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Australian police arrest man in US over fake ‘collar bomb’

Businessman arrested two weeks after Madeleine Pulver had device attached to her neck for 10 hours in Sydney An Australian businessman has been arrested in the United States in connection with an attack on a Sydney teenager who had a fake bomb chained to her neck. The 50-year-old was arrested in Louisville, Kentucky, on Monday in an operation involving Australian police and the FBI. Police will ask a US court to extradite him to Australia, and plan to charge him with aggravated breaking and entering and kidnapping. Officials have not released his name. The arrest comes nearly two weeks after 18-year-old Madeleine Pulver was attacked in her home in the wealthy Sydney suburb of Mosman as part of an alleged extortion attempt that Australia’s prime minister said resembled “a Hollywood script.” Pulver was home alone when police say a masked man broke into the house in the middle of the day, chained a device that looked like a bomb to her neck and left a note with demands before fleeing. Bomb technicians, negotiators and detectives rushed to the scene. Neighbouring homes were evacuated, roads were closed and medical and fire crews waited nearby. Pulver spent 10 hours chained to the device before the bomb squad was able to free her. She was not hurt, and the device was later found to contain no explosives. Police say a note had been attached to the device, but they haven’t released details of what it said. The attacker made no additional demands after fleeing, New South Wales police assistant commissioner Dave Hudson said. Police have said they’re treating the case as an extortion attempt. “There are some links between the suspect and the family, however no direct links,” Hudson told reporters. The man has family in both the US and Australia, and conducts business in both countries, Hudson said. He declined to say whether the suspect had any direct business ties to William Pulver, Madeleine’s father. Hudson said police didn’t identify the man as a suspect until he had fled Australia for Kentucky a few days after the attack. Officials are still working to determine a motive, he said. “It’s a fairly detailed chain of circumstantial evidence which has led us to making the arrest … we believe it’s fairly compelling,” Hudson said. Police are not searching for any other offenders in connection with the attack, Hudson said. Australia United States guardian.co.uk

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Animal rights activists staged a daring late-night break-in Saturday night to hang a “Go vegan” sign on a butter cow at the Iowa State Fair. The activists snuck past a guard, scaled a wall in a back hallway, and broke into the refrigerated case holding the sculpture. Then they emailed…

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A Tibetan Buddhist monk set himself on fire today in southwest China while calling out the Dalai Lama’s name, the latest in a string of self-immolation protests in that country as well as North Africa. Tsewang Norbu, 29, “drank petrol, sprayed petrol on himself, and then set himself on fire,…

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With the economy weak, the president is looking vulnerable; “the Republicans have Obama right where they want him,” writes Mike Lupica in the New York Daily News . But with Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry in the lead, the party is shooting itself in the foot. For his part, “Barack Obama…

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A crew of cosmonauts has broken the record for longest space mission, having spent 438 days in a 12-foot-wide capsule. But they’ll also break another record when their mission is up—the record for shortest distance traveled on a space mission—because they’ve never actually left Moscow in all that…

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Some have long believed that notorious outlaw Butch Cassidy survived the 1908 shootout in Bolivia that supposedly killed him—and now a rare books collector says he has a manuscript offering proof. Bandit Invincible: The Story of Butch Cassidy , a 200-page manuscript from 1934, is a much longer version of…

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A somber crowd made its way into the reopened state fair today following Saturday night’s deadly stage collapse, which shuttered the fair yesterday. The large stage remained in ruins, surrounded by yellow police tape, but a smaller one hosted a memorial for the five lost in the disaster. “We come…

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Hosni Mubarak’s trial has been adjourned for three weeks, and when it resumes Sept. 5, the hearings will no longer be televised. The judge ordered the live airings halted “in the interest of the public,” but some opponents of the former Egyptian president were unhappy with the decision. “Preposterous! The…

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A woman fell into the Niagara River and was swept over the falls last night after climbing onto a railing while taking pictures with a friend. Emergency crews are still searching for her today, but she is presumed dead, the Toronto Star reports. The woman, who was in her 20s,…

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Rick Perry’s campaign will probably focus on an “alleged economic miracle” in Texas, predicts Paul Krugman: People think the state “sailed through the Great Recession almost unscathed thanks to conservative economic policies,” which Perry will no doubt argue that he can replicate nationwide. Thing is, there was no miracle, writes…

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