GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Work continues to find survivors and clear rubble five days after the area around the town of Ercis was struck 23 October by a 7.5 earthquake, but snow and freezing rain are hampering the effort and causing major problems for victims, many of whom are still reportedly without shelter. Survivors have been cheered, nevertheless, by extraordinary rescues: a 13-year-old boy was pulled out alive early Friday morning and an 18-year-old youth Thursday evening, reports Reuters. The government now officially reports 535 people have died. Aljazeera says that about 185 have been brought out of the rubble alive since Sunday. And a mother was reunited with her 18-day-old baby Thursday, reports the Telegraph, although the child’s father is yet to be found.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Runner Amber Miller beat her husband Joe in the 42-km Chicago Marathon 9 October, but the hard work wasn’t over yet for the day: she went into labour soon after the race and gave birth to a 7-pound daughter, June. Mother and daughter are doing fine. Miller was closely followed by doctors during the pregnancy and they advised her on how to handle the race. She says she alternately ran and walked, following their advice.
The 27-year-old mother has a son, 19-month-old Caleb.
Links to other sites: Chicago Tribune, Daily News, South Africa
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 44-year-old woman who had recently contacted a psychiatrist killed her nine-year-old daughter Friday 12 August in Romanel-sur-Lausanne, then killed herself. The pair was found by the father and husband, who called 117 after he discovered the two at the family residence, shortly before 18:00.
Canton Vaud police have released little additional information beyond saying that the involvement of a third party has been excluded and that the husband/father as well as others close to the situation are being given counseling. TSR reports that the couple had another child, who age is not known, and who was not at home at the time; the station quotes a police officer as saying the father was in a “terrible state of shock”.
Le Matin reports that the other child, a 12-year-old girl, learned of their deaths upon her return Saturday from summer camp, and that the mother sent an e-mail to her boss Friday to say she wasn’t ready to come back from sick leave, which she’d taken in mid-July.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – A 48-year-old man who killed himself in a small plane crash over the weekend aimed for his mother’s house, canton Schaffhausen police said Monday 18 July. His 69-year-old mother was in the house at the time but she escaped injury.
The man left a note saying he would fly into her house, but he made no mention of trying to kill her, in his suicide note. The son and his mother had no contact by telephone before the crash. She has three other adult children.
The pilot, about whom police are not providing any further information, took off from the Altenrhein airport at 11:45 and he crashed into the villa shortly before 16:00. Police are still trying to determine if there were any other passengers in the plane.
Photos, video, TSR public television
Boiron beach, between St Prex and Tolochenaz, Switzerland: site of 2-day search for missing girls
Geneva / Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Police in canton Vaud say a large-scale two-day search for missing twins Alessia and Livia is over, with nothing found. The search, using 11 dogs from three countries, specially trained to search for dead bodies, turned up no trace of the girls or their father. “The search did not provide any new material for the investigation,” noted police spokesperson Jean-Christophe Sauterel in a statement issued late Friday.
The search for the missing children will continue in Switzerland, France and Italy.
It was prompted by new information offered by a witness 6 April, who told police he saw a man dragging a suitcase Sunday 30 January about 16:00, in the Boiron area.
Some 100 potential witnesses in the area were interviewed over the two days, says Sauterel, people who live or work in the area, including employees at dumps, fishermen and people who use the shooting range near the Boiron beach, site of the dog-tracking search.
The search involved more than 200 people, including 150 from the area’s Civil Protection unit alone, with dog handlers and their animals covering an area approximately 2.3 kilometres long and 150-400 metres wide on land.
The lake search involved Lake Brigade police from Vaud and Geneva who carried out what police call “a minutieuse search around the mouth of the Boiron river and the lake zone, an area 300 metres wide and 700 metres long, starting from the mouth of the Boiron.” They used remote-controlled robots, or vehicles, and multibeam echo lasers, multibeam swath bathymetry, a sophisticated system for underwater searches.
The entire area was blocked off, with police stationed every 100 metres along the lake road between St Prex’s eastern edge and the Tolochenaz roundabout, and red and white tape keeping out the public to allow the investigators to work in peace. Police boats kept other boats away just off the shore.
Irina Lucidi with her daughters Livia and Alessia, from her Facebook page, Missing Alessia and Livia
Mother says family took walks in searched area
Irina Lucidi, the mother of missing six-year-old twins Alessia and Livia Schepp, called a press conference Friday afternoon 15 April in Morges to thank police for undertaking a large-scale hunt for her daughters, who disappeared with their father from St Sulpice 30 January.
Matthias Schepp, the father of the girls, committed suicide five days after leaving with his daughters, driving to the south of France, Corsica and southern Italy. Police in Italy, France and Switzerland have been looking for the children since then; the father sent his wife a letter from Italy saying that he had killed them.
Irina Lucidi had told him a few days before he left with the children that their marriage was over and she wanted a divorce.
Her press conference was held at the tennis club on the west side of Morges, not far from the area where police have been carrying out an intensive dog-tracking search for the past two days, based on new information provided 6 April by a witness. Police searched the Boiron river mouth and beach area, where the witness says he saw a man dragging a suitcase Sunday 30 January, about 16:00.
Irina Lucidi told reporters Friday afternoon that she and her husband and the girls often walked in that area, just to the east of St Prex, near the lake road at Tolochenaz. The lakefront is not open to the public between St Prex and the beach, but from the beach it is possible to walk to Morges, about 3 kms.
Police say that concerning the possible death of the twins, investigators remain open to all possibilities.
Related articles: GenevaLunch
Police seek information on father Matthias Schepp's whereabouts from 1-3 February
Lausanne / Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Matthias Schepp, the dead father of Alessia and Livia Schepp, twins who have been missing since Sunday 30 January from their hometown of St Sulpice, near Lausanne, was seen in Corsica Tuesday morning 31 January, Vaud police have confirmed. New elements turned up by police in Marseille, France confirm that the father, who committed suicide near Bari, Italy late last Thursday, took the late Monday overnight ferry to the island.
There is no evidence yet whether or not he had the six-year-old twins with him.
Police have been able to pin down his movements in Switzerland more clearly: he was seen with the girls in Saint Sulpice at 13:30 Sunday 30 January, and he was in Morges at 15:50, cell phone records show. He then drove to Geneva and on to Annecy, crossing the border into France at 18:15 Sunday.
The police also confirmed that the girls’ mother has received several packets of money, in €50 bills, mailed by her estranged husband, but the total received to date is €4,400, slightly less than the amount mentioned earlier today by the girls’ uncle.
The postal stamps show they were mailed from Bari, Italy.
Vaud police say they are not yet in a position to discuss other information or details in their possession, in order not to prejudice the investigation.
Alessia and Livia continue to be the focus of a large, three-country manhunt. Police are particularly anxious to have information on the father’s whereabouts between Tuesday morning 1 February, when he was seen in Corsica, and noon Thursday 3 February, when he was near Naples.
Police in canton Vaud, who have been leading an intensive three-country search for the girls, held a press conference Tuesday evening 8 February.
Calf taking his first steps at Taronga Zoo, Sydney, Australia (photo: Bobby-Jo Vial)
Australia is having a good day: first the news about police killing Dalmatin, the mastermind behind the Bali bombings which killed 100 Australians, and now the cheering news about a little elephant calf at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, born shortly after 03:00 Wednesday 10 March. The calf was declared dead in his mother’s womb three days earlier, but surprised everyone when he was born alive, and first signs are encouraging: with help from the intensive care staff at the zoo he has taken his first steps within just hours of his birth, attempted to suckle his mother, Porntip, and touched the trunks of the other elephants at the zoo, writes the Sydney Morning Herald.
“Advice from world elephant reproduction expert, Dr Thomas Hildebrandt of the Berlin Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Health is that such an outcome after a protracted labour has never been seen before,” according to the zoo’s pages on the new calf. ” He said the birth will completely re-write the elephant birth text books.” The zoo now believes the calf was in a coma during his mother’s lengthy labour, which explains why they were unable to pick up his vital signs.
Vevey, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Did he or didn’t he? The ages-old dilemma of judges and juries in the face of conflicting evidence has brought a tale of money, adoption, sibling rivalry and murder back into the headlines in the Lake Geneva region. A 46-year-old man put behind bars for life in 2008 for murdering the aging mother who adopted him and a close friend of hers, purportedly for money, is being tried again because of new evidence. The two women were found dead 24 December and the man’s sister disappeared that day.
A bakery employee, who only saw the story once the man was sentenced, came forward to say that she had in fact waited on the women at a time when police say they were already dead, a detail which could unravel the public defender’s case.The accused murderer has complicated the case from the start by handing out different versions of what happened.
Monday the imprisoned man told the court that he had made up the various stories about his actions under pressure from police. He now says that he played no role at all in the deaths.
The women were found dead 24 December 2005. The accused man’s brother has argued that he should not be allowed to touch any of the family’s considerable fortune, made in real estate.
Background, GenevaLunch
Bjoerk the bear and her two cubs, 18 February (photo: Bern Bear Park)
Update 26 February, link added Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Lausanne newspaper 24 Heures called it one of Switzerland’s best-guarded secrets, proving that it isn’t only bank accounts the Swiss are quiet about: Finn, one of Bern’s two much-loved zoo bears who was shot by a policeman in November when he attacked an intruder, became a father in December. The news came out only this week. Bjoerk, the mother, surprised everyone by not just hibernating but giving birth to two cubs at the Bern Bear Park, which is one of Switzerland’s most popular tourist attractions.
Finn, the father will remain alone in his part of the park, say zoo authorities. “Male bears have no fatherly feelings – he would just kill the cubs.”
The cubs have been named Urs and Berna.
Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Rosa Rein, who would have turned 113 in March, has died in a nursing home in canton Ticino. She was Switzerland’s oldest person and, according to wikipedia, one of the 15 oldest “verified” people in the world. When she celebrated her birthday in 2009 she was still able to walk, although she had some vision and hearing loss.
Rosa Rein was born in 1897 in Dzietzkowitz, now part of Poland, the daughter of relatively comfortable farmers, according to RTI, Swiss Italian radio. She married for the first time in 1935, at age 38, after running a textile business, but the young Jewish woman and her German husband fled to Brazil at the time of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom.
Update 16 September Yverdon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The mother of a young child who fell out of a window and died while she was out partying has been given a six month suspended sentence for negligent homicide. The state prosecutor had asked for a 10-month prison sentence plus two years suspended sentence in the trial of a 24-year-old woman who left her three-year-old daughter alone while she went out for most of the night with friends. The child died in December 2006 after falling out of a six-storey kitchen window. She had managed to pull a chair up to the window, which had been left open, and climb out, then fell to her death.
Flushing Meadows, New York, USA (GenevaLunch) - Serena Williams lost the semi-final of the US Open with an extraordinary outburst against a line judge who had called her for a foot-fault. She lost the first set to Kim Clijsters and was down 5-6, 15-30 when she was called for a foot-fault on her second service, thus losing the point. She advanced on the line judge with a variety of expletives which led to the lineswoman reporting to the umpire.
Serena had already been warned for racket abuse and was therefore given a penalty point against her: the fact that it was on match point meant the match was over. Tournament referee Brian Earley stressed that the point penalty for “unsportsmanlike conduct” had taken place on match point rather than Williams defaulting the match.
Willams later denied threatening to kill the line judge but did not specify what she had said, claiming not to remember. There is considerable online speculation about what exactly she said.
A children’s television show in Gaza provoked outrage as well as concerm among psychiatrists for its impact on children when it was aired two years ago: it showed the mother of young children preparing to kill herself in a suicide bomb attack, which succeeded. The show has been aired again, but this time with a studio audience of children, prompting new protests from observers. CNN
Update 3 July 06:15 Debbie Rowe, mother to performer Michael Jackson’s two oldest children, implied in a 90-minute interview with US television network NBC that she intends to fight for custody of the children but her lawyer later softened that, after media reports, saying that she is undecided. BBC
Lausanne, Switzerland (24 Heures, Fre) – The 38-year-old mother who murdered her six-year-old son by drowning him in November 2007 did it out of vengeance, to remove him from his father, a judge in Lausanne declared Wednesday 27 May. He referred to the crime as an “assassination” and the work of an ego-centric woman who mistakenly saw herself as a victim and her husband as the one who should bear responsibility.
Background, “Mother drowns her six-year-old in Romanel-sur-Morges,” GenevaLunch, 20 November 2007
Budapest, Hungary (TSR, Fre) – Three-year-old Elise André, taken from her father, who was attacked by two men as the father and daughter left her pre-school in France 25 March, has been found with her mother as the pair tried to cross the border from Hungary into Ukraine. The mother has been placed under arrest and the father re-united with his daughter. The couple divorced when the girl was a year old. The news made headlines in Switzerland, with fears that the mother had flown with the girl from Geneva to Russia; as a Russian citizen she could not be extradited even if charged with illegally taking the child out of France.
In a case that made headlines as the odd story unfolded in February 2008, the mother of 10-year-old Shannon Matthews and the uncle of the mother’s ex-boyfriend have been found guilty of kidnapping the girl and reporting her missing in order to collect a reward. Tests showed that the girl had been given several drugs over a period of months and she was kept drugged during the 24 days she spent in captivity. BBC
