Teen accused of Cork gang rape tells court he had sex with alleged victim in van

31/10/2012 - 18:01:09
A teenager accused of taking part in a gang rape of a woman in Cork told gardaí he and his cousin had sex with the alleged victim in the back of a van.

He is one of three accused, who have each pleaded not guilty to four charges, namely the rape, oral rape, attempted rape and sexual assault of a woman at an unknown location in Cork on September 13, 2009.

The alleged victim, aged 31 at the time, told the jury she was drunk after a night out and that she can't remember how she ended up in the back of a van with strangers.

In a garda interview watched by the jury, the then 15-year-old accused described picking her up in a van in the early hours.

He said he was sitting by her on a mattress in the back when she began kissing his neck which led to sex.

He said afterwards he went to the front of the van while his cousin, then aged 16, got in the back and lay on top of her.

He said all he could hear was kissing.

He told gardaí that a third teenager, who was 18 at the time, started saying hurry give me a lash before he too got in the back, having stopped the van.

Read more »

Obama visits New Jersey victims

31/10/2012 - 08:19:22
President Barack Obama, locked in a tight re-election bid, is skipping campaign events in battleground states to visit victims of superstorm Sandy in New Jersey, a state he’s confident of winning.

The president’s actions, emphasising his incumbent’s role for a third straight day, have forced Republican challenger Mitt Romney to walk a careful line and make tough choices.

The former Massachusetts governor must show respect for the superstorm’s casualties along the eastern seaboard, but he can ill afford to waste a minute of campaign time with the contest virtually deadlocked in several key states and the election six days away.

After tamping down his partisan tone yesterday at an Ohio event that chiefly emphasised relief efforts, Mr Romney plans three full-blown campaign rallies today in Florida, the largest competitive state.

Sandy largely spared Florida so Mr Romney calculates he can campaign there without appearing callous.

Mr Obama’s revised schedule is a political gamble too. Rather than use the campaign’s final Wednesday to woo voters in the states that will decide the election, he will go before cameras with New Jersey’s Republican governor, Chris Christie.

Mr Christie is one of Mr Romney’s most prominent supporters, and a frequent Obama critic, but he praised the president’s handling of the response to Sandy, a political twist Mr Obama’s visit is sure to underscore.

Mr Obama cancelled his campaign appearances today but is staying in the public eye as commander of federal relief efforts. Yesterday, he visited the American Red Cross headquarters – a short walk from the White House – to commiserate with victims and encourage aid workers.

“This is a tough time for millions of people. But America is tougher,” he said.

Mr Romney wavered in his strategy. First the campaign said he would skip a rally in Ohio yesterday out of sympathy for the storm victims, then he decided to do the event but recast it as a storm-relief effort, shorn of the usual campaign speech.

“It’s part of the American spirit, the American way, to give to people in need,” Mr Romney told supporters in Kettering, Ohio, before they lined up to hand him bags of canned food for storm victims.

Adding to his dilemma are the candidate’s previous statements on the federal government’s role in emergency management. He said he believes state and local governments should have primary responsibility for emergency clean-up rather than central government, and refused yesterday to answer repeated questions from reporters about what he would do with the Federal Emergency Management Agency if he wins the election.

Asked about federal aid to help recover and rebuild from Sandy, Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said: “A Romney-Ryan administration will always ensure that disaster funding is there for those in need. Period.”

For Mr Obama, missing a few days of active campaigning for vital presidential duties may be a good trade, politically speaking.

Lingering anger about George Bush’s performance when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005 provides a backdrop that could benefit Mr Obama if his administration does a solid job, analysts said.

For US president  Mr Obama, the federal response to the disaster could make or break his bid for a second term. His reputation could suffer if the federal government’s response is feeble or botched.

Read more »

Sandy pummels W. Virginia as grueling recovery begins on East Coast

Sandy spawns blizzard in West Virginia

(CNN) -- Faced with one of the most daunting recoveries imaginable, ravaged cities in the Northeast must now clean up waterlogged buildings, burned homes and crippled infrastructure -- while millions of people remain without power.

Although some New York City transit and airports come back to life Wednesday, much of the country's biggest city remains paralyzed.

Meanwhile, New Jersey neighborhoods are still deluged under feet of water ahead of President Barack Obama's scheduled visit to the state Wednesday.

And states farther west are grappling with Superstorm Sandy's dramatic encore -- a blizzard that dumped 3 feet of snow in West Virginia and left hundreds of thousands in the shivering cold.

The arduous road to recovery seems as formidable as Sandy itself.

Transportation mess slowly untangles

After days of canceled flights and stranded travelers, two New York-area airports -- John F. Kennedy and Newark Liberty -- are slated to reopen Wednesday with limited service.

But New York's LaGuardia airport is expected to remain closed Wednesday because of significant damage.

Photos: Sandy's destructive path

Blood shortage due to Sandy

Sandy floods NYC, New Jersey subways

The city's massive subway network will remain offline for several more days as workers try to recover the inundated underground lifeline. New York's bus service will resume a nearly full schedule Wednesday, but it likely won't accommodate the 5 million commuters who rely on the subway every day.

Is Sandy a taste of things to come?

Likewise, the transportation headaches in New Jersey are far from over.

The rail operations center of NJ Transit was crippled by 8 feet of water, and an emergency generator was submerged, officials said.

At least 65 locomotive engines and 257 rail cars were damaged by floodwater. It will be weeks before service resumes on the New Jersey coast line.

"There is major damage on each and every one of New Jersey's rail lines," Gov. Chris Christie said. "Large sections of track were washed out."

Storm's state-by-state effect

Philadelphia commuters are more fortunate. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority will resume regional rail service Wednesday morning, SEPTA said.

Still in the dark

Early Wednesday morning, at least 6.2 million electric customers across the eastern United States were still in the dark.

At one point, about 300,000 people in West Virginia shivered without power as remnants of Superstorm Sandy dumped a barrage of snow.

iReporters share Hurricane Sandy images

That number dropped to 236,000 Wednesday morning. But residents can't necessarily count on the power staying on long.

As snow continues falling, so do power lines and tree limbs -- meaning residents are still at risk of going cold.

How you can help

"The storm absolutely outpaces anything we have ever seen since moving here," said Allison Vencel of Morgantown, West Virginia.

Vencel's electricity has sputtered out four times. But that's not foremost on her mind. The family is wondering how they'll be able drive to her daughter's wedding in Virginia this weekend.

Forecasters predict even more snow for West Virginia on Wednesday, coupled with winds so fierce that the snow will fall sideways.

Sandy's other hazards

Ironically, the storm that dumped more than 10 feet of water has left many without clean drinking water.

Parts of New York City had no running water for a second day, and cities such as New Brunswick, New Jersey, urged residents to boil drinking water.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a task for those recovering from the storm:

"Clean and disinfect everything that got wet," he tweeted. "Mud left from floodwaters can contain sewage and chemicals."

Workers in Howard County, Maryland, scrambled to stop a sewage overflow caused by a power outage.

The raw sewage spilled at a rate of 2 million gallons per hour, county emergency official Karen Spicer said. It was unclear how much sewage had flowed into the Little Patuxent River.

Mounting devastation

As Sandy sputters away, it leaves behind at least 101 deaths from Haiti to Canada.

The storm killed 67 people in the Caribbean before slamming into the U.S. East Coast, leaving at least 33 dead. One woman in Canada died after begin struck by debris.

On Wednesday, the New York Police Department reported a total of 22 deaths in the city from Sandy. Previously, Gov. Cuomo's office reported 15 deaths in the state.

In addition to the scores of deaths, the superstorm is also wreaking financial havoc.

The total cost of property damage and lost business is estimated at between $10 billion to $20 billion, according to Eqecat, which provides loss estimates to the insurance industry.

Christie said seeing the damage left behind to the state's treasured beaches was "overwhelming," and the Jersey Shore might never return to its original glory.

"We will rebuild it. No question in my mind, we'll rebuild it," he said. "But for those of us who are my age, it won't be the same. It will be different because many of the iconic things that made it what it was are now gone and washed into the ocean."

Read more »

Fallen tree reveals historic bones amid storm devastation

Superstorm Sandy has revealed a skeleton which may date back to Colonial times, police in New Haven, Connecticut, said today.

Millions of people in the US are still without power, and at least 50 are dead, in the wake of the most devastating storm in decades to hit the country’s most densely-populated region.

It comes as US President Barack Obama, locked in a tight re-election bid, skipped campaign events in battleground states to visit victims of the superstorm in New Jersey.

Spokesman David Hartman said a woman who was with other bystanders called police after she saw bones in the upturned roots of a fallen oak tree on the town green.

Mr Hartman said the tree was planted on the green in 1909, on the 100th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birth.

He said the remains probably belong to one of thousands of people buried there in Colonial times. The remains will be evaluated by the state medical examiner.

Katie Carbo, who called police, told the New Haven Independent she saw something in the tree roots, and found the bones when she removed some dirt.

She said the skeleton “should be given a proper burial”.

Superstorm Sandy, which was reclassified after starting as a hurricane, has killed at least 50 people, many hit by falling trees, as the east coast was ravaged.

It inched inland across Pennsylvania, ready to bank toward western New York state to dump more of its water and likely cause more havoc last night.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, when asked to assess the damage left by the storm, said: “Nature is an awful lot more powerful than we are.”

More than 8.2 million households were without power in 17 states as far west as Michigan.

Nearly two million of those were in New York, where large parts of lower Manhattan lost electricity and entire streets ended up underwater – as did seven subway tunnels between Manhattan and Brooklyn at one point, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said.

The New York Stock Exchange was closed for a second day from weather, the first time that has happened since a blizzard in 1888.

The city’s subway system, the lifeblood of more than five million residents, was damaged like never before and closed indefinitely, and Consolidated Edison said electricity in and around New York could take a week to restore.

Though early predictions of river flooding in Sandy’s inland path were petering out, colder temperatures made snow the main product of Sandy’s slow march from the sea.

Parts of the West Virginia mountains were blanketed with two feet of snow by yesterday afternoon and drifts four feet deep were reported at Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the Tennessee-North Carolina border.

By yesterday afternoon, there were still only hints of the economic impact of the storm. Airports remained closed across the East Coast and far beyond as tens of thousands of travellers found they were unable to get where they were going.

Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicted the storm will end up causing about $20bn in damages.

Sandy began in the Atlantic and knocked around the Caribbean – killing nearly 70 people – and strengthened into a hurricane as it chugged across the southeastern coast of the United States.

Some limited air travel is expected to return to the New York City metro area today following the superstorm.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Newark International Airport in New Jersey will open at 7am with limited service. They were closed in the storm.

It is unclear what carriers will have flights operating.

The Port Authority says some carriers will be landing planes with no passengers at JFK starting Tuesday night to be prepared for flights the next day.

New York’s LaGuardia Airport remains closed.

The parts of New York City still without power are seeing increased police patrols and other stepped-up security measures as they face the prospect of days without electricity.

Mr Bloomberg promised “a very heavy police presence” in the darkened neighbourhoods. Some prominent galleries in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood have brought in private security.

Officials said power might not be back until the weekend for hundreds of thousands of people.

There was no sign of looting or widespread crime, although about a dozen people were arrested in Coney Island and Queens on charges of trying to steal from shops, a pharmacy and a bank where the entire front was missing.

Read more »

Sandy changes lives forever -- here are three of their stories

Aerial images from the U.S. Coast Guard show the coastline in Brigantine, New Jersey, on Tuesday, October 30. Sandy struck land near Atlantic City, New Jersey, around high tide Monday night.

(CNN) -- Sandy disrupted the lives of millions of people when it turned toward the Northeast United States and morphed into a superstorm. Most will return to their routine in time, but some lives are forever changed.

Among those people, here are three of their stories:

Emergency: A desperate rush to save lives in a hospital

The doctors, nurses and staff at the New York University's Langone Medical Center acted fast Monday evening when their hospital basement flooded, cutting off power and the roof-top generators choked under Sandy's torrential rain.

When the power went out, the hospital staff went into action.

Ventilators giving newborns breath failed, lights dimmed and elevators in the 15-floor hospital stopped.

Dr. Andrew Brotman described a desperate rush to find other hospitals to take their 260 patients and ambulances to take them there along streets flooded by the superstorm.

The hospital was empty of patients by 11 a.m. Tuesday, but Brotman and his colleagues were left with the challenge of reclaiming it from Sandy's fury.

Read more about the fast-thinking efforts of the hospital staff

Rescue: Police chief aids hundreds who stayed behind

One of Ralph Verdi's jobs as police chief of Little Ferry, New Jersey, is to make sure residents heed warnings when danger approaches.

New Jersey was slammed hard. This is Atlantic City.

But many of the 10,000 residents who rode out Irene last year -- the first hurricane to make landfall in New Jersey in 108 years -- might have seen Sandy as another overhyped storm.

When Sandy lived up to her billing and flooded Little Ferry and two neighboring towns, Verdi's job became the rescue of residents trapped in the top floors and roofs of their homes by 6-feet-deep water.

Rescuers under Verdi's direction scrambled to save a Bergen County woman who waved and shouted from her front porch.

The chief has been too busy to count how many people have been whisked from rising water, but he knew it was in the hundreds -- with many others, some in pajamas and barefoot, calling for help.

Read more about the rescue efforts in hard-hit New Jersey

Death: She answered the call of the sea and history

While the patients at Brotman's hospital and the people Verdi rescued all survived, Sandy took the life of Claudene Christian.

Claudene Christian was thrilled to be a part of the Bounty.

Christian, 42, was living her dream as a deckhand on a replica of the historic HMS Bounty before giant waves, churned up by Hurricane Sandy, overtook the three-masted, 180-foot sailing vessel off North Carolina's coast early Monday.

While 14 crew members made it to lifeboats, waves washed Christian, Capt. Robin Waldridge and another crew members overboard. The third crew member eventually swam to a lifeboat.

The U.S. Coast Guard staged a daring helicopter rescue: They flew into the hurricane's outer bands and plucked the surviving crew members from two lifeboats.

Christian's body was later pulled from the sea, but Waldridge remained missing Tuesday.

Read more »