Man gets $28.3 million after 39 years in prison
CALIFORNIA: 71-year-old Craig Coley spent more than half his life behind bars for a double murder he did not commit. He will now spend the rest of his life as a multi-millionaire. Mr Coley has just reached a US$21 million (S$28.4 million) settlement with the city of Simi Valley after spending 39 years in prison. Mr Coley was wrongfully convicted for killing his former girlfriend Rhonda Wicht and her four-year-old son Donald, in their apartment in 1978. “From day one, I told them do what you want to do to me, but keep looking, don’t stop, you have the wrong man,” said Mr Coley. Mr Coley has always maintained his innocence and was pardoned in 2017 by California’s then-governor, Jerry Brown based on lost DNA evidence found at the scene. “People need to realise that these things occur out there, police are human, they make mistakes,” he added. A home video shot when Mr Coley was released shows him being hugged by former Simi Valley Detective Michael Bender who helped prove his innocence. The retired officer quit his job in 1991. He was convinced Mr Coley was innocent. “Any legal charge against anybody is a search for the truth, period, nothing else,” said Mr Coley. Last year, California authorities awarded Mr Coley US$1.95 million – that’s US$140 for each day he spent in prison. At the time, it was the largest payout for a wrongful convictionin California. (Reuters)
Iceberg twice the size of NY City is about to break off of Antarctica
WASHINGTON: A chasm and a crack on the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica are creeping closer and closer to each other, and when the two finally meet, a slab of ice twice the size as mush as of New York City will break away and float out to the sea. The two glacial flaws are about 4km apart, and it could take few days or even months for them to finally rendezvous. When they do, the iceberg that forms in the Weddell Sea will not be the largest to orbit Antarctica. In fact, it might not even make the historical top twenty. Its size is not what makes it noteworthy – it is what the break itself says about the natural process of iceberg calving, the way climate change might be destabilising other ice shelves like Brunt, and how the movement could jeopardise the critical scientific research human residents have conducted there for more than 60 years. Since 1956, British scientists have been studying geology, glaciology and the atmosphere at the Halley research station located on the Brunt Ice Shelf. The lab has been torn down and rebuilt many times over the decades, and took its most recent form in 2012 when the Halley VI Research Station – a mobile, modular structure – delivered its first scientific data. That same year, satellite monitoring showed that a large chasm in the ice shelf – officially named Chasm 1 – was growing for the first time in more than three decades. (Agencies)
