Newsgab

“So where are we going today Dad?” asks a curious 10 year old boy while visiting is father. “We’re running with the bulls today son…” Yes that’s right, a father has taken his 10 year old son to run with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.

Needless to say, the mother was not impressed, and sought to have the father’s visitation rights removed to protect the child’s “well being” and to teach him a lesson about raising a child. And after contacting the local authorities, a judge was more than happy to grant the mother her request. And what a surprise the father must have had when the police came around to remove the boy from his custody.

But how did the mother find out about all this??? A local paper had run a story on the annual running of the bulls, complete with photos of the event. That’s right, one of the photos contained a bull.. complete with running father and his son.

Millions of environmental activists will be picking up trash in places from Copacabana Beach in Brazil to the banks of the Nile in Egypt this weekend in a “Clean Up the World” protest at pollution.

The campaign, founded in Australia in 1993, says its members have collected 3.6 million tonnes of rubbish over the years. This is estimated to be sufficient rubbish to fill 5,710 Olympic-sized swimming pools with glass, plastic, metal and cigarette butts.

“We will have 122 countries involved this weekend,” said Ian Kiernan, the chairman of the campaign, who estimated that more than 600 grassroots groups reaching 35 million members would be cleaning up from China to Canada.

“It’s another form of protest,” he says, the presence of volunteers sweeping up schools in Togo or fishing trash out of the Mediterranean was a way of putting pressure on governments and industry to safeguard the environment.

Tropical Storm Lane is gaining strength and by the time it hits tourist areas later today it could become a full scale hurricane, within the next 12 to 24 hours.

The U.S. National Hurricane Centre said the storm, carrying maximum winds of 60 mph (95 kph), was about 70 miles southwest of the beach resort of Manzanillo and heading northwest at seven mph (11 kph).

It is forecast to touch the Baja California peninsula near the tourist destination of Los Cabos on Saturday afternoon.

Baja California is still recovering from Hurricane John, which killed three people earlier this month.

Lane brushed past Acapulco, bringing scattered rain and wind, but fortunately it was too far offshore to wreak major damage.

Ports to the north of Acapulco, including Lazaro Cardenas, were closed as a precautionary measure but are experiencing only moderate rains.

Hurricane Florence was positioned at 35.8 N 63.9 W, at 11 p.m. EDT (UTC - 4 hr), with maximum winds blowing at 85 mph and gusts of upto 105 mph. The hurricane is moving in a north-easterly direction at 18 mph and is showing signs of weakening.

The government of Bermuda has discontinued the Tropical Storm warning it issued only after it blew away window panes, glasses and roofs. No deaths have been reported though there are reports of minor injuries. The hurricane has knocked out power supply to thousands of people.

The Bermuda Electric Light Company (BELCO) expects the restoration of supply to be complete in few days.

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According to an official news release on the Tongan Royal Palace website, His Majesty King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV passed away peacefully at 11.34pm local time (2334 UTC), on Sunday, 10th September at Mercy Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand aged 88.

King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV was the ruler of Tonga following the death of his mother, Queen Sālote Tupou III, in 1965. His wife was Queen Halaevalu Mata`aho Tuku`aho , born in 1926. The couple had four children.

“The sun has set in the Kingdom of Tonga,” said an official government statement from the royal palace.

His death ends 41 years of his rein.

The capital, Nukua’alofa, was draped in black and purple, the official colours of mourning.

His state funeral is expected to be held on September 19. An official month of mourning was declared.

His body will be flown home on Wednesday, September 13.

Sources speaking to sky news claimed that Ian Huntley, currently serving a minimum sentence of 40 years for the murders of two schoolgirls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, has made a videotape confessing his crimes. It is beleived that the video was made before a failed suicide attempt in his cell at Wakefield high security prison in West Yorkshire.

Huntley was found unconscious in his cell on Tuesday following a suspected overdose of anti-depressant drugs. It is beleived he obtained the drugs from a fellow prisoner in exchange for the videotape. The actions of an alert guard at the prison saved Mr Huntley’s life, he could have been dead before the existance of the tape came to light.

It is understood that managers at the Wakefield prison are transcribing the tape before sending transcripts to Cambridgeshire Police, who led the original investigation into the Soham murders.

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Accoriding to a news report on Australia’s ABC News. An additional four members of the Bali Nine, convicted of smuggling heroin into Indonesia will face the death penalty.

In all, six of the drug smugglers are sentenced to death by firing squad. The Bali Nine is the name given to nine Australian citizens arrested in Indonesia in early 2005.

Zarof Ricar from Jakarta’s Supreme Court has confirmed that the previous 20 year sentences given to Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, Si Yi Chen, Matthew Norman and Scott Rush had been changed to death by firing squad after an appeal by prosecutors. Bali Nine members Andrew Chan and Myran Sukumaran had previous been the only members of the group to be given the death penalty.

Ricar’s confirmation ends a day of speculation about the fate of the men. The Australian government is still seeking official confirmation about the decision, believed to have been made on August 16.

15-year-old teenager, Ngatai Reweti was sentenced and jailed today at Auckland’s High Court for four years after killing Christopher Currie by throwing an eight kilogram chunk of concrete at Auckland’s Southern Motorway.

Currie, from Taupo, was driving along the Auckland Southern Motorway with his friends when the concrete smashed through his windscreen from the Princes Street, Otahuhu over-bridge, killing Currie instantly.

Reweti was originally convicted of the murder of Currie on August 19, 2005 but in July, 2006 a jury overturned this conviction and instead of murder charged him with manslaughter.

Justice Winkelmann, during the sentencing, said: “Reweti’s actions were serious and of breathtaking stupidity worthy of condemnation.” She said it was a mindless act that killed Mr Currie and irreparably damaged the lives of others.

Winkelmann has suggested that he should serve his sentence at a youth justice residence and said that it was not premeditated unlike what the crown said.

A gunman has opened fire on tourists in Amman, the capital of Jordan. One Briton was killed and five other tourists injured at the Roman Amphitheatre in central Amman. Three of the injured tourists are British whilst the other two are from the Netherlands and New Zealand. The gunman has been arrested.

The attack took place at 12:30 local time (09:30 GMT). The lone gunman shouted “God is great” (in arabic) before opening fire according to eye witness reports given to the AFP news agency.

A BBC reporter in the area has said that the area is cordened and currently being patrolled by armed police.

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Manila’s President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took part in a massive tree-planting campaign aimed at improving air quality in the Philippines while breaking a world record.

The “Green Philippine Highways” project initially aimed to simultaneously plant 500,000 trees on 3,439 kilometres of roads across the sprawling archipelago, but Environment Undersecretary Francisco Bravo said the figure may have been higher.

“Some 620,000 seedlings were distributed to government and civic groups and nearly a million participants signed up, including members of 4,414 organizations”, he said.

“This morning, we planted trees all over the archipelago, the biggest number of trees planted at one time in the history of the world,” Arroyo said in a speech after launching the project. “We will probably make it to the Guinness Book of Records for that.”