ABCD

When classmates met as judge & criminal

Houston : Two school friends, a judge and a man suspected of numerous charges including burglary, had a heartrending ‘reunion’ at a court room in Miami, US. Miami-Dade County Judge Mindy Glazer noticed the familiar face from Nautilus Middle School, suspect Arthur Booth.She asked if Booth, 49, had attended the school. “Oh, my goodness! Oh, my goodness!” Booth exclaimed before breaking down in the court. “I’m sorry to see you here,” Glazer told Booth. “I always wondered what happened to you sir,” she said.

Glazer said “he was the nicest kid in middle school” and lamented the choices that led him to her courtroom. “I used to play football with him, all the kids, and look what has happened,” Glazer said, “I’m so sorry to see this.”         Booth’s cousin, Melissa Miller, told the Local 10 station that Booth had the potential to do great things with his life, but that future was destroyed by drugs and crime.

“It just brought back memories of how smart he was,” Miller said, the station reported. “He was a scholar, well- rounded athlete, bilingual.”  Glazer wished Booth well in turning his life around.

Rat disturbs budget meet

London: Larry, the 10 Downing Street’s “Chief mouser”, could be sent packing in Prime Minister David Cameron’s next reshuffle with Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and his Cabinet colleague giving stiff competition to the feline. The cat is under pressure after Osborne and Cabinet Office Minister Mathew Hancock chased a rodent around the Treasury in the middle of a top-level budget meeting. During top-level talks ahead of the budget, a mouse ran across the sofa in the Chancellor’s office, sending one official screaming from the room.

Iranian woman caricatures 
parliamentarians: Jailed for 12 years

London: A Tehran court has sentenced a woman artist to 12 years in prison for drawing satirical cartoons of Iran’s parliamentarians who approved restricting women’s access to birth control. Atena Farghadani was on trial at Tehran’s Revolutionary Court for “insulting members of parliament through paintings” in relation to an illustration depicting government officials as animals, the Daily Mail reported, according to IANS. Although she   has been given 12 years and nine months in jail, experts believe this far exceeds the maximum legal limit for such a crime, which currently stands at seven years and six months.
According to a report by Amnesty International, the guards burst into her home, blindfolded her, seized her personal belongings and then hauled her off to jail.

Farghadani was held in solitary confinement since her arrest last August and was only allowed to receive one visitor a week.

For dog’s mistake owner murdered

Mumbai: The police registered a case against thirteen persons for allegedly murdering a man over a minor issue in suburban Bhandup.

According to police, the victim Anil Pande, died after he was assaulted with swords and knives as his dog had caught hold of the ball with which the accused were playing cricket. “the accused and the victim live in the same locality. The accused  were playing cricket, when Pande’s dog caught hold of the ball and chewed it. When one of accused tried to get the ball off its mouth, he received bruises as the dog charged at him,” a police release said, angry over this, the accused went to Pande’s residence and brutally assaulted him with swords and knives, it added.

Survival antics of thornbill fools predator 

Melbourne: One of Australia’s smallest birds has found a cunning way to protect its nest from predators – by mimicking the warning calls of other birds to scare off the threatening predators, a new study has found. Researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) found that the tiny brown thornbill mimics the hawk warning call of a variety of birds to scare off predators threatening its nest, such as the larger pied currawong. “It’s not superbly accurate mimicry, but it’s enough to fool the predators,” said Dr Branislav Igic, who carried out the study during his PhD at ANU Research School of Biology.

Child floats out to sea as parents busy on beach

A 10-month-old girl was rescued off the coast of Turkey after she drifted about a kilometer into the sea on a floatation device while her parents were busy settling in on the beach. Melda Ilgin was seated in an inflatable child’s toy when strong winds caused her to drift away from the shore in country’s Canakkale province. The yellow inflatable was carried further out to sea with the child still sitting atop it while her parents and others watching on the beach reacted with horror. The Turkish coast guard was then called to the scene, and a man jumped from the rescue boat to carry her to safety.