Man who pulled gun after Burger King worker wouldn’t take drugs for payment gets 143 years in prison

This photo released by Colorado’s 18th Judicial District Court on Aug. 16, 2024, shows is an undated photo of Eugene Robertson, who was convicted of pointing a gun at Burger King drive-thru worker and later shooting at other people elsewhere the same night, was sentenced to 143 years in prison. (AP)
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Updated 16 August 2024
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Man who pulled gun after Burger King worker wouldn’t take drugs for payment gets 143 years in prison

  • In April, a jury found Robertson guilty of 17 crimes, including eight counts of attempted murder
  • The sentences for many of the crimes were stacked on top of each other, leading to a long sentence

DENVER: A man who was convicted of pointing a gun at Burger King drive-thru worker who wouldn’t accept drugs for payment and later shooting at other people elsewhere the same night has been sentenced to 143 years in prison.
Prosecutors who announced the sentence Thursday said the drive-thru incident was the beginning of a series of crimes Eugene Robertson carried out in the Denver suburb of Aurora on Oct. 17, 2022. No one was wounded.
In April, a jury found Robertson guilty of 17 crimes, including eight counts of attempted murder. The sentences for many of the crimes were stacked on top of each other, leading to a long sentence. Robertson had faced a maximum sentence of more than 400 years when he was sentenced Aug. 9.
“I hope this century-long prison sentence serves as a warning that my prosecutors and I will not tolerate violent crime in our community,” 18th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner said in a statement.
After Robertson pointed the gun at the drive-thru worker, prosecutors said he walked into a convenience store across the street and pointed a gun at the head of a clerk. When Robertson saw there was a surveillance video camera system there, he shot at the screen and left, then shot toward two people outside in the parking lot, Kellner’s office said.
The Sentinel Colorado in Aurora previously reported that a witness at the convenience store store told police there seemed to be “something off” about Robertson and that he was “talking about God” and carrying a Bible with a purple cover.
Later that night, a woman who was friends with Robertson called 911 to report that he had fired shots after she refused to open the door of her apartment, where she was with several people, prosecutors said.
Police spotted Robertson at the woman’s apartment complex. He hid behind some bushes before being arrested, prosecutors said.


In Hiroshima, a schoolboy keeps memories of war alive with guided tours​

Updated 1 min 11 sec ago
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In Hiroshima, a schoolboy keeps memories of war alive with guided tours​

  • “I want them to know how bad is war and how good is peace. Instead of fighting, we should talk to each other about the good things of each other,” he said
HIROSHIMA: Since the age of seven, Japanese schoolboy Shun Sasaki has been offering free guided tours to foreign visitors of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park with a mission: ensuring that the horrors of nuclear war do not fade from memory with the passage of time.
Aged 12 now, Shun has conveyed that message to some 2,000 visitors, recounting in his imperfect but confident English the experiences of his great-grandmother, a ‘hibakusha’ who survived the atomic bomb.
“I want them to come to Hiroshima and know about what happened in Hiroshima on August 6,” Shun said in English, referring to the day the bomb was dropped in 1945.
“I want them to know how bad is war and how good is peace. Instead of fighting, we should talk to each other about the good things of each other,” he said.
About twice a month, Shun makes his way to the peace park wearing a yellow bib with the words “Please feel free to talk to me in English!” splashed across the back, hoping to educate tourists about his hometown.
His volunteer work has earned him the honor of being selected as one of two local children to speak at this year’s ceremony to commemorate 80 years since the A-bomb was dropped — its first use in war.
Shun is now the same age as when his great-grandmother Yuriko Sasaki was buried under rubble when her house, about 1.5 km (0.9 mile) from the hypocenter, collapsed from the force of the blast. She died of colorectal cancer aged 69 in 2002, having survived breast cancer decades earlier.
The uranium bomb instantly killed about 78,000 people and by the end of 1945 the number of dead, including from radiation exposure, reached about 140,000. The US dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9.
Canadian Chris Lowe said Shun’s guided tour provided a level of appreciation that went beyond reading plaques on museum walls.
“To hear that about his family... it surely wrapped it up, brought it home and made it much more personal. So it was outstanding for him to share that,” he said.
Shun said he plans to continue with the tours as long as he can.
“The most dangerous thing is to forget what happened a long time ago… so I think we should pass the story to the next generation, and then, never forget it, ever again.”

Thousands to pay respects as Ozzy Osbourne laid to rest in UK hometown

Updated 30 July 2025
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Thousands to pay respects as Ozzy Osbourne laid to rest in UK hometown

  • Thousands are expected to line the streets of Ozzy Osbourne’s UK hometown of Birmingham on Wednesday to honor the heavy metal hell-raiser as he is laid to rest

BIRMINGHAM: Thousands are expected to line the streets of Ozzy Osbourne’s UK hometown of Birmingham on Wednesday to honor the heavy metal hell-raiser as he is laid to rest.
Osbourne, nicknamed the “Prince of Darkness” and who once bit a bat while on stage while performing with his Black Sabbath band, died on July 22 at the age of 76.
The heavy metal star, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2019, passed away just over a fortnight after playing a final gig before a sold-out crowd in Birmingham.
Birmingham city council said Osbourne’s funeral cortege would pass slowly through the city from 1:00 p.m. (1200 GMT) down Broad Street to Black Sabbath bridge, along a route planned with the rocker’s family.
The hearse and vehicles will be accompanied by a live brass band performance by local musicians from Bostin’ Brass.
Osbourne will then be laid to rest at a private funeral service.
“Ozzy was more than a music legend — he was a son of Birmingham,” Zafar Iqbal, the lord mayor of the central English city, said in a statement.
“It was important to the city that we support a fitting, dignified tribute ahead of a private family funeral.
“We know how much this moment will mean to his fans. We’re proud to host it here with his loving family in the place where it all began,” Iqbal added.
Thousands of fans have left heartfelt messages and floral tributes at the bridge in recent days, mourning the death of the musician who was instrumental in pioneering heavy metal, an offshoot of hard rock.
Black Sabbath enjoyed huge commercial success in the 1970s and 80s after forming in Birmingham in 1968.
Their eponymous 1970 debut album made the UK top 10 and paved the way for a string of hit records, including their most famous song “Paranoid.”
The group went on to sell more than 75 million albums worldwide and were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Osbourne was added for a second time last year as a solo artist.
Osbourne gained notoriety for his outlandish stunts, many of them fueled by his lavish use of drugs and alcohol.
In 1989, he was arrested for drunkenly trying to strangle his wife Sharon, which he once mentioned in a 2007 interview.
His live performances at the height of his hedonism have gone down in rock folklore, particularly the 1982 gig in the US city of Des Moines when he bit a bat on stage.
Osbourne said he thought a fan had thrown a fake rubber bat onstage, and it was not until he took a bite that he realized it was real.


Life after cod: Latvia reinvents its coastal communities

Updated 30 July 2025
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Life after cod: Latvia reinvents its coastal communities

  • With the European Union steadily cutting allowable catches of Baltic cod, and moving toward a total ban to replenish stocks, towns and villages are diversifying into tourism and seafood processing

VENTSPILS: Fishers do not usually wish for a “perfect storm.” But Latvian boating communities are hoping for exactly that: a rare tempest that might, one day, revive waning stocks of Baltic cod.
Decreasing salinity in the Baltic Sea is robbing the saltwater fish of the conditions it needs to thrive.
And as its population shrinks, so do the fishing traditions that have long characterised villages along Latvia’s 494-kilometer (307-mile) coastline.
The result for the communities in this small EU nation is a drive to reinvent themselves, to survive.
With the European Union steadily cutting allowable catches of Baltic cod, and moving toward a total ban to replenish stocks, towns and villages are diversifying into tourism and seafood processing.
“We launched a new marina for yachting, offered services for sea travelers, and a French investor opened a brand new shipyard for yacht building,” Agris Stulbergs, harbormaster for the port in the village of Engure, explained to AFP.
Leisure boating has become a favored activity in this village, located just 50 kilometers from the capital Riga, and others.
Farther west, in the port city of Ventspils, Juris Petersons, a lifelong seaman, reminisced how Latvian fishers used to bring in lavish hauls of fish highly valued in kitchens from Russia to Britain.
“Back in the mid-80s the Latvian fishing fleet brought in 55,000 tons of Baltic cod, in addition to salmon, herring and many other saltwater fish,” he said.
Now “the environmental conditions have become so unfavorable to cod growth that Latvian fishermen are allowed to catch just 16 tons of cod a year,” he said.
“And even that amounts only to the accidental by-catch when we fish for herring,” said Petersons, an industrial fishing boat skipper until he sold off his trawlers last year.
The Baltic Sea is fed by a number of large freshwater rivers. It is connected with the North Sea only through the shallow Danish straits, preventing Atlantic saltwater from entering the Baltic basin.


In order to recover, the cod population would need a rare seastorm, with just the right windspeed at the correct angle to push masses of saltwater into the Baltic Sea.
That “happened at least twice during the previous century, but currently we’re waiting for that perfect storm for the third decade,” Petersons said.
Given the smaller yield, many in the industry have focused on quality over quantity.
“All the fish canning companies... have either gone out of business or turned their production lines into making more valuable export-grade products,” said Janis Megnis, chief of the Roja port administration.
Their high quality herring and anchovy products “can be found today from Walmart in the United States to stores in Australia and Japan,” he said.
Political changes have also affected the industry.
Historically Latvia’s fish processing industry mainly served markets in Russia and Belarus.
But with the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, followed by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the resulting Western sanctions, Latvian fishing companies have been forced to seek other markets.
The biggest importers today are Canada, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Denmark and the UK, according to the agriculture ministry.
New markets include Arab countries and South Africa.


Many families in Latvia’s coastal towns have also turned their former fisheries into guesthouses and vacation destinations or switched from selling raw fish to the more lucrative smoked, prepared and spiced varieties.
“My husband is a fifth-generation fisherman: he goes out to sea for fish, which we then smoke and turn into high-end products,” said Iveta Celkarte, who runs a fishing estate in Berzciems village.
“We also have a family cafe... serving our own seafood,” said Celkarte, who has also become a television and social media personality.
Celkarte offers three-hour tours about the history of traditional fishing, taking visitors on a stroll through dunes to the shore and finishing with a special meal.
“For me it is important to tell people about the traditions of our coast, the history of fishing and the life of previous generations working on the sea” she said.
Aivars Lembergs, a former mayor of Ventspils, said he began turning his city into a manufacturing hub and developing tourism has been key, and is paying off.
The city is seeing many tourists coming in from neighboring Lithuania.
“During summers you’ll sometimes see more Lithuanians on the streets of Ventspils than Latvians, as Lithuania has a very short Baltic coastline, and their tourists come here to enjoy the short Baltic summer,” said Lembergs, who was mayor between 1988 and 2021.


UK museum finds 4,000-year-old handprint on Egypt tomb

Updated 29 July 2025
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UK museum finds 4,000-year-old handprint on Egypt tomb

LONDON: British researchers have discovered a rare handprint on a 4,000-year-old Egyptian artifact, a Cambridge museum said.
The ancient handprint was found by museum conservators on the base of an Egyptian soul house — a clay offering tray in the shape of a building which may have been used in tombs for laying out food offerings or as a dwelling for souls.
The unique discovery was made after the piece, crafted between 2055-1650 BC, was examined by conservation staff in preparation for a new exhibition.
“I have never seen such a complete handprint on an Egyptian object before,” said Helen Strudwick, senior curator and Egyptologist at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
The handprint was left by the maker of the soul house, when they picked it up before drying and firing the clay.
“When you see something like this, you feel very close to the person who left their mark on an object,” Strudwick said, describing the finding to AFP as an “exciting moment.”
“You can see all the fingers, and also where the heel of the hand rested,” she said.
The rare artifact will be on display at the museum’s Made in Ancient Egypt exhibition which opens on October 3.
The exhibition will focus on the makers of Egyptian artifacts such as jewelry, ceramics and sculptures.
It is important to understand how the ancient objects were made “in order to look after them properly,” the curator said.
The museum in southeast England has been researching how the artifacts were created since 2014, but little is known about the potters that worked in Ancient Egypt.
Since pottery was seen as having a low value, Egyptian potters may have been accorded a lower social status than other craftspeople.
“We can’t really say anything about the identity of the person from the handprint. It is quite small — about the same size as my own hand,” said Strudwick.
“If this is a man’s handprint, it’s possible that — given the scale of it — he was a younger person, or it may be that a more junior person in the workshop was responsible for moving these objects out to dry,” she speculated.
Strudwick says the history of Egyptian craftspeople was often overlooked by researchers.
But with new research methods, “we are able to know more and more about how they worked, lived and how they wanted to be remembered for all time,” she said.
The exhibition will include a large loan of antiquities from the Louvre museum in France, the most significant of its kind to visit the UK in almost 20 years.

 


Labubu fans dote over ugly-cute doll trending at Comic-Con

Updated 28 July 2025
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Labubu fans dote over ugly-cute doll trending at Comic-Con

  • Labubu dolls have been popularized by celebrities, including Lisa from Blackpink
  • The dolls were created by a Hong Kong artist and is based on Nordic mythology

SAN DIEGO: San Diego Comic-Con is the latest location where the ugly-cute dolls named Labubu have been trending, with fans carrying the plushies globally popularized by celebrities Rihanna, Lizzo, Dua Lipa, and Lisa from the K-pop group Blackpink. The wide-eyed and grinning doll was created in 2015 by Hong Kong artist and illustrator Kasing Lung. In 2019, Lung allowed them to be sold by Pop Mart, a Chinese toy company that sells collectible figurines, often in “blind boxes.”
“Blind boxes” are sealed boxes containing a surprise item that is usually part of a themed collection.
Naomi Galban, from San Diego, waited in line on Sunday at the Pop Mart booth in the San Diego Convention Center for a chance to get her first Labubu.
“Every time I go to a Pop Mart store, they’re sold out,” the 24-year-old told Reuters. She hoped to buy one for her little sister.
Emily Brough, Pop Mart’s Head of IP Licensing, spoke to Reuters on Thursday about Labubu fans at Comic-Con.
“We love to see how fans are personalizing it (Labubu) for themselves,” Brough said next to the Pop Mart booth.
While Brough noted that there were many people with a Labubu strapped to their bags and backpacks at Comic-Con, the doll’s popularity did not happen overnight. Labubus had a huge boost in 2019 after Pop Mart began selling them, and in 2024, when Blackpink’s Lisa, who is Thai, created a buying frenzy in Thailand after she promoted Labubu on social media.
Pop Mart saw sales skyrocket in North America that same year, with revenue in the US in the first quarter of 2025 already surpassing the full-year US revenue from 2024, Pop Mart said.
When he created Labubu, Lung gave the character, who is female, a backstory inspired by Nordic mythology.
He called her and his other fictional creatures “The Monsters.”
Diana Goycortua, 25, first discovered Labubu through social media, and before she knew it, it felt like a “game” to try and collect the dolls.
“It’s a little bit of gambling with what you’re getting,” the Labubu fan from San Diego said on Sunday while waiting at the Pop Mart booth, concluding that her love for the character made it worth trying blind boxes.
Goycortua already has three Labubus, and was hoping to score her a fourth one at Comic-Con.