Baby offered for sale on eBay as a joke
May 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
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GERMAN police are investigating a couple after they offered their eight-month-old son for sale on internet auction site eBay.
Renee Beck, a police spokesman in the Bavarian town of Krumbach west of Munich, said the 23-year-old woman told them it was only a joke.
But he said police were nevertheless continuing their investigation and the baby was put in state custody.
“She says it was a joke,” he said. “That’s not yet clear.
Detectives are investigating on suspicion of child trafficking.
A number of people called authorities across Germany after seeing the offer on eBay that read: “Baby - collection only. Offer my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long.”
The opening bid was €1 ($1.65). There were no bidders during the two hours before the offer was removed, police said.
The mother was quoted in Bild newspaper saying: “It was only a joke. I just wanted to see if someone would make an offer.
“They’ve taken my son to hospital and I’ve got to take psychiatric tests next week.”
Divers saved after 19 hours at sea asked to pay up
May 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
AN international bidding war has broken out, offering Richard Neely and his partner Allyson Dalton as much as $250,000 for interviews and pictures of their survival against the odds, as fellow divers cast doubt on their story.
Authorities have called on the couple to pay back some of the estimated $100,000 cost of their rescue operation.
A massive air-and-sea search involving seven helicopters, three planes and a flotilla of boats was used to find the divers, who spent 19 hours lost at sea.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh suggested the couple could make a contribution to their rescue costs: “If they are going to profit from their story I don’t think a contribution would go astray.”
Rules broken
Mr Neely, a dive instructor and Ms Dalton, a dive master, have been accused of deliberately flouting an onboard dive briefing which may have resulted in them spending 19 hours adrift in shark-infested waters.
Mr Neely, 38, and Ms Dalton, 40, both with 2000-plus underwater dives, tied themselves together and filmed each other waving desperately to rescuers.
The couple miraculously survived being swept 15km out to sea after surfacing at the wrong spot 200m away from the dive boat Pacific Star following a dive at Bait Reef, near Hayman Island in the Whitsundays, about 2.30pm on Friday.
Snakes and sharks
In a paid interview with the UK’s Sunday Mirror, Mr Neely and Ms Dalton told how they came face-to-face with venomous sea snakes during their ordeal.
Mr Neeley said: “I truly thought we were going to die. Sharks were on our mind the entire time - but neither of us mentioned the ‘S’ word. We just had to stay positive and calm to help each other through the ordeal.
“We were shouting and whistling but nobody saw us. We saw other divers climbing back on to the boat. The boat stayed where it was, on a mooring, but we just kept drifting further away. There was nothing we could do.”
Both divers - with the only visible signs of their ordeal red chaffing on their necks from wetsuits - stayed bunkered down in a friend’s Townsville home last night and declined to speak to the media.
They have retained the services of publicist Max Markson.
Couple ‘upset’
Friend Danielle Scott-Flanders, speaking on behalf of the couple recuperating in her home, said they had been upset by reports “they did anything wrong”.
But fresh evidence indicates the buddy pair ignored strict briefing rules to immediately surface if they left the dive site - in a protected reef known as Paradise Lagoon - and got caught in strong current on the outer reef wall.
Another passenger onboard the Pacific Star has cast doubt over the couple’s version of events, saying it was unlikely the couple surfaced anywhere near the boat before being washed away and that they had been dismissive of safety instructions prior to the dive.
Matt Cawkwell, one of 18 tourists aboard the dive boat, told The Australian it was unlikely the couple could have surfaced 200m from the vessel as claimed and not been seen.
“There were about 22 people standing on the roof looking for them,” he said.
“There were at least four pairs of binoculars, and it wasn’t that rough. There’s no way they came up near the boat or still in the lagoon.”
Diver’s boasts
Mr Cawkwell said Mr Neely had boasted to other tourists on the three-day, three-night diving charter about his experience, and had insisted on diving alone with Ms Dalton, not four other people as had been reported.
Mr Cawkwell also told The Australian he heard Ms Dalton pressuring her partner to take their third dive of the day, even though conditions were getting worse.
“There were things he wanted to do and nothing was going to stop him. He was told to stay in the lagoon, but there’s no way he could have done that and got lost. The other four divers came back when the currents started to pick up, but you got the impression he thought he knew better.”
The incident is the second time Mr Neely has been lost at sea, once spending eight hours in the water off Thailand after the boat he was on sank. He also survived the Boxing Day tsunami.
Man arrested for selling urine as oil
May 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment
A ZIMBABWEAN man has been jailed for two years after he sold urine to residents in a mining town claiming it was cooking oil, according to state media reports.
Piccard Mudzingwa, 28, approached one of the victims at a bus terminus in the southern mining town of Zvishavane selling bottles containing a liquid he said was cooking oil, The Herald newspaper reported.
The victim discovered she had been duped when she was preparing dinner the following day and reported Mudzingwa to the police.
He was arrested when he attempted to repeat the trick on another woman.
Cooking oil is among commodities that are in short supply in Zimbabwe as the country battles an economic crisis with 165,000 per cent inflation and 80 per cent unemployment.
Sex change approved for 12 year old girl
May 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment
A judge has allowed a 12-year-old Victorian girl to start a taxpayer-funded sex swap, despite objections from the child’s father.
The girl has begun court-approved hormone treatment in the first step toward a complete gender switch.
The Family Court orders also permit the girl, who cannot be named, to apply for a new birth certificate, passport and Medicare card in a boy’s name.
The application to allow the hormone treatment was lodged by the girl’s mother.
A state government observer, an endocrinologist, a psychiatrist, a family counsellor and a lawyer acting on the child’s behalf all supported the plan.
Only her father, who lives interstate, opposed the proposed sex change, though he did not attend the final court hearing and could not afford to send a lawyer on his behalf.
The court was told he could not accept that his daughter had always seen herself as a boy and considered her too young to make such a decision.
The mother expressed sadness and deep concern for her daughter, but said she would stand by the girl.
The child’s lawyer told the court she considered the girl capable of making an informed decision.
The girl is one of the youngest patients in Australia granted permission to begin a sex swap.
The court was told early intervention was needed because the child was stressed and anxious at the prospect of starting her period and had threatened self-harm.
Hormones implanted under her skin every three months will stop her menstruating and prevent her hips and breasts growing.
The court heard the hormone therapy was reversible and would give the family “breathing time”.
A further court application must be lodged in coming years for testosterone treatment to deepen her voice and promote growth of facial hair and muscles.
Surgery to remove her womb or ovaries, or build an artificial penis must wait until she is at least 18.
Details of the case came to light in a Family Court judgment issued this month. The hearing was held in December, behind closed doors.
The case was heard over two days. The next day the judge issued orders approving the treatment.
“The expert evidence made it clear that if I determined to make an order for the treatment, I should do so with expedition,” the newly released judgment said.
News of the judge’s decision yesterday ignited debate among medical ethicists and child-health experts.
Medical ethicist Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini said the decision was astounding.
“I fail to see how it can be in the interests of a young girl to undergo treatment that will change her for the rest of her life,” he said.
“Twelve is a time of great uncertainty for a young person . . . I would question whether the medical evidence supports treating (her) in this way.”
Australian Childhood Foundation chief executive Dr Joe Tucci, a psychologist, said the issue was complex.
“But I would have thought that waiting until the child is older is a more prudent course of action,” he said. “Kids can change their minds. Things that seem set in stone when they are 12 will seem very different when they are 18 or 19.”
Boys enjoyed killing two-year-old
May 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment
TWO brothers, aged seven and nine, told psychiatrists they slowly, coldly tortured a two-year-old girl to death - a revelation that has Argentines debating whether to do away with a law prohibiting the prosecution of minors for heinous crimes.
Judge Marta Pascual said the children confessed to slaying little neighbour Milagros Belizan in a shantytown south of the capital.
“They understood her pain but it did not move them,” Judge Pascualsaid after meeting with psychiatrists who examined the boys. “In some form it gave them pleasure.”
Little Milagros disappeared from her home in the poverty-stricken Almirante Brown neighbourhood on Sunday. Her family found her body in a vacant lot 10 blocks away.
She had been stripped naked, beaten and strangled with telephone cord that was found wrapped around her neck.
Argentine law prohibits the prosecution of anyone under 18 years old.
Instead, such juveniles are generally held in youth homes until they reach 18, when they are released without further punishment.
Sunday’s killing has many Argentines calling for much harsher punishments - including prosecuting them once they turn 18.
“But if it were up to the people living in the shantytown where that little girl was murdered, they would kill the two boys,” lawyer Gregorio Badeni said.
Other Argentines disagreed that child killers should be tried like adults.
“These two boys are victims just like the poor girl they killed,” family psychologist Cristina Castillo said.
Ms Castillo said the responsibility for the crime lies with the boys’ parents and the society in which the boys were raised.
Neighbours said the boys were frequently beaten by their mother and had been out of school for two years. They were often seen throwing stones at other children and passing cars.
“They are boys who evidently had violence for an example,” the judge said. “I don’t know if a boy’s mind can know whether it was a crime. But they did know they had done something wrong.”
The boys’ grandmother said she repeatedly pleaded with the boys’ mother to stop beating them.
But only after the girl’s death did the neighbourhood appear to take action: A mob rose up, setting fires and throwing rocks, after the girl’s tortured body was discovered in a pit. Police fired rubber bullets at the roiting mob to prevent more bloodshed.
Neighbours later told police they had seen the boys with the little girl and then leaving the pit. Confronted, both boys then blamed each other before confessing, authorities said.
