`A retired French colonel accused of trying to boost his children’s tennis results by drugging their opponents has admitted he spiked the water bottle of a rival player who later died in a car crash.
Christophe Fauviau, whose daughter Valentine, 15, is one of France’s brightest prospects, made his confession at the start of his trial in the south-western town of Mont-de-Marsan.
He is charged with the manslaughter of Alexandre Lagardere by unintentionally causing him to fall asleep at the wheel of his car. Mr Lagardere had earlier been overcome by drowsiness while playing Fauviau’s son Maxime in the final of a local tournament.
Fauviau, 46, a former helicopter pilot instructor with an exemplary military record, is also accused of administering toxic substances to 21 of Valentine’s opponents and six of her brother’s.’
`A $400,000 federal government compensation payout to an 11-year-old Iranian boy who suffered psychological harm in Australian detention centres has been described by his lawyers as a “landmark outcome.”
The NSW Supreme Court today approved the compensation offer to Shayan Badraie who sued the immigration department on the grounds he was psychologically harmed while living at Woomera and Villawood detention centres between 2000 and 2002.
After months of hearings, the boy’s lawyers accepted an out-of-court settlement offer yesterday of “$400,000 by government solicitors”, a spokeswoman for legal firm Maurice Blackburn Cashman said.’
`A man showing off his OnStar system in his Cadillac Escalade found out the system worked too well. Ralph A. Gomez, 38, was being held Wednesday on $15,000 bond on charges of possession of an illegal narcotic within 1,000 feet of a church and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Gomez was showing off his OnStar system to his girlfriend, but the volume was set so low that he couldn’t hear the OnStar operator. OnStar comes on many new General Motors vehicles and allows a customer to contact an OnStar representative in an emergency or to get directions.
If there is no response, OnStar contacts police.’
`Shawanna Nelson, a prisoner at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Ark., had been in labor for more than 12 hours when she arrived at Newport Hospital on Sept. 20, 2003. Ms. Nelson, whose legs were shackled together and who had been given nothing stronger than Tylenol all day, begged, according to court papers, to have the shackles removed.
Laura Strange, a California inmate, shackled to her bed before the state enacted a law banning the practice during labor, delivery and recovery.
Though her doctor and two nurses joined in the request, her lawsuit says, the guard in charge of her refused.
“She was shackled all through labor,” said Ms. Nelson’s lawyer, Cathleen V. Compton. “The doctor who was delivering the baby made them remove the shackles for the actual delivery at the very end.”‘
`Naked Rambler Stephen Gough has been jailed for two months for appearing naked in the dock from custody.
Mr Gough, from Eastleigh in Hampshire, completed his second naked trek from Lands End to John O’Groats last week.
He had been arrested on Wednesday for walking naked into Edinburgh Sheriff Court to face previous charges.’
`A woman pleaded guilty Monday to attempted murder charges for trying to hire a hit man to rob and kill four men for what she thought was cocaine, but turned out to be cheese.
Jessice Sandy Booth, 18, hatched the plot after she visited the home of the men, and mistook queso fresco – a white, crumbly cheese common in Mexican cuisine.
But the hit man she hired turned out to be an undercover police officer.
“They asked her numerous times ‘Do you really want to go through with this?'” prosecutor Paul Hagerman said. “They gave her numerous chances to back out, but she said she was serious. She said she needed the money for modeling school.”‘
`A Baton Rouge hospital, hoping to get to the bottom of an office prank, is ordering 25 employees to undergo DNA testing or be terminated.
Leaders at Woman’s Hospital say a man who works in Building Operations returned from several weeks off to find that someone had placed urine in his toolbox.
After hearing of the incident, hospital administrators sent a memo to 25 employees who also work there telling them that DNA testing would be done unless someone came forward admitting guilt. Since no one came forward, the hospital said the DNA testing will begin within the next few weeks.’
`RCMP officers in Montreal have dismantled an international operation that they allege was selling marijuana seeds over the internet.
Investigators claim they seized 200,000 seeds, enough to run 500 grow operations if planted and nurtured correctly.
That many plants would have the potential to generate about 42 million joints, reporters were told as police displayed the seized material Tuesday.’
`i was just on the bus. doing typical travel things. you know, listening to my ipod, staring out the window, day dreaming about ice cream and puppy dogs. a few stops before mine, a sheriff’s car pulls in front of the bus with its lights on. he gets on, moves to the back and an undercover informs a woman that she’s being cited for wearing headphones. apparently, having both headphones on while in a bus is a crime. they take her info. they are about to leave when the undercover notices me with my ipod. do you have your id, he rudely asked. i asked why. he informs me that what i’m doing is illegal. that i can only have one earphone in at a time. i was looking at him completely dumbfounded. shaking, i looked through my bag for my id then he took down all of my info. when he saw that my id was from canada, he asked why i was in the country.’
`A phone repair worker who is in transition from male to female said Tuesday that she was arrested three times by transit police in the last six months for using the women’s restroom at Grand Central Terminal.
Helena Stone, 70, said an officer called her “a freak, a weirdo and the ugliest woman in the world” and warned her, “If I ever see you in the women’s bathroom, I’m going to arrest you.”
“I said, ‘That’s the only bathroom I use,'” Stone said at a rally and news conference. “‘That’s who I am.'”‘
Brought to you by the Mississippi Criminal Sex Offender Information website.
`Police in Orlando, Fla., are searching for a group of men who attacked and robbed a woman ice cream truck driver of food and items, according to a Local 6 News report. [..]
As she attempted to serve the man from the truck, he reached in and grabbed some ice cream from the cooler, the report said.
Moments later, a group of men rushed the truck, opened the door and stole her cell phone and sunglasses.
Another man pulled a cooler from the truck, and when the woman tried to stop him, he punched her in the face.’
`A homeless man who police say tried to take a sheep from the Little Rock Zoo has been arrested on numerous charges. A security guard at the zoo called police Tuesday evening after spotting a man carrying a trash can with a sheep in it, a police report said.
When officers arrived Grady Allen Carnahan, 32, told them he was a doctor and the sheep was sick. He said he was taking the animal to a veterinary clinic, the report said.
Carnahan fought with officers as they were trying to take him into custody, police said.’
`Last week’s raid on a security depot in the county of Kent has been confirmed as the biggest heist in British history, netting robbers £53 million ($125.4 million), police said today.
Police hunting for the gang behind the heist are questioning four suspects held in the past 24 hours, Kent’s Assistant Chief Constable Adrian Leppard said in what he described as a major development in the case.
Seven others have been arrested but freed on bail since the heist on Thursday.
The six robbers posed as police officers.
They kidnapped the manager of the security depot, along with his wife and small child, and held them before making off with the cash.’
`A Colombian man has been sentenced to four years’ house arrest for slapping a woman’s bottom as he rode by her on his bicycle, sparking debate on whether the punishment fit the crime.
Showing re-enactments of the incident, television news shows were filled on Friday with legal experts offering opinions about the judgment handed down earlier in the week by Bogota’s district court.
Some said that to confine bicycle messenger Victor Garcia to his home for four years for smacking Diana Marcela Diaz’s buttocks was excessive. Others said it would deter other men.’
`A Battle Creek man is in the Calhoun County jail accused of trying to solicit sex from a minor that turned out to be an undercover police officer.
The Emmett Township Department of Public Safety says they caught 32-year-old Brian Woodman in an Internet sting. He’s accused of chatting with a girl he thought was 14-years-old and then arranging to meet her for sex.
When Woodman arrived for that meeting, he found out that he had been chatting with an undercover police officer.
Woodman was arraigned today on eight felony counts.’
`A young Brisbane IT specialist who worked as a part-time nightclub bouncer for extra cash has been jailed for seven years for killing a drunk patron with a single kick. [..]
Coddington was overhead to say to Hutchings: “I fucked your mother.”
It was alleged that when Coddington repeated the insult Hutchings kicked him with a fast, sharp blow to the head.
Coddington, who had a blood alcohol reading of 0.29 per cent, died a short time later of a brain haemorrhage.
Hutchings has maintained he only hit Coddington on the shoulder in a bid to subdue him, and the kick did not have enough force to do any damage.’
`Former escort kingpin Arthur “Big Pimpin’ Pappy” Vanmoor is known for his litigious nature.
In the past decade, he has been a plaintiff or defendant in 29 lawsuits in Broward County alone. He has sued businesses that challenged him, police departments that investigated him, an assistant state attorney who prosecuted him and journalists who reported on him.
But his latest suit has stunned even veteran court watchers.
Vanmoor, 46, has filed a federal lawsuit against six former customers of his escort service. He says they broke the law after purchasing time with his escorts, and it was their illegal actions that led to his arrest, incarceration and deportation, as well as the loss of his business.’
`It’s an unusual motive for murder. Investigators in Belleview said slamming the door drove a man to kill his next-door neighbor in Marion County.
Investigators believe Betty Shepperd was murdered over something that sounds extremely trivial. They said 45-year-old Vito Loiacono was irritated that Shepperd was slamming the door at night and waking him up.
The two allegedly argued earlier in the day and then Shepperd’s friend said she got a strange phone call from someone else in the complex.
“[The person] said, ‘The reason I’m calling you is I saw Vito coming out of Betty’s apartment.’ I said, ‘That can’t be,'” said Shepperd’s friend, Maria Folks.
Folks went to Shepperd’s apartment and found her in the bathroom, where she had been stabbed to death.
“I found the door ajar. I started yelling, ‘Betty! Betty!'”‘
‘A clerk at a GetGo station made a horrifying discovery last night after a man walked into the minimart and asked her to heat something wrapped in a paper towel in the store’s microwave.
When the item in the microwave gave off an unusual odor, the clerk opened the over door, unwrapped the paper and found what appeared to be a severed human penis, according to KDKA-TV.’
and Police Uncover Twist In Bizarre Case:
‘According to McKeesport’s police chief, a man and a woman had inserted urine into a fake penis that the woman was planning to use to pass a drug test.’
`With great power comes great responsibility… unless greed overcomes one’s better spider-senses.
A robber wearing a Spider-Man mask was caught on surveillance video Tuesday stealing a set of rare comics from a store in Culver City, Calif. Among the issues stolen were Fantastic Four #1, X-Men #1, and the comic in which Spidey first appeared, Amazing Fantasy #15, valued at around $2,500 an issue.
The man walked into the shop around 11:30 a.m., but store employees thought nothing of a customer dressed in partial costume, reports KCBS-TV’s Suzie Suh.’
`A Wichita man shouting abuse and throwing groceries in a Sam’s Club parking lot didn’t know he had an audience.
He had an audience, all right: Kelly Otis, a homicide detective, walked past just as the man appeared to hit his 11-year-old daughter in the forehead with a box of frozen chicken. [..]
“The guy started crying and told me he was sorry and was just having a bad day,” Otis said. “I told him that was a horrible excuse, and that his day was about to get worse.”
When Otis looked inside, he saw a 1-year-old girl sitting in a car seat, and another girl, age 11, with a red lump growing on her forehead. She was crying.
Otis asked her what had struck her. She pointed. One corner of the 2 ½-pound box was broken from striking her in the head.
Otis said the childrens’ mother told him: “I didn’t do anything.”‘
`An Amish teenager will pay a fine and restitution to a neighbor for illegally tapping into his telephone line.
James Bontrager, 17, W3950 Grand River Road, Markesan, pleaded guilty in Green Lake County Circuit Court Jan. 23, to a charge of telecommunications fraud.
He was fined $367 and ordered to pay $36.09 in long distance charges to CenturyTel for calls the teen made on his neighbor’s phone line to a relative in Indiana. The Amish traditionally shun telephones and other modern conveniences in their homes.’
`A disturbing case was discovered Tuesday about a Central Ohio man who allegedly told police he likes to drink the urine of adolescent boys. [..]
“Listening to his describe it, it’s like listening to a crack or cocaine addict. He’s addicted to children’s urine,” Fithen said.
According to police, Patton said he’s been drinking urine for years.
“He told us he’s been doing it over 40 years, since he was 7 years old,” Fithen said.
Police said Patton goes to family restaurants and movie theaters and waits for boys in a bathroom stall. Investigators said he shuts off the water to the child-level urinal and puts a cup in the bottom.’
`The MPAA filed lawsuits against Torrentspy, Isohunt, Torrentbox, Niteshadow and Bthub. This could have a huge impact on the Bittorrent community since Torrentspy and Isohunt are two of the most frequently visited torrent sites.
But on the other hand, Isohunt and Torrentspy are torrent search engines and DO NOT host any torrents so the MPAA may have a hard time to built a strong case.’
`Our government tells us the prisoners at Guantanamo are “the worst of the worst,” to use Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s phrase. “They’re terrorists. They’re bomb-makers, they’re facilitators of terror. They’re members of al-Qaida and the Taliban” is the description from the ever-reliable lips of Vice President Dick Cheney.
“They were there to kill,” the President has asserted. [..]
What do the official findings of the U.S. military show?
More than half of the so-called enemy combatants at Guantanamo were determined to have committed no hostile act against U.S. or coalition forces. This was so even though the definition of a “hostile act” was loose enough to include fleeing a camp that had been bombed, or being picked up in an area of Pakistan where others believed to be fighters had fled.’
`The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.
Black Box Voting successfully sued former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004 presidential election.
After investing over $7,000 and waiting nine months for the records, Black Box Voting discovered that the voting machine logs contained approximately 100,000 errors. According to voting machine assignment logs, Palm Beach County used 4,313 machines in the Nov. 2004 election. During election day, 1,475 voting system calibrations were performed while the polls were open, providing documentation to substantiate reports from citizens indicating the wrong candidate was selected when they tried to vote.
Another disturbing find was several dozen voting machines with votes for the Nov. 2, 2004 election cast on dates like Oct. 16, 15, 19, 13, 25, 28 2004 and one tape dated in 2010. These machines did not contain any votes date-stamped on Nov. 2, 2004.’
`A man who raped his unconscious teenage stepdaughter as she lay dying from a head injury has been jailed for nine years at the High Court in Glasgow.
Sentencing Judge Lord Philip told George McKee, 50, he had committed an “appalling crime” which filled members of the public with “horror”.
McKee admitted raping Kerry Muchan, 14, in her Paisley home on 23 July, 2005 while she was unconscious.
Kerry died soon after the rape from a head injury caused by a fall.’
`Dennis Crouch had already slashed himself. And when he refused to drop his knife, Daytona Beach police Officer Betsy Cassidy decided she had no choice.
“Taser! Taser!” Cassidy shouted as she sent a two-pronged wire, packing 50,000 volts, at Crouch’s chest. What happened next stunned everyone.
A Taser probe pierced the pocket of his khaki shirt — and ignited the butane lighter inside. Crouch’s pocket exploded in flames.
“The subject,” recounted Sgt. Al Tolley in a subsequent report, “immediately dropped the knife.”‘
`Police say the driver charged with the smash that killed six teenagers and left one fighting for his life has appeared in court at least eight times since 1992 for driving while disqualified.
And it alleged his four-year-old son was sitting on his lap at the time of the crash. [..]
Towle, 34, who was released from jail three months ago after serving 18 months for a firearms-related offence, held his head in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair yesterday as he faced up to the full horror of the charges against him: six counts of culpable driving causing death, four counts of negligently causing serious injury, one count of failing to stop and one of failing to render assistance.’
