The Texas woman who drowned her five children in the bath has told police she did it because she thought she was a bad mother who had been unable to provide her offspring with a normal upbringing.
Andrea Pia Yates, who is in policy custody and could face the death penalty if criminal charges are taken to their full extent, has a history of severe depression and, according to the police, contemplated killing her children several times before going through with it.”She essentially said she had realised she was a bad mother and felt the children were disabled: they were not developing normally,” the Dallas Morning News quoted a police official as saying. “She told us she had thought about doing this for several months.”It has already emerged that, in a 90-minute taped confession, Mrs Yates described drowning her children and laying them out on a bed. The last to go was her oldest, seven-year-old Noah, who ran for his life before being dragged back.The case is the most shocking recent infanticide in the US. In 1994, a South Carolina mother named Susan Smith drowned her two children in a lake and told police they had been abducted She is serving a life sentence.. A Princeton University professor has been placed under police protection after saying that the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, was indictable for war crimes. A Princeton University professor has been placed under police protection after saying that the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, was indictable for war crimes.
Richard Falk took part in the BBC programme Panorama, which caused a storm in Israel last week for publicly accusing Mr Sharon of playing a leading role in the 1982 slaughter of 800 Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Chatila camps in Lebanon.Since the broadcast, Professor Falk, who is Jewish, has received threatening telephone calls including a specific physical threat to him and his wife, he said.In the programme, which was re-broadcast on BBC World television this weekend, he asserted that Mr Sharon could be charged under international law. “There is absolutely no question in my mind that he is indictable for the knowledge he had or should have had,” he said.The prominent professor of international law was invited to appear on the programme, called “The Accused”, as a former member of an international commission that looked into the massacre of the Palestinian refugees after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.

An Israeli commission of enquiry at the time found Mr Sharon, who was Defence Minister and in charge of overseeing all of the invasion, indirectly responsible for the killings.The massacre was not carried out by Israeli soldiers but by Lebanese Christian militia fighters allied with Israel.As Professor Falk said on the programme: “Sharon’s specific command responsibility arises from the fact that he was minister of defence in touch with the field commanders, that he actually was present there in Beirut, that he met with the Phalange leadership, and it was he that gave the directions and orders that resulted in the Phalange entering the camps in September.”Princeton Police confirmed that the professor had contacted them since the broadcast asking for help.”This has been rather unpleasant, as you can imagine,” he told the Independent on Sunday. “My participation in the programme was rather restrained and I am surprised that it should have provoked such a reaction” He said it had been especially distressing for his wife. “She is nervous every time the phone rings now.”Investigators would not speculate as to the origin of the calls, but Professor Falk suggested they had come from “disturbed individuals” rather than militant groups, such as the Jewish Defence League. The JDL has been investigated by FBI in past terrorist attacks, including the unsolved murder in 1985 of Alex Odeh, an Arab-American activist. “My impression [of extremist Jewish groups] is that if they are serious about trying to assassinate or injure somebody then they don’t do these kind of harassing defamatory type preparations. They just do it.”But he does not regret appearing: “I would diminish my sense of self-respect if I didn’t participate in a reasonable programme of the sort the BBC put together because I was scared of the consequences.”The broadcast caused a furore in Israel, despite the broadcasting authority’s decision not show it. The issue became still more sensitive when 28 survivors of the Sabra and Chatila camps launched legal proceedings against Mr Sharon in a Belgian court on Monday..

A storm has erupted in a small town in central Mexico after the Catholic mayor cut off water and electricity to the town’s Protestants. A storm has erupted in a small town in central Mexico after the Catholic mayor cut off water and electricity to the town’s Protestants.
Catholics in the town of San Nicolas in central Mexico had even threatened to forcibly remove 36 Protestant families this weekend, but city officials, religious leaders and lawyers representing the families have now delayed the action until 17 July, when another round of negotiations is scheduled to begin.The problems began in March when the group, mainly families converted by American missionaries, refused to pay council taxes for the traditional celebrations for the patron saint of San Nicolas. According to custom, the taxes provide food for the entire community during the festivities.When the Protestant families refused to take part, town officials turned off their water and electricity supplies. “We are being obliged to pay dues and sign an agreement denouncing our faith,” local Protestant leader Guillermo Cano said.

“When we refused they began shutting off the water.”Mr Cano said that the Protestant community was subsequently threatened by locals wielding machetes and throwing stones.Tension has been running high in San Nicolas, 155 miles north of Mexico City, since 1998, when Protestants were forbidden to bury their dead in public cemeteries.. Distraught Palestinians were yesterday salvaging belongings from the rubble of destroyed homes in the Gaza Strip, after Israel’s armed forces went on a wrecking spree, less than a day after two Israeli soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber. Distraught Palestinians were yesterday salvaging belongings from the rubble of destroyed homes in the Gaza Strip, after Israel’s armed forces went on a wrecking spree, less than a day after two Israeli soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber.
As Israeli tanks provided cover fire from machine guns, bulldozers flattened homes at Rafah in the seething southern part of the strip, according to Palestinian officials.The operation – another breach of the US-brokered ceasefire, which has been violated by both sides – came shortly before a Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli troops, also in Gaza.The Israeli army said the troops who killed the man were from the same unit as two soldiers killed on Friday by a Hamas suicide bomber. A spokesman said that he had been trying to climb over the border fence separating Gaza from Israel, armed with grenades and a pistol.Israel has blamed all ceasefire violations on the Palestinians – a point that Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, is certain to emphasise when he sees Tony Blair en route to Washington today, and also when the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, visits the region shortly afterwards.Mr Sharon is demanding that Yasser Arafat secure an end to Palestinian violence, largely aimed at Israeli settlers and soldiers inside the occupied territories, before implementing the Mitchell peace plan. Yet an end to mortar attacks, bombs and Palestinian drive-bys was always unlikely, and has become even less so while Israel’s army continues to shoot Palestinians and flatten their homes.

More than a dozen Israelis and Palestinians have been killed since George Tenet, the CIA director, brokered the truce nearly a fortnight ago.. In the district known as Shibuya, at the heart of fashionable teenage Tokyo, the multi-screen cinemas are preparing themselves for the big summer film. Even now, three weeks before next month’s opening, the posters are going up. The cinemas are handing out flyers, the advance ticket sales have begun, and on Thursday night 30,000 people attended the premiere at a Tokyo sports stadium. In the district known as Shibuya, at the heart of fashionable teenage Tokyo, the multi-screen cinemas are preparing themselves for the big summer film.