Sweden may tighten sexual assault laws
STOCKHOLM • The Swedish government will look into tightening sexual assault laws after a series of attacks at music festivals over the past week, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said on Tuesday.
Swedish television reported the police were investigating 15 allegations of rape and around 40 of sexual assault at two recent music festivals.
Mr Mattias Grenestam, who is heading the preliminary police investigation into the reported attacks at a festival in Bravalla, about 140km south-west of Stockholm, said the suspects were individuals of different ages acting alone.
REUTERS
7 die in Turkish military copter crash
ISTANBUL • Seven people were killed and eight injured when a helicopter carrying Turkish military personnel, their wives and children crashed in the Black Sea region of north-east Turkey on Tuesday, the Turkish armed forces said.
The cause of the Sikorsky helicopter's crash, as it returned to the town of Giresun from a visit to military outposts in the area, could not be determined immediately, a statement on the military's website said.
However, the Prime Minister and one of his deputies said poor weather was responsible, rather than a militant attack. The Turkish armed forces are involved in a conflict with Kurdish militants focused in the country's south-east.
REUTERS
Tarantula named after Nobel laureate
BOGOTA • A new species of tarantula has been identified near the home town of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and in an unusual posthumous honour, the spider has been named after the late Nobel literature laureate, officials said on Tuesday.
The newly identified "Kankuamos marquezi" is named after both Garcia Marquez and the indigenous Kankuamo group who lives in the area of Caribbean Colombia where the writer was born.
The arachnid has a defence mechanism that includes releasing stinging hairs that dig into predators' eyes and people's skin. The scary-looking but non-aggressive spider's body is 3cm long, with legs the same length, giving it an overall length of 9cm.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Bad weather delays search for MH370
SYDNEY • Adverse weather has caused a delay of up to eight weeks in the Indian Ocean search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, search officials said yesterday, pushing the hunt well beyond the middle of this year, which was when the search was expected to be concluded.
The jet carrying 239 passengers and crew members disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, in one of aviation's great mysteries. A wing part, known as a flaperon, washed up on the French island of Reunion in July last year.
Crash investigators have otherwise confirmed no other trace of the plane. An undersea search of the southern Indian Ocean, the costliest such effort in history, has turned up nothing.
REUTERS
