UNITED KINGDOM
Girl killer jailed for life
A man was jailed for life on Tuesday for sexually assaulting and murdering a 12-year-old girl, before hiding her body in the attic of the home he shared with her grandmother. Stuart Hazell, 37, was told by a judge at London’s Old Bailey that he would serve a minimum of 38 years in prison for the murder of Tia Sharp in August last year. Hazell, who was the boyfriend of Tia’s grandmother, had finally admitted killing the schoolgirl on Monday, the fifth day of his trial, after previously claiming she died by falling down the stairs. Tia’s family were forced to sit through days of gruesome evidence, including a nude picture of the schoolgirl apparently taken after she died. The schoolgirl most likely died from being smothered, the judge said, but her body had decomposed by the time it was found. The court heard that Hazell, a window cleaner and convicted drug dealer, had developed a sexual attraction toward Tia while living with her grandmother for more than five years. He had previously also dated Tia’s mother. Hazell murdered Tia while her grandmother was working a night shift. The schoolgirl’s blood was found on a sex toy in the house and on Hazell’s belt, and his semen was on her sheets, the court heard. He wrapped her body in a sheet of plastic and hid it in the attic.
SWEDEN
Couple jailed for exorcisms
An appeals court on Tuesday jailed a couple from the Democratic Republic of the Congo for having performed exorcisms on their daughter, who they considered to be a witch. The couple were both found guilty of aggravated assault. The father, 39, was sentenced to two years, three months behind bars, while his 34-year-old wife, who is the girl’s stepmother and who was judged to be the instigator of the abuse, was handed a two-and-a-half-year sentence. The couple were also ordered to pay the girl damages of 12,000 euros (US$15,500). Her age was not disclosed, but according to the local newspaper Boraas Tidning, she is about 10 and the events took place in 2010. The girl told the court she had been repeatedly targeted in exorcism sessions, had her arm cut with a burning knife to get her to confess her sins and had her head shaved because “the spirit” was in her hair. A second man, aged 40 and who claims to be a pastor, was also given an 15-month jail sentence for assault and ordered to pay the girl 2,300 euros in damages.
GERMANY
Pedophile links investigated
The Green Party is to launch an investigation into its active promotion in the 1980s of pedophile groups who lobbied for the legalization of sex with children. The party’s leadership has said it will commission an independent researcher to investigate “for how long and to what extent” such groups had an influence. The party’s chief whip, Jurgen Trittin, said the initiative aimed to take a close look at the “totally unacceptable demand” in the 1980s that sex with children should be made legal. The inquiry follows a row over the Green Party lawmaker Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s apparent endorsement of sex with children in his 1975 book The Great Bazaar, in which he reported on his alleged sexual interactions with children while working at an anti-authoritarian kindergarten in the 1970s. In the book, he wrote: “My constant flirtations with the children took on erotic characteristics. It happened to me several times that a few children undid my flies and started to stroke me.” The damning passage and a subsequent TV interview came back to haunt Cohn-Bendit when the remarks came to light ahead of an awards ceremony. Several people refused to attend the event.
CZECH REPUBLIC
President not drunk: aides
Was he or wasn’t he? The video footage shows Czech President Milos Zeman clearly worse for wear, propping himself up against a wall at a public event, struggling to negotiate a step and being aided by a cardinal. Zeman makes no secret of his drinking. However, on this occasion — a rare and highly ceremonial public display of the Czech crown jewels last week — his office insisted he simply had a virus and subsequently needed a day or two of rest. Since then, the video has prompted a storm of social media gags. Czechs — by far the biggest beer drinkers in the world per capita — have been posting pictures of themselves in bars getting drunk with slogans like: “Here I am getting a virus,” or “Heading out for a virus.” Zeman, 68, a chain smoker and lover of fatty foods, often extols the virtues of booze. On one occasion, he praised former British prime minister Winston Churchill for his love of whiskey and pointed out that Adolf Hitler was a teetotaler and vegetarian — “and you know how he ende
d up.” During a 1996 election campaign Zeman said his campaign bus “drove on gas and Becherovka,” a popular Czech liquor.
CANADA
Man fights frost with chopper
With a frost warning in effect in parts of Canada, an Ottawa area farmer reportedly sent a helicopter to hover over his apple orchard overnight on Monday in an unusual effort to save his crop. Temperatures in the Ottawa region fell to minus-2°C at about 3am on Tuesday morning. Phil Lyall of Mountain Apple Orchards, about 60km south of Ottawa, told public broadcaster CBC he paid thousands of dollars to have a helicopter fly all night over his 10,000 trees in order to push rising warm air back down and keep temperatures on the ground above freezing. It was the second time in two years that he had tried it, after hearing that fruit growers in Argentina, New Zealand and elsewhere were doing the same in similar circumstances when their crops were threatened by cold. Last year, he recorded a six-point jump in temperatures in his 10-hectare orchard, from minus-3°C to 3°C. Lyall said his orchard might lose only 10 percent of its apples when temperatures drop to 0°C, but a night at minus-2°C can kill 90 percent of the crop.
UNITED STATES
Man charged over feast
Authorities have charged a man who officers said had an overnight feast in a closed supermarket outside Louisville. The manager of a ValuMarket says he found 57 empty whipped cream cans in the garbage when he arrived on Monday morning. WAVE-TV in Louisville reported 30-year-old Trevor Runyon was charged after he was found in the ceiling of the store. Surveillance video from the store showed that Runyon cooked and ate six steaks, washed them down with beer and then topped off his meal with shrimp and birthday cake. Police say Runyon slipped into the store and hid while employees closed it for the night.
UNITED STATES
Officer rescued from tree
Authorities say a New York police officer who tried to rescue a cat stuck in a tree got caught himself and needed a little help getting back down to the ground. The Fire Department of New York says it happened on Monday afternoon in the borough of Queens. A call came in that a man attempting to get a cat out of a tree had gotten stuck. Fire department personnel used a bucket ladder to get the man and the cat down. The fire department said the man is a police officer.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS