Spain’s Supreme Court has ruled that an attack on a teenage woman that shocked Spain was gang rape, rather than an earlier verdict of sexual abuse. The five men, known as the “wolf pack”, were originally given nine years in jail when they were cleared of rape.

But prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court to upgrade the conviction and judges increased their sentences to 15 years. The attack prompted Spain to announce a review of its rape laws. All five had been on provisional release since last year pending the Supreme Court decision. Prosecutors had asked for their jail terms to be doubled to 18 years. Reports say that at least two of the men were detained after the verdict and arrest warrants have been issued for the rest. The court ruled decisively that the five had carried out the attack in “a genuinely intimidating scenario”. Under current Spanish rape law use of intimidation is key to a rape conviction.

In July 2016, when the city of Pamplona was holding its traditional San Fermin bull-running festival, the 18-year-old woman was dragged into the hallway of a residential building. The five men removed her clothes and had unprotected sex with her. Some of them filmed it on their phones. The woman’s phone was also stolen and she was found reportedly in a distraught state.(BBC)…[+]

WASHINGTON – Walmart Inc said yesterday it will pay $282 million to settle a seven-year-long investigation into whether its overseas units in Mexico, Brazil, China and India violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The retailer will pay more than $144 million to settle charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission and about $138 million to resolve parallel criminal charges by the U.S. Department of Justice, according to court and regulatory filings.

In a separate regulatory filing, Walmart said the $282 million was part of a “global settlement” and ended all FCPA-related investigations into the retailer and its overseas businesses. The Justice Department launched an investigation of the retailer after a series of New York Times articles in 2012 described alleged bribes paid by Walmart in Mexico to obtain permits to build stores there.

The reports spurred a wide-reaching investigation by the department into the behavior of Walmart subsidiaries around the globe, including in Mexico, Brazil, China and India. “Walmart profited from rapid international expansion, but in doing so chose not to take necessary steps to avoid corruption,” Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said on Thursday.(Reuters)…[+]

The hur­ri­cane fore­cast for 2019 is just as bad as the fore­cast of 2018 and with nine to 15 named storms ex­pect­ed to form in the At­lantic this year, of­fi­cials from the Com­mon­wealth of Do­mini­ca wants the rest of the Caribbean to pre­pare. Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the is­land last week and mar­velled at how Do­mini­ca has man­aged to bounce back from ex­ten­sive dev­as­ta­tion of Hur­ri­cane Maria which rav­aged the is­land in Sep­tem­ber 2017, killing 65 peo­ple.

Many of the bod­ies were nev­er found and some of the homes bat­tered by the force of the hur­ri­cane re­main roof­less. Some of the moun­tains still har­bour rem­nants of de­bris but Min­is­ter for the En­vi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Re­silience, Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment and Ur­ban Re­new­al Joseph Isaac be­lieves this year the is­land is bet­ter pre­pared the hur­ri­cane sea­son. Back in 2017 the res­i­dents like Dec­i­ma Sharplis, own­er of Sea­world Guest House, were not pre­pared for a Cat­e­go­ry Five Hur­ri­cane.

Sharplis said she could re­mem­ber run­ning around her home se­cur­ing items be­tween 11 pm to 3 am while the hur­ri­cane ham­mered the is­land. “Maria was the most hor­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ence I ever had. I will nev­er for­get when I went down­stairs to se­cure some stuff and I saw these big waves com­ing at me. I had to run,” Sharplis said.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]