1. An 11-year-old girl was ‘bitten, beaten and choked’ by her own mother as part of an attempted exorcism.
A California mum was arrested after she was seen “striking, biting and choking” her own 11-year-old daughter on a beach as part of an attempted exorcism, the Sacramento Bee reports.
Police received a 911 call around 9am on Friday from a witness who said the mother was “attacking her child” during what she said was an exorcism.
The girl had been stripped naked, and her mother was “shoving handfuls” of sand into her eyes and down her throat.
The woman – named by police as 45-year-old Kimberly Felder – said she was “trying to remove demons from the child” during the vicious attack.
The young girl’s assault was allegedly witnessed by a crowd of 10 to 12 people, with local resident John Marciel telling authorities he stepped in to try and stop the attack.
Kimberly continued to attack her daughter, striking her in the head with a piece of driftwood, as John tried to restrain her.
She was arrested a short time later by a sheriff’s deputy.
Police have commended John for intervening, crediting him with saving the young girl’s life. The Sheriff’s Office is requesting he be recognised with the Red Cross Life Saving Award for his brave actions.
The 11-year-old was taken to hospital for treatment for her injuries, which included severe damage to one of her ears.
The mother was charged on suspicion of attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, child abuse and aggravated mayhem.
If you or someone you know is in need of help, please call the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800 RESPECT.
2. Three-year-old boy in pyjamas found wandering Melbourne streets alone at 2am.
A little boy has been reunited with his mother after he was found wandering the streets in Melbourne’s west, dressed only in his pyjamas without his shoes, early on Tuesday morning, AAP reports.
The boy, thought to be three years old, was found in Morris Street, Melton around 2am by a local resident who took him to the local police station.
Melton police were earlier appealing for the parents of the boy, described as wearing blue pyjamas, no shoes or socks and has blond/brown hair, to come forward after he was unable to give his name or his parents’ names.
The mother later collected her son around dawn.
3. Driver ‘deliberately rammed’ a car filled with explosives into police van on Paris’ Champs Elysees.
A man deliberately rammed a car carrying weapons and explosives into a police van as it drove in a convoy down Paris’s Champs Elysees avenue, officials say.
The man, who was known to French security services, died in Monday’s incident and the Paris prosecutor’s counter-terrorism unit said it had opened an investigation.
It was unclear how the man, who was not named, had died. Nobody else was hurt.
Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the car had been carrying weapons and explosives, AAP reports.
“This once again shows that the threat level in France is extremely high,” Collomb told journalists near the scene.
France has been on high security alert following a series of militant Islamist attacks, including the shooting of a policeman in an Islamic State-claimed attack on a police bus on the Champs Elysees, one of the world’s most famous thoroughfares, in April.
Eighty-six people died in a truck attack on a crowd in Nice last year and similar incidents have occurred in other European cities.
The incident in Paris came hours after a van ploughed into Muslim worshippers near a mosque in London, injuring 10 people.
In the Paris incident, eyewitnesses saw the man being pulled from the car as it burned, and footage on the Daily Mail web site later showed an officer stripping clothes from the body.
The car struck the front of the van as it overtook a convoy of police vehicles, a police spokeswoman said. Footage recorded shortly afterwards at the site, a short walk from the Elysee presidential palace and the US embassy, showed yellow smoke billowing from the car.
“We saw big flames coming out of the front windows of the car,” 16-year-old eyewitness Adrien Cairo told Reuters.
“Then suddenly we saw four policemen arrive, they knocked on the window, they said ‘Sir, are you alright? Can you hear us?’
He said police broke the window and pulled the man from the car while other police used fire extinguishers to put out the blaze.
President Emmanuel Macron said last month his government would ask parliament to extend wider search and arrest powers granted under a state of emergency called after Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in and around Paris in November 2015.
Some magistrates and human rights groups have protested against the proposal that would enshrine in ordinary law measures currently in place under the state of emergency.
4. An Australian is among four prisoners who have tunnelled out of Bali’s Kerobokan prison.
Bali police were interviewing witnesses into Monday night as they continued the search for an Australian man and three other foreigners believed to have tunnelled out of Kerobokan prison.
“Up to tonight, there is no information that the four have been caught,” head of Badung District Police in Bali Yudith Hananta told AAP at around 9pm local time.
“We hope they haven’t left Bali, so it is easier for us to catch them.”
Shaun Davidson, 33, from Perth has found himself the subject of a manhunt after officials said he and three others escaped the notorious Bali prison early on Monday morning.
When they failed to show for roll call, a search of the prison’s perimeter unearthed a covered tunnel – around 50 by 75cm wide – and 15 metres long, Kerobokan prison governor Tony Nainggolan said.
The tunnel travels underneath the prison wall and emerges at a road running along Kerobokan.
A guard tower hovers above it, but was unmanned at the time due to staff shortages.
Just two buckets, a towel, cups and sandals lay nearby.
“We will investigate if there’s involvement from other prisoners or guards,” Mr Nainggolan said, with police adding that they were also looking into whether the men received any help from the outside.
Davidson had just two months and 15 days left to serve of his sentence for immigration offences after he was caught in April last year for using another man’s passport on the popular tourist island.
However, the 33-year-old faced deportation after his sentence finished and was known to have been wanted in Perth for drug offences. His alleged fellow escapees all lived with him in the same cell block in Kerobokan.
Dimitar Nikolov Iliev, 43, from Bulgaria was serving a seven-year term for money laundering, alleged fellow escapee Sayed Mohammed Said – a 31-year-old from India – was in the midst of a 14-year sentence for drugs.
Malaysian man, Tee Kok King, 50, is understood to be serving seven-and-a-half years for drug offences.
Head of Bali Corrections, Surung Pasaribu, said there was nothing in Indonesia’s criminal code that would allow the men to be charged with escape, however they could face damaging a facility.
“If they escape, they don’t receive remission or parole,” he added.
Staff shortages, chronic overcrowding and allegations of corruption have long plagued Indonesia’s prisons.
Just last week, 76 inmates escaped Jambi jail in Sumatra after flooding caused the prison’s walls to collapse.
In May, in another Sumatran facility, Pekanbaru, 442 prisoners made a run for it following allegations of guards charging people for cells in the chronically overcrowded facility.
5. ‘Mystery’ Englishman found dead in a Sydney apartment in 2014 has finally been identified.
An Englishman who went to extraordinary lengths to live a double life in Australia before he was found dead in a Sydney unit in 2014 has been identified by a coroner as John Pritchard.
The man’s former boyfriend found his body in a Manly unit but when authorities attempted to identify him, it soon became apparent many aspects of his life didn’t stack up.
Mr Pritchard went by the name Paul Lachlan while in Australia and NSW Deputy State Coroner Harriet Grahame on Monday described him as “somewhat mysterious” and “ultimately quite unknowable, even to those closest to him”.
Throughout a 17-year relationship his ex-partner, who can’t be named for legal reasons, never saw official mail, a driver’s licence, Medicare card, tax file number or passport.
Mr Pritchard paid for everything in cash and revealed minimal details about his background, AAP reports.
Police searched fingerprint databases, checked the electoral roll, spoke with the Immigration Department and contacted the British consulate and air force – all without success.
It wasn’t until the man’s niece in the UK recognised his photographs that police made major progress.
One relative who lost contact in 2002 said she never considered filing a missing person report.
“As far as I was concerned, he was not missing. I knew he was living a very happy life in the country he wanted to live in,” she said.
Australia’s Department of Immigration confirmed a man by the name of John Pritchard with the same date of birth entered Australia in 1996 and DNA comparisons with relatives showed “moderately strong” matches.
Police found flatmates from his former Surry Hills address who recalled changing the locks after Mr Pritchard was accused of stealing rent money, a computer and CDs in 1997.
He started using the name Paul Lachlan around the same time but “provided sketchy and sometimes conflicting versions of his past” while living in Australia illegally.
A friend who volunteered with Mr Pritchard at Lifeline was once told his parents did not accept his sexuality, the coroner’s report states.
“That may have been part of the reason for the distance he had from his family,” Ms Grahame said.
“I have no way now of knowing if that is true.”
The coroner said Mr Pritchard was initially an uplifting, caring and loving person but became “a somewhat troubled young man”.
She offered condolences to Mr Pritchard’s former partner and family and agreed to suppress details of his cause of death.
“While they had not been in contact for years, I understand their shock and loss is nevertheless significant,” Ms Grahame said.
6. A study has confirmed that a broken heart may never truly mend.
A condition known as “broken heart syndrome” may leave longer lasting damage than previously thought.
Around 3,000 people per year in the UK suffer from Takotsubo syndrome, which can be triggered by severe emotional distress, such as the death of a loved one.
The syndrome, previously thought to be temporary, is a condition where the heart muscle becomes suddenly weakened, or “stunned”, according to the British Heart Foundation.
Symptoms are similar to a heart attack and the condition, which mostly affects women, is usually diagnosed in hospital.
Until now, it was thought the heart fully recovered from the syndrome, but new research suggests the muscle actually suffers long-term damage, AAP reports.
This could explain why people with the syndrome only tend to have the same life expectancy as those who suffer a heart attack.
The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), was published in the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography.
A team from the University of Aberdeen followed 52 Takotsubo patients over the course of four months.
They used ultrasound and cardiac MRI scans to look at how the patients’ hearts were functioning.
The results showed that the syndrome permanently affected the heart’s pumping motion, delaying the twisting or ‘wringing’ motion made by the heart during a heartbeat.
The heart’s squeezing motion was also reduced, while parts of the heart muscle suffered scarring, which affected the elasticity of the heart and prevented it from contracting properly.
Dr Dana Dawson, reader in cardiovascular medicine at the University of Aberdeen, who led the research, said: “We used to think that people who suffered from takotsubo cardiomyopathy would fully recover, without medical intervention.
“Here we’ve shown that this disease has much longer lasting damaging effects on the hearts of those who suffer from it.”
Figures show that between 3 per cent and 17 per cent of people with the syndrome die within five years of diagnosis.
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