Army fires live amo into crowd at exhibition
June 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
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TWO people including a child were in a critical condition today after live bullets were used instead of blanks during a French special forces open day, army and regional officials said.
Another two people are in a serious condition.
Seventeen people, 15 of them civilians and two of them soldiers, were injured in the bizarre incident, as parachutists from a marines parachute regiment demonstrated to the public the techniques involved in hostage liberation exercises.
According to the army toll, two are in a critical condition after “incomprehensible” scenes at a barracks near Carcassone, in the country’s southwest.
One soldier has been detained, although no explanation was immediately forthcoming for why the wrong ammunition was loaded into weapons.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy was urgently awaiting the results of a top-level military probe into the accident, according to a presidential statement.
A regional official, Bernard Lemaire, told France 3 radio that two civilians including one child were “critical”.
He said that investigators believed the deadly ammunition was loaded by mistake.
“The question being asked is ‘Did the soldier engage in a criminal act or not?’,” Lemaire said.
“For now, no one can answer that, but the theory being worked on is one of error.”
Top model plunges to her death
June 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
A 20-YEAR-OLD woman identified by local media as Kazakh model Ruslana Korshunova plunged to her death from a Manhattan apartment yesterday in an apparent suicide.
Police said only that the woman was found dead in front of an apartment building in Manhattan, near the financial district and the South Street Seaport tourist area.
Korshunova had graced the covers of European editions of Elle and Vogue and walked the catwalks for designers including Betsey Johnson and Jill Stuart.
Witnesses described seeing her plunge from a ninth floor balcony in the building yesterday afternoon.
Local media, citing police sources, said there was no sign of a struggle inside her apartment and that Korshunova was believed to have leaped to her death.
A friend told The New York Post, however, that Korshunova had just returned from a modelling job in Paris and seemed “on top of the world”.
“There were no signs,” the unidentified friend was quoted as saying. “I don’t see one reason why she would do that.”
Korshunova, born in Kazakhstan, had been profiled in British Vogue in recent years as a new face to watch, and she was featured in ads by Vera Wang, Marc Jacobs, Christian Dior and DKNY.
A spokesman for Korshunova’s agency, IMG, which also handles Heidi Klum and Kate Moss, said “We’re shocked and our heart goes out to her family,” the Daily News reported.
Girl killed by horse she idolised
June 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
A YOUNG woman whose life revolved around horses died yesterday after she was kicked in the chest by her thoroughbred.
Danielle Garner, a veterinary nurse of Regency Downs near Laidley in Queensland, would have turned 21 on July 14.
Danielle was trying to settle her horse before putting him in a float about 9am (AEST) yesterday when she was kicked.
Her mother, Donna Garner, gave her daughter CPR but Danielle died before Queensland Ambulance arrived.
Mrs Garner’s sister Bonnie Robinson said it appeared the horse’s kick had stopped Danielle’s heart.
“She was a lovely person,” Ms Robinson said.
“She loved her animals, she loved her horses.
“She was an outgoing girl with boundless energy. She was her mother’s pride and joy.”
Ms Robinson said Danielle had owned the horse for two years.
“It was her favourite,” she said. “She idolised him.
“She was trying to put him in a float and she was lunging him to get a bit of energy out of him.”
She said Mrs Garner had been in the house and had heard a noise and ran down to an arena in the back yard.
“Danielle’s whole life revolved around horses,” Ms Robinson said.
“She always said she was going to the Olympics one day.”
Danielle had been preparing the horse for an eventing competition yesterday.
“Her mother worried about her a bit around the horse,” Ms Robinson said.
“Danielle once said, ‘If I died doing it Mum, I’ll die doing what I love’.
“She wasn’t scared of horses.”
It was Mrs Garner’s second child to die. She lost a baby, six weeks old, to SIDS 18 years ago.
Danielle grew up in Toogoolawah, near Ipswich, and Bray Park on Brisbane’s northside.
She went to school at Genesis Christian College.
Danielle has a brother, Trent, 13, and two sisters Katelyn, 16, and Elisha, 19.
“She was beautiful inside and out,” Ms Robinson said.
Pigeons used in Jail drug smuggling
June 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
A sharp increase in drugs and cellphones found inside a Brazilian prison mystified officials - until guards spotted some distressed pigeons struggling to stay airborne.
Inmates at the prison in Marilia, Sao Paulo state had been training carrier pigeons to smuggle in goods using cell phone sized pouches on their backs, a low-tech but ingenious way of skipping the high-tech security that visitors faced.
“We have sophisticated equipment to search people when they go in, but they avoided this by finding another way to bring in cellphones and drugs,” prison director Luciano Gamateli told Globo TV.
Officials said the pigeons, bred and trained inside the prison, lived on the jail’s roof, where prisoners would take their deliveries before smuggling the birds out again through friends and family.
The scheme was uncovered when guards on the prison walls saw some pigeons struggling to fly.
Brazil’s overcrowded prisons have notoriously lax security, with cell-phone and drug use common among inmates. Two years ago, a powerful Sao Paulo prison gang used cell-phones to orchestrate a wave of attacks against police and public property
Romanian girl, 11, will have abortion in Britain
June 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment
AN 11-year-old Romanian girl will be brought to Britain for an abortion after she was allegedly raped by her teenage uncle.
The girl is 20 weeks pregnant but Romanian law allows terminations up to only 14 weeks.
Her parents are desperate for her to have an abortion quickly - and authorities last night ruled it could go ahead.
Her father said the family would have travelled to Britain, where abortions can be carried out up to 24 weeks, anyway.
A wealthy Romanian businesswoman living in London has spoken to the family and promised to make arrangements for the abortion and cover all the costs.
“We will take the UK offer and have arranged to fly out Tuesday. The clinic is already arranged,” the father said.
The case has caused uproar in Romania, bitterly splitting the legal and medical communities, child rights groups and the public. The girl’s father said his daughter had been raped twice by an uncle in Piatra Soimului, eastern Romania.
The family had expected an abortion would be simple to secure because of Florina’s age.
“She was just a child herself and one who had been raped and betrayed by one of her own family,” said a family friend. “How could anyone expect her to go through with the pregnancy and have the baby?”
Health ministry official and panel member Vlad Iliescu last night said the abortion would be allowed under Romanian law because the girl was a victim of sexual abuse.
The girl faced “major risks to her mental health” if the pregnancy continued.
But the committee also decided that no changes in current relevent legislation were needed, simply “clarifications with regard to the exceptional circumstances” allowing abortions to go ahead.
Under Romanian law, abortions are allowed up until the 14th week of the pregnancy if the mother’s life is endangered or if the foetus suffers from malformation.
The girl’s parents discovered the pregnancy when she underwent a medical check-up after she complained of stomach pains. By then, she was already 17 weeks pregnant.
Two medical panels then examined the girl, who is now 21 weeks pregnant - the first finding in favour of an abortion, the second against.
The second panel found that “having examined the girl … the pregnancy is proceeding naturally and termination should therefore not be imposed”.
“The fact that the pregnancy stemmed from rape was not taken into account by the panel, for two reasons: one, because rape has not been proven; and two, because the penal code does not allow for any exceptions,” said Vica Todosiciuc, head of the Cuza Voda maternity section in the city of Iasi, last week.
“This was a very difficult decision for the doctors to make. They searched for a medical reason which would allow them to authorise a termination, but none was found,” Todosiciuc said.
The inter-ministerial panel was therefore asked to make a final ruling on the case.
