Local News

A Danish couple who fled their “forest resort” in Sweden for Guatemala and left behind a large tax debt and 158 barrels of human waste have hit back at criticism and claimed that their handling of the compost toilets was “very normal”.

Flemming Hansen and Mette Helbæk, both chefs, abandoned their purportedly eco-friendly retreat, Stedsans, in Halland, southern Sweden, last year. They owed large sums to Swedish and Danish tax authorities. They have since set up a business in Guatemala.

The story behind their disappearance and the abandoned human waste was revealed this week after an investigation by the newspapers Politiken and Dagens Nyheter. It also found that the couple had allowed wastewater to run into the forest and alleged that animals had died as a result of being left outside and that others were abandoned.

A helicopter crashed into the Hudson River in New York on Thursday, killing all six people aboard, including the pilot and a family with three children who are believed to be Spanish tourists.

The fire department said it received a report of a helicopter in the huge tidal waterway that runs up the west side of Manhattan at 3.17pm ET. Videos posted on social media showed the aircraft mostly submerged, upside down in the water, and rescue vehicles crowding on to the streets on shore as emergency workers raced to save those onboard.

At the scene of the crash, the emergency response boats could be seen circling in the water. A crane could also be seen on a floating platform in the river, presumably trying to raise the sunken helicopter. Meanwhile on shore, fire and police personnel stopped the public and press from reaching the end of a long concrete pier on the river from downtown Manhattan, as scuba teams emerged from the water. A New York fire department boat responds to the crash on Thursday.

People on the Aegean islands, more used in April to the sight and scent of spring’s blossoms, have been left reeling from flash floods spurred by typhoon-strength gales, with authorities calling a state of emergency in some of Greece’s most popular destinations less than three weeks before Easter.

“It’s a total catastrophe and it happened in just two hours,” said Costas Bizas, the mayor of Paros, the island worst hit by weather not seen in decades. “We need all the help we can get.”

On Paros and Mykonos, two of the country’s most visited islands, officials were racing against the clock to complete clean-up operations before the arrival of tourists for the Easter break.

A man from New York has been sentenced to spend life in prison after investigators found he talked to a teen girl online, manipulated her into sending him nude photos before using those images as leverage to get her to meet at a Jersey Shore hotel where he had sex with her.

In September of 2020, Zachary Williams, 37, met a 13-year-old New Jersey girl online and lied about his age by telling her he was just 17 -- even though he was 33 at the time, according to court documents.

During their conversation, Williams is accused of asking her for nude photographs, then, once he received them, Williams threatened to send the pictures to her family and friends, officials said in a statement.

Kick streamers LordHito and GaganTV found themselves on the receiving end of a violent attack after Japanese locals struck them with glass bottles, captured during a live broadcast.

On February 15, Kick streamers LordHito and GaganTV were eating at a restaurant in Sapporo, Japan when they walked into a bar nearby. The duo spoke with a woman they’d met beforehand and two other men in what appeared to be a friendly and playful conversation at first.

At one point, two other men approached the streamers, with one grabbing at GaganTV’s phone twice. An argument broke out shortly thereafter, and an employee ushered them out of the door.

Angry at the situation that had unfolded, GaganTV vented his frustration as he and Hito walked away, while Hito himself was left confused.

Just a few moments later, one of the angry patrons from the bar approached them, shouting and holding a bottle. He lunged at Hito and then set his sights on GaganTV, swinging the bottle at him in the middle of the street as another man joined in.

A former interpreter was sentenced on Thursday to nearly five years in prison for stealing $17m from Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani to pay off gambling debts, according to local media reports.

Ippei Mizuhara, the one-time translator and de facto manager of Ohtani, was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, the punishment prosecutors had sought, and also ordered by US district judge John Holcomb to pay restitution of over $18m, the City News Service reported.

Mizuhara, 39, pleaded guilty to felony bank fraud and subscribing to a false tax return last year, according to his plea deal previously filed in US district court in Los Angeles.

Spanish police have rescued a man who was kidnapped and bundled into the boot of a car after he managed to alert his girlfriend by sending her a photo of the vehicle’s steering wheel and a set of coordinates.

On 23 January Policía Nacional officers in the Andalucían province of Málaga received a report that a man had been kidnapped two days earlier on the promenade of the town of Sabinillas. The man had been taken by a group of men travelling in two cars who were looking for information on the whereabouts of another man who had apparently swindled them out of €30,000 (£25,000) in a drug deal.

Officers were also provided with videos of the victim, showing him face down and with a pistol at his head while he was asked where the other man was.

Unknown to his captors, however, the kidnapped man managed to contact his friends and send his girlfriend a photograph of the steering wheel logo of the car he was travelling in. He also sent coordinates that led police to a street in Torre del Mar, a town along the coast from Málaga.

MADRID, Jan 18 (Reuters) - A ski lift collapsed at a resort in the Spanish region of Aragon on Saturday, injuring dozens of people, nine of them very seriously and eight seriously, the regional government said.

Around 80 people remain trapped, hanging in the chairlift at the ski resort of Astún, in the province of Huesca, according to state TV channel TVE.

"It's like a cable has come off, the chairs have bounced and people have been thrown off," a witness told TVE.

A tram that derailed in downtown Oslo then ploughed into a phone and computer shop left four people injured, though none seriously, Norwegian police have said.

There were about 20 people on the commuter train when it came off the tracks on Tuesday at an intersection on Storgata, one of the Norwegian capital’s main thoroughfares close to Oslo’s main train station.

Witness Mohnsin Munir told Norwegian media that he saw the tram travelling at high speed. It was supposed to make a left turn but derailed and continued straight ahead and into the shop.