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Sep 30, 2011

UK lawmaker's wife found guilty of stealing lover's kitten

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The estranged wife of a British member of Parliament was found guilty of burglary Friday after being caught on camera breaking into his lover's home and stealing her kitten.
A Birmingham Crown Court jury deliberated for five hours before convicting Christine Hemming, 53.
The prosecution said she stole Beauty, a 4-month-old tabby, three days after separating from her husband, John, a Liberal Democrat MP in Birmingham, in September last year.
Closed-circuit TV footage showed her crawling on her hands and knees underneath a window of the home of Emily Cox, a researcher with whom the MP fathered a child in 2005, before sneaking in and leaving with the cat tucked under her arm.
"The defendant, Mrs. Hemming, had sneaked around the back garden, she had opened the back door, she had entered Emily’s house and she remained in that house for three minutes or so," said prosecutor Jason Pegg, according to metro.com.uk.


"She then left the house through the same door which she had entered but, when she left the house, under her left arm was Beauty the kitten.’
Heming denied the charges, saying she could not remember taking the cat and had gone to the house to deliver letters for her husband.
"Everything just got out of hand," she told the court Wednesday, according to BBC.
"I didn't mean to enter the property.
"I left holding a kitten — there is no doubt about that — but I have no recollection of picking the kitten up."
She said after she realized she had the kitten, she tried to return it by slipping it under the fence of a house in a street in Cox's neighborhood, BCC reported.
She will be sentenced next month.
According to BBC, Pegg said after the verdict: "We're still unsure what the motive behind the burglary was but whatever it might be, a crime was committed and today Mrs. Hemming has been convicted of that crime."
Beauty has not been seen since the theft despite a plea for information and an offer of a reward on John Hemming's official website. He said his other cat misses Beauty.
"Her brother Twinkle is pining for her," he wrote on his blog.




Spain: baby born after mom shot risks brain damage

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A covered body is brought out of St. Mary's Church in Madrid Thursday Sept. 29, 2011, after a gunman walked into the Church in an upper middle class neighborhood of Madrid and killed a pregnant woman, then turned his pistol on himself, the National Police official said. Although emergency crews performed a C-section on the woman inside the church and saved the baby, the mother died. The pregnant woman was just days away from giving birth.

Doctors are waiting to see if a baby cut from the belly of his mother in a Madrid church after she was shot dead has suffered brain damage, an official said Friday.

The baby boy, delivered after his mother died in an apparently random attack, was in cardio-respiratory arrest at birth Thursday evening, but was resuscitated with a chest massage, the Madrid emergency rescue official said.

It will be three days before doctors know if the infant suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen. The 36-year-old woman was just days away from giving birth.

La Paz Hospital, where the baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit, issued a statement at midday saying the baby's family does not wish his condition to be made public.

The 34-year-old gunman, wearing a straw hat and casual clothing and carrying a pistol inside a sports racket cover, walked into St. Mary's Church in a middle-class neighborhood of Madrid as about 40 people were waiting for Mass to start. He shot the pregnant woman in the head at point-blank range as she sat in one of the back pews next to her mother, the police official said.

He then proceeded down the center aisle a few steps, shot a 52-year-old woman in the chest, then walked a bit further, knelt down in front of the altar and shot himself dead. The hospital statement said the second victim's life is not in danger.

The victims were apparently shot at random. A police official said the gunman had been wandering around outside the church and asked in a bar what time Mass started. The officials said the man had a criminal record for drug dealing, domestic violence and resisting arrest. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with their departments' policy.

At no point did the man say anything, the police official said.





 

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