Liquidator of Josef Fritzl’s estate says cellar of house where daughter was imprisoned and abused is to be shut for ever The liquidator of Josef Fritzl’s estate says the basement of the house where Fritzl imprisoned and repeatedly raped his daughter for 24 years is to be filled up with concrete. Walter Anzboeck says the move is to ensure the space can never be entered again. He said in a statement that concrete would be pumped into the basement early next year, once town authorities in Amstetten, about 70 miles (120km) west of Vienna, issue a permit. Fritzl, 76, was sentenced to life in prison two years ago after being convicted of holding his daughter captive in a windowless cellar, fathering her seven children and for responsibility in the death of one of them. No decision has yet been made about whether the house should be torn down. Josef Fritzl Austria Europe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …British Prime Minister David Cameron is calling some unusual characters on the carpet for the violence that rocked England this week: Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry. In fact, social media played such a key role in the unrest that Cameron is considering blocking users from the systems to prevent violence in…
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Artist used Sant Boi hospital to trial prototypes for features in Park Güell and the Sagrada Familia, say researchers In what appears to be an early application of art therapy, new research suggests that the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí used the garden of a psychiatric hospital as a testing ground for his revolutionary designs, with the patients serving as his artisans. The grounds of the hospital at Sant Boi, south of Barcelona, are littered with Gaudí-esque constructions, the most outstanding of which is a bench similar to those in Park Güell , finished with broken tiles in a style known as trencadís that was pioneered by Gaudí. The relative crudeness of the work suggested until now that the works were copies, but research published in the magazine Sapiens by the architect David Agulló and the geologist Daniél Barb shows that they pre-date Gaudí’s signature buildings and were in fact prototypes for features in Park Güell, the Sagrada Familia and the nearby Colònia Güell, all of which Gaudí was working on at the time. The work is poorly executed, the researchers claim, because Gaudí’s workers were in fact patients. The bench at the hospital dates from 1912, while that at Park Güell was made in 1914. A further link with Gaudí is that his patron, Eusebi Güell, was closely associated with the management of the hospital and at one point provided one of his houses as an isolation ward during a cholera outbreak at the hospital. The Sant Boi hospital was founded by the widely travelled doctor Antoni Pujadas in 1854. It was the first hospital in Spain to treat mental illness as something other than divine punishment or demonic possession. Pujadas was an advocate of ergotherapy, which treats illness through physical activity, in particular through manual work. He was also in contact with the French psychiatrist August Marie, an early advocate of art therapy, who was a regular contributor to the Sant Boi hospital’s journal. While Gaudí was part of the art nouveau movement – or modernisme, as it’s known in Catalunya – he was also a revolutionary structural engineer. He made an upside-down model of the Sagrada Familia to test his structural theory, which he then tested in practice when he built Colònia Güell. “Without that first trial, I’d never have dared adopt the design for the temple,” he said. It now appears that it began earlier still, as an experiment in both architecture and psychiatry, in the gardens of the hospital at Sant Boi. Spain Europe Stephen Burgen guardian.co.uk
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Police chiefs’ leader Sir Hugh Orde says home secretary had no role in ‘more robust tactics’ and cuts will mean fewer officers Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers , has rejected home secretary Theresa May’s claims that she had ordered the “more robust” approach that quelled rioting in English cities. Orde said tactics had changed because more officers were made available. The fact that MPs had come home from holiday was “an irrelevance”. May had “no power whatsoever” cancel all police leave, Orde said. “The more robust policing tactics you saw were not a function of political interference; they were a function of the numbers being available to allow the chief constables to change their tactics,” he told BBC’s Newsnight. Orde defended their police after David Cameron used an emergency debate on the riots in the Commons to critice their tactics. Meanwhile a 22-year-old man has been arrested over the murder of Richard Mannington Bowes , the 68-year-old who was attacked as he tried to put out a fire during riots in Ealing. Bowes had been in hospital with critical injuries – his death was announced early this morning. Four other deaths coinciding with the riots are being investigated by police. A man was found shot in a car in Croydon and three men were hit by a car in Birmingham. Courts again sat through the night as magistrates heard charges against many of those arrested during the four nights of violence. The Metropolitan police have made 1047 arrests since the rioting began on Saturday, with 584 people charged. West Midlands police have arrested 445 people and 178 have been arrested in Manchester and Salford. Police had faced an “unprecedented situation, unique circumstances,” Orde said in the BBC interview. “The fact that politicians chose to come back [from holiday] is an irrelevance in terms of the tactics that were by then developing. The more robust policing tactics you saw were not a function of political interference; they were a function of the numbers being available to allow the chief constables to change their tactics.” Cuts to policing budgets would “inevitably” lead to fewer police officers, he said. “We need to have some very honest conversations with government about what we stop doing if we are to maintain frontline service delivery at current levels. “It’s the 20% cuts in the present spending period that will lead to less police officers, we should be very clear about that.” UK riots Theresa May Police Hugh Orde James Meikle guardian.co.uk
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European stock markets fall as Eurostat data shows French GDP was flat in the second quarter The French economy failed to grow in the last quarter as households across the country cut their spending, in the latest sign that Europe’s economy is stumbling. Data released by Eurostat, the region’s statistics body, on Friday showed that French GDP was stagnant between April and June. Economists had expected the economy to grow by around 0.3%. The disappointing data helped to send stock markets across Europe lower at the start of trading, with the FTSE 100 falling 40 points to 5122. France’s CAC 40 was down 1.9% at 3030.48. Household consumption in France fell by 0.7% compared with the first three months of 2011, increasing the pressure on president Nicolas Sarkozy to convince financial markets that he can meet his fiscal targets. Sarkozy has promised to release revised plans to cut France’s budget deficit within days. Finance minister François Baroin said the French government had no plans to change its targets for GDP growth on the back of one quarter’s data. He also pointed out that France’s economy had grown by 0.9% in the first three months of 2011. “For this year we are in line [with targets],” Baroin told French radio. In contrast, the UK economy grew by 0.5% in the first quarter of 2011, and 0.2% in the second. Baroin also insisted that France’s banks were among the safest in the world, just hours after regulators banned traders from ‘short-selling’ certain financial stocks in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium . Despite this move, shares in Société Générale and BNP Paribas fell by more than 3% in early trading. France has also denied that its AAA credit rating is at risk. Global economy Europe Europe Global recession Economics France Financial crisis Graeme Wearden guardian.co.uk
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Public anger as China’s rail industry suffers fresh blow only weeks after 40 killed in high-speed crash China’s second-biggest trainmaker is to recall 54 bullet trains used on the new showcase Beijing-Shanghai line for safety reasons, dealing a fresh blow to the nation’s rail system. The recall of the trains by China CNR Corp Ltd comes three weeks after 40 people were killed in a high-speed rail crash, which triggered public fury , unusually bold media coverage and a freeze on approvals for new railway projects . China’s high-speed rail drive was until recently held up by senior government officials as a symbol of the nation’s technological prowess. Now it has become a political albatross, drawing scorn from many citizens already frustrated with the hulking railways ministry. China’s fast-growing microblog websites have served to amplify public anger , and the recall drew more catcalls on the popular Weibo site. “Wasn’t this locomotive the most advanced type, and put into use only after many tests? So how come the problems were discovered after they were put into operation? What a miracle,” wrote one Weibo user. “Can we also recall the Ministry of Railways?,” asked another. Officials blamed July’s crash first on a lightning strike and then on faulty signals technology. But on Friday Chinese media quoted a senior investigator as saying the crash also exposed management failings and could have been avoided. “There were serious flaws in the system design that led to an equipment failure,” said Luo Lin, the minister of China’s State Administration of Work Safety, who is leading the investigation. “At the same time, this exposed problems in emergency response and safety management after the failure occurred,” the Beijing Times cited Luo as saying. “This was a major accident involving culpability that could have been totally avoided,” he said. Industry analyst Lu Zhou said the recalls added to signs that China’s high-speed railway boom faced bleak times. “The government is putting a sudden brake on China’s high-speed railway story, and we must wait for the bad days to pass over,” said Lu, an analyst with Everbright Securities in Shanghai. “A Great Leap Forward-style movement in China’s high-speed railway is changing abruptly to a period of silence, and that could last a few years,” he said. The Great Leap Forward was Mao Zedong’s disastrous effort in the late 1950s to catapult China into communist prosperity. But China could not afford to curtail train investment in the longer-term, said Luo. “After all, China’s railway system can’t go back to the old days of shabby green cars.” China Rail transport Rail travel guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Pencil it in as one of the better Senate races to watch in 2012: Elizabeth Warren vs. Scott Brown in Massachusetts. It now looks like a safe bet that Warren will enter the contest, writes Sam Stein in the Huffington Post . Warren herself ratcheted up the speculation by posting a…
Continue reading …Facial-recognition technology being considered for London’s 2012 Games is getting a workout in the wake of Britain’s riots , with officers feeding photographs of suspects through Scotland Yard’s newly updated face-matching program. A law enforcement official told the AP that to use the technology “you have to have a good picture…
Continue reading …The female member of the fugitive siblings glorified as the Dougherty Gang doesn’t sound too upset she caught a bullet in the thigh: “I pointed the gun at the cop,” Lee Grace Dougherty told authorities, according to KMGH in Denver. “I deserved to get shot. The cop said drop the…
Continue reading …The US Postal Service is looking to cut 120,000 jobs—20% of its workforce—and pull its workers out of federal health and retirement plans, reports the Washington Post . USPS would replace those benefits plans with new ones of its own. The proposal, which would include layoffs currently banned…
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