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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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