MELBOURNE: Vatican finance chief Cardinal George Pell will find out next month if he will stand trial on sexual offense charges, as his lawyer argued Tuesday the cleric was being targeted to punish the Catholic Church.
Pell, a top adviser to Pope Francis, is accused of multiple historic offenses relating to incidents that allegedly occurred years ago. He took leave to return to Australia to fight the allegations being heard in the Melbourne Magistrates Court.
The court said magistrate Belinda Wallington would deliver her decision on whether the case should proceed to trial on May 1.
It followed a weeks-long committal hearing involving witness statements and cross-examinations by Pell’s lawyers. He was not present for Tuesday’s final hearing.
His barrister Robert Richter told the court the case should be thrown out as the complainants were unreliable and not credible, Melbourne’s Herald Sun reported.
He added that the allegations were “the product of fantasy or mental health problems... or pure invention in order to punish the representative of the Catholic Church in this country for not stopping child abuse by others of children.”
“Cardinal Pell has been seen as the face of that responsibility,” he said.
Prosecutor Mark Gibson said while there were conflicts in the testimony of witnesses, they were for a jury to decide on, adding that nothing Richter referred to “amounts to a defect in the evidence,” Melbourne’s The Age reported.
Pell, 76, a former Sydney and Melbourne archbishop, is the most senior Catholic cleric to be charged with criminal offenses linked to the Church’s long-running sexual abuse scandal.
The exact details and nature of the allegations have not been made public, other than they involve “multiple complainants.”
Vatican finance chief to learn of trial fate next month
Vatican finance chief to learn of trial fate next month
- Vatican finance chief Cardinal George Pell's barrister has argued the case should be thrown out of court
- The defendant is the most senior Catholic cleric to be charged with criminal offenses linked to the Church’s long-running sexual abuse scandal
India police volunteer convicted of shocking rape, murder of junior doctor in Kolkata
KOLKATA: An Indian police volunteer was convicted on Saturday of the rape and murder of a junior doctor at a hospital in the eastern city Kolkata, in the speedy trial of a crime that sparked national outrage over a lack of safety for women.
The woman’s body was found in a classroom at the state-run R G Kar Medical College and Hospital on Aug. 9. Other doctors stayed off work for weeks to demand justice for her and better security at public hospitals.
Defendant Sanjay Roy said in November he was “completely innocent” and was being framed. He reiterated this in court on Saturday, saying, “I have not done this.”
Roy’s lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment on the verdict. They had argued there were glaring discrepancies in the investigation and forensic examination reports.
Judge Anirban Das said circumstantial evidence had proved the charges against Roy and that the sentence, to be announced on Monday, would range from life in prison to the death penalty.
“Your guilt is proved. You are being convicted,” the judge said.
The parents of the victim, who cannot be named under Indian law, expressed dissatisfaction with the probe, saying the crime could not have been committed by just one person.
“Our daughter could not have met such a horrific end by a single man,” her father said. “We will remain in pain and agony until all the culprits are punished.”
India’s federal police, who investigated the case, described the crime as “rarest of rare” during the trial and sought the death penalty for Roy.
Several doctors chanted slogans in solidarity with the victim outside the court. Dr. Aniket Mahato, a spokesperson for the junior doctors, said street protests would continue “until justice is done.”
More than 200 armed police personnel were deployed in anticipation of the verdict as Roy was brought to court in a police car.
The investigation cited 128 witnesses, of whom 51 were examined during the trial, which that began on Nov. 11 and was fast-tracked to conclude swiftly, according to court sources.
Police also charged the officer heading the local police station at the time of the crime and the then-head of the hospital with destruction of the crime scene and tampering with evidence.
The police officer is out on bail while the former head of the hospital remains in detention in connection with a separate case of financial irregularities at the hospital.
India police volunteer convicted of rape, murder of junior doctor in Kolkata
- Doctors stayed off work for weeks to demand justice for victim and better security at public hospitals
- Defendant Sanjay Roy said in November he was ‘completely innocent’ and was being framed
KOLKATA, India: An Indian police volunteer was convicted on Saturday of the rape and murder of a junior doctor at a hospital in the eastern city Kolkata, in the speedy trial of a crime that sparked national outrage over a lack of safety for women.
The woman’s body was found in a classroom at the state-run R G Kar Medical College and Hospital on Aug. 9. Other doctors stayed off work for weeks to demand justice for her and better security at public hospitals.
Defendant Sanjay Roy said in November he was “completely innocent” and was being framed.
Roy’s lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment on the verdict. They had argued there were glaring discrepancies in the investigation and forensic examination reports.
Judge Anirban Das said the sentence, to be announced on Monday, would range from life in prison to the death penalty.
The parents of the victim, who cannot be named under Indian law, expressed dissatisfaction with the probe, saying the crime could not have been committed by just one person.
“Our daughter could not have met such a horrific end by a single man,” her father said. “We will remain in pain and agony until all the culprits are punished.”
India’s federal police, who investigated the case, described the crime as “rarest of rare” during the trial and sought the death penalty for Roy.
Several doctors chanted slogans in solidarity with the victim outside the court. Dr. Aniket Mahato, a spokesperson for the junior doctors, said street protests would continue “until justice is done.”
More than 200 armed police personnel were deployed in anticipation of the verdict as Roy was brought to court in a police car.
The investigation cited 128 witnesses, of whom 51 were examined during the trial, which that began on Nov. 11 and was fast-tracked to conclude swiftly, according to court sources.
Police also charged the officer heading the local police station at the time of the crime and the then-head of the hospital with destruction of the crime scene and tampering with evidence.
The police officer is out on bail while the former head of the hospital remains in detention in connection with a separate case of financial irregularities at the hospital.
Russian attack kills four in Kyiv
- The attack came as Kyiv has upped its aerial attacks on Russian energy and military facilities
KYIV: A Russian attack has killed four people and injured three in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, the city’s military administration said Saturday.
“We already have four dead in Shevchenkivsky district,” said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, in a Telegram post, adding that three people were injured.
Hours earlier, Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko warned of a “ballistic missile threat” against the capital and said the city’s air defense was activated.
He later said a building in Shevchenkivsky district had its windows broken, with smoke coming from it, while a water pipeline in the area was damaged.
In addition, a metro station near the city’s center also suffered damage and was temporarily closed, with Kyiv’s trains bypassing that stop, Klitschko said.
The attack – a rare strike on the heart of the Ukrainian capital – came as Kyiv has upped its aerial attacks on Russian energy and military facilities in recent months.
Kyiv’s army has hit several Russian oil depots recently, including two major strikes on a facility near a military airfield in Russia’s Saratov region that triggered days-long blazes.
Also on Saturday, Russian forces “attacked the center” of Zaporizhzhia, injuring two people, according to local governor Ivan Fedorov. An administrative building of an industrial facility was partially damaged, he said.
India uses AI to avoid stampedes at gathering of 400 million pilgrims
- Deadly crowd crushes are a notorious feature of Indian religious festivals
- Kumbh Mela, with unfathomable throngs, has grim track record of stampedes
PRAYAGRAJ: Keen to improve India’s abysmal crowd management record at large-scale religious events, organizers of the world’s largest human gathering are using artificial intelligence to try to prevent stampedes.
Organizers predict up to 400 million pilgrims will visit the Kumbh Mela, a millennia-old sacred show of Hindu piety and ritual bathing that began Monday and runs for six weeks.
Deadly crowd crushes are a notorious feature of Indian religious festivals, and the Kumbh Mela, with its unfathomable throngs of devotees, has a grim track record of stampedes.
“We want everyone to go back home happily after having fulfilled their spiritual duties,” Amit Kumar, a senior police officer heading tech operations in the festival, told AFP.
“AI is helping us avoid reaching that critical mass in sensitive places.”
More than 400 people died after being trampled or drowned at the Kumbh Mela on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.
Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in the northern city of Prayagraj.
But this time, authorities say the technology they have deployed will help them gather accurate estimates of crowd sizes, allowing them to be better prepared for potential trouble.
Police say they have installed around 300 cameras at the festival site and on roads leading to the sprawling encampment, mounted on poles and a fleet of overhead drones.
Not far from the spiritual center of the festival at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, the network is overseen in a glass-panelled command and control room by a small army of police officers and technicians.
“We can look at the entire Kumbh Mela from here,” said Kumar. “There are camera angles where we cannot even see complete bodies and we have to count using heads or torsos.”
Kumar said the footage fed into an AI algorithm that gives its handlers an overall estimate of a crowd stretching for miles in every direction, cross-checked against data from railways and bus operators.
“We are using AI to track people flow, crowd density at various inlets, adding them up and then interpolating from there,” he added.
The system sounds the alarm if sections of the crowd get so concentrated that they pose a safety threat.
The Kumbh Mela is rooted in Hindu mythology, a battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.
Organizers say the scale of this year’s festival is that of a temporary country — with numbers expected to total around the combined populations of the United States and Canada.
Some six million devotees took a dip in the river on the first morning of the festival, according to official estimates.
With a congregation that size, Kumar said that some degree of crowd crush is inevitable.
“The personal bubble of an individual is quite big in the West,” said Kumar, explaining how the critical threshold at which AI crowd control systems ring the alarm is higher than in other countries using similar crowd management systems.
“The standard there is three people per square foot,” he added. “But we can afford to go several times higher than that.”
Organizers have been eager to tout the technological advancements of this year’s edition of the Kumbh Mela and their attendant benefits for pilgrims.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a devout Hindu monk whose government is responsible for organizing the festival, has described it as an event “at the confluence of faith and modernity.”
“The fact that there are cameras and drones makes us feel safe,” 28-year-old automotive engineer Harshit Joshi, one of the millions of pilgrims to arrive for the start of the festival, told AFP.
Impeached South Korean president arrives for arrest warrant hearing
- Yoon Suk Yeol threw the nation into chaos on Dec. 3 when he attempted to suspend civilian rule
- Embattled president’s martial law bid lasted just six hours, with lawmakers voting it down
SEOUL: Impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol arrived at court for the first time Saturday to attend a hearing that will decide whether to extend his detention as investigators probe his failed martial law bid.
Yoon, who has claimed his arrest is illegal, threw the nation into chaos on December 3 when he attempted to suspend civilian rule, citing the need to combat threats from “anti-state elements.”
Yoon’s die-hard supporters gathered outside the court building Saturday, even trying to surround the blue van carrying the suspended leader.
Yoon’s martial law bid lasted just six hours, with lawmakers voting it down despite the president ordering soldiers to storm parliament to stop them.
Yoon was subsequently impeached by parliament and resisted arrest for weeks, holed up in his guarded residence until he was finally detained Wednesday in a dawn raid.
South Korea’s first sitting president to be detained, Yoon has refused to cooperate during the initial 48 hours detectives were allowed to hold him.
But the disgraced president remains in custody after investigators requested a new warrant Friday to extend his detention.
A judge at Seoul Western District Court was set to review the request at a 2:00 p.m. (0500 GMT) hearing, with her decision expected Saturday night or early Sunday.
Before the hearing, Yoon’s lawyer Yoon Kab-keun said the president would attend “with the intention of restoring his honor.”
If approved, the new warrant would likely extend Yoon’s detention by 20 days, giving prosecutors time to formalize an indictment.
The Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) is probing Yoon for insurrection, a charge that could see him jailed for life or executed if found guilty.
Yoon said Wednesday he had agreed to leave his compound to avoid “bloodshed,” but that he did not accept the legality of the investigation.
His supporters have gathered in front of the court since Friday, holding South Korean and American flags and demanding judges dismiss the request to extend the president’s detention.
The court closed its entrance to the public Friday evening, citing safety concerns.
Yoon has refused to answer investigators’ questions, with his legal team saying the president explained his position when detained on Wednesday.
The president has also been absent from a parallel probe at the Constitutional Court, which is mulling whether to uphold his impeachment.
If the court rules against Yoon, he will lose the presidency and elections will be called within 60 days.
He did not attend the first two hearings this week, but the trial, which could last months, will continue in his absence.
Although Yoon won the presidential election in 2022, the opposition Democratic Party has a majority in parliament after winning legislative polls last year.
The Democratic Party has celebrated the president’s arrest, with a top official calling it “the first step” to restoring constitutional and legal order.
As challenges against the embattled leader mount, parliament passed a bill late Friday to launch a special counsel probe into Yoon over his failed martial law bid.
