Thursday, July 26, 2012

An AS532 Cougar helicopter has crashed in the south-east of France, killing all six occupants onboard. The aircraft, owned by manufacturing company Eurocopter, descended in the Verdon Gorge — located in the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence — at roughly 13:30 CEST (1130 UTC) yesterday. Police lieutenant Benoit Gounine told Reuters “[t]he accident occurred in a place that’s very difficult to access, which is complicating our work”.

A spokesperson for Eurocopter said the occupants of the helicopter were company engineers and test pilots. The aircraft, which launched from a heliport near Marseille, was being taken on a test flight and was due to be delivered to a customer later. Gilles Bruniaux, security development director at Eurocopter, said the helicopter occupants were “hardened professionals”.

Although investigations into the cause of the incident are ongoing, initial examinations by police and witness reports suggest the helicopter impacted with an electricity cable before descending. The owner of a restaurant close to the impact site told Agence France-Presse “customers having lunch on the terrace started yelling — there was an explosion and lots of black smoke”.

Verdon Gorge, one of the most famous in Europe, has a depth of 700 metres (2300 feet). The gorge is notable for its popularity with hikers.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Nelson Boys College was closed today because of an outbreak of gastro-enteritis in its boarding houses.

About 40% of the school’s boarding students have been hit with what is thought to be the highly contagious and violent stomach bug, Norovirus.

The principal, Salvi Garguilo, says the boys are being well cared for at the school, helped by Nelson Hospital.

They will stay isolated until they are no longer contagious.

Nelson College will reopen on Monday.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Zimbabwe has decided to abandon its currency, the Zimbabwean dollar, in favour of other currencies.

Acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced today that Zimbabweans will be allowed to make transactions in other currencies along with the local currency. “In line with the prevailing practices by the general public, [the] government is therefore allowing the use of multiple foreign currencies for business transactions alongside the Zimbabwean dollar,” he said, adding that the Zimbabwean dollar will not be removed from circulation and would be used alongside other currencies.

This decision comes during the current period of hyperinflation, which has massively devalued the Zimbabwean dollar. Banknotes up to $100 trillion have been printed, despite the removal of ten zeroes from the currency last summer to try to make transactions easier. The official inflation rate, last updated in July 2008, was 231,000,000% a year, although independent estimates place the number as high as 6.5×10¹⁰⁸, or 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion, percent.

Up to now, only vendors with licenses were legally able to accept foreign currencies, although the practice was widespread — private businesses altogether refuse to accept the unstable Zimbabwean dollar.

Large sections of the workforce, including teachers and doctors, have gone on strike because hyperinflation rapidly renders their wages worthless. Representative groups said salaries, now measured in trillions of dollars, are insufficient to pay for even the bus fare to work.

Zimbabwe also faces other crises, including a cholera epidemic that has claimed the lives of over 3,000 people, according to statistics from the World Health Organisation.

[edit]

Friday, October 23, 2009

Canadian authorities have dropped charges against 38-year-old Kyle Unger, who has served more than a decade in jail for a murder he did not commit. Hair from 16-year-old Brigitte Grenier’s body was used to convict him and has since been linked to someone else.

The case began at a rock concert near Winnipeg on June 23, 1990. Grenier attended the concert but then failed to return home. Her naked body was recovered from a nearby creek the following day in the grounds of the Roseisle ski resort that hosted the event. She had been beaten and sexually assaulted.

Unger later confessed to an undercover police officer posing as a drug dealer, and was charged alongside Timothy Houlahan. Both were found guilty, with Unger’s conviction helped by male hair recovered from the victim, which a forensics expert testified had come from the innocent man.

Unger, who had been imprisoned since being charged in 1991, was sentenced on February 29, 1992 to a minimum of 25 years imprisonment. The following year the Manitoba Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear it. In 1994 Houlahan’s conviction was overturned and he was released on bail pending a retrial; the 21-year-old chose instead to take his own life.

In 2003 the area’s Forensic Evidence Review Committee (FERC) began to look at cases involving hair samples. The next year authorities reported that they were able to relocate the hair used in the Grenier case, which they had previously believed to have been destroyed. Several months afterwards FERC said that the hair was not Unger’s.

It would be another year before Justice Holly Beard ruled in November 2005 that Unger should be released while his case was reviewed. On November 24, 2005 he was set free after nearly 14 years wrongly imprisoned. The review was completed this year and in March the conviction was overturned. A retrial was ordered by Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.

However, prosecutors today decided that a retrial was highly unlikely to result in a conviction owing to the fact that no physical evidence links Unger to the slaying. He was formally acquitted of first-degree murder today. Grenier’s family have maintained that they believe in his guilt.

“It’s the first day of the rest of my life, a new beginning,” Unger said after leaving court today. He now lives in British Columbia. He said he was not angry over what happened to him, just upset. “When you feed off anger it just takes more from you. They already took my younger years away from me, why let them have my mind?” He says of his confession to the men he thought were gangsters that it was because he wanted to work for them: “When you’re young, naive and desperate for money, they hold a lot of promises to you, so you say and do what you have to do to survive, just like in prison.”

“Right now we are joyful that the man has an acquittal,” said Unger’s lawyer, Hersh Wolch. “This is a momentous day. The (justice) minister … rarely sends the matter to a retrial. Rarely. Tell me of one. And then an acquittal? It’s virtually unheard of. It is unheard of. So this is huge.”

Manitoba’s Attorney General Dave Chomiak says he will not be compensated despite his wrongful conviction because of his false confession. Prosecutor George Dangerfield, who convicted the pair in 1992, is having his cases reviewed owing to being involved in two previous separate miscarriages of justice — wrongful murder convictions against Thomas Sophonow and James Driskell.

[edit]

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

A policeman from the United Kingdom pleaded guilty to the murder of his fiancée, a female police constable. PC Martin Forshaw, 27, used a steel hammer to bludgeon WPC Claire Howarth, 31, before placing her in her car and staging an accident.

Forshaw’s intent had been to convince police that Howarth had died behind the wheel, but officers became suspicious when they found her injuries were severe while the car was virtually undamaged. The trial had been due to start today before Manchester Crown Court but Forshaw confessed to the crime beforehand.

The couple met in 2006 and the next year became engaged in Mexico. They were due to fly to St Lucia on the day of the killing but Forshaw had other plans; he, his lover, and their child were booked on a trip to Disneyland in Paris. An argument broke out and Forshaw used a large steel hammer to hit her, in the same room as her dress and packed suitcases.

He then drove to an isolated patch of moorland, placed her in the driver’s seat and executed a crash into a hedge at 50–60 mph. He then dialed 999 and said he had been in a high speed accident. Howarth was found unconscious; she died later that day in a hospital in Bolton.

“It was such a poor attempt to make it look like a crash that both the police and the ambulance service were immediately suspicious, and the severity of Claire’s head injuries meant they could not have been caused by such a minor crash,” said lead investigator Andy Tattersall of Greater Manchester Police. “That caused us to question Forshaw’s account and led us to unravelling this tragic sequence of events.”

Forshaw was sentenced to life imprisonment, of which he will serve a minimum of eighteen years.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Pop culture event Toronto ComiCon continued to grow this year, the sixth year since its restructuring as a three day program. Beginning on Friday evening, it continued through to Sunday. Organized by the same company as Fan Expo Canada, the event offered exhibitors, retailers, an artist’s alley, and panels.

Cast members from Canadian teen show Degrassi Junior High were among the featured guests at the convention. While the current series in the franchise, best known as Degrassi: The Next Generation, has spawned Broadway star Jake Epstein, rapper Drake, and others, the earlier show including Stacie Mistysyn and Stefan Brogren remains popular, particularly in Canada. Brogren told industry publication Kidscreen: “A part of me thought we would do it for five years and maybe get recognized for a couple of years afterwards and then that would be it. I had no idea it would turn out to be such an important thing in so many people?s lives and not just in Canada, but around the world.”

The current program is now distributed by Netflix, and Brogen remains a cast member as school principal, in addition to being a producer and director.

It was the first time the cast did a convention event. The cast also plan to tour to other conventions in Canada this year.

Also appearing were Robert Picardo, the holographic doctor on Star Trek: Voyager, and Ray Park, Darth Maul in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

Panels at the convention focused on topics like steampunk costuming, wig styling, recently rebooted comic Captain Canuck, toy collecting, and the history of comic books in Canada over the decades, in conjunction with Canada’s sesquicentennial year. Cast members from The Sean Ward Show appeared at the event, meeting guests to the convention and hosting a panel about the superhero comedy YouTube channel which has more than 600 million views.

Saturday, April 1, 2006

Chemicals, which the Auckland City Council said are a suspected cause of cancer and are considered toxic, have been found in soil at a children’s playcentre in Auckland. The contamination was found at the Auckland Central Playcentre in Freemans Bay, and the Council will now spend $100,000 removing the top 50 cm (about 20 in) of soil at the playcentre, doing landscaping and replacing playground equipment.

The presence of “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, including benzo-a-pyrene,” was suspected at the school playground and was confirmed by a chemical analysis on Tuesday. The chemicals may cause temporary digestive and respiratory distress, as well as irritation of the eyes and skin. The levels of benzo-a-pyrene found were between 0.06 and 4.82 milligrams per kilogram of soil at surface level, according to the Ministry of Education. A potential risk is present at levels above 3.5 mg.