A youthful thief who rocketed to international notoriety as the ‘Barefoot Bandit’ while he evaded police during a two-year crime spree has been sentenced to more than seven years in state prison after pleading guilty to dozens of charges.
Colton Harris-Moore, 20, showed no reaction as the sentence was delivered by a judge who took pity over his bleak upbringing at the hands of an alcoholic mother and a series of her convict boyfriends – a situation she described as a “mind-numbing absence of hope”.
Harris-Moore’s daring run from the law earned him international fame and a film deal to help repay his victims after he flew a stolen plane from Indiana to the Bahamas in July 2010, crash-landed it near a mangrove swamp and was arrested by Bahamian authorities in a hail of bullets.
Man killed at Gaza border
A man has died from heavy machine gun fire on the tense border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, Palestinian medics said.
The man was taken to the Al Aksa hospital in central Gaza, where he died. Family members identified the victim as Nafez Nabhein, 35, a Bedouin civilian from the Bureij refugee camp.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers on patrol in the area heard explosions, and a tank responded with gunfire toward “suspicious locations”.
She said the border is used by Palestinian militants to plant explosives and attack Israel.
Congo poll results upheld
Congo’s supreme court upheld President Joseph Kabila’s victory following a contested election, raising fears of more violence in sub-Saharan Africa’s largest nation because the main opposition candidate has rejected the results showing he placed second.
The November election was only the second democratic vote in Congo’s 51-year history, and the first to be organised by the Congolese government rather than by the international community. Observers have expressed concern about irregularities, saying voter turnout results were impossibly high in some districts.
Mr Kabila, Congo’s incumbent president, had faced 10 candidates, including Etienne Tshisekedi, a 79-year-old long-time opposition leader who is enormously popular with the country’s impoverished masses.
Observers fear unrest if Mr Tshisekedi orders his supporters to take to the streets.
Tight Cypriot budget cuts approved
Cyprus MPs approved an austerity-driven budget for 2012 aimed at slashing a burgeoning deficit.
They hope to restore confidence in the small, €18 billion economy and stave off a possible bailout with a budget the finance ministry called the “tightest in 35 years”.
The vote was delayed by several hours as opposition parties – which hold a majority in parliament – negotiated additional spending cuts aimed at bringing the deficit below the 2012 target of 2.4 per cent of GDP.
The deficit now stands at over six per cent.
Burma holds peace talks
Burma is negotiating peace with major ethnic rebel groups and is determined to achieve a permanent peace with them in three to four years, the government’s senior negotiator said.
Peace talks based on mutual respect are being held with the Shan, Mon, Karen, Kayah and Kachin groups, with the government’s only condition being that the groups not demand to secede, said Aung Thaung, who heads the government’s Peace Committee.
He told reporters that President Thein Sein ordered an end to fighting with Kachin rebels in the north on December 10 but skirmishes continued because communicating with troops in remote areas was difficult.