News in Brief (2023-10-21)

FE Team | Published: October 20, 2023 21:52:35

After 189 bodies found in Colorado funeral home, evidence suggests
families received fake ashes
COLORADO SPRINGS, Oct 20: A Colorado funeral home where 189 decaying bodies were discovered this month appears to have fabricated cremation records and may have given families fake ashes, according to information gathered by The Associated Press from customers and crematories. The families that did business with Return to Nature Funeral Home fear their loved ones weren't cremated at all and instead could be among the yet unidentified corpses authorities discovered after responding to a report of an " abhorrent smell." "My mom's last wish was for her remains to be scattered in a place she loved, not rotting away in a building," said Tanya Wilson, who believes the ashes she spread in Hawaii in August were fake. — AP
Four killed in Kenya stampede
NAIROBI, Oct 20: Four women died in a stampede in western Kenya Friday after a crowd panicked when people mistook the effect of tea spilt on a fire for tear gas, police said. The incident in the town of Kericho happened outside a stadium where President William Ruto was due to deliver a national day speech several hours' later. A woman selling tea accidentally spilled it into a fire, as people waited in the early hours to enter the stadium. "There was a stampede caused by a lady who was selling tea outside the stadium who accidentally spilled hot tea in the fire near gate C along the public road," according to a police report. — AFP
Meloni announces separation from partner

ROME, Oct 20: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced Friday she was separating from her partner, the father of her daughter, after he was recorded making sleazy comments and seemingly admitting an affair. "My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted almost ten years, ends here," Meloni wrote in a message on social media, saying their paths "have diverged for some time". The announcement comes after Giambruno, a television presenter, was caught making overtly sexual and sexist comments to female colleagues off-air on the sidelines of his talk show "Diario del giorno" (Daily diary) on the Rete 4 commercial station. — AFP
Sunak faces electoral test
LONDON, Oct 20: Britain's Labour Party dealt a crushing blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservatives on Friday, winning two previously safe parliamentary seats in victories leader Keir Starmer said showed voters wanted change at the next national election. The double defeat showed a dramatic slump in support for the governing Conservatives, who have won the last four national votes, and suggests Labour is on course to win power for the first time since 2010 at an election expected next year. — Reuters
Two dead as storm batters Scotland
BRECHIN, Oct 20: Two people died and families were trapped in flooded homes in Scotland on Friday as Storm Babet moved east after pounding Ireland. The UK's Met Office issued a rare red severe weather warning for parts of eastern Scotland with "exceptional rainfall" of up to 22 centimetres (8.6 inches) forecast for Friday and Saturday. Police said the body of a 57-year-old woman had been recovered after she was swept into a river in the county of Angus on Thursday afternoon. A second person also died in Angus on Thursday evening after a falling tree hit the van the 56-year-old was driving. — AFP