Wed, May 15, 2024 page5

• World News Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  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.
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