AUSTRIA
Rapist to change prison
Convicted rapist Josef Fritzl, 89, can be transferred to a regular prison from a prison psychiatric unit, but release from incarceration is unlikely, the Regional Court of Krem ruled yesterday. Fritzl, who has changed his name, raped his daughter whom he held captive for 24 years in a dungeon he built under his home, fathering seven children over the period. He has been serving a life sentence in a prison unit for “mentally abnormal” inmates since his conviction in 2009 for incest, rape, enslavement, coercion and murder by neglect of one of the children, a newborn boy. While a transfer could, in principle, pave the way for Fritzl’s conditional release from prison altogether, the court has said such a request was unlikely to be approved due to “special preventive reasons.” Prosecutors can still file a complaint against the decision to move him to a regular prison in a bid to get it overturned, as they did after the first ruling.
NETHERLANDS
‘Fortnite’ maker fined
The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) yesterday hit Fortnite maker Epic Games with two separate fines totaling 1.1 million euros (US$1.2 million), judging that vulnerable children were exploited and pressured into making purchases in the game’s Item Shop. Epic Games has filed an objection against the decision and proposed several changes to the game that the ACM said would resolve their concerns. The ACM imposed the first fine over phrases in the game such as “Get it now” or “Buy now.” Adverts directly exhorting children to make purchases are “an illegal aggressive commercial practice under all circumstances,” the ACM said. The second fine was imposed for “deceptive” and “misleading” countdown timers that pressured children to make purchases quickly, because they believed the item would disappear when the clock hit zero — which was not always the case. “Children’s vulnerabilities were exploited and were thus pressured into making purchases,” ACM board member Cateautje Hijmans van den Bergh said.
SPAIN
Orcas sink sailing yacht
An unknown number of orcas have sunk a sailing yacht after ramming it in Moroccan waters in the Strait of Gibraltar, the Spanish maritime rescue service said on Monday, a new attack in what has become a trend in the past four years. The 15m-long Alboran Cognac, with two people onboard, encountered the highly social apex predators, also known as killer whales, at 9am on Sunday, the service said. The passengers reported feeling sudden blows to the hull and rudder before water started seeping into the yacht. After alerting the rescue services, a nearby oil tanker took them onboard and transported them to Gibraltar. The yacht eventually sank.
TURKEY
Spider ‘smuggler’ detained
A curator at the American Museum of Natural History was detained at Istanbul airport for allegedly attempting to smuggle 1,500 spider and scorpion samples, local media reported. Lorenzo Prendini, an expert on arachnids at the New York-based museum, said in e-mailed comments that he had appeared before a judge and was released without charge. Prendini said the police had disregarded permits from the Turkish government to conduct his research in collaboration with Turkish scientists. “The police completely ignored this and relied on the testimony of an ‘expert’ who has a conflict of interest with my collaborators … and whose scientific research is highly questionable,” he said.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant