Prince Laurent of Belgium has lost his legal battle to receive social-security benefits on top of a taxpayer-funded 'royal allowance' that in 2024 came to 388,000 euros plus free housing. Declaring his claim for compensation as an independent entrepreneur 'unfounded', a court in Brussels found royal duties to be more akin to civil-service work, already subject to a separate scheme. While he might appeal - on principle, rather than in response to a 15% allowance cut for illegal meetings with foreign leaders - the 61-year-old prince's solicitor, Olivier Rijckaert, concluded 'I understand the [court's] reasoning'.
Hefting sledgehammers and crowbars, Ladell Tharpe and two fellow
members of a criminal gang targeted an upscale jewellery shop in
Beverly Hills in broad daylight. They managed to cart off $2.6
million of loot in a convoy of stolen and other vehicles. Even though
a mobile phone fell from one robber's sweatpants pocket mid-heist, the
trio got away with it - until authorities followed clues from
Instagram photos of piles of cash that Tharpe, 39, tagged 'Robbery
Gang'. All three men have now been handed a custodial sentence.
One of the roughly 200 children adopted or fostered by a Winfield,
Missouri, woman complained to authorities about frequent beatings and
paddlings with various household items. They followed up only after
the girl's absence from school revealed rumours that the 70-year-old
woman had exchanged her for a monkey owned by a fellow exotic-animal
collector. Child-welfare officials in Texas found the girl and have
placed her in a group home, where she is reportedly thriving.
Lincoln County Prosecutor Mike Wood, reports that the foster mother
is in jail, at least for the moment. Though two witnesses admit to
having obeyed requests to take the girl to Texas and bring back a
monkey, this does not constitute proof of a trade, Wood pointed out.
Reporting on a Shanghai-bound plane that returned to California after
two hours in the air, United Airlines explained that the flight crew
had discovered that not everything necessary was aboard. One of the
257 passengers, Yang Shuhan, recalled the pilot's 'very frustrated
voice' announcing that he had left his passport behind.
Picking up a new, appropriately documented crew in San Francisco
left a six-hour dent in the day's US-China shuttle service. Later,
United, whose rules require pilots to carry a passport in addition to
the TSA-mandated operator certificates, admitted that the same issue
had delayed a flight from California to Shanghai a week prior.
The South African Civil Aviation Authority has released a report on an aviation incident of another sort, a low-altitude helicopter crash on Bird Island. The agency found that the pilot's pre-takeoff risk assessment had neglected to consider the cardboard box in a front-seat passenger's lap. After takeoff, this 'specialist' proved unable to control the contents, a penguin from the island, which soon hit the controls. Neither the bird nor any of the four humans aboard suffered any harm, apart from censure for the lack of a secured crate.
Annamae Cabalsa Martinez, 45, suffered a flat tyre while driving along an interstate highway in Utah at nearly 200 km/hour. Therefore, she rang roadside recovery services to request help in patching the puncture, which had been inflicted by police road spikes. The sound of amplified commands for Martinez to exit the vehicle prompted dispatchers to forward the call to the cops, who put one of the troopers at the scene on the line. At that point, she surrendered.
A car with obscured number plates sped away when Nashville, Tennessee, police officers attempted to pull it over. Though they lost sight of it in the ensuing chase, the crew of a patrol helicopter saw the vehicle peel off the main road and enter a petrol station's car park. There, the two occupants began pumping up the tyres a bit. When cops arrived, they were still adding air, while the ambient air's aroma drew attention to the various marijuana-filled containers in the car. Both driver Jonathan E. Chapa, who claimed ownership of the drugs, and his passenger were arrested.
A car park occupies a central role in a story from central London, where it plays the antagonist. In December 2022, Mark Lucas parked his family company's six-month-old electric Vauxhall van at a stacked car park at Rathbone Square. When he returned for it later in the day, a concierge stated that 'the stacking system has malfunctioned'. In light of assurances that the van would be returned soon, the company opted to use a hire van while waiting, at costs of roughly 750 euros a month, while also paying the loan on the trapped van. Even now, 26 months on, building-complex managers continue to report that the new parts needed for engineers to rescue it remain unavailable.
Our next story takes us to Germany, where a detained van took a central role at a border crossing from the Netherlands. Inspecting a van that two Polish nationals were driving into the country from the Bad Nieuweschans area, German federal police found a veritable Noah's ark of wildlife crammed inside. They counted two zebras, six monkeys, an antelope, a buzzard, and several other improperly secured exotic animals. In the absence of any papers for the animals, they all were confiscated from the van's humans, ages 23 and 31, and are being cared for at a shelter in the Netherlands.
Humouring one of her charges, who couldn't sleep, a child-minder in Barton County, Kansas, checked for the under-bed monster that had been preoccupying him. She revised her assumptions when coming face to face with the monster, former resident Martin Villalobos, Jr. He leapt out from beneath the young boy's bed, whereupon he resisted the babysitter's efforts to restrain him and bowled over a child. Villalobos, 27, was jailed on the following day. Since he'd been under judge's orders to stay off the premises after having breached a previous protection-from-abuse order, no bail was granted this time.
Plotting to get his former girlfriend deported, Jose Pablo Romero piled
pressure on his 19-year-old wife for help in framing her. This
included punching his wife, cutting her hair off, and stabbing her in
the abdomen. As soon as she'd made it through emergency surgery, he
asked her to blame the stabbing on his ex. The attempts to secure her
testimony ultimately succeeded, after he carved an 'X' from her
shoulders to her waist with a box-cutter and left her in a field;
however, she testified against him rather than on his behalf.
Romero was convicted of numerous offences and locked up. That was 10
years ago. Romero, now 48, has now sought and been denied parole, with
District Attorney Krishna Abrams reminding the California Parole Board
that his victim is suffering for life.
Six days after 74-year-old Henry Frantz perished while diving off the coast of Maui, his family answered a long-standing question: what had become of his son, who had not been seen since leaving the home four years earlier. Resting in a backyard treehouse were mostly skeletal remains identified by Rebecca Frantz Culpepper as her missing 28-year-old brother. The authorities do not suspect foul play in connection with either death.
I seldom run 'lottery addict who won lottery wins again' stories, but
the case of North Carolina's Dennis Parks is slightly different. While
he was in the queue to claim winnings of $50,000 at the lottery office
in Greensboro, his daughter gave him a 'match all 10' ticket for his
81st birthday. Parks tried for the top prize and won $100,000.
He plans to put the sum toward bills and a family trip to Ohio.
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