An Australian man who kidnapped and raped a woman blamed his actions on a spider, local media reported yesterday.
Philip Spiers pleaded guilty to the kidnap and rape, but told a court that the poison from a funnel-web spider bite had left him with a viral illness which led to his actions.
But a toxicologist told the New South Wales state District Court there was no medical evidence to suggest a spider bite could be responsible for anger and hatred.
Mr Spiers, who kidnapped and raped the woman in 1997, was sentenced to eight years jail.
Hiroshima bomb pilot dies
Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the US bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan in 1945, died yesterday, aged 92.
Mr Tibbets, who died at his home in Ohio, had suffered strokes and was ill from heart failure.
An experienced pilot who had flown bombing missions over Germany during World War II, Mr Tibbets was a 30-year-old colonel commanding the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress bomber named for his mother. The bomb, code-named Little Boy, instantly killed about 78,000 people but by the end of 1945, the number of dead had reached about 140,000.
Mr Tibbets said in interviews he did not regret the decision to drop the bomb.
Chops 122 trees for seaview
A German pensioner secretly cut down or shortened 122 trees in a publicly owned forest to give his holiday cottage a clear view of the Baltic Sea.
The 70-year-old Hamburg resident felled 56 trees with a chainsaw and left only the bottom four metres of 66 others, mainly copper beech, oak, ash and wild cherry trees.
"He told us he wanted to enjoy an unobstructed view of the Baltic," about 50 metres from his cottage, said a police spokesman in the city of Luebeck.
The pensioner, whose tree-felling caused an estimated €15,000 of damage, is likely to be charged with damaging property and breaking conservation laws.
Jailed after 57 years
A Czech court sentenced an 85-year-old former communist prosecutor to eight years in prison yesterday for her part in the hanging of a pro-democracy politician in 1950.
Former prosecutor Ludmila Brozova-Polednova was found guilty of complicity to murder for helping lead the case against Milada Horakova, whose show trial became one of the most notorious of the communist era. Ms Horokova was executed for treason on the basis of what historians believe was fabricated evidence, and became a symbol of the fight against communism. She had been jailed by the Nazis throughout World War II and was then accused of treason by the communists after they seized power in 1948.
Students, teachers protest
Greek students and teachers launched a new wave of anti-government protests in central Athens, yesterday, to demand more funds for education and better facilities.
Some 3,000 high school and university students and teachers, also protesting against plans to allow private universities, marched to Parliament, halting busy afternoon traffic and shutting down most major boulevards while youths set off flares and chanted anti-government slogans.
Earlier this year protesters had forced the conservative government to shelve plans to introduce private tertiary education institutions, with months-long rallies that sometimes turned violent.
'Exodus' re-enactment
A cruise liner carrying some 300 Jewish passengers docked in the Israeli port of Haifa yesterday in a symbolic re-enactment of an attempt by European Jews to settle in British-run Palestine 60 years ago. The story of the ship Exodus, intercepted by the British navy in 1947, helped draw world attention to the efforts of Jews to flee Europe after the World War II Nazi Holocaust and became an important episode in the founding of the state of Israel.
The British mandate government of Palestine prevented many Jewish migrants from settling in Palestine and turned them away, worried by Palestinian Arabs' hostility to the newcomers. The original Exodus sailed from a port near Marseille in July 1947 with 4,500 Jews. It was stopped by British naval ships before reaching Palestine and towed to Haifa, where the migrants were forced onto ships that deported them back to Europe.