Gibbs, Beth

According to the Star Tribune, Indian police said they would not charge the father of a 9-year-old actress in “Slumdog Millionaire,” who was being investigated on the accusation that, posing as a wealthy sheik, he tried to sell the girl to a reporter.

After a British tabloid, News of the World, claimed the actress, Rubina Ali, was offered to adoption on Sunday in exchange by her father, Rafiq Qureshi, for $400,000, her estranged mother, Khurshud Monish Dewade, filed a complaint, police said.

The deal was offered to a News to the World reporter, according to News International Ltd., which also owns Fox Searchlight Pictures that distributes “Slumdog Millionaire.”

Qureshi denied allegations while police questioned him.

"We have interrogated Rubina's father at length and have not found any evidence against him indicating that he was trying to sell Rubina," said senior police officer Nishar Tamboli to the Associated Press.

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The Star Tribune reported that officials in a small village in England are considering leaving potholes unfilled as an attempt to slow down speedy drivers.

Mike Parrish, the city councilor in Navestock, said the potholes would help return the town’s small roads to country lanes, as they once were. It will also save the town money in roadwork fees.

"It seems potholes are good on our quiet little back roads," he said. "Not fixing those might save us time and cost and also be a traffic calming measure."

Parrish said some residents have asked for speed bumps, but the potholes serve the same purpose at a cheaper price.

There is some debate in the town whether the plan is a good idea. The town will invite residents to discuss the plan before a decision is made.

According to Telegraph.co.uk, local retired police officer, Roy Tyzack, said the potholes will not slow drivers down, but become a hazard.

"Potholes, and we have a great deal of them, are very dangerous,” Tyzack said.

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The Star Tribune reported that after cable news television stations and mobile phone networks went down as requested by the communist leaders of Moldova on Tuesday, protesters kept in contact through Twitter.

Some protesters stormed Parliament and the offices of President Vladimir Voronin on Tuesday due to what they say were rigged elections. A total of 10,000 people protested and in violent riots more than 90 were injured and 200 were arrested.

Cable news stations in Moldova did not play any footage of the riot, so the protesters use the social network Web site, Twitter, to keep in touch.

"We sent messages on Twitter but didn't expect 15,000 people to join in. At the most we expected 1,000," said Oleg Brega, the head of the non-governmental pro-democracy group Hyde Park.

The New York Times reported that after hundreds of messages were sent through Twitter, the internet was cut off in Chisinau, the country’s capital.

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The Star Tribune reported that an Australian woman was convicted Wednesday of stabbing and killing her neighbor in Sydney, who had complained about her barking dog.

After two days of deliberating, a New South Wales Supreme Court jury found the woman, Katrina Megan Whitmore, 26, guilty of murder.

Whitmore stabbed Joseph Durrant, 47, with a knife on Jan. 27, 2007 in her front yard, after the two had an argument about Whitmore’s dog, prosecutors said.

"She does say that she told people not to speak to her dog like that," prosecutor Chris Maxwell said.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Durrant had been intoxicated from a party he was returning home from celebrating Australia Day

Adam Duncan, a witness, said he was at an Australia Day party next door when he saw Whitmore run down her driveway holding a knife.

She will be sentenced May 29.

Steven Spiro Sotiropoulos, 34, was charged as being involved in the fight, but was not found guilty of murder.

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The New York Times reported a senior Taliban leader and nine insurgent fighters have been killed according to a statement by NATO on Monday.

Maulawi Hassan, was killed on Saturday in an attack on his Compound near Kajaki on Saturday. Hassan was responsible for many roadside bombings and suicide attacks.

Helmand Province Police Chief Assadullah Shirzad said Hassan’s death is, “a real blow to Taliban.”

Attacks have risen in the Helmand, Uruzgan and Kandahar provinces of Afghanistan in the past weeks due to Taliban resurgence.

Eight police officers were killed and one wounded in a Taliban attack on Monday, according to the Associated Press.

President Barack Obama ordered last month that an additional 17,000 troops be sent to Afghanistan and are expected to be there by summer.

“What we can’t do is think that just a military approach in Afghanistan is going to be able to solve our problems,” Obama said. “So what we’re looking for is a comprehensive strategy. And there’s got to be an exit strategy. There’s got to be a sense that this is not perpetual drift.

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The Star Tribune reported officials said Thursday that the 17-year-old gunman who killed 15 people and himself at his former school warned hours earlier in an Internet chatroom that he was planning the attack

The suspect, who according to police documents is Tim Kretschmer told other he was “sick of this life,” and planned to attack the school in Winnenden located in Germany, Baden Wuerttemburg state interior Minister Heribert Rech said.

The police were not told about the chat until after the school shooting, Rech said. A Bavarian man told authorities his son, 17, notified him after the shooting had taken place.

Authorities learned the suspect was treated for depression in 2008, Investigator Siegfried Mahler said. He had five visits to a psychiatrist between April and September and was supposed to continue the treatment at different clinic, but did not show up, Mahler said.

According to CNN.com, most of the victims were female. Eight female students, three female teachers and one male student were victims in the tragedy, Rech said.

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The Star Tribune reported that police recuperated millions of dollars and questioned seven suspects on Saturday, in relation to a bank robbery in Dublin the previous day.

Sgt. Alan Roughneen said police arrested a woman and six men that might be the armed bank robbers, who came in to the home of Bank of Ireland worker Shane Travers, took his family as hostages and forced him to cooperate in robbing the bank.

The use of hostage-taking in the robbery is similar to past crimes in Ireland, but no former robbery in the Republic of Ireland resulted in $9 million being stolen.

Travers' family, his partner, her 5-year old son and her mother, were left inside a van north of Dublin. The family escaped on their own and was not badly harmed.

Police said a third of the stolen cash has been recovered.

According to The Lede blog, the money lost in the robbery has been hard on the bank, especially in the current economic crisis. The Irish finance ministry had recently announced plans to put 3.5 billion euros ($4.4 billion) into the Bank of Ireland to improve the country’s banking industry.

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The Star Tribune reported that the state media announced Thursday, 14 people were poisoned after eating pig organs that may have contained an animal-feed additive in southern China and this is the second outbreak this month.

The 14 grew ill after eating a pig liver in Guangzhou at a dinner party, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

All 14 were hospitalized with stomachaches, diarrhea, vomiting and headaches, according to the agency.

The agency said, the doctor said the poisoning could be from clenbuterol, which is a chemical used to prevent pigs from accumulating fat.

In early February, more than 70 people became ill in the same area after eating pig organs that contained clenbuterol.

CNN.com reported the largest clenbuterol case occurred in Shanghai in 2006, when 336 people were hospitalized after eating pig that contained the chemical. It has since been banned by China.

Posted by gibb0138 at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New York Times reported a jury acquitted three suspects on Thursday in the murder of a prominent Russian journalist.

Two Chechen men and a former police investigator were acquitted in the murder case of Russian investigative reporter, Anna Politkovskaya.

Supporters of Politkovskaya, an investigative reporter, were frustrated by the verdict. They see it as the government’s failure to pursue the murder.

“The fact that no one at all has been held accountable for this murder sends a very clear message to potential perpetrators: You can do it, and you can get away with it,” Tatyana Lokshina, deputy director of the Human Rights Watch Moscow bureau, said.

Politkovskaya criticized the Kremlin’s policy and investigators and colleagues believe someone had her killed in 2006 to silence her dissent.

The Star Tribune reported the two Chechen men were brothers, Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov, accused of being a lookout and a driver for the suspected triggerman and the former police investigator was Sergei Khadzhikurbanov accused of organizing the murder. The triggerman is yet to be found.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s office announced plans to challenge the verdict, according to the New York Times.

16 journalists have been killed in Russia since 2000. For more information, read “Russian Journalists in Danger.”

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The New York Times reported that an empty luxury hotel in Beijing went up in flames on Monday after it was hit with sparks from fireworks.

The China Central Television Cultural Center was still engulfed in flames in the late evening. Due to the height of the building, firefighters could not do much to contain the fire because their ladders only reach the height of about 12 floors.

According to the Star Tribune the fire started after fireworks ignited part of the building. The fireworks were in celebration of the Lunar New Year.

Monday was the last day of fireworks and the city had waived laws for firework use in the city for the celebration.

After sparks from the fireworks landed on the building, flames went up one side of the building and sent off a large amount of black smoke. Police held back onlookers as embers fell to the ground, witnesses told reporters.

No deaths or injuries were reported.

The building was designed by famed architect Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren of the the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).

The building was the the international broadcasting center for the 2008 Olympic Games. The Mandarin Oriental hotel, which is located in the tower of the building, was not yet completed.

"I think it's really sad that this building is destroyed before it can be opened to the public," Erik Amir, a senior architect at OMA, said.

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The New York Times reported that at least 108 people died Saturday in wildfires that stretch across Southeast Australia.

The fires in Victoria grew with the 62 miles per hour wind and the temperature rose to 117 degrees, a record high.

Australia often has fires in the summer, due to its hot and dry climate. A drought has made conditions worse than past summers.

The fire destroyed more than 700 houses and killed 108 or more people, at least two of those being children. The toll could rise.

Witnesses said they saw trees and houses explode in flames.

A $6.5 million relief fund has been set up by the government.

According to the Star Tribune, police believe some of the fires were set on purpose and it might take days to put them out.

"Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters.

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The New York Times reported that a surprise meeting was held between the president of Russia Dmitri Medvedev and the editor of an independent Russian newspaper, due to the recent murder of one of their reporters.

President Medvedev met with Dmitri Muratov, editor-in–chief of Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper which is highly critical of Kremlin. Muratov told reporters that in their meeting the president expressed his sorrow for the lost reporter.

The reporter, Anastasia Baburova, 25, and Stanislav Markelov, a human rights lawyer who is associated with the newspaper, were shot near the Kremlin by a masked man with a silenced pistol on Jan. 19, reported the Star Tribune.

According to both sources, the murder is thought to be a contract killing. Markelov is thought to be the target and Baburova was killed after she tried to intervene.

The Star Tribune reported that Russia is, “one of the most dangerous [countries] for journalists."
Since 2000, 16 journalists have died in mysterious ways or in contract-style killings. Four of those have been from the Noyava Gazeta.

First, reporter Igor Domnikov was attacked and killed with a hammer in 2000. Some were suspicious that a regional governor had him killed after criticizing the governor in the paper, but the governor was not charged.

Then, in 2003, Yury Shchekochikhin died of an allergic reaction. Some thought he had been poisoned.

Next, Anna Politkovskaya, who was critical of the Kremlin, was shot in 2006 in her apartment building. Three Chechens are on trial for the murder, but no mastermind or motive has been identified.

Some, including Novaya Gazeta, believe the trial is a cover-up. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia said the murder was planned elsewhere to discredit Russia.

Many Novaya Gazeta employees believe the killings have been planned by nationalists or fascists groups. Others believe security agencies may be behind the murders.

In the past the Novaya Gazeta’s phone were tapped and in 2000, their computer hard drives were stolen.
Novaya Gazeta employees are taking many precautions. Some have taken self-defense classes, some use pseudonyms and some have hired bodyguards.

“…You just have to write, write, write and keep writing. You have to," Elena Kostyuchenko, 21, told reporters.

On the Novaya Gazete web page there is a photo of Markelov’s body laying on the street. Underneath the photo it says this:

The killers have no fear because they know they will not be punished. But neither are their victims afraid, because when you defend others you cease to fear.

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