Monday, December 21, 2009
Man confesses on TV to putting needles in boy
RIO DE JANEIRO — A Rio man publicly confessed pushing dozens of needles into his 2-year-old stepson, saying Sunday he intended to kill the boy out of spite for his wife and didn’t think he would be discovered.
In a jail cell interview aired on Globo television’s “Fantastico” program, 30-year-old bricklayer Roberto Carlos Magalhaes said he mixed water with wine to dope the child before he and his lover held the boy down and stuck sewing needles into him.
The pain led the toddler to complain to his mother, and on Dec. 10 she took him to a hospital where X-rays revealed about 30 needles lodged throughout his body.
The boy underwent a five-hour operation Friday to remove four rusty needles that most threatened his life, near his heart and in his lungs.
Doctors said Sunday the child is doing well and likely will undergo two more surgeries to extract needles up to 2 inches long from his abdomen and spine.
Eurostar train service shut down indefinitely
LONDON — The only passenger rail link between Britain and the rest of Europe has been shut down indefinitely, Eurostar said Sunday, promising more travel misery for thousands of stranded passengers just before Christmas.
Services have been suspended since late Friday, when a series of glitches stranded five trains inside the Channel Tunnel and trapped more than 2,000 passengers for hours in stuffy and claustrophobic conditions. More than 55,000 passengers overall have been affected.
Eurostar runs services between England, France and Belgium. The company said Sunday it had traced the problem to “acute weather conditions in northern France,” which has seen its worst winter weather in years.
Polish police recover stolen death-camp sign
WARSAW, Poland — Police said early today that they have found the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign that was stolen Friday from the gate of the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz.
Police spokeswoman Katarzyna Padlo said that the sign was found in northern Poland. She said police also detained five men between age 25 and 39 who are being transported to Krakow for questioning.
Padlo said the steel sign, which symbolizes to the world the atrocities and cruelty of Nazi Germany, has been cut into three pieces.
Shoppers evacuated from Macy’s in NYC after fire
NEW YORK — Hundreds of holiday shoppers were evacuated from the flagship Macy’s store at Herald Square on Sunday after a fire in an escalator spread smoke through the building. No injuries were immediately reported.
The fire occurred in an escalator between the third and fourth floors, said Elina Kazan, a Macy’s spokeswoman.
Outside the building, a police officer announced to prospective customers after 5 p.m. that Macy’s had closed. It reopened within an hour, Kazan said.
Israel admits harvesting organs without permission
JERUSALEM — Israel has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without permission of their families.
The issue emerged with publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr. Jehuda Hiss. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic.
Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 TV over the weekend. In it, Hiss said, “We started to harvest corneas. ... Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.”
In a response to the TV report, the Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place. “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer,” the military said in a statement quoted by Channel 2.
Iraq takes back oil well
BAGHDAD — Iraq took back a remote oil well from Iranian forces and tentatively approved a lucrative oil deal with foreign investors in separate steps Sunday toward shoring up its nascent oil industry in the face of still-existing security pitfalls.
The peaceful end of the standoff at well No. 4 at the southern al-Fakkah oil field capped a tense weekend between Iraq and Iran, uneasy allies that were once at war. But the preliminary deal — between Iraq’s oil ministry and a partnership run by European giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Malaysia’s state-run Petronas — was also an important step for Baghdad as it jockeys for a larger piece of the world’s oil profits.
Associated Press