A five-year-old Cypriot boy was found dead in the family car, forgotten there for nearly eight hours by his doctor father while he carried out emergency surgery, police said yesterday.
A post mortem indicated that the boy could have died from a heart attack and not from heatstroke or asphyxiation as first feared.
"The child had quite serious heart problems that were discovered during the autopsy. For a final conclusion we must await the results of tissue tests," state pathologist Eleni Antoniou told reporters.
She said the child had been dead for six hours before he was found ruling out the June heat as a factor and suggesting an unknown heart defect was the cause of death.
"Small children can withstand high temperatures for many hours. The possibility of death by heatstroke or asphyxiation is excluded here."
According to the Cyprus News Agency (CNA) the police found the car locked, with the boy in the back seat and an empty water bottle next to him.
The father had planned to take the boy to nursery but on the way he received a call asking him to rush to the clinic hospital to conduct emergency surgery and headed there immediately. (AFP)
16 kilos of heroin seized
Abu Dhabi police have seized 16 kilogrammes of heroin which three Afghans and a Pakistani tried to sell to undercover agents, The National newspaper reported yesterday.
An agent posing as a buyer contacted one of the four traffickers and agreed to buy the heroin, which had been smuggled into the country in boxes of fruit, for about $261,500, the paper said.
A Pakistani and an Afghan who delivered the drugs to a hotel room in Abu Dhabi were arrested and charged with trafficking. Two other Afghans remain at large and will be tried in absentia.
The four face the death penalty if convicted. However, executions are rare in the United Arab Emirates, where death sentences are usually commuted to life in prison. (AFP)
Porn actor kills worker
Steven Hill, who had been living at Ultima DVD's distribution and production centre for several months, attacked his colleagues last night after being told he must pack and leave, Los Angeles police said.
Mr Hill fled the studio in a car after the attack and is being hunted by police.
Mr Hill went on the rampage with a machete-type prop weapon used in porn production at the building. He attacked one man and two others who heard his screams ran to help and were also attacked.
One of the helpers suffered a large wound to his torso and died in surgery at a hospital.
The victims, whose names were not released, were not established porn stars. (PA)
Jailed for £53m robbery
A cage fighter who played a leading part in Britain's biggest cash robbery has been sentenced to 10 years in a Moroccan jail for his part in the crime.
Lee Murray, 30, appeared to have escaped arrest by fleeing the UK for Morocco after the £53 million armed robbery on a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent four years ago.
But Kent Police - which had 100 police officers and support staff assigned to the case - worked with the Moroccan authorities to bring him to justice at a court in Rabat, where he was sentenced on Tuesday.
Mr Murray - a cage fighter who used the name "Lightning" and earned £30,000 a bout - was one of a gang of robbers who kidnapped depot manager Colin Dixon and his family to gain overnight access to the warehouse on February 21, 2006.
Held at gunpoint the Dixons, along with 14 other Securitas employees, were forced to cooperate with the robbers who loaded £53 million in old and new bank notes into a 7.5-tonne lorry, Kent police said. (AFP)
Berlusconi buys into anti-cancer drug firm
Age-defying Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has become the main shareholder of a company developing anti-cancer drugs, Italian daily La Repubblica said yesterday..
Mr Berlusconi, who is 73 and has overcome prostate cancer and a heart condition, recently said at a political rally that he and his government wanted "to win the battle against cancer."
The billionaire prime minister "was really and secretly cultivating the project, along with his anxious chase of immortality," La Repubblica said.
He often boasts about his health and has said that he will not even discuss a possible political successor until 2020. (AFP)
30-year-old banquet dug up
Pigs ears, smoked udders or veal lungs? French archaeologists began examining the remains of an open-air banquet shovelled underground almost 30 years ago as an art performance.
Supervised by the creme-de-la-creme of French archaeology, a bunch of dusty diggers are unearthing the leftovers from a work now known as "Lunch Under The Grass" - a meal for 80 in sumptuous gardens south of Paris where the star course was offal.
On April 23, 1983, Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri, one of the central figures of post-war European art, invited dozens of artists, gallery-owners, critics and friends for a lunch held by a 40-metre-long trench.
The meal over, the 80-odd participants trundled tables laden with plates, glasses and leftover tripe into the trench to be buried for posterity. (AFP)