alleged sacrifice of a two-year-old boy in a tribal area. Police were alert after the boy went missing on Tuesday while playing on the street in the Durg district in Chhattisgarh state. “The witchdoctor, his wife and three children were arrested yesterday after the bloodied body of the child was recovered from their worship place along with the knife used for the crime,” district police chief Amit Kumar said. The witchdoctor had said bloodstains at his home were the result of him slaughtering a goat, Kumar said. However, when police checked the house, they found the body of the child covered with a cloth.
AUSTRALIA
Woman’s car runs over her
A Melbourne woman was rushed to hospital on Wednesday after being run over by her own car — twice. Paramedic Craig Brooks yesterday said the woman forgot to pull the hand brake before getting out of the car and that it rolled down her driveway and knocked her down, leaving her unable to move. The woman told paramedics “that the car ran over her lower abdomen and legs before crossing the street, hitting a fence on the other side of the road, bouncing back and running over her again.”
NEW ZEALAND
Tokelau teen trio rescued
Three teenage boys from the remote island of Tokelau have been rescued by a tuna ship near Fiji after 50 days adrift in the Pacific Ocean. The boys, aged 14 and 15, went missing in a small aluminum boat early last month and were presumed to have died after unsuccessful searches by the air force. Tai Fredricsen, the first mate of the San Nikunau told Radio New Zealand the trio were were found on Wednesday off the coast of Fiji, which is 1,420km from Tokelau. They were said to be dehydrated and sun-burned and would be taken to hospital when the ship reaches Fiji today.
DENMARK
TV station ‘self-censoring’
Culture Minister Per Stig Moeller accused a TV station of self-censorship on Wednesday after it delayed airing a comedy series about a bungling group of terrorists because of security concerns. A spokesman for private SBS TV said The Cell was indefinitely delayed because of terrorist threats against the country. Moeller told the online edition of Berlingske Tidende that it was a case of “self-censorship fed by fear.” He also demanded that the channel pay back 4.5 million kroner (US$810,000) of public money used to film the show if it does not broadcast it. The Cell is a 12-episode series directed by Danish-Egyptian director Omar Marzouk about the misadventures of three Islamic extremists in Denmark.
GERMANY
Breast implants threatened
A woman who got breast implants with a loan from her then-boyfriend now fears her assets could be repossessed after she failed to fully reimburse him, the 20-year-old woman told Bild newspaper. The ex-boyfriend is demanding she return the 4,379 euros (US$5,800) he gave her to pay for her surgery last year or he’ll call the police and get the repossessors involved, Bild reported on Wednesday. “It’s true that Carsten signed a loan agreement shortly before the operation,” the woman, named only as Anastasia, was quoted saying. “The condition was that I wouldn’t have to pay him back if I stayed with him for a year.” However, they split shortly after her surgery. The woman said she had sent 3,000 euros into the man’s account last week.
UNITED STATES
Obama stops ‘shellacking’
He couldn’t preserve the political lives of fellow Democrats this month, but he can still save a turkey. President Barack Obama pardoned “Apple” and his feathered friend “Cider” on Wednesday in an annual White House ritual ahead of Thanksgiving. “Today, I have the awesome responsibility of granting a presidential pardon to a pair of turkeys,” said Obama, standing with his two daughters in the White House Rose Garden. “Now, for the record, let me say that it feels pretty good to stop at least one shellacking this November.” Democrats lost strength in the Senate and their majority in the House of Representatives on Nov. 2 in elections Obama described famously as a “shellacking,” or heavy beating. Politics took a backseat to the high-profile turkey ceremony on Wednesday, however, and the president — calling it “one official duty I am sworn to uphold as the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth” — made the most of it.
UNITED STATES
Ex-priest tried to hire hitman
A defrocked Roman Catholic priest has been charged with trying to hire someone to murder a Texas teenager who accused him of sexual abuse two years ago, officials said on Tuesday. John Fiala, 52, was arrested by state troopers yesterday after he negotiated a US$5,000 hit with an undercover agent, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement. The investigation began after a neighbor tipped off the sheriff of a nearby county, the San Antonio Express-News reported. “I received a call from an unnamed informant who was having problems with the way Fiala was acting,” Edwards County Sheriff Don Letsinger told the paper. “I really was kind of surprised that he would stick his neck out this far and talk to people he didn’t even know about having someone murdered.”
UNITED STATES
Shop owner hits jackpot
A shop owner in western Pennsylvania has sold himself a winning US$1.8 million lottery ticket — and as the seller of the ticket, he’ll get an extra US$10,000. Ron Rea owns Tobacco World stores in Uniontown and Belle Vernon. He bought the winning ticket for the Nov. 18 Match 6 Lotto drawing at the Belle Vernon store. Rea says he doesn’t play the lottery’s Daily Number, but he spends about US$20 a day on tickets for games with higher odds, telling the Herald-Standard of Uniontown: “If you hit, your life’s changed.”
ARGENTINA
Father charged with rape
A 62-year-old Argentine man was arrested and charged with raping his daughter for more than 30 years and fathering 10 children with her, in a case “even worse” than that of Austria’s Josef Fritzl in 2008, a judge said on Wednesday. The man has been charged with repeated sexual abuse and incest, crimes which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, he added. The man, whose identity was not disclosed, was arrested in June for alleged cattle rustling, prompting his daughter, now aged 43, to report him to the police despite his threats of harm if she talked.
BRAZIL
Doctor gets 278 years
A Brazilian reproductive medicine specialist was sentenced to 278 years in prison for sexually abusing 39 of his patients, local media reported on Tuesday. Roger Abdelmassih, a well-known Sao Paulo fertility doctor, was accused of 56 cases of sexual abuse of patients in his private clinic. He was convicted of abusing patients both during examinations and sometimes when they were in recovery rooms.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
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