Wife of Philadelphia abortion doctor sentenced to prison

By Dave Warner

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The wife of a Philadelphia doctor convicted of murdering babies during late-term abortions was sentenced on Wednesday to up to 23 months in prison for helping her husband.

Pearl Gosnell, 52, whose husband, Dr Kermit Gosnell, ran the now-shuttered Women's Medical Society clinic in Philadelphia, had pleaded guilty to performing an illegal abortion, being part of a corrupt organization and conspiracy.

Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner ordered Pearl Gosnell to serve seven to 23 months behind bars for her role in the clinic, which prosecutors described as a "house of horrors."

Earlier this month her 72-year-old husband was sent to prison for three life terms without parole after being convicted by a jury of murdering babies during late-term abortions at his squalid clinic.

The graphic testimony at Kermit Gosnell's trial, which cast a spotlight on the controversial practice of late-term abortions, recounted the doctor cutting the necks of babies who were expelled and breathing after botched abortions.

Also sentenced on Wednesday was Adrienne Moton, 36, a key witness who testified against the doctor.

Moton took a cellphone picture of one victim, identified only as Baby A, who another clinic worker testified the doctor described as "big enough to walk me to the bus stop."

Moton, who had pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, participating in a corrupt organization and conspiracy in a deal that required her to testify against the doctor, faced 36 months in prison.

Lerner said she had already served 28 months in jail and, since there was no benefit in keeping her locked up any longer, she would be freed immediately.

Lerner credited Pearl Gosnell with three months already served, meaning she could be freed after serving little more than four months.

"I don't like to put people in prison," the judge said. "But I can't overlook the offenses that you have committed over time. I can't overlook your role in this operation."

"First let me say how sorry I am," responded Gosnell in a tear-choked voice. "It is my fault for not being diligent about what was going on around me ... I relied on what my husband told me."

Prosecutor Joanne Pescatore told the judge Gosnell wasn't sympathetic.

"It makes me sick," Pescatore said of what she called the greed and money that flowed into the clinic, which served a predominantly black and low-income community.

"She was a key participant," Pescatore said, adding that both Gosnells took advantage of "these desperate women that were at the end of their ropes."

(Reporting by Dave Warner; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Eric Beech)

Police: Man staged kidnap that killed Maine girl

This June 2012 photo provided by the Penobscot County Jail via Maine State Police shows Kyle Dube, of Orono, Maine. A Penobscot County grand jury Wednesday, May 29, 2013 formally charged Dube in the death of Nichole Cable. (AP Photo/Penobscot County Jail via Maine State Police)

BANGOR, Maine (AP) — A man indicted for the murder of a teenage girl used a fake Facebook account to lure her from her home so that he could stage her kidnapping and rescue and appear to be a hero, according to a state police affidavit.

Instead, the affidavit released Wednesday says Kyle Dube ended up killing 15-year-old Nichole Cable, whose body was found in a wooded area of Old Town this month a week after she went missing.

Detective Thomas Pickering outlined the scenario leading to the high school sophomore's death. He wrote that Dube told his brother that he used Facebook to trick her into going out of her house in Glenburn, not far from Old Town, while he waited in the woods wearing a ski mask.

When Nichole came along, Dube jumped out and snatched her, duct-taped her and put her in the back of his father's pickup truck, the affidavit said. The 20-year-old Dube later discovered that she was dead, so he dumped her body and covered it with branches, it said.

The affidavit, released after Dube's indictment, doesn't go into details about how Nichole was duct-taped, and the cause of her death is still being determined by the medical examiner's office.

Dube told his brother that he "intended to kidnap Nichole and hide her; that he would later find her and be the hero," Pickering wrote.

Dube's attorney, Stephen Smith, did not immediately return a phone call left at his office Wednesday evening. He had argued for the affidavit to be withheld, citing threats against Dube in jail, concerns about whether he could get a fair trial and fears for the privacy of his relatives.

Earlier Wednesday, Justice William Anderson had denied a motion by The Associated Press and the Portland Press Herald to unseal the affidavit on First Amendment grounds.

The judge's original order had sealed the affidavit only until Dube was indicted. When the indictment was handed down, the affidavit was made public.

Nichole was reported missing on May 13 by her mother, who said she had left the night before to meet a friend at the end of the driveway but hadn't returned.

Police interviewed a friend of Nichole's named Bryan Butterfield, who said somebody had set up a fake Facebook account in his name and he suspected Dube. Butterfield told detectives that Dube wanted to have sex with Nichole but that she had rejected his advances, the affidavit said.

Investigators determined that Nichole had frequent contact with the fake Butterfield on Facebook and that the person posing as Butterfield repeatedly requested to meet with her before she agreed to meet with him at the end of her road to get some marijuana the night she went missing, the affidavit said.

Police asked Facebook officials to produce records to identify the owner of the fake Butterfield account, which was traced to Dube and his parents' home in Orono.

When a detective interviewed Dube's girlfriend, Sarah Mersinger, she reported that Dube told her where he left Nichole's body. Dube's brother, Dustin Dube, then told police what he knew.

Dozens of law enforcement officers, using aircraft and dogs, and hundreds of civilian volunteers had spent days searching for Nichole, whose body was found on the night of May 20. About 300 people turned out for her funeral.

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Canfield reported from Portland, Maine.

Buddhist mobs spread fear among Myanmar's Muslims

In this photo released by Daily Eleven Media, people gather around a burning mosque in Lashio, northern Shan State, Myanmar, Tuesday, May 28, 2013. There were no reported fatalities after Tuesday night's rioting in the northeastern town of Lashio, which was sparked by rumors that a Muslim man had set fire to a Buddhist woman, state television reported Wednesday. (AP Photo/Daily Eleven Media)

LASHIO, Myanmar (AP) — It was a terrifying sight: hundreds of angry, armed men on motorcycles advancing up a dusty street with no one to stop them.

Shouting at the top of their lungs, clutching machetes and iron pipes and long bamboo poles, they thrust their fists repeatedly into the air.

The object of their rage: Myanmar's embattled minority Muslim community.

Residents gaping at the spectacle backed away as the Buddhist mob passed. Worried business owners turned away customers and retreated indoors. And three armed soldiers standing in green fatigues on a corner watched quietly, doing nothing despite an emergency government ordinance banning groups of more than five from gathering.

Within a few hours on Wednesday, at least one person was dead and four injured as this northeastern town of Myanmar became the latest to fall prey to the country's swelling tide of anti-Muslim unrest.

After a night of heavy rain, downtown Lashio was quiet Thursday morning. Soldiers blocked roads where Muslim shops were burned. At one corner where the charred remains of a building still smoldered, Muslim residents sorted through rubble for anything salvageable. One woman who had fled a mob a day earlier was still in a state of shock.

"These things should not happen," said the woman, Aye Tin, a Muslim resident. "Most Muslims are staying off the streets. They're afraid they'll be attacked or killed if they go outside."

The violence that started Tuesday in the northeastern city of Lashio is casting fresh doubt over whether President Thein Sein's government can or will act to contain the racial and religious intolerance plaguing a deeply fractured nation still struggling to emerge from half a century of military rule. Muslims have been the main victims of the violence since it began in western Rakhine state last year, but so far most criminal trials have involved prosecutions of Muslims, not members of the Buddhist majority.

The rioting in Lashio started Tuesday after reports that a Muslim man had splashed gasoline on a Buddhist woman and set her on fire. The man was arrested. The woman was hospitalized with burns on her chest, back and hands.

Mobs took revenge by burning down several Muslim shops and one of the city's main mosques, along with an Islamic orphanage that was so badly charred that only two walls remained, said Min Thein, a resident contacted by telephone.

On Wednesday fires still smoldered at the ruined mosque, where a dozen charred motorcycles lay on the sidewalks underneath its white minarets. Army troops stood guard. The wind carried the acrid smell of several burned vehicles across town, and most Muslims hid in their homes.

When one group of thugs arrived at a Muslim-owned movie theater housed in a sprawling villa, they hurled rocks over the gate, smashing windows. They then broke inside and ransacked the cinema.

Ma Wal, a 48-year-old Buddhist shopkeeper across the street, said she saw the crowd arrive. They had knives and stones, and came in two separate waves.

"I couldn't look," she said, recounting how she had shut the wooden doors of her shop. "We were terrified."

A couple hours later, the mobs were gone and two army trucks and a small contingent of soldiers guarded the villa. "I don't know what to think about it," she said. "More casualties are ... not good for anybody."

The government, which came to power in 2011 promising a new era of democratic rule, appealed for calm.

"Damaging religious buildings and creating religious riots is inappropriate for the democratic society we are trying to create," presidential spokesman Ye Htut said on his Facebook page. "Any criminal act will be dealt with according to the law," he said.

National police said nine people were arrested for involvement in the two days of violence, but didn't say if they were Buddhists or Muslims.

After nightfall, authorities could be heard issuing instructions on loudspeakers across the city, reminding residents a dusk-to-dawn curfew was in effect. The voice bellowing into the night also said: "You are prohibited from carrying sticks or swords or any kind of weapon."

A local freelance journalist, Khun Zaw Oo, said he was hit on the head with an iron pipe as he photographed mobs ransacking shops. He said he managed to flee but a companion also holding a camera was attacked and badly injured.

Myanmar's sectarian violence first flared in western Rakhine state last year, when hundreds of people died in clashes between Buddhists and Muslims that drove about 140,000 others, mostly Muslims, from their homes. Most are still living in refugee camps.

This month, authorities in two areas of Rakhine announced a regulation limiting Muslim families to two children. The policy drew sharp criticism from Muslim leaders, rights groups and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell on Tuesday said the U.S. opposes coercive birth limitation policies, and called on Myanmar "to eliminate all such policies without delay."

The clashes had seemed confined to the Rakhine region, but in late March, similar Buddhist-led violence swept the town of Meikthila in central Myanmar, killing at least 43 people. Earlier this month, a court sentenced seven Muslims from Meikthila to prison terms for their role in the violence.

Several other towns in central Myanmar experienced less deadly violence, mostly involving the torching of Muslim businesses and mosques.

Muslims account for about 4 percent of Myanmar's roughly 60 million people. Anti-Muslim sentiment is closely tied to nationalism and the dominant Buddhist religion, so leaders have been reluctant to speak up for the unpopular minority.

Thein Sein's administration has been heavily criticized for not doing enough to protect Muslims. He vowed last week during a trip to the U.S. that all perpetrators of the sectarian violence would be brought to justice.

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Associated Press writers Aye Aye Win in Yangon and Jocelyn Gecker and Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Assad says Syria received Russian missile shipment: Lebanese media

A Shi'ite anti-government protester holds up a poster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a demonstration against Israeli air strikes in Syria, in Sanaa May 10, 2013. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria has received the first shipment of an air defense system from Russia, President Bashar al-Assad was quoted as saying, sending a signal of military strength days before an EU arms embargo on the war-torn country lapses.

"Syria has received the first shipment of Russian anti-aircraft S-300 rockets," Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar newspaper quoted Assad as saying in an interview due to be broadcast later on Thursday.

More of the missiles would arrive soon, he was quoted as saying.

Russia has said it would deliver the missile system to the Syrian government over Western objections, saying the move would help stabilize the regional balance.

A staunch ally of the Assad government, Moscow has appeared to grow more defiant since the European Union let its arms embargo on Syria expire, opening up the possibility of the West arming the rebels battling to topple the president. The embargo lapses on June 1.

The United States, France and Israel have all called on Russia to stop the missile delivery.

An interview with Assad will be released on Thursday on Al Manar, a television station linked to Assad's ally, the Shi'ite Muslim militant group Hezbollah.

More than 80,000 people have died in Syria since peaceful protests against four decades of Assad family rule led to a civil war that has pitted the president's forces and his ally, Hezbollah, against Syrian rebels and a flow of Sunni Islamist militants who have come to help them from abroad.

Moscow says the lapsing of the EU embargo complicates U.S. and Russian-led efforts to set up a peace conference between the Syrian government and its opponents, who want an immediate end to four decades of Assad family rule.

The Syrian leader said he planned to go to the "Geneva 2" conference, al-Akhbar reported, though he was unconvinced of a fruitful outcome and said he would continue to fight the militants.

THREATS AGAINST ISRAEL

Officials in Israel, the United States' main ally in the region, say the S-300 could reach deep into the Jewish state and threaten flights over its main commercial airport near Tel Aviv.

Al-Akhbar said Assad also stressed ties between his forces and Hezbollah militants now openly fighting on the Syrian side of the Lebanese-Syrian frontier.

"Syria and Hezbollah are part of the same axis," al-Akhbar quoted him as telling al-Manar.

"The Syrian army is the one fighting and leading the battles against the armed group, and this fight will continue until all those who are called terrorists are eliminated."

Syria sits along the faultlines of several regional and ethnic conflicts, and violence in the country is increasingly seeping across its borders.

Israel, wary of any Syrian weapons being sent to Hezbollah in Lebanon, has already launched three air strikes against Damascus to stop suspected transfers.

A recent string of strikes in the capital Damascus, which shook the entire city, stoked an angry reaction from Syria. State media outlets said Syria would respond to any further attacks, and would also allow militant groups to attack Israel from a shared border on the Golan Heights.

Israel captured much of Syria's Golan Heights in a 1967 regional war and occupies the territory today, but Assad and his father, the deceased president Hafez al-Assad, had kept the border quiet for decades.

"The Syrian government will not stand in the way of any Syrian groups that want to wage a war of resistance to liberate the Golan," Assad was quoted as saying in the upcoming interview.

Hezbollah has stated it would be willing to support groups that chose to launch operations from the Golan.

Israel has become particularly wary of the S-300 shipments. Its defense minister Moshe Yaalon said on Tuesday, however, that the shipments were not yet on their way.

Sources close to the Russian weapons export monopoly Rosoboronexport said last year that an earlier agreed S-300 deal had been frozen due to concerns over violence in Syria. But one of the sources said Syria had already paid 20 percent of the contract price.

Earlier this month, Israel was reported to have told Washington that Syria had begun payments for a $900 million purchase of S-300s, with an initial deliver due within three months.

(Editing by John Stonestreet)

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Reports: Woman who reported newborn in pipe is mom

BEIJING (AP) — A 22-year-old woman who raised the initial alarm about a newborn trapped in a sewer pipe in China kept quiet about being his mother even as she watched the sensational two-hour rescue unfold, reports said Wednesday.

The woman, whose name was not revealed in state media reports, confessed to police a couple of days later when they asked her to undergo a medical checkup after searching her rented room and finding toys and blood-stained toilet paper, the state-run Zhejiang News website said.

Firefighters were called Saturday to the residential building in the Pujiang area of the eastern Zhejiang province city of Jinhua to rescue a baby trapped in the L-joint of a sewage pipe just below a squat toilet in one of the building's public restrooms.

Video of the rescue of Baby No. 59 — so named because of his incubator number in the hospital — was shown on Chinese news programs and websites starting late Monday and picked up worldwide, prompting both horror and an outpouring of charity on behalf of the newborn.

The single woman, a tenant in the building, told police she could not afford an abortion and secretly delivered the child Saturday afternoon in the toilet. She said the newborn slipped into the sewer line and that she alerted her landlord of the trapped baby after she could not pull the child out, Zhejiang News said.

In China, unwanted pregnancies have been on the rise because of a lack of sex education and an increasingly lax attitude toward sex. Young men and women often are engaged in unprotected sex, and abortions have become increasingly common with abortion services widely available.

The baby, who weighed 2.8 kilograms (6 pounds, 2.8 ounces), had a low heart rate and some minor abrasions on his head and limbs, but was mostly unhurt, according to Zhejiang Online, the province's official news site. The placenta was still attached.

Police initially said they were treating the case of as possible attempted homicide, but it was not immediately clear whether the mother would face any criminal charges.

In the video, officials were shown removing the pipe from a ceiling that apparently was just below the restroom and then, at the hospital, using pliers and saws to gently pull apart the pipe, which was about 10 centimeters (about 3 inches) in diameter.

Zhejiang News said the mother was present throughout the entire rescue and expressed her concern for the child, thought that didn't initially rouse suspicion of the police.

News of the baby's ordeal was met with horror and pity by bloggers on Chinese sites. Most speculated that the child had been dumped by his parents down the toilet. The rescue prompted an outpouring from strangers who came to the hospital with diapers, baby clothes, powdered milk and offers to adopt him.

The landlord of the building told Zhejiang News earlier in the week that there were no signs that the birth took place in the restroom and she had not been aware of any recent pregnancies among her tenants.

The mother told police she cleaned up the scene in the toilet after the delivery and that she managed to hide her pregnancy by wearing loose clothes and tightly wrapping her abdomen, Zhejiang News said.