AUSTRIA
Rapist to change prison
Convicted rapist Josef Fritzl, 89, can be transferred to a regular prison from a prison psychiatric unit, but release from incarceration is unlikely, the Regional Court of Krem ruled yesterday. Fritzl, who has changed his name, raped his daughter whom he held captive for 24 years in a dungeon he built under his home, fathering seven children over the period. He has been serving a life sentence in a prison unit for “mentally abnormal” inmates since his conviction in 2009 for incest, rape, enslavement, coercion and murder by neglect of one of the children, a newborn boy. While a transfer could, in principle, pave the way for Fritzl’s conditional release from prison altogether, the court has said such a request was unlikely to be approved due to “special preventive reasons.” Prosecutors can still file a complaint against the decision to move him to a regular prison in a bid to get it overturned, as they did after the first ruling.
NETHERLANDS
‘Fortnite’ maker fined
The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) yesterday hit Fortnite maker Epic Games with two separate fines totaling 1.1 million euros (US$1.2 million), judging that vulnerable children were exploited and pressured into making purchases in the game’s Item Shop. Epic Games has filed an objection against the decision and proposed several changes to the game that the ACM said would resolve their concerns. The ACM imposed the first fine over phrases in the game such as “Get it now” or “Buy now.” Adverts directly exhorting children to make purchases are “an illegal aggressive commercial practice under all circumstances,” the ACM said. The second fine was imposed for “deceptive” and “misleading” countdown timers that pressured children to make purchases quickly, because they believed the item would disappear when the clock hit zero — which was not always the case. “Children’s vulnerabilities were exploited and were thus pressured into making purchases,” ACM board member Cateautje Hijmans van den Bergh said.
SPAIN
Orcas sink sailing yacht
An unknown number of orcas have sunk a sailing yacht after ramming it in Moroccan waters in the Strait of Gibraltar, the Spanish maritime rescue service said on Monday, a new attack in what has become a trend in the past four years. The 15m-long Alboran Cognac, with two people onboard, encountered the highly social apex predators, also known as killer whales, at 9am on Sunday, the service said. The passengers reported feeling sudden blows to the hull and rudder before water started seeping into the yacht. After alerting the rescue services, a nearby oil tanker took them onboard and transported them to Gibraltar. The yacht eventually sank.
TURKEY
Spider ‘smuggler’ detained
A curator at the American Museum of Natural History was detained at Istanbul airport for allegedly attempting to smuggle 1,500 spider and scorpion samples, local media reported. Lorenzo Prendini, an expert on arachnids at the New York-based museum, said in e-mailed comments that he had appeared before a judge and was released without charge. Prendini said the police had disregarded permits from the Turkish government to conduct his research in collaboration with Turkish scientists. “The police completely ignored this and relied on the testimony of an ‘expert’ who has a conflict of interest with my collaborators … and whose scientific research is highly questionable,” he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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