Australian biological father accused of sexually abusing twin girls born to Thai surrogate mom

Thai police display a picture of surrogate babies born to a Japanese man who is at the centre of surrogacy scandal during press conference at police headquarters in Thailand. Interpol says it has launched a multinational investigation into what Thailand calls the 'Baby Factory' case: a 24-year-old Japanese businessman who has 16 surrogate babies. Photo: Sakchai Lalit/The Associated Press/Files

CANBERRA, Australia — An Australian man has been charged with sexually abusing twin girls he fathered several years ago to a Thai surrogate mother.

The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was charged in a New South Wales state court last year with indecent dealings of a sexual nature with the children while they were around four and five years old, Australian Broadcasting Corp. and Nine Network television reported late Monday.

The charges are the latest blow to the credibility to the commercial surrogacy industry in Thailand, which the southeast Asian country’s military junta has vowed to shut down.

Court documents reveal that the father,  in his 50s, has also been charged with possessing child pornography materials which were found after a raid on his home, ABC and Nine reported.

The man, who denies the allegations, will go to trial in December. He is free on bail.

The twins were born around seven years ago to a 23-year-old Thai surrogate mother, Siriwan Nitichad, also known as Aon, who lives in the Petchabun province, 400 kilometres north of Bangkok.

Aon agreed to act as a surrogate for a couple from Australia who could not conceive on their own, ABC reported. The man was then in his 40s and his wife was older, Nine reported.

“They said they were just married and they really wanted to have a baby so much,” Aon told ABC. “She said her husband wanted to have a baby so much, please help them, please help them.”

Aon agreed to use her own eggs with the Australian man’s sperm. Aon said she was paid 170,000 Thai baht ($5,300 US).

She said the twins were born with lung and other health problems. They were four or five months old before she handed them over to the Australians.

“They were so lovely, I wanted them to stay with me, I did not want to let them go,” Aon told ABC.

“If they asked if they could cancel their payment and we kept the babies, I would definitely have said ‘yes,”‘ she added.

Court documents reveal the father became unemployed, allegedly had a violent temper, and the marriage broke down, ABC reported.

The children are now in the care of the ex-wife of the accused man, and Australian child welfare authorities are working on plans for their care, ABC reported.

Ilya Smirnoff, executive director of Childline Thailand Foundation, a child welfare organization which runs safe houses for children, said Tuesday that Australian officials had considered sending the twins back to Thailand to live with their biological mother after their father was charged.

But Australia’s Family Court made an order last year on the girls’ long-term care, he said. Smirnoff would not detail the terms of the order, or say who cares for the girls.

“The Family and Community Services officials contacted us in the case of the children, and the court would like to consider all circumstances of the case, so they asked us to provide all relevant information from the Thai side,” he told The Associated Press, referring to the Australian Family Court hearing last year.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which is negotiating with Thai authorities to help Australian couples bring home babies already conceived by Thai surrogates before the recent crackdown on the industry, would not immediately comment Tuesday.

Sydney-based New South Wales Department of Family and Community Services did not immediately respond Tuesday to questions about the girls’ current living circumstances and whether plans was underway to send them to Thailand.

Thai authorities have been cracking down on the largely unregulated surrogacy industry since recent publicity over allegations that an Australian couple had abandoned a baby boy born to a surrogate Thai mother after learning he had Down syndrome. The couple, who took the boy’s healthy twin sister home, has said they wanted to bring the boy with them and the Thai surrogate has acknowledged she kept him because she feared he would end up in a state institution.

U.S. military forces conduct operation against Islamic extremist al-Shabab in Somalia

In this Feb. 17, 2011 file photo, hundreds of newly trained al-Shabab fighters perform military exercises in the Lafofe area, about 18 kilometres south of Mogadishu, in Somalia. Photo: Farah Abdi Warsameh/The Associated Press/Files

WASHINGTON — U.S. military forces targeted the Islamic extremist al-Shabab network in an operation Monday in Somalia, the Pentagon said.

Spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said the U.S. was assessing the results and would provide more information when appropriate. No further details were available.

The U.S. action comes after Somali government forces regained control of a high security prison in the capital that was attacked Sunday by seven heavily armed suspected Islamic militants who attempted to free other extremists held there. The Pentagon statement did not indicate whether the U.S. action was related to the prison attack.

Somali officials said all of the attackers, three government soldiers and two civilians were killed. Mogadishu’s Godka Jilacow prison is an interrogation centre for Somalia’s intelligence agency, and many suspected militants are believed to be held in underground cells there.

The Somali rebel group al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the attack that shattered a period of calm in Mogadishu after two decades of chaotic violence. The attack started when a suicide car bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at the gate of the prison, followed by gunmen who fought their way into the prison.

It was al-Shabab gunmen who attacked the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, with guns and grenades last September, killing at least 67 people.

Fisher: NATO looks for Harper’s tough talk to be backed by action, defence spending

Prime Minister Stephen Harper looks over a map in April with the Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Thomas Lawson before announcing Canada will send six CF-18 fighter jets to Eastern Europe as part of a NATO mission. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a chance to prove that he is not “all hat and no cattle” at the NATO leaders’ summit in Wales this week.

No other leader in the 28-country trans-Atlantic alliance has condemned Vladimir Putin’s military adventure in Ukraine more harshly and more persistently than Harper has. However, paradoxically, although the prime minister, and his foreign affairs minister, John Baird, are notoriously fond of ferocious rhetoric, until now Canada has not done anything more than most of its allies to assist Ukraine to curb the Russian strongman’s growing appetite for conquered territory or to reassure those countries on NATO’s eastern flank who think that they might be next on the Kremlin’s hit list.

Reuters broke a story last week detailing deep concern and frustration at NATO over Canada’s meagre spending on defence, which has dropped about 13 or 14 per cent over the past two years so that the Harper government can reach its cherished ambition of a pre-election budget surplus.

The charge that Canada has been niggardly on defence spending has been strongly rejected by Defence Minister Rob Nicholson. However, an official in Brussels who is well versed on the issue, dryly noted Monday that Canada had become “very isolated on the issue” and faced “lots of pressure” to spend more.

When pondering why Canada has done nothing yet to rectify this problem, is it too much of a stretch to wonder whether the Harper government is more terrorized by the electorate and next year’s federal election than it is by the danger to global peace caused by the crises in Ukraine and Iraq, and the challenge poised by China’s rise as a military power in the Pacific? After all, Canada is such a sleepy hollow that recent polls have shown that despite the mayhem overseas, a majority of Canadians are content with the amount that their country spends on the military.

Only four countries meet NATO’s long stated target of two per cent of GDP being devoted to defence, so it is true that there is plenty of blame to go around regarding spending. It is also true that Canada did its share of the heavy lifting if not more in Afghanistan, where, mercifully without competitive bidding, it protected troops by buying C-17 and C-130J transport aircraft and Chinook helicopters and leasing drones. Unfortunately for Ottawa, NATO is understandably more concerned with today and tomorrow than what happened a few years back.

A Canadian CF-18 gets the go-ahead for takeoff at dusk at the military base in Dohar, Qatar. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson)

The Reuters report dovetails with rumours at National Defence headquarters in Ottawa that the U.S. has become so concerned at the massive cuts to Canada’s military budget that it recently filed a formal diplomatic demarche in protest. Whether such an extraordinary private communication was made, it is a fact that Washington, as well as Brussels, is vexed at how Canada, which aside from Norway, arguably has NATO’s best performing economy, has slashed military spending so much that it may have now dipped below one per cent of GDP. There is also alarm because there are now probably several thousand fewer Canadians in uniform than the official number, which remains 68,000.

The White House’s readout of a conversation between U.S. President Barack Obama and Harper that was published on Saturday said the two leaders had “agreed on the importance of ensuring alliance unity on measures to strengthen NATO’s readiness and responsiveness to the full range of current and future threats.” Tellingly, Obama stressed to Harper that an “agreement on increased defence investment in all areas” was a top priority at the summit.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (left) speaks with Commander Joint Task Force North Brig.Gen. Greg Loos as they make there way to speak to troops Tuesday August 26, 2014 on Baffin Island near York Sound, Nunavut. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld)

Since the Afghan combat mission ended 38 months ago, the Canadian Forces have had far less money available to keep troops in a state of readiness for possible contingencies. The army has been quietly unhappy about this for some time. The air force may run out of money to fly its planes at the end of this month unless additional funds are found elsewhere in DND’s reduced budget.

Moreover, Canada’s relatively small transport fleet has already been pushed close to the maximum hours allotted to it this year, meaning that to do what the government wants done with ferrying supplies to Ukraine and Iraq, their air frames will pay the price at some point in the future.

NATO is considering trying to tackle what it considers one of its most serious systemic problems by establishing a new formula on spending that is based on wealth. Such calculations would inevitably lead to more demands that Canada pull its weight.

A Canadian soldier looks at a CF-18 as it sits loaded for flight at Camp Fortin on the Trapani-Birgi Air Force Base in Trapani, Italy. (CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

Harper has a chance to get Washington and NATO off his back at the summit in Wales. A brigade-sized multi-national spearhead force with air, land sea and special forces elements is to be announced at the summit. The alliance’s civilian leader, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, told a news conference in Brussels Monday the force will be able to respond within days to “Russia’s aggressive behaviour” as well as “other challenges.”

This “spearhead,” which is looking for volunteers, will operate within a British-led rapid reaction division that will have a humanitarian as well as a robust combat capability, he said. Canada will have a chance to put its hand up for either venture. But they will cost money. NATO intends to tithe its members to pay for the required bases, infrastructure and the pre-positioned supplies.

The words and, more importantly, the commitments made by Canada’s prime minister this week will be far more closely scrutinized than usual by his NATO colleagues.

Quebec ‘clairvoyant medium’ charged under obscure sorcery law

A still from the film "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." A little-known Canadian law outlaws the false practice of witchcraft and sorcery. Photo: supplied

A Quebec man who advertised his services as a “clairvoyant medium” is in trouble for not delivering on his prophecies after being charged for falsely claiming to practise witchcraft and sorcery.

Yacouba Fofana, who worked under the name Professor Alfoseny, was arrested in April and charged with fraud for allegedly swindling people, according to the QMI news service. Police later added the sorcery charge.

Both in print and online, Fofana listed himself as a medium who “solves your problems,” and could facilitate “return of the beloved, luck, gambling, protection, etc.”

“Guaranteed results,” the ad said.

The Crown says one person was charged over $5,000 for these dubious services. If convicted, Fofana could spend up to 14 years behind bars for fraud and another six months under the witchcraft statute.

Charges under the anti-witchcraft law, Section 365 of the Criminal Code of Canada, are not that uncommon. In Toronto alone there have been at least two incidents in the last five years. Gustavo Valencia Gomez was arrested in 2012 for posing as a healer who could lift a curse on a 56-year-old woman’s family for $14,000, and in 2009 Toronto Police charged Vishwantee Persaud for bilking lawyer Noel Daley out of $27,000 by claiming to be possessed by the man’s sister.

The law is intended to clamp down on scam artists who take advantage of the gullible and vulnerable. It reads:

Every one who fraudulently (a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration, (b) undertakes, for a consideration, to tell fortunes, or (c) pretends from his skill in or knowledge of an occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner anything that is supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found, is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

Curiously, the law is silent on those with actual magical powers.

Israeli children go back to school after spending summer in bomb shelters

Children hold hands during the first day of school in the costal city of Ashkelon, Monday, Sept. 1, 2014. Thousands of children in southern Israel return to school Monday after spending the summer vacation in bomb shelters taking cover from the thousands of Palestinian rockets and mortars fired from Gaza during 50 days of war. AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov Photo: AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov

KIBBUTZ SAAD, Israel — Thousands of Israeli children in areas near the Gaza Strip went back to school Monday after spending the summer in bomb shelters as rockets and mortars rained on their communities during the 50-day Israel-Hamas war, while schools in Gaza remained shuttered as the territory recovered from the fighting.

The start of school brought a sense of joy and excitement to rocket-scarred communities in southern Israel, but the signs of the fighting remained fresh. In the southern city of Ashdod, employees at the “Pashosh” kindergarten, which was struck by a rocket, removed shrapnel marks off the walls and slides ahead of the students’ arrival.

“We are a little scared but we are excited,” said Ronit Bart, a resident of Kibbutz Saad and an English teacher in its school. “A lot of children in our area really need to go back to a routine.”

Her 11-year-old daughter, Shani Bart, said it felt a “little bit weird” to suddenly be going back to school.

“There were some difficult times and we didn’t leave our houses at all,” she said.

President Reuven Rivlin visited the kibbutz, which is located close to the Gaza border, to offer his support.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin gestures as he sits among first grade students during a visit to a school in Kibbutz Saad, near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, on the first day of the school year on September 1, 2014, after a truce which ended a 50-day war between Israel and Gaza militants. More than 2,000 Palestinians and 67 Israelis were killed during the conflict. DAVID BUIMOVITCH/AFP/Getty Images

Until a ceasefire halted the war last week, thousands of residents of border communities like Saad remained indoors or left their homes for safer areas further away from Gaza to escape rocket and mortar fire.

Many residents of Nahal Oz, a community close to the Gaza frontier where a 4-year-old boy was killed by a Palestinian mortar shell, are hesitant about coming back. The Education Ministry said about a dozen families still had not returned. Their children have been placed in alternate schools for the time being.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited a school in Sderot, a Gaza border town that has been hard hit by Palestinian fire. He urged the children to study hard and said “we will make sure to provide you with knowledge and provide you with security.”

Israel and Hamas agreed to an open-ended truce last Tuesday. The ceasefire brought an immediate end to the fighting but left key issues unresolved, such as Hamas’ demand for the lifting of an Israel-Egyptian blockade of Gaza and the reopening of Gaza’s air and seaports. Israel wants Hamas to disarm and the return of bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in the war. A new round of indirect talks is expected to begin later this month in Egypt.

An Israeli student pulls his bag on his way to elementary school as he walks past policemen in the costal city of Ashkelon, Monday, Sep. 1, 2014. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

The war killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, three-quarters of whom were civilians and at least 494 children, according to Palestinian and UN estimates. Israel disputes the figures and estimates that at least half of those killed were militants, though it has not provided firm evidence to back its claims. On the Israeli side, 66 soldiers and six civilians, including a Thai worker, were killed.

Hamas and other Gaza militants fired 4,591 rockets and mortars at Israeli cities during the fighting, mostly in the south. The Israeli military, meanwhile, carried out more than 5,000 air strikes and other attacks.

The Israeli attacks damaged or destroyed thousands of homes in Gaza, and an estimated 250,000 people took refuge in more than 100 UN schools turned into makeshift shelters. With tens of thousands of people still in the shelters and fighting still raging, education officials delayed the start of the school year last week.

Israeli students with their parents make their way to elementary school on the first day of the school year in the costal city of Ashkelon, Monday, Sept. 1, 2014. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

“I hope the school will open soon to complete our education, just like the world’s children and Jewish children,” said Mohammad Amara, a 13-year-old boy staying in a Gaza City school.

Ziad Thabet, a Gaza Education Ministry official, said classes in the strip are set to begin on Sept. 14. The UN said most of the displaced were to be evacuated to temporary housing by Monday afternoon, but Thabet said the schools need to undergo repairs before they can be used.

At least 223 Gaza schools, either run by the UN refugee agency or the Hamas government, were hit in the fighting, including 25 that are too damaged for use. Israel has accused Hamas of using civilian buildings such as schools for military purposes.

“I have two children who are supposed to go to school, and a child who is supposed to go to kindergarten. They ask me ‘when we will go to school?’,” said Haitham Abu Attah, another displaced Gazan.