An Italian man has finally been acquitted of stealing an aubergine nine years after being charged, ending a legal wrangle that cost taxpayers thousands. The man, then 49, had the aubergine in his bucket when police caught him trying to escape through a privately owned field near Lecce, in the southern region of Puglia, in 2009.

While being taken away, he pleaded with the police that he had tried to steal it because he was unemployed and desperate to feed his child. However, the courts initially showed no mercy, sentencing him to five months in prison and ordering him to pay a €500 (£440) fine. That punishment was reduced on appeal to two months in jail and €120. The man’s legal counsel was still not satisfied and took the case to the court of cassation in Rome, Italy’s highest appeals court, where the defendant was acquitted nearly a decade after he was arrested. The court criticised the lower courts in Lecce for not taking into account the extreme weakness of the prosecution’s case given the man’s financial situation. La Repubblica newspaper quoted the ruling as saying that the man “was definitely acting to satisfy the hunger of his family … there are grounds for justification”.(theguardian)…[+]

Three Indian journalists have been mown down by vehicles and killed in separate incidents over recent days in what their families and rights groups claim were deliberate attacks. The deaths of the reporters Sandeep Sharma in Madhya Pradesh state, and Navin Nischal and Vijay Singh in Bihar state, have underlined India’s status as one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist, particularly in languages other than English and outside large cities. Sharma, 36, had recently conducted an undercover “sting” that claimed to have produced footage of a senior police official in his area agreeing to accept a 25,000-rupee (£272) bribe each month in exchange for allowing sand mining in a protected crocodile sanctuary.

“After that he was getting lots of threats from people,” said Rizwan Ahmad Siddiqui, editor-in-chief of News World, the local television news channel where Sharma worked. “He was denied police protection and the police asked for the camera he had used to conduct the sting,” he said. “They took the original recording and never gave it back.”(theguardian)…[+]

White House officials have been looking into whether $500m in loans that went to Jared Kushner’s family real estate company may have spurred ethics or criminal law violations, according to the head of the federal government’s ethics agency. David Apol, acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, said in a letter sent late last week to representative Raja Krishnamoorthi that the White House counsel’s office told him officials were investigating the loans to Kushner Companies and whether “additional procedures are necessary to avoid violations in the future”.

Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, asked Apol on 1 March about a New York Times report in February that Kushner Companies accepted $184m in loans from Apollo Global Management and $325m from Citigroup last year over a span of several months after Kushner met officials from the two firms.

As Donald Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser, Kushner plays an influential role in domestic and foreign policy decisions. Late on Monday, Kushner’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said “the White House counsel concluded there were no issues involving Jared”. Several White House officials contacted for comment were not immediately available to confirm whether White House lawyers had completed the inquiry.

Lowell denied any improprieties by Kushner, saying “he was not involved with his former company after he entered government service; the transactions in question came after that; he had nothing to do with those transactions; the transactions had nothing to do with any of his meetings in the White House”. Both companies have insisted their officials did nothing wrong in meeting with Kushner. In one case cited by the Times, Citigroup lent $325m to Kushner Companies in spring 2017, shortly after Kushner met Citi’s chief executive, Michael Corbat. Last week, Citigroup’s general counsel told several Democratic lawmakers in a letter that the loan was “completely appropriate”.(theguardian)…[+]