PRAGUE--Polish and Slovak authorities on Tuesday canceled their nation's
respective bans on imports and sales of hard alcohol from the Czech Republic,
according to news reports in both countries.
Polish news portal Newsweek.pl and Slovak daily newspaper SME reported that
agriculture ministers in both countries have lifted the ban after Czech
authorities last week determined the source and distributors of alcohol poisoned
with methanol.
At least 25 people have died from the tainted, bootleg alcohol in the Czech
Republic and at least five people suffered the same fate in Poland.
Czech authorities also had a ban on hard-alcohol exports and on the sale of
all liquors and spirits with alcohol content of more than 20%.
The Czechs have arrested dozens of people involved in the illegal bootlegging
operation gone awry and are now gradually implementing new safety measures while
also slowly lifting sales and export bans.
No criminal charges will be filed against the Flagstaff police officer who used his baton, boot and a cable to kill an injured dog in Sunnyside in August.
Officials with the Navajo County Attorney's Office said that there was insufficient evidence to pursue prosecution in the case of the Cpl. John Tewes.
"This includes, but is not limited to, the fact that there is insufficient evidence of a culpable mental state for prosecution," Deputy Navajo County Attorney Michael Tunink wrote in a letter to Flagstaff police Tuesday. "If additional evidence is submitted, I will, of course, review my decision at that time."
Prosecutors have also decided against pursuing charges that Tewes made threatening statements about his ex-wife.
POLICY VIOLATIONS
However, Flagstaff Chief of Police Kevin Treadway said that the criminal charges were only one part of their investigation. He said Tewes violated numerous department policies.
An internal investigation in the case has been completed, but is still waiting on one last piece of information before action is taken. Officials did not specify what information they were waiting for.
The chief will decide what action to take once the internal affairs investigation is finalized.
According to the report by the Coconino County Sheriff's Office, an officer was driving through Sunnyside on Aug. 19 when a loose dog darted out in front of his car at about 2:30 a.m. and was seriously injured. The officer called Tewes for help, and when he showed up, the two decided that the dog should be euthanized.
But Tewes was concerned about using his gun in the neighborhood.
ENDING SUFFERING
Tewes later told investigators he regularly clubbed animals to end their suffering while he was hunting, and he thought he would be able to kill the dog quickly with his baton.
Tewes tried again and again to bludgeon the dog to death, but it didn't die. He then tried to jump on the dog's head and cave in its skull, but that also didn't kill it. Eventually, after some 20 to 30 minutes of trying to kill the dog, he used a hobble, which is like a metal cable, to try to strangle the dog. It took several tries before the dog died.
"Tewes stated that he was thinking that he could not believe the dog wasn't dead yet, and it was the most bizarre thing," the sheriff's office report stated.
He told investigators he didn't ask other officers for advice about other methods because he thought he knew how to do it.
The dog's body was left in between two vehicles behind the police station and later stored in a freezer at the Humane Association. The owners didn't find out what had happened to their dog for five days after the event.
Treadway said it wasn't immediately clear to officials whether the dog owner had been notified or where the dog owner lived. A neighbor had approached Tewes while the dog was alive and pointed out the dog owner's home
WESTMINSTER, Colo. (Reuters) - The search for a 10-year-old Colorado girl who authorities believe was abducted on her way to school has led to the discovery of a dismembered body at a park several miles from where the fifth-grader vanished, police said on Thursday.
But Westminster Police Inspector Trevor Materasso said authorities have not confirmed if the body is that of Jessica Ridgeway, who went missing on her way to school six days ago.
"The process is complicated because the body is not intact," Materasso said, declining to elaborate. He said authorities may release the identity of the body on Friday.
Jessica Ridgeway vanished last Friday after leaving for school in the Denver suburb of Westminster.
Her mother, Sarah Ridgeway, said she last saw her daughter when the girl left home for the short walk to school.
A night-shift worker, Sarah Ridgeway said she sleeps during the day and did not hear the phone call from the school notifying her that Jessica was absent, so it was several hours before she was reported missing.
An agent opened fire on a group of people throwing rocks across the fence with Mexico in Nogales, Ariz., killing one of them, El Imparcial newspaper reported.
Agents had reports of two suspected narcotics smugglers near the border at about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, the Border Patrol said in a news release. The agents watched the two abandon a load of narcotics and run back to Mexico.
People on the south side of the border fence then began throwing rocks at the agents and ignored orders to stop, the release said. One agent opened fire and it appeared he struck one of the people, news release said.
Bullets struck five spots on the outside of an office where medical exams are performed, El Imparcial reported.
The Border Patrol has not confirmed the victim was fatally shot, but it has been reported by news outlets in Sonora.
After being shot in the head and neck by Taliban gunmen on Tuesday, 14-year-old Pakistani blogger Malala Yousufzai is in critical condition today and will be transferred to a better equipped hospital. "Doctors have decided to shift Malala to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Rawalpindi
where medical facilities are better," one doctor told the BBC, while another doctor, Mumtaz Khan, told the AFP Malala had a 70 percent chance of survival. Lt. Col. Junaid Khan, head of neurosurgery at the Peshawar hospital where Yousufzai was first treated, said she's in "critical" condition and is
suffering from severe edema—swelling in the body that's due to accumulation of fluid, report CNN's Nasir Habib and Reza Sayah. "Doctors say she needs 48-hours' rest," her uncle was quoted as saying in that CNN report.
Lance Armstrong challenged the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to name names and show what it had on him.
On Wednesday, it did.
The anti-doping group released a report on its case against Armstrong — a point-by-point roadmap of the lengths it says Armstrong went to in winning seven Tour de France titles USADA has ordered taken away.
In more than 150 pages filled with allegations, USADA names 11 former teammates — George Hincapie, Tyler Hamilton and Floyd Landis among them — as key witnesses.
It details the way those men and others say drugs were delivered and administered to Armstrong's teams. It discusses Armstrong's continuing relationship with and payments to a doctor, Michele Ferrari, years after Ferrari has been sanctioned in Italy and Armstrong claimed to have broken ties with him.
It presents as matter-of-fact reality that winning and doping went hand in hand in cycling and that Armstrong's teams were the best at getting it done without getting caught. He won the Tour as leader of the U.S. Postal Service team from 1999-2004 and again in 2005 with the Discovery Channel as the primary sponsor.
