AUSTRALIA
Father of child bride jailed
A man who consented to an Islamic “marriage” ceremony between his 12-year-old daughter and a man more than twice her age was yesterday jailed for at least six years. The 63-year-old father, who cannot be named to protect the girl’s identity, was found guilty in April of procuring a child under the age of 14 for unlawful sexual activity and encouraging the pair to have intercourse despite denying the charges. “[The man] failed in his duty to his daughter,” Judge Deborah Sweeney said during sentencing at the Downing Centre District Court in Sydney. The court had earlier heard that he wanted to save the girl from what he considered the sin of having sex outside marriage, so when she reached puberty, he decided she should wed. When a 26-year-old Lebanese man, in Australia on a student visa, showed interest in her, the father consented to a marriage, which was carried out by a local sheikh last year at his home about 250km north of Sydney. On the night of the wedding, the pair went to a hotel with the father’s permission. They had sex there and twice more at the father’s home the following weekend.
SPAIN
‘Baby dumper’ arrested
Police on Thursday arrested a Colombian woman for allegedly dumping her newborn baby in a rubbish bin. The boy, who is about 10 days old, was found by police on Wednesday in a bin in the village of Mejorada del Campo, about 20km east of Madrid. The tiny infant, who escaped serious harm, was found in a backpack concealed in a plastic bag. Madrid Prefect Concepcion Dancausa told reporters that a baby’s bottle found next to the child led to the mother. The brand of bottle was one used by the local Alcala de Henares hospital. By examining the hospital’s recent birth records, they discovered the name of a 37-year-old Colombian woman who lived just next to where the child was dumped, Dancausa said. The woman initially denied disposing of her baby, but later confessed, the prefect added.
ITALY
Animals given showers, AC
Farmers are installing showers and air conditioning (AC) in cowsheds and pigsties to allow the animals to freshen up in the baking summer heat, an agriculture group said on Thursday. Farm animals in Italy — particularly in the muggy agricultural heartland around the Po river near Milan — are under stress as the mercury approaches 40oC in the hottest July for more than a decade. Cows produced 50 million liters less milk than usual in the first 15 days of the month and chickens laid between 5 and 10 percent fewer eggs, the group said in a statement.
UNITED KINGDOM
Nessie a ‘catfish’: watcher
A man who has spent 24 years scanning Scotland’s Loch Ness for its legendary mysterious monster reckons Nessie is most likely a giant catfish — although he is not prepared to give up looking just yet. Steve Feltham, who holds a Guinness World Record for the longest continuous Nessie vigil, says it is the most probable explanation for the enigmatic beast that has captivated people’s imaginations the world over. Feltham left his home and girlfriend in 1991 to go looking for Nessie and has spent the years since in a caravan on the lake shore, scanning the waters. Feltham said he would keep searching for the definitive conclusion. “We still have this world-class mystery and for the next several decades, I hope to carry on trying to find the answer,” he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
RSS