English court jails policeman over insurance fraud

Thursday, July 1, 2010

A court in England, UK has jailed a policeman for ten months after he was convicted of defrauding his car insurance company.

Police Constable Simon Hood, 43, arranged for a friend who dealt in scrap metal to dispose of his Audi TT, then claimed it had been stolen.

Hood had been disappointed with the car’s value when he tried to sell it two years after its purchase in 2008. He arranged for friend Peter Marsh, 41, to drive the vehicle to his scrapyard in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Marsh then dismantled the vehicle with the intent of disposing of it, but parts were later found wrapped in bubblewrap at Ace Tyre and Exhaust Centre.

Marsh picked up the TT from outside nearby Gorleston police station. Records show mobile phone conversations between the conspirators that day in March, both before and after the vehicle was reported stolen. The pair denied wrongdoing but were convicted of conspiring to commit insurance fraud after trial.

The fraud was uncovered after Hood told former girlfriend Suzanne Coates of the scheme. It was alleged before Norwich Crown Court that he had confessed to her in an effort to resume their relationship. Coates said that after the pseudotheft, Hood told her “he didn’t want to look for it. He said it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, which I thought was a bit strange.”

Shortly afterwards Hood suggested they should become a couple once more, she said; she challenged his version of events regarding the car: “He said he did it but I couldn’t tell anyone. He said he did it with Peter. Peter had a key and took the car away and it was going to be taken to bits and got rid of so it was never found.”

Hood was defended by Michael Clare and Marsh by Richard Potts. Both lawyers told the court that their clients had already suffered as a result of the action in mitigation before sentencing. Clare said Hood had resigned from the police after fifteen years of otherwise good service and risked losing his pension. “It is not a case where his position as a police officer was used in order to facilitate the fraud,” he pointed out. “His career is in ruins.” Hood is now pursuing a career in plumbing.

Potts defended Marsh by saying that he, too, had already suffered from his actions. His own insurers are refusing to renew their contract with him when it expires and his bank withdrew its overdraft facility. His business employs 21 people and Potts cited Marsh’s sponsorship of Great Yarmouth In Bloom as amongst evidence he supported his local community.

Judge Alasdair Darroch told Marsh that he did accept the man was attempting to help his friend. He sentenced Marsh to six months imprisonment, suspended for two years and ordered to carry out 250 hours of community service. He was more critical of Hood:

“As a police officer you know the highest possible standards are demanded by the public. You have let down the force. You knew throughout your career that policemen that get involved in serious dishonesty get sent to prison.”

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

At least nine people have died in northern Italy after a landslide caused the derailment of a passenger train. A further 25 people were injured, according to emergency services.

The incident occurred earlier this morning near the border with Austria, in a mountainous region near Merano, a city around 300 kilometres north of Venice.

“There are nine confirmed victims, while 28 people have been injured, seven of them seriously,” reported the governor of the Bolzano-Bozen province, Luis Durnwalder, to the Reuters news service. Initially, eleven people were reported dead, due to what the governor described as a “counting error”. However, he noted that “there could still be someone buried in the mud”, so the death count is not yet final.

According to the ANSA news agency, the train had about forty passengers on board when it derailed. Sky TV, meanwhile, quoted officials as saying that three people are reported to be missing. The authorities say the landslide was due to a broken irrigation pipe, which caused rocks to fall onto the tracks below. Authorities say they are looking into why the pipe burst.

The trains front car hit two trees upon derailment, local media says, which prevented it from dropping off into a river below. The carriage, however, was hanging over the river, and firefighters had to use cables to stop it from falling any more. A crane was also dispatched the scene to help clean up debris, ANSA reported.

“The train is hanging off the rails about five meters from the river. It is now only a few trees that are holding up the train and preventing it falling into the river,” said a witness, Alex Rowbotham, to the BBC.

“[…] The landslide occurred at the very passage of the train. It hit the train,” said Thomas Widmann, a transport official for the city of Bolanzo.

The crash was the deadliest in Europe since February, when eighteen people died after two commuter trains ran into each other near Brussels, Belgium. Italy saw its worse rail crash two decades ago, when 29 people died following the derailment of a freight train carrying petroleum gas, resulting in several explosions.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

LONDON – The big-budget Hollywood movie The Aviator and the low-budget Brit flick Vera Drake have scooped the main prizes at the 2005 Orange BAFTA Film Awards. Four gongs went to The Aviator with the top ones being Best Film and Cate Blanchett for Best Supporting Actress. Vera Drake got three gongs with Best Director, Best Actress & Costume Design. Jamie Foxx got Best Actor with Ray and Clive Owen got Best Supporting Actor with Closer.

Sunday, July 8, 2007

In 1999, Bernard Weber started the New7Wonders foundation, and eight years, 200 candidates and 100 million votes later, seven man-made structures now have something in common – they all hold the title of ‘Wonder’. Weber claims he started the foundation to ensure that “everybody can decide what the new seven wonders should be and not some government, not some individuals, not some institutions.”

Nominated structures had to be built or discovered before the year 2000, and out of the 200 nominations, only twenty-one were left by the early part of last year. Voting had been taking place for six months, but only recently did voting result in server crashes, causing the foundation to encourage text message voting.

The results were announced at a ceremony hosted by Hilary Swank, Ben Kingsley and Bollywood star Bipasha Basu in Lisbon, Portugal. Out of the twenty-one, the following seven were announced as the new ‘Wonders of the World’:

• Great Wall of China, in northern China. It was created in the 5th century BC to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire. The Wall is the world’s longest human-made structure, stretching over 6,400 km (4,000 mi).
• Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The giant statue of Jesus Christ is 38 m (105 ft) tall and weighs 700 tonnes. The statue is located at the peak of the 700 m (2296 ft) Corcovado mountain, overlooking the city of Rio.
• Machu Picchu, above the Urubamba Valley, Peru. It is a city created by the Inca Empire, located on a mountain ridge. Machu Picchu was forgotten for centuries by the outside world, however not by the locals. It was brought to international attention by archaeologist Hiram Bingham in 1911.
• Petra, in Jordan. It is famous for having many giant stone structures carved into the rock. The site was revealed to the Western world by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1812, but remained accessible only to Europeans until after World War I.
• Chichen Itza, on the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. It is a large archaeological site originally built by the Maya civilization. Chichen Itza was a major regional center in the northern Maya lowlands. Archaeological data suggest that Chichen Itza’s collapse was violent.
• Taj Mahal, in Agra, India. It is a white marble mausoleum generally considered the finest example of Mughal architecture. Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan commissioned it for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, and it was constructed between 1632 and 1648.
• Colosseum, in Rome, Italy. It is a giant amphitheatre located in the centre of the city, and was capable of seating around 50,000 spectators. It was constructed between 70 AD and 80 AD, and used for nearly 500 years for a variety of events.

Although the foundation had large amounts of public support, UNESCO, the United Nations cultural program, distanced themselves from the project, saying it had “no link whatsoever” to the project. UNESCO currently keeps tabs on 851 places in its ‘World Heritage Sites‘ program.

Left out of the Seven are the Pyramids of Giza, to which a respected Egyptian antiquities expert replied that the pyramids are a “symbol of the genius of the ancient people.” The foundation announced that the pyramids would have “honorary status” with the seven. The pyramids were the only remaining of the original Seven Wonders.

Weber claims that now that the man-made wonders have been chosen he has a new task: choosing the seven natural wonders of the world. He says he will start his new project immediately.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

The U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission has recalled more products over the last few days, though not all because of excessive lead.

While American toy companies have been rocked in the last few months by numerous unsafe Chinese-made products, mostly due to excessive amounts of lead in paint, a few of the latest recalls were actually due to design flaws.

Also recently recalled are sunglasses and toy cars from the Dollar General chain of price-point retailers.

Monday, October 15, 2007

So far, three people (including a baby) have been killed, and at least ten others were injured when two semi trucks collided in a tunnel on Interstate 5 (Newhall Pass) between Los Angeles and Santa Clarita California, United States in the late evening of October 12, setting off a chain reaction pileup that involved between 28 and 30 semi trucks and one passenger car. The wreck caused a massive fire that burned for over six hours. It was previously believed that only 13 semi trucks were involved.

“The fire burned in a very intense state for approximately four hours and basically consumed everything that was burnable,” said John Tripp the Fire Chief for L.A. county.

As a result of the crash, the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a declaration of a state of emergency for Los Angeles County.

The debris has been removed and officials say that a full inspection will have to be done on the tunnel before it can be used again because the structure of the tunnel has been compromised. The tunnel passed inspection in June of 2006.

“The walls of the tunnel are fairly heavily damaged. None of the rebar appears to be melted, damaged at this point in time. But it’s completely separated from the walls in a number of areas, so we lose vertical support when that happens,” said California Department of Transportation official, Doug Failing.

Tripp added that more bodies could be buried in the wreckage, saying “…we’re going to have to do a very methodical search. There could be unfortunately more people that were not able to escape.” So far authorities have yet to identify the three people who were killed.

A full investigation is being conducted into what caused the crash.

Friday, February 1, 2008

United States software giant Microsoft has launched an unsolicited bid to buy Internet search giant Yahoo! for US$44 billion or approximately US$31 per share.

The deal, which is half in cash and half in stock, if accepted by Yahoo!’s shareholders, could create a major competitor to Google, the search giant which currently dominates the Internet search market.