Three killed in northern Italy earthquake

Three people have been killed in a 5.9-magnitude earthquake that struck northern Italy near Bologna, according to reports. The quake that struck at just after 4am local time was centred 21.75 miles north-northwest of Bologna at a relatively shallow depth of six miles, the US Geological Survey said. Italian news agency Ansa, citing emergency services, said two people were killed in Sant'Agostino di Ferrara when a ceramics factory collapsed. Another person was killed in Ponte Rodoni do Bondeno. In late January, A 5.4-magnitude quake shook northern Italy. Some office buildings in Milan were evacuated as a precaution and there were scattered reports of falling masonry and cracks in buildings. The tremor was one of the strongest to shake the region, seismologists said. Initial television footage indicated that older buildings had suffered damage. Roofs collapsed, church towers showed cracks and the bricks of some stone walls tumbled into the street during the quake. As dawn broke over the region, residents milled about the streets inspecting the damage. Italy's Sky TG24 showed images of the collapsed ceramics factory in Sant'Agostino di Ferrara where the two workers were reportedly killed. The structure, which appeared to be a hangar of sorts, had twisted metal supports jutting out at odd angles amid the mangled collapsed roof. The quake “was a strong one, and it lasted quite a long time”, said Emilio Bianco, receptionist at Modena's Canalgrande hotel, housed in an ornate 18th century palazzo. The hotel suffered no damage and Modena itself was spared, but guests spilled into the streets as soon as the quake hit, he said. Many people were still awake in the town since it was a “white night”, with shops and restaurants open all night. Museums were supposed to have remained open as well but closed following the bombing of a school in southern Italy that killed one person. The quake epicentre was between the towns of Finale Emilia, San Felice sul Panaro and Sermide, but was felt as far away as Tuscany and northern Alto Adige. The initial quake was followed about an hour later by a 5.1-magnitude aftershock, USGS said. And it was preceded by a 4.1-magnitude tremor. In late January, a 5.4-magnitude quake shook northern Italy. Some office buildings in Milan were evacuated as a precaution and there were scattered reports of falling masonry and cracks in buildings. In 2009, a devastating tremor killed more than 300 people in the central city of L'Aquila.

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FISHERMAN has been ordered to pay £1 million as part of the notorious black fish fraud case in the north east of Scotland.

The confiscation order against Ian Buchan, 55, master of the Quantas fishing vessel, is one of the largest ever made against an individual in Scotland.

Buchan was one of four captains ordered over the proceeds of their crimes at the High Court in Edinburgh today.

They had all previously pled guilty to landing undeclared fish at Fresh Catch Ltd and Alexander Buchan Ltd between 2002 and 2005.

Of the others, James Duthie, 55, master of the Sunbeam, was ordered to pay £99,000, Stephen Bellany, 49, master of the Unity, was handed a £64,612 bill, and Oswald McRonald, 64, master of the Quantas, received a confiscation order for £23,669.

Confiscation orders totalling almost £3m and fines of about £1m had previously made against 17 skippers involved in what judges described as “an episode of shame” for the fishing industry.

The vessel masters and three factories conspired to under report fishing levels from the North Sea in a scam estimated to have been worth at least £62.8m.

Speaking after today’s court hearing, Lesley Thomson QC, the Solicitor General, said: “Serious and organised crime can take many forms and these individuals were involved in significant organised criminality.

“They put their own financial gain first and sought to obtain staggering amounts of money with blatant disregard for the impact such large scale overfishing would have.

“Our message is very clear that there is no place in Scotland for those who want a lifestyle funded by crime and we will continue to work closely with law enforcement agencies to use Proceeds of Crime laws to make Scotland an increasingly hostile place for these criminals.”

Detective Superintendent Gordon Gibson, of Grampian Police, who led the police investigation, added: “These investigations have been an excellent example of highly effective partnership working by a number of Law Enforcement bodies across Scotland and beyond.

“The significant sums of money seized under the Proceeds of Crime legislation clearly show that these men were involved in a highly organised criminal enterprise for their own profit.

“I look forward to the sizeable sums seized today, and indeed monies from the previous over fishing cases within this investigation being distributed to many worthwhile causes across our communities in Scotland.”

Cephas Ralph, head of compliance at Marine Scotland, said: “Today’s court activity was the successful result of long running and complex joint operations into large-scale illegality at a small number of processing plants initially uncovered during factory raids over six years ago.

“This action has prompted huge improvements in levels of compliance but my officers remain continuously vigilant in monitoring the enormous quantities of valuable Herring and Mackerel handled by Scottish processing plants.”

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‘Save euro’ plea to Germans as Spain slumps

BRITAIN yesterday piled pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to save the euro. 6 comments Related Stories PM: Make or break for euro HE to issue plea to Merkel to fork out as only way to stave off meltdown New French Pres gets a soakingFrench warning for CameronSarky poll malarky will leave PM narky David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne said she must use her financial clout to stop the single currency collapsing. The PM hammered the message home in emergency talks via video-link with Mrs Merkel and French president Francois Hollande. It came as the chaos in Greece spread to Spain — with fears of a run on banks in both countries. Greeks have taken £560million from local banks in the past week. And yesterday Spain’s Bankia bank was forced to deny reports customers had taken £800million out of its coffers in the past seven days. Last night the fears hit Santander UK as credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded the bank along with its Spanish owner and 15 other Spanish banks. And credit agency Fitch downgraded Greece on fears it will be booted out of the Eurozone. Earlier, Mr Osborne said the Treasury had drawn up emergency plans to cope with Greece quitting the euro. He told MPs: “Britain will be prepared for whatever comes.” Mr Cameron had warned countries such as Greece and Spain can only survive if richer countries did more to “share the burden of adjustment”. He also backed Eurobonds to raise billions to prop up crisis-hit countries — a proposal that would have to be bankrolled by Berlin. After the video chat, a Downing Street spokesman said the PM urged the eurozone to take “decisive action to ensure financial stability and prevent contagion”.

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Greece must ‘obey or get off euro train’

Top EU officials have decreed Greece should leave the eurozone if unable to stick to the austerity measures imposed by European creditors. The political crisis in Athens is making this scenario not altogether impossible. The parliamentary elections in Greece on May 6 ended with no political party gaining the majority of seats needed to form a government. Now it appears that their hopes of forming a ruling coalition are falling apart like a card-castle. President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso told Italy’s SkyTG24 TV channel that since Greece is unable to fulfill its financial obligations towards the EU, it should leave the eurozone. Barroso compared the single currency to a club, the rules of which are binding for members. The President of the European Commission said however highly he respects Greek democracy, he cannot neglect the needs of the other 16 eurozone member states. He stressed that if Athens cannot respect agreements reached, he sees no reason why the EU should not part company with Greece.

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Neo-Nazi party wins seats in Greek parliament

One of the big winners in the Greek election was the far-right Golden Dawn. It passed the three per cent barrier guaranteeing parliamentary participation, and will be the first neo-Nazi formation in the Greek parliament since 1974. Among other things it wants to expel immigrants and mine the border with Turkey. Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Micholiakos said: “The Greeks were anytime nationalists and now they have the chance to express their political stand. Nobody need fear me if he is a good Greek citizen, for everyone who is a traitor I do not care.”

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We don't want your European Union

The election results in France and Greece leave a crystal clear message to those grey elements controlling the European Union, a message from the people who they never bothered to consult as they imposed a failed super-state in an arrogant top-down approach. The Merkozy space is dead. R.I.P. Let me take that back. The Merkozy space is dead, now rot in Hell for all eternity. The message is clear: the people do not want your European Union and the more people you ask, in a democratic process called a Referendum, the louder the message will ring in your ears. It is by now patently clear that the centre-right approach to the economic crisis which the political right created, is pitifully inadequate and woefully out of touch. That is why Hollande beat Sarkozy in France, that is why the Greek elections have ended in a stalemate. Any student of elementary economics knows that the way to stimulate an economy is not to take money out of it, but to inject money into it, yet what does the faceless army of Eurocrats do? It increases taxes, it does little or nothing to stimulate employment, little or nothing to help save companies in difficulty and then gets itself into negative spirals of development when it has to pay more and more money out in unemployment benefit and receives less and less money from taxes. The more you tax, the less money you have - it is an economic rule which seems to have bypassed this incompetent band of failed managers gravitating around Brussels and Strasbourg. Print version Font Size Send to friend Something else which passed them by thirty years ago - and anybody could have seen it coming - is that if you pay countries not to produce, if you pay farmers to bury their crops and sell their cows, if you pay fishermen not to fish, then downstream the effects on employment will be felt years later as communities based upon thousands of years of history are destroyed. And what were the governments thinking of when they were negotiating away their fisheries and their industries and their agriculture? They were destroying jobs, they were destroying the futures of their countries' children. Then when their wonderful economic system enters yet another of its boom and bust cycles, sweeping millions of people into poverty as the rich get richer and as the middle classes move down two cogs further towards endemic poverty, what do they do? They find money to bail out the banks at the drop of a hat and then instead of finding money to create jobs and build schools and fund hospitals, they impose draconian austerity measures on the people, whose only crime was to have done everything that was asked of them. As if that was not enough, they then impose a single currency without asking anybody, without explaining the consequences, which is hardly surprising because they did not know what they were, and without knowing what they were doing, pressed ahead in an anti-democratic, arrogant manner which defies their legitimacy to govern. Then they allow foreign ratings agency to have a direct say in financial policy, they spend billions and billions on NATO, which was elected by nobody and is doing precisely what? Defending Europe from an invasion from Burkina Faso? Or Saturn? Or murdering children in Libya while supporting terrorists in Syria? There is money for illegal wars, there is money to murder children in their homes, there is money for tanks, there is money for guns and bullets and aircraft and drones and ships but there is no money for Universities, there is no money for healthcare, there is no money to create jobs. And when, in their wisdom, they have led their countries to abject misery and economic and financial ruin, they call in The Troika, another faceless gang of incompetent wannabe economists, who despite having lists of diplomas as long as their arms, defy logic by imposing austerity measures in return for bailouts which push their sovereign credit ratings to impossible levels. Let us be honest: on which planet or in which galaxy can an economy which is showing growth rates of below one per cent, be expected to honour debts with a seven-per-cent interest rate? No wonder the people are fed up. Given that the European Union's leaders in their collective wisdom are incapable of producing any ideas and reply wanly "we don't know" when asked what to do, then let us produce some ideas ourselves: First off, let us all admit once and for all that the EU project went too far and too fast. What people wanted was a loose trading agreement eliminating tariffs on goods. We did not want to do away with frontiers, we did not want a single currency and we certainly did not want Brussels dictating that packets of mixed salad seeds are illegal. I repeat, packets of mixed salad seeds are illegal. Secondly, let us do away with this Eurozone nonsense which is as complicated or as easy as they wish to make it, let us do it with goodwill so that people do not have an even worse economic situation placed upon their shoulders and don't you dare increase our mortgages, don't you dare increase prices and don't you dare take away a single right we have fought for. Thirdly, let us dismantle the Eurocratic Union, let us send the Eurocrats back to where they came from, let us have our frontiers back, let us have our currencies back so we can use them as leverage when we need to and let us stop imposing German measures on economies like Portugal's, or else conversely, give the Portuguese German salaries and then treat them with the same set of weights and measures.

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former world heavyweight champion was spotted in Warsaw with his third wife Lakiha Spicer, and their son, one-year old Morocco Elijah Tyson

He has just finished a sell-out run at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas — Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth and a spate of guests appearances in the UK.

And today the former world heavyweight champion was spotted in Warsaw with his third wife Lakiha Spicer, and their son, one-year old Morocco Elijah Tyson. 

But Lakiha, also known as Kiki, was left holding the baby as Tyson appeared in be in the middle of reading a book titled Gangs.

Mummy's boy: Morocco clung to his mother as they left the hotel in Warsaw

The fallen boxing champ is in Poland with his family to continue what appears to be an attempt at the rehabilitation of his reputation and a restocking of the coffers.

In a recent interview Tyson claimed to have squandered his $300million fortune and was now ‘forced to live paycheck to paycheck’.

'In Warsaw, Poland. Just wrapping commercial for Black Power Energy Drink. They put me on the can,' the former heavyweight champion posted on his Twitter feed.

 

Third time's a charm: Lakiha is Tyson's third wife, he was also married to Robin Givens and Monica Turner

 

Tyson performed his one-man show in Vegas earlier this month to audiences of celebrities and fellow boxers including fellow boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard.

The former champ pulled no punches in the frank talk about his three marriages, eight children, drug abuse and his traumatic upbringing.

He also kept the audience laughing by breaking out into song and with unscripted gags about his wild past.

The show took place at the MGM Grand casino in Las Vegas, which has been the scene of some of Tyson’s most epic fights during his career.

A new man: Tyson claims to be a changed man thanks to sobriety and veganism

The shamed boxer has been a constant presence in the headlines recently.

In a shocking interview with ESPN's Rick Reilly last week, Tyson claimed he got a prison worker pregnant while serving a jail sentence.

The revelation came after Reilly asked him what stories he had left out of his one man show Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth.

He said: 'Oh yeah. In prison, stuff happens. But she had no baby.'

While he did not discuss when exactly the incident occurred, his longest stint behind bars was when he was convicted of raping 18-year-old beauty queen Desiree Washington in 1992.

She's a knock-out: Lakiha is an awesome wife who cares about Tyson according to the boxer.

Tyson had told the audience at his six-run Vegas show: ‘I went to jail for something I didn’t do’.

Tyson wed Spicer in 2009 in Las Vegas, she is also the mother of Tyson's daughter, Milan.

Tyson has also fathered eight other children.

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