Police said a 50-year-old woman has been charged with shooting and killing her teenage son and daughter in an upscale suburb of Tampa, Florida.
Police spokeswoman Laura McElroy man said that Julie Powers Schenecker (pictured) faces two charges of first-degree murder in the deaths of her 16-year-old daughter, Calyx Powers Schenecker, and 13-year-old son, Powers Beau Schenecker.
Ms McElroy said Schenecker admitted to the killings. Schenecker’s husband is a US Army colonel serving in Qatar. (PA)
Head of missing man found in freezer
A traditional healer and his alleged accomplice have been arrested for murder in South Africa after the head of a missing 18-year-old was found in a freezer, police said yesterday.
Family had reported the youth missing after he disappeared on Christmas Day while visiting his sister in the city of Pietermaritzburg in the eastern province of Kwazulu-Natal.
His beheaded body was found three weeks later, police spokesman Jay Naicker said in a statement.
“After further investigation police searched a house in France Location (a Pietermaritzburg neighbourhood) and discovered the head in a freezer at the house,” Naicker said.
Police also found a dead snake in the freezer. (AFP)
Palin’s Reagan date
Sarah Palin is giving the keynote address during festivities commemorating what would have been the 100th birthday of former President Ronald Reagan.
Mrs Palin is scheduled to speak on Friday at a Young America’s Foundation banquet in Santa Barbara, California. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is speaking the following night.
Mr Reagan was born on February 6, 1911. He died in 2004. (PA)
Jet lands safely
An American Airlines jet en route to Miami from Ecuador has made an emergency landing in Jamaica.
The airline said the jet landed at the Montego Bay airport and all passengers disembarked normally without incident.
The Boeing 757 took off from Quito, Ecuador, with 155 passengers and a crew of eight. (PA)
Nuclear energy talks
Chile and the US are working on a nuclear energy accord in advance of President Barack Obama’s visit to the region in March, the US Ambassador to Chile said.
Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet had ruled out developing nuclear energy during her term, but it is clearly back on the agenda under current President Sebastian Pinera.
“The decisions about what Chile’s energy future looks like and whether nuclear energy is part of that mix is the Chileans’ to make, and they haven’t made any decisions we’re aware of, but we stand ready to help,” Ambassador Alejandro Wolff said. (PA)
Bolivia’s coca-leaf chewing dilemma
Bolivia will ask the UN to organise a conference on coca leaf-chewing if the US, Britain and Sweden don’t withdraw their objections to the country’s efforts to drop the ban on the age-old practice in an international treaty, Bolivia’s UN ambassador said.
Underscoring his point by wearing a silver lapel pin shaped like a coca leaf, Ambassador Pablo Solon told reporters that six countries had filed formal objections to Bolivia’s move to lift the ban on leaf-chewing but three – Colombia, Macedonia and Egypt – withdrew them.
Tomorrow is the deadline for countries to raise objections to Bolivia’s proposed amendment to the United Nations’ 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. (PA)
Venetian fugitive agrees to switch
A fugitive charged with forcing Eastern European women to become exotic dancers is set to travel from New York to Michigan to face charges.
Prosecutors said Veniamin Gonikman agreed to the transfer during a brief court appearance in New York.
He was flown into the city following his capture in Ukraine. (PA)
Man’s boot ordeal
Police in New York City said a man who had placed an online ad to sell a BMW was found stabbed, bound and barely alive in the boot of the car.
Police said they are looking for a man they suspect was driving and fled the scene, 30-year-old Barion Blake of Manhattan. Police said the motive appears to be robbery, and Blake has a history of stealing BMWs.
Police said the bloodied 33-year-old victim – identified as Akeem Ajimotokan – was found in the car’s boot in Manhattan last Wednesday. (PA)
Liberal quit call
A US liberal group is calling for Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough to step down, and the board of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum is complaining that Mr Clough bowed to political pressure in removing a video from an exhibit.
Mr Clough became the target of a censorship debate after he removed a video depicting ants crawling on a crucifix from the National Portrait Gallery exhibit, Hide/Seek, after a Roman Catholic group complained. (PA)