crimes | Common News Update

Jul142020 by adminNo Comments

Malian accused of war crimes refuses to enter plea at ICC

World

July 14 (UPI) -- An accused Islamist militant declined to enter a plea in response to war crimes charges at the start of his International Criminal Court trial Tuesday in The Hague. Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud, 42, refused to plead guilty or not guilty to the charges, but acknowledged he understood the charges. Advertisement He told the judges, "I cannot answer that question," when they read each of the 13 charges. Hassan is accused of joining the Ansar Dine militant group and leading a force of religious police during an Islamist occupation of Timbuktu, Mali, in mid-2012. Prosecutors said he enforced a strict version of Sharia law, allegedly torturing offenders and encouraging forced marriages, which "led to repeated rapes and sexual enslavement of women and girls." IC...

Jan172020 by adminNo Comments

Huawei CFO lawyers say her alleged crimes no crime in Canada

World

Defense lawyers argue a senior executive of the Chinese tech giant Huawei should not be extradited to the U.S. because her actions would not be considered crimes under Canadian lawBy JIM MORRIS Associated PressJanuary 17, 2020, 10:11 PM2 min readVANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Defense lawyers argue a senior executive of the Chinese tech giant Huawei should not be extradited to the U.S. because her actions would not be considered crimes under Canadian law. The extradition hearing for Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou is scheduled to begin Monday. Meng, the daughter of the company's founder, faces charges of committing fraud to try and evade U.S. sanctions on Iran. Huawei is China's first global tech brand and Beijing views her case as a political move designed to prevent China's r...

Dec282019 by adminNo Comments

Medical examiner in Sandy Hook massacre, other crimes dies

Technology

A former longtime Connecticut chief medical examiner who played a key investigative role in the state's most infamous murder cases has diedBy DAVE COLLINS Associated PressDecember 27, 2019, 7:54 PM2 min readHARTFORD, Conn. -- Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, the former Connecticut chief medical examiner whose office examined the bodies of victims of the state's most infamous homicides, including the children and educators killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, has died. He was 67. Carver died Thursday night at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, said Dr. James Gill, current chief medical examiner. Carver's death was natural, he said, but the exact cause was not immediately clear. Carver, a portly man known for his dark sense of humor, joined the medical examiner's office in 1983 and headed the offi...

Aug242019 by adminNo Comments

Amazon fires: Fines for environmental crimes drop under Bolsonaro

World

Media playback is unsupported on your device The record number of fires in Brazil's Amazon rainforest has coincided with a sharp drop in fines for environmental violations, BBC analysis has found.Official data from Brazil's environment agency shows fines from January to 23 August dropped almost a third compared with the same period last year. At the same time, the number of fires burning in Brazil has increased by 84%.It is not known how many of these fires have been set deliberately, but critics have accused President Jair Bolsonaro's administration of "green lighting" the destruction of the rainforest through a culture of impunity.Mr Bolsonaro has sent in the military to help put out the fires after coming under pressure from the internation...

Nov212018 by adminNo Comments

Norwegian man accused of sexual crimes with more than 300 boys

World

Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Norwegian authorities charged a 26-year-old man with sexual crimes involving more than 300 teenage boys in what some police are calling the country's biggest sexual abuse case in history. Prosecutors said the man, whose name was not revealed, targeted the teens over the Internet, at times posing as a young girl to entice the boys to send nude photographs and videos of themselves. The victims ranged in age from 9 years old to 16 years old and were from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. They said once he obtained the images, he would use them to blackmail the boys into sending more images. In all, he allegedly had more than 16,000 videos of underage boys. It is "the biggest case of sexual abuse in Norway so far," prosecutor Guro Hansson Bull said. Police believe he met several of...