UAE
Australian woman deported
An Australian woman was deported on Tuesday after being arrested and fined for “insulting” social media posts, according to a judicial source in Abu Dhabi. Jodi Magi, 39, appeared in an Abu Dhabi court and was taken into custody on Sunday, before being placed on a flight to Bangkok — her “destination of choice” — on Tuesday evening, the same source said. The trouble began in February when she posted on her Facebook page a photograph of a car illegally parked between two places reserved for disabled drivers near her apartment in Abu Dhabi. The picture was accompanied by “insulting, degrading remarks,” the source said. Following a complaint from the car’s owner, a European, Magi admitted having posted the photograph online, but not the incriminating text, the source added. In April, the Australian was sentenced in absentia to pay a fine of 10,000 dirhams (US$2,720) and deportation. She appeared in court with a lawyer and interpreter to appeal against the verdict the following month, but to no avail and her sentence was confirmed last month. Magi posted on her personal Web site late on Tuesday that she was going to “decompress in Laos” after being in custody for 53 hours. She said she had been “shackled at the ankles, strip-searched, blood tested, forced to sleep on a concrete floor without a mattress or pillow and having no access to toilet paper or eating utensils.” Magi said she was “pretty traumatized” by the experience, but added to being “forever heartbroken” by the stories of the other women she met while in jail.
AUSTRALIA
Serial killer tours axed
A ghost tour company has ceased visits to the forest where a notorious serial killer buried the remains of young backpackers, following a backlash over the idea which has been labeled “horrendous.” Goulburn Ghost Tours recently added the nighttime visits to the Belanglo State Forest, where killer Ivan Milat dumped the bodies of young travelers more than 20 years ago, to its other tours, but late on Tuesday it said that the “extreme terror tour” to Belanglo, southwest of Sydney, where the bodies of two Britons, three Germans and two Australians were found in the 1990s, had been canceled for good. “From here on in, we will not be running Belanglo tours,” Louise Edwards told Channel Ten’s The Project. Edwards said ghost tours were controversial, because “people believe in ghosts or they don’t, so we are used to a little bit of controversy.” In hindsight she said the marketing of the “extreme terror” tours, which had included lines such as: “Once you enter Belanglo State Forest you may never come out,” was not up to scratch. Milat is serving consecutive life sentences for the murders of the seven backpackers.
AUSTRIA
British soldier jailed for rape
A court on Tuesday sentenced a British soldier to nine years in prison for raping and sexually abusing a six-year-old girl in the province of Tyrol. The 30-year-old soldier, who has not been named, was at a British army adventure camp in the Stubaital Alpine Valley and had entered the girl’s unlocked family home while drunk in the early hours of the morning, a court spokesman said. The soldier pleaded guilty, but said that in large part he did not remember what happened that night, the spokesman said. Police arrested the man in front of the victim’s house in the town of Neustift on Nov. 29 last year after he was found by the girl’s father. The soldier’s lawyer said he planned to appeal. If he loses the appeal, the soldier can ask to serve the prison sentence in Britain, the spokesman said.
COLOMBIA
Cross-country coke run ends
A surgeon running for mayor in a small town was arrested along with his supposed medical crew on charges of transporting more than 200kg of cocaine cross-country in an ambulance, police said on Tuesday. The four others detained were a nurse, technician, supposed patient and driver, all of whom were dressed in proper attire for their purported professions. The ambulance was stopped in the rural Cimitarra area in the Santander Department, where inspectors found the drugs behind a “false roof.” Investigators determined that the ambulance had traveled from the south of the nation “with the sole purpose of depositing the load in Cartagena,” a northern port city on the Caribbean coast, police said in a statement. “The doctor, identified as Edgardo Figueroa, headed the ambulance transfer and is a health professional — a surgery specialist, a doctor in a municipal hospital and a current mayoral candidate in the town of Puerto Caicedo,” police said. The ambulance’s unusual route led authorities to suspect its mission.
UNITED STATES
App solves ice cream heist
Police in Utah have scooped up two 16-year-olds who allegedly stole tubs of ice cream from a truck while broadcasting their escapade live online, authorities said. A resident in West Weber, about 64km north of Salt Lake City, called sheriff’s deputies late on Sunday to report seeing the act being streamed live on social media using Twitter’s Periscope app, police said. “The investigating deputy tracked down the creator of the video, a 16-year-old male who lived in the neighborhood,” the Weber County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Monday. The teen admitted breaking into the truck’s refrigerated trailer with a friend and stealing the contents, the sheriff’s office said. “He also confessed to posting their caper online through Periscope,” it said. “The subject said he and his friend then went and randomly placed the tubs of ice cream on the front porches of some of their neighbors as a gift.” The teens, who were not named, are to be referred to juvenile court on burglary and theft charges, the statement said.
UNITED STATES
Giant carp did not fight
Rarely is a trophy fish so easy to land. An animal control officer in Olathe, Kansas, recently hauled in a 27kg carp that was lying in a drainage ditch. A man out for a walk last week spotted the fish and called police, city animal control officer Jamie Schmidt said on Tuesday. The man estimated the fish at more than 1.22m long and he was not telling a whopper, said Schmidt, who responded to the call in suburban Kansas City. The carp lay dead in a roadside ditch that connects to a lake; it apparently swam there when heavy rain caused flooding, she said. “When the guy said it was four foot, I thought: ‘Well, most men tell fish stories,’ and I thought it was not going to be even close to that,” Schmidt said. “I was very shocked.” Schmidt said the fish measured about 1.06m long and weighed 27kg. It was a grass carp, Kansas Department of Parks, Wildlife and Tourism fisheries biologist Lucas Kowalewski said. The Kansas record for grass carp caught by angling is 35kg, department records show. Schmidt had her picture taken with the fish, which appears on the Olathe Police Department Facebook page. After the picture, the fish met a quick demise. “We treated it like any other dead animal,” Schmidt said. “We put it into our incinerator.”
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
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