Wednesday, September 13, 2017

A police officer has shot and killed his wife and two of their children at the train station in the French city of Noyon in the department of Oise, the local prosecutor said, after the wife had informed the officer of her intention to separate from him. Their sons were aged three and five; a third child, twin to the five year old victim, survived the attack and is in the care of child services. The killings took place around 11:30 local time (0930 UTC) on Sunday.

The wife, born in 1983, called the gendarmes (police) in the morning, and they arrived to find her explaining to their five children about the domestic argument which had escalated. The husband returned while the police were present, and they reported he seemed calm and did not interfere with the children being moved to a neighbor’s home, so they departed. The woman reportedly chose to leave her house when her husband was not there, and headed to the station, where the husband awaited them armed.

After assassinating his family, the police officer committed suicide. The wife’s family lived in Guiscard, near Noyon. The station at Noyon was closed after the incident. Late on Sunday, the police were searching for a witness who escaped after observing the events.

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Sunday, April 18, 2010

A land mine blast in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, has killed eight people, and mortars launched by rebels at the city airport killed six others, according to witnesses and doctors. The al-Shabaab group was said to be responsible for both the attacks by police officials, although they did not claim responsibility for it.

“All the mortar rounds missed the airport but landed in civilian areas,” Ali Muse, coordinator of ambulance services, told Reuters news agency. Five of the six people were killed in the Bakara market, four of them being women. The rebels opened fire soon after President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and the parliament speaker arrived late on Saturday.

The earlier attack occurred near a police station in southern Mogadishu. Several government soldiers died in the attack. Ali Gab, a local police official, said five police officials died in the attack, and blamed al-Shabaab for it. Fadum Hassan, a nurse at a hospital where the injured was being treated, said twenty critically injured people had been admitted to the hospital.

“The explosion killed five soldiers and three [civilians]. Human flesh was everywhere and some of the injured victims were screaming for help,” eyewitness Yusuf Abdulqader told Reuters. Relatives of the victims of the attack have blamed the al-Shabaab for the blast. “They have massacred our people, they don’t care for our people, our flag and sovereignty,” cried Fadumo Abdi, whose son died in the attack.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Famed English actor, singer and author Sir Christopher Lee died last Sunday morning in London aged 93, after being admitted to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for heart failure and respiratory problems. News of his death only became public on Thursday, as his wife of 54 years, Birgit Krøncke Lee, wished first to inform friends and family.

A spokesman for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea confirmed the issuing of his death certificate.

Lee first rose to prominence in the 1950s starring in Hammer Horror films as the classic movie monsters Dracula and Frankenstein and was more recently seen as Saruman the White in the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films as well as portraying the villainous Count Dooku in the Star Wars films Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

In 2010 Lee released a heavy metal album titled Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross followed by another metal album in 2013, Charlemagne: The Omens of Death and several collections of Heavy Metal cover songs including A Heavy Metal Christmas, A Heavy Metal Christmas Too and Metal Knight.

In 2008 Lee was knighted for services to drama and charity, and in 2001 received a Bafta Fellowship.

Lee is survived by his wife Birgit and daughter Christina.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

A graduate student attending Yale University who went missing five days before her planned wedding was found dead on Sunday, police said.

Annie Le, an American doctoral student seeking a degree in medicine, went missing on September 8, five days before her planned wedding. Investigators reviewed footage from the security cameras of 10 Amistad, the building where Le last entered, and found no evidence that she had left. Police scouring the building found a body, later identified as Le’s, hidden in a wall. Earlier, police had found bloody clothes in the ceiling, which they think belonged to the killer.

According to the medical examiner, Le had been strangled.

Le was set to marry Jonathan Widawsky, a graduate student studying physics at Columbia University.

Police believe that there was a motive, and that the slaying was not random. A lab technician, who was labeled a “person of interest” by police, had failed a polygraph and had defensive wounds on his chest, was detained and later released. However, no arrests have been made in connections with the homicide, according to a police spokesman.

In December 1998, Suzanne Jovin was found murdered on the Yale campus.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

The British government announced today that marriages in England and Wales between members of the same-sex will be conducted from March 29 of next year. The change follows the passage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act earlier this year.

The equalities minister Maria Miller said: “Marriage is one of our most important institutions, and from 29 March 2014 it will be open to everyone, irrespective of whether they fall in love with someone of the same sex or opposite sex. This is just another step in the evolution of marriage and I know that many couples up and down the country will be hugely excited that they can now plan for their big day and demonstrate their love and commitment to each other by getting married.”

The government have not given details of how couples already in a civil partnership will be able to convert to a marriage. The government are also working on arrangements for those who wish to change their legally recognised gender while married. Miller said arrangements on both of these issues would be in place by the end of 2014.

Ben Summerskill from the gay rights group Stonewall said: “This historic step will mean that, for the first time, every gay person in England and Wales will finally enjoy exactly the same rights as their heterosexual friends and family.”

The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said on Twitter that it was “great news”.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Prince William of Wales has selected his brother Prince Harry to be the best man at his wedding. The announcement was made by a spokesman at St James’s Palace. It has also been revealed that Prince William’s fiancée, Kate Middleton, has asked her sister Philippa to be her Maid of Honour. Prince William and Middleton will marry on April 29th of this year at Westminster Abbey.

When it was announced that William and Kate had become engaged Prince Harry commented saying that: “It means I get a sister, which I have always wanted,” and that he was “delighted”.

As well as the announcements of the best man and Maid of Honour, other plans have been released as well. The four bridesmaids have been announced as the daughter of the Earl and Countess of Wessex, Lady Louise Windsor, who is seven years old. Eight-year-old Margarita Armstrong-Jones, who is the daughter of Viscount and Viscountess Linley, and three-year-old Grace van Cutsem, the daughter of Hugh van Cutsem, who is a close friend to both William and Kate. The three-year-old granddaughter of the Duchess of Cornwall will be the forth bridesmaid.

Two page boys have been announced as William Lowther-Pinkerton and Tom Pettifer. Lowther-Pinkerton is the son of William’s private secretary while Pettifer is the son of William and Harry’s former nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke.

However, details of the bridesmaid dresses and page boys uniforms will not be revealed until the day of the wedding.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Traralgon defeated Wonthaggi by five goals at the Wonthaggi Recreation Reserve as they kept in touch with Maffra at the top of the Gippsland Football League in Australia’s state of Victoria. Wonthaggi now sit a game out of the top five.

Maffra (nine wins one loss) are on top a game clear of Traralgon, with Moe a further game back. Morwell (five wins five losses) are two games behind Moe in fourth. Drouin (four wins five losses) sit in fifth ahead of Sale (four wins five losses) and Leongatha (four wins six losses) on percentage. Warragul have not won a game this season. (Sale and Drouin have had one extra bye then the rest of the competition)

The Gippsland League, comprising nine clubs, is the major Australian rules football competition in the rural region between Melbourne and the boundary with New South Wales.

Scores are quoted as goals-behinds (total). Goals are worth six points, behinds one.

The opening quarter was a goal for goal affair with both teams kicking two each. However, Traralgon lead by three points going into the first break.

Traralgon kicked seven goals to one in the second quarter to take a 38 point lead into the third quarter. At half time Traralgon lead 9-6 (60) to 3-4 (22).

Wikinews asked Traralgon statistician Andy Thissling about Wonthaggi’s second half fight back. “Yea[h] kick[ed] 4 goal[s] to 3 in 3[rd] quarter,” Thissling said.

The teams kicked a goal each in the last quarter with the visitors winning 13-13 (91) to 8-13 (61).

Around the grounds, Morwell 14-16 (100) defeated Leongatha 7-10 (52), Sale 12-20 (92) defeated Warragul 2-6 (18) and Maffra 13-15 (93) defeated Moe 6-6 (42). Drouin had the bye.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

The British Foreign Office is advising Britons against all but essential travel to Kenya because of the violence following the disputed presidential elections. The warning and the violence are heavily affecting Kenya’s tourism industry, which relies heavily on European tourists escaping the winter cold.

The travel warning recommends that those already in Kenya stay indoors and exercise extreme caution and seek advice locally either from their tour operator or the local authorities if they want to travel. The Foreign Office also warns against attending political gatherings and large public meetings.

This decision comes at the same time as widespread violence in the country and calls for an investigation into the vote results, after suspicion over vote rigging by the government.

Tour operators in the United Kingdom have suspended holiday packages to Kenya until the situation there improves. Two holiday companies are thought to be flying out empty planes to the country, to bring back British residents from the country.

The Association of British Travel Associations, an umbrella body for travel agents says about four hundred tourists who had been scheduled to fly to Kenya have postponed their trips. Sean Tipton is a spokesperson for the association.

“Clearly holidays can’t count as essential travel, because of that British tour operators have two flights one going out on Friday and another one on Saturday both those flights will still be going, but they will be flying out empty,” he said. “They won’t be taking any more customers out to Kenya. The reason they are being sent is they were due to return people to the UK. There is another charter flight which should go out on Monday at the moment that’s still scheduled to go because the advice to Kenya is changing very rapidly, but if the Foreign Office is still advising against all but essential travel, that flight will also be cancelled.”

Another umbrella body, the Federation of Tour Operators also announced the suspension of holiday trips to Kenya with departures due up to Saturday January 5th.

In a statement it said the situation is being reviewed daily and any changes to departures planned after 5 January will be made over the coming days.

Media reports say there are about 6,000 British citizens currently travelling in Kenya.

Sunday, June 4, 2017

In an analysis published on Friday in Science, scientists announced data collected from the Curiosity Rover show that Mars’s Gale Crater was once a chemically stratified lake, meaning the aquatic environment differed markedly between deep and shallow water. According to the report, “all of the physical, chemical, and energetic conditions necessary to establish a habitable environment were present on Mars between ~3.8 billion and 3.1 billion years ago.”

Analysis shows the chemical index of alteration fluctuated over time in a way that suggested the lake varied between hot, wet periods and colder, drier periods. The shallow water would have been rich in oxidants brought in from the atmosphere and groundwater, and the deeper water would have been oxidant poor. Phosphates, carbon, nitrogen, iron and sulfur, indicating chemistry suitable for life, have also been found there in a variety of compounds.

Lead author Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University explained, “These were very different, co-existing environments in the same lake[…] This type of oxidant stratification is a common feature of lakes on Earth, and now we’ve found it on Mars. The diversity of environments in this Martian lake would have provided multiple opportunities for different types of microbes to survive.”

The scientists also evaluated the fineness of the sediment, meaning the sizes of individual particles of dirt, dust and sand. Curiosity found larger grains near the edges of the lake where sediments from incoming rivers and streams would have fed it, and smaller ones in what would have been the deep lakebed, which is consistent with particles dropping out of the water as the current slows down. “We could tell something was going on,” Hurowitz said in a statement. “What was causing iron minerals to be one flavor in one part of the lake and another flavor in another part of the lake? We had an ‘Aha!’ moment when we realized that the mineral information and the bedding-thickness information mapped perfectly onto each other in a way you would expect from a stratified lake with a chemical boundary between shallow water and deeper water.”