The McCann's mark the 16th 'anniversary' since Maddie disappeared
The parents, family and friends of Madeleine McCann who went missing in Portugal marked the 16th 'anniversary' of her disappearance yesterday in a memorial ceremony in their village, Rothley, Leicestershire.
About 70 people attended the memorial ceremony led by the local parish priest, where people offered prayers and lit candles in Maddie's memory.
Kate’s close friend Fiona Payne, one of her "Tapas Seven” pals who was on the fateful holiday in Portugal when three-year-old Maddie vanished in 2007, was among the crowd.
Maddie's sister, Amelie, who is now 18 years old, spoke for the first time in public about the tragedy: "It's a sad occasion," she said. Her brother Sean was not present at the memorial.
After 16 years and almost 15 million euros spent – an amount that the British Government has already allocated for the searches to continue –, British investigators still have not provided any clue as to what happened on May 3, 2007.
German police are convinced Maddie is dead and have been intent on charging prime suspect Christian Brueckner with her kidnap and “no body” murder. But it recently emerged that the convicted paedophile may never face a trial in the high profile Maddie case, or with unrelated alleged sex offences, because of a legal technicality over foreign courts' jurisdiction.
Brueckner, 45, is currently serving a sentence in a German jail for the rape of an American tourist in the same Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz where Maddie vanished from in May 2007. He has fiercely denied any involvement in her abduction.
Kate and Gerry cling onto a glimmer of hope that Maddie, who would now be aged 19, nearly 20, could still be alive.
Man steals Police car but regrets it and returns it!
The PSP were called to a disturbance on the street in Viso, Porto when the man took his chance and jumped in to the empty police car and drove off.
The episode occurred at around 1am on Wednesday morning, when police were called to a disturbance caused by several drunk and disorderly people.
The police officers stopped their car and got out to deal with the situation. That's when one of the suspects, a 46 year old male, got into the police car and drove a few hundred metres down the road at high speed.
The apparently drunk man immediately returned to the scene, handed the car over to the PSP and said he was sorry. He was arrested and charged with theft.
Neither the vehicle, or the man, suffered or caused any type of damage.
Anti-mafia police operation results in the arrest of 2 of the EU's Most Wanted
A “large-scale” European police operation is taking place today in several countries, including Portugal, focused on arresting members of the Italian criminal organization, 'Ndrangheta.
Police carried out dozens of arrests and house searches early this morning across Germany, in an operation involving more than 1,000 officers who carried out searches of dozens of homes, offices and shops in the states of Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.
More than 30 suspects who had outstanding arrest warrants were arrested. Two of these fugitives had been on the EU Most Wanted list.
“Among other crimes, the defendants are accused of money laundering, tax evasion, commercial fraud and drug smuggling,” says a statement from the state criminal investigation office of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The raids are part of a broader joint investigation that involved Europol and also included simultaneous actions against the group in Belgium, Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Romania, Brazil and Panama, involving over 2770 police officers and 132 arrests of members of one of the world’s most powerful criminal networks.
The Bavarian Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, classified the operation as a “sensitive blow against the 'Ndrangetha”, a criminal organization based in the Italian region of Calabria (south) and considered the richest and most powerful mafia in Italy, with a growing global presence covering more than 40 countries.
According to the Bavarian judicial police, the German authorities acted within the scope of “Operation Eureka”, coordinated by Europol and Eurojust.
Operation Eureka, launched at European level more than three years ago, is “one of the most important and significant in recent years in the field of organized crime in Italy”, said the Bavarian police.
As part of these investigations, the Italian and Belgian authorities managed to attribute the importation and trafficking of around 25 tons of cocaine to 'Ndrangetha, in the period from October 2019 to January 2022, said the same source.
Financial flows of more than 22 million euros from Calabria to Belgium, the Netherlands and South America have also been identified.
Almancil: GNR catches seven men playing cards for money
An inspection of cafés and restaurants by the GNR in Almancil identified seven men playing for money inside an establishment.
The men, aged between 25 and 53, were caught in the act, playing for money, and were accused of this illegal practice.
The authorities seized a deck of cards and 3,480 euros, money from the offenders' bets.
Faro: 'SNS will let me die' says 40 year old nurse
Sandra Gomes, a 40 year old national health nurse, is fighting breast cancer for the second time in her life. There is a medicine that can help her to stay alive, however the medicine in question is not available for this type of cancer via the Portuguese National Health Service (SNS), due to the cost.
In statements to the Correio da Manhã newspaper, Sandra guarantees that she asked Infarmed for access to the drug in January but so far has not received a response “I don’t want to believe that I graduated in nursing and that the National Health Service (SNS) is going to let me die, me and so many people. "I believed in the SNS when I took my course”, says Sandra, understandably in despair.
“Things are starting to get worse. I am a human being, I have rights, just as I have duties, but I have rights. I cannot stay at home, impassive and serene, waiting for an answer. We can't wait a lifetime. Time does not stop, and my life is at risk.”
The story of her first cancer involved eight chemotherapy sessions at Hospital de Faro. Sandra lost her left breast. She was also submitted to 33 radiotherapy sessions. She was discharged in June last year. Four months later, a recurrence came, after a gynecology consultation.
Sandra believes that she is already suffering because of the lack unavailability of a drug that should already be available to SNS patients. Thousands of euros are needed to have access to the medicine in private.
