Italian court sparks outrage in clearing man of sexual assault for "quick grope" of teen student
CBSN
An Italian court has cleared a school aide from charges of sexually assaulting a student, determining that the aide only touched the student for "5 to 10 seconds" without "libidinous or lusty intent."
The 17-year-old Roman high school student – known only as "Laura" — was climbing school stairs with a friend when she hiked up her pants. That's when 66-year-old Antonio Avola came up behind her, slipped his hand inside her trousers and lifted her slightly in the air by her underwear.
Avola admitted to touching the girl in the April 2022 incident, at the Roberto Rossellini high school in Rome, but insisted that he did so only as a joke. Roman prosecutors asked for a jail term of three-and-a-half years. However, the court ruled on July 6 that the contact was so brief that it left "ample margins of doubt" about Avola's intentions, and said it found the defense argument that it had been a joke "convincing."
Tel Aviv — After more than a year of bombing and homelessness, Gazans are looking to a new administration in Washington for help. President-elect Donald Trump's election victory has raised hopes and fears among the five million residents of the Palestinian territories — the warn-torn Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
President Biden has given the OK to lift restrictions that will allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided long-range weapons to strike deep into Russian territory, a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News on Sunday. The move is a significant change to U.S. policy in the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Tropical Storm Sara was downgraded to a tropical depression after it made landfall in Belize on Sunday as forecasters expect heavy rain to continue and cause life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides.
The main spokesman for Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on central Beirut on Sunday, an official with the militant group said.
Eight people were killed and 17 others wounded Saturday in a knife attack at a vocational school in eastern China, and the suspect — a former student — has been arrested, police said.
A fire tore through a neonatal intensive care unit in a hospital in northern India, killing 10 newborn babies and injuring 16 others, authorities said.
Johannesburg — It's often called the forgotten conflict, but the civil war that has torn Sudan apart for 19 months is fueling the world's biggest humanitarian crisis. In just over a year and a half, 13 million people have been displaced from their homes. At least one overcrowded camp for displaced civilians is already dealing with famine, while other parts of the country are suffering though famine-like conditions.
British jets were scrambled to monitor a Russian reconnaissance aircraft flying close to U.K. airspace, the defense minister in London said on Friday, just days after NATO jets were mobilized when Russian aircraft were spotted over the Baltic Sea and off the coast of Norway.
A German soccer club is leaving X because of the increase in hate speech and disinformation on the social media platform that it claims could undermine the snap elections in the country.
Tropical Storm Sara formed in the Caribbean on Thursday, becoming the 18th named storm of the 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season. The system, previously called Tropical Depression 19, developed in the western Caribbean earlier this week and intensified while traveling westward on a path toward Central America.
Paris — Security forces were on high alert Thursday in Paris ahead of a soccer match between France's national soccer team and the visiting Israeli side. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators held protests in the city Wednesday night, and there has been fear of a possible repeat of last week's violence and antisemitic attacks against Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam.