Foreign News
Australian childcare worker charged with sex abuse of 91 children
A former Australian childcare worker has been charged with more than 1,600 offences after allegedly sexually abusing 91 children, filming it, then distributing the content online.
Police allege the man preyed on young girls over a 15-year period at a dozen centres in Australia and abroad.
He was arrested in August 2022, but it has taken police a year to investigate and identify alleged victims.
Authorities say it is one of the most “horrific” cases they have ever seen.
The 45-year-old man is facing 246 counts of rape and 673 counts of indecent assault against children – many of them in aggravated circumstances. The most serious charges carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. He also faces hundreds of charges for filming and distributing child abuse material. Police allege he recorded all of his abuse, and say they found 4000 images and videos on his electronic devices.
The offending allegedly occurred in 10 childcare centres in Queensland, and one each in New South Wales and an unnamed overseas country. The man worked at other childcare centres, but the Australian Federal Police (AFP) says it is “highly confident” he did not offend at those centres.
Speaking to media on Tuesday, AFP Assistant Commissioner Justine Gough said the case would be “deeply distressing” for the community. “It’s beyond the realms of anyone’s imagination, what this person did to these children. You try not to be shocked after a long period of time in the police but this is a horrific case,” she said.
The 87 Australian children who were allegedly abused – some of whom are now adults – have been identified and their families contacted. Australian authorities are now working with their international counterparts to contact the other four alleged victims.
Investigators say they caught the man after they were able to identify the background appearing in child abuse material as one of the childcare centres he worked at. The AFP executed a search warrant at the Brisbane centre on 20 August 2022, before also searching the man’s Gold Coast home and seizing electronic devices allegedly containing child abuse material he had created.
He had been reported to police in Queensland twice before, in 2021 and 2022, but investigators had found insufficient evidence to act, police say.
The man – who is yet to be named – is next due to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court on 21 August.
(BBC)
United States President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to demand control of the Panama Canal after accusing Panama of charging excessive rates on US ships passing through one of the busiest waterways in the world.
“Our Navy and Commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
He later doubled down during a speech in Arizona on Sunday, saying the US was “being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else”.
The US largely built the canal in 1914 and administrated territory surrounding the passage for decades. But Washington fully handed control of the canal to Panama in 1999 after a period of joint administration.
Trump also hinted at China’s growing influence around the canal, which connects the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.
“It was solely for Panama to manage, not China, or anyone else,” he said in the original post. “We would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands!”
“It was not given for the benefit of others, but merely as a token of cooperation with us and Panama. If the moral and legal principles of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question,” Trump said.
Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino firmly responded to Trump on Sunday.
“Every square meter of the Panama canal and the surrounding area belongs to Panama and will continue belonging so,” Mulino said in a recorded message posted on social media.
He further denied that China or any other country has direct or indirect influence over the canal. He added that fees were not decided on a “whim”.
The canal is key to Panama’s economy and generates about one-fifth of the government’s annual revenue.
[Aljazeera]
At least 13 people, including four children, have been killed in two incidents in Nigeria as large crowds gathered to collect food and clothing distributed at annual Christmas events, police say.
In the capital, Abuja, at least 10 people died on Saturday and many more were injured in a scramble to receive gifts of charity being distributed by the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Maitama district.
“This unfortunate event, which took place around 6:30am [05:30 GMT], resulted in a stampede that claimed the lives of 10 individuals, including four children, and left eight others with varying degrees of injuries,” said Josephine Adeh, a police spokesperson.
In a separate incident in Okija in Anambra State in southern Nigeria, three people were killed in a crush at a charity event organised by a philanthropist, state police said.
“The event had not even started when the rush began,” police spokesman Tochukwu Ikenga said. There could be more deaths recorded as officers investigate, he said.
In both incidents, the victims were mostly women and children who were trampled as crowds tried to reach the provisions being offered.
[Aljazeera]
A nine-year-old child and four adults have been killed, and more than 200 injured after a car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, officials say.
At least 41 people were critically injured after the incident which lasted around three minutes, police said.
The arrested suspect has been named in local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had worked as a doctor.
Reiner Haseloff, the premier of Saxony-Anhalt state, said a preliminary investigation suggested the alleged attacker was acting alone.
He added that he could not rule out more deaths due to the number of injured.
The suspect is currently being questioned and prosecutors expect to charge him with murder and attempted murder in due course, the head of the local prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.
Prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens added that the investigation was ongoing but suggested the background to the crime “could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany”.
The suspected attacker has no known links to Islamist extremism – social media and posts online appear to suggest he had been critical of Islam.
Footage from the scene showed numerous emergency services vehicles attending while people lay on the ground.
Further footage then emerged of armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground by a stationary vehicle.
Unverified video on social media purports to show a car ploughing into the crowd at the market.
City officials said around 100 police, medics and firefighters, as well as 50 rescue service personnel rushed to the scene.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who travelled to the city on Saturday, described the attack as a “dreadful tragedy” as “so many people were injured and killed with such brutality” in a place that is supposed to be “joyful”.
He told reporters that there were serious concerns for those who had been critically injured – which German media reports is in the dozens – and that “all resources” will be allocated to investigating the suspect behind the attack.
There would be a memorial service for the victims at the Magdeburg Cathedral later on Saturday, he added.
[BBC]
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