الكاتب: kafej

A former fugitive has been sentenced to 90 years in jail after murdering her love rival in a jealous rage, before fleeing the US and having plastic surgery to try to evade authorities.

Kaitlin Armstrong, 35, was convicted of shooting dead professional cyclist Anna Moriah “Mo” Wilson after the 25-year-old went swimming and had a meal and rum drinks with Armstrong’s boyfriend Colin Strickland earlier that evening.

A Texas jury found Armstrong guilty of murder on Thursday and a day later took three hours to decide her sentence. She faced a maximum of 99 years for the crime.

Armstrong left the Austin courtroom immediately after the verdict, as her family could be heard sobbing.

Wilson’s family embraced each other after the sentencing, as her mother Karen Wilson addressed the court.

Looking at Armstrong, she said: “When you shot Moriah in the heart, you shot me in the heart… all the people who loved her, pierced their hearts.”

Armstrong used fitness app Strava to track Ms Wilson down to an apartment in Austin – where she shot her twice in the head and once in the heart before fleeing the scene.

At the time of the murder in May 2022, the killer was in a relationship with another professional cyclist, Mr Strickland.

The pair had been together for about three years before a period of separation – during which Mr Strickland had a brief relationship with Ms Wilson.

Armstrong and Mr Strickland then got back together, but she remained jealous of her rival and had called Ms Wilson warning her to “stay away”.

Two of Armstrong’s friends said she told them she wanted to, or could, kill Ms Wilson, jurors were told.

Ms Wilson had been visiting Texas for a cycling race and was among the favourites to win. She had been staying with a friend when she was killed.

Following the murder, police managed to briefly interview Armstrong. But she then sold her Jeep and fled to Costa Rica using her sister’s passport.

Once abroad, she spent more than $6,000 (£4,850) having surgery to change the appearance of her nose, as well as changing the colour and style of her hair.

But she was eventually arrested at a beachside hostel after 43 days on the run.

Armstrong made a second attempt to evade justice when she tried to escape authorities during a medical appointment outside jail last month. She faces a separate felony escape charge.

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Jurors deliberated for about two hours after two weeks of testimony before delivering their verdict on Thursday.

Earlier, Ms Wilson’s friend Caitlin Cash had told the court she discovered her body and tried to perform CPR.

She told jurors she had texted Ms Wilson’s mother earlier that day with a message: “Your girl is in safe hands here in Austin.”

“I felt a lot of guilt not being able to protect her,” Ms Cash said. “I fought for her with everything I had.”

Karen Wilson also told the court: “From the day she was born, she had a force in her.

“She lived as if every day was her last day. And she lived it so fully. She never wasted any time… It’s as if she knew her life would be short.”

Armstrong, a yoga teacher, did not testify on her own behalf during the trial, which heard her Jeep was seen near the apartment at the time of Ms Wilson’s murder.

Bullet casings found near Ms Wilson’s body also matched a gun Armstrong owned.

She denied murder and her lawyers claimed she was the victim of a “nightmare” of circumstantial evidence.

Greenpeace has accused Kim Kardashian of using the climate crisis as a “punchline” to promote her “nipple bra”.

The environmental charity has criticised Kardashian after she released a video to promote her new lingerie item, which is part of her Skims clothing line.

In the promo, the 43-year-old says: “The sea levels are rising. The ice sheets are shrinking.

“I’m not a scientist, but I do believe everyone can use their skill set to do their part.

“That’s why I’m introducing a brand new bra with a built in nipple, so no matter how hot it is, you’ll always look cold.”

Skims says it is donating 10% of proceeds from the sales of the bra to 1% For The Planet – an international organisation whose members contribute at least 1% of their annual revenue to environmental causes.

But the product has attracted criticism from Greenpeace, which has accused Kardashian of making “a mockery of the climate crisis“.

In an Instagram post, entitled “Greenwashing explained – climate activists vs Kim Kardashian”, the charity said the reality star was “co-opting the language of climate activists to promote a plastic product made from petrochemicals”.

It described the advert as an “obvious case of greenwashing”, alleging the product is marketed to appear more eco-friendly than it actually is.

Greenpeace said: “We need more climate conversations in the mainstream.

“But using melting glaciers and rising sea levels as a punchline to improve your profit margins makes a mockery of an issue that is devastating millions of lives.

“We desperately need global icons like Kim Kardashian to champion the fight against climate change.

“Sadly that isn’t what’s happening here.”

The advert “perpetuates the harmful profit-driven system accelerating the climate crisis,” Greenpeace said.

The charity also claimed the ad diverts attention from more “more impactful actions”, such as the proposed UN Global Plastics Treaty.

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This week, negotiators from across the globe gathered in Kenya’s capital Nairobi for talks to establish the landmark international treaty to combat plastic pollution.

The devastating impact of plastic pollution on ecosystems, climate, the economy and health costs up to $600bn (£482bn) every year, according to the UN.

Plastics production is expected to double in the next 20 years if no action is taken, it added.

Sky News has contacted Skims for further comment.

At the end of a sixth week of war, a day of burials and death but also signs the conflict is deepening.

In the settlement of Modiin in Israel, the Marciano family were burying their daughter Noa.

Her body was one of two found by Israeli forces near al Shifa hospital in Gaza.

She’d been a soldier in a military base overrun by Hamas on 7 October and was taken hostage.

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Her sister Yuval was choked with tears as she delivered a heart-breaking eulogy.

She said: “I love you. I’m glad at least you’re here. I will bring my grandchildren; I will bring the family.

“I won’t give up on you, everyone will know about Noa Marciano.”

In the moshav of Olesh to the west, another grief-stricken Israeli family are preparing to bury their grandmother this weekend.

Yehudit Weiss was also found dead by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) near al Shifa. She had been taken hostage during Hamas’s initial attack, when her husband Shmulik was killed.

Her son Omer recalled the family’s double heartbreak at being told first about his father’s death, then his mother’s.

“It broke us the first time when they told us about my father and the next time it tore us apart, we didn’t know how to deal with it.

“We are taking it day by day,” he told me.

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Like the relatives of some 240 hostages, they hoped for a breakthrough that would bring their grandmother home.

But the waiting and the uncertainty, he said, have been unbearable.

“It’s unbelievable pain. Every day passes, every hour, every minute, and we don’t have information,” he added.

“We buried our father, and we weren’t able to mourn. We kept ourselves busy, and we did everything we could to bring my mother home.”

In Gaza itself, another family are also preparing to bury relatives. Eleven of them.

The Tabatibi family lost that many in multiple Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip.

Alaa Abu Hasira said they were among the thousands of people who have travelled south from northern Gaza, after being told they would be safer there by the Israelis.

“We were in Gaza City, and as a result of the conflict we moved to Khan Younis. All my sisters died, and my son and daughter also. I wish I had taken my daughter in my arms, and my twin sister also died,” she said.

Others in Gaza were buried alive today.

Israeli airstrikes in Nusseirat have left dozens under the rubble of residential blocks which collapsed in the bombardment.

A Friday of death and burials, ending a sixth week of this devastating war.

It is two years since I was last in the West Bank, and today it is a different place.

Beyond the Israeli checkpoints guarding ever-expanding Jewish settlements, illegal in international law, is a Palestinian population more squeezed than ever before.

We pass shops shuttered, streets deserted and Palestinian communities cut off.

A huge new highway cuts through the landscape. It’s a road for Israelis, linking Israel to the West Bank settlements.

Israel-Gaza latest: Satellite images show huge crowds trying to flee to southern Gaza

We’re trying to reach the Palestinian town of Tulkarm and it’s hard going.

At one roadblock, we stop to talk to the Palestinians beyond.

“The Israelis closed it,” the young man says. “We have businesses everywhere here… we can’t work. It has been closed for about 35 days.”

Then he looks beyond me and backs off quickly. Behind, the Israeli military has turned up.

The Israeli crackdown here in the West Bank intensified after the Hamas attacks from Gaza on 7 October.

On the face of it, it’s about maintaining security and foiling terror threats. But combined with a massive spike in attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, including forced displacement, it represents a shocking shift in violence against Palestinians.

It took a while, but we reached Tulkarm eventually. We’d come to meet the Mahmeed family.

“The martyr’s family?” a man says when we ask for directions.

The “martyr” is a 15-year-old boy. Ibrahim and Naheda Mahmeed lost their son two weeks ago. They had watched from the balcony of their home as Taha was shot dead below them.

The whole thing was caught in a horrifying video filmed by Taha’s sister, Sarah. She had been on the balcony at 3.30am on 18 October.

Taha had heard that the “occupier forces”, as they call them, were in their town. He and a friend had gone out, a few metres from his home, to see what was going on.

As Taha leaned his head out into the main road, there were three shots. Taha fell to the ground. Sarah’s screams on the video are piercing and haunting. She’d just filmed her brother being killed.

Moments later, she filmed her father running out to help his son. He too was shot. The video shows him struggling back to the house.

Ibrahim is out of hospital now; his physical wounds healing. He showed me the entry wound in his back and the much larger exit wound in his stomach.

“I saw my son lying on the floor, with no value, like an animal,” he told me.

He repeated what he said he had shouted to the Israeli soldiers up the street.

“I am a father. The boy has been killed. I ask for mercy. Then I heard bullets around me and they hit my back.”

Taha is one of at least 52 children to be killed in the West Bank by the Israeli military since the Hamas attacks in southern Israel on 7 October. That’s more than any other month since 1967.

According to the Defence for Children International, a NGO (non-governmental organisation), 97 children have been killed in the West Bank in 2023, the majority of them in the last two months.

“If this was your son, and what they did to Taha, they did to your son, will you accept to live with them?” his mother asks me, waiting for my reply.

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“They are killing children, all the children who were killed were like Taha, they went to buy things in the shops and rockets fell on them.

“And children, aged 10, 11, 14… and Taha was 15. Most of them are under 20.”

The shooting had happened at 3.31am according to the time stamp on the video which Taha’s sister shared with Sky News.

Another of Sarah’s videos shows the Palestinian ambulance arriving. It is time-stamped 4.44am. That is an hour and 13 minutes after Taha was shot.

It is common for ambulances to be refused access for “security reasons”. In this case it is unlikely it would have made any difference – one of the shots struck Taha in the head.

Sky News has asked the Israel Defence Forces for information about the circumstances leading to Taha’s death. They said they would respond to us, but have yet to do so.

In the name of Israeli security, you have to wonder what impact that has on the people in the West Bank – on the next generation of Palestinians.

“Do you think it is possible for Palestinians and Israelis to live alongside each other?” I asked Taha’s sister, Sarah.

“No,” she answers, with no hesitation. “No. It’s our land. Just for us.”

“All of it?” I ask. “The West Bank? Or all of it?”

“All. It’s our land,” she says.

Western politicians say a two-state solution remains the only fix for this profound problem. That doesn’t make it a solution that feels remotely possible.

My time back in the West Bank has been deeply depressing.

The chief executive of OpenAI – the firm behind viral chatbot ChatGPT – has been ousted after the board said it no longer has confidence in him.

Sam Altman is to depart and will be replaced in the interim by Mira Murati, who is currently chief technology officer for the artificial intelligence company.

In a statement on Friday, OpenAI said the move follows a “deliberative review process by the board” which concluded that Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board”.

The statement said Altman’s behaviour was hindering the board’s ability to exercise its responsibilities.

Posting on social media following the announcement, Altman wrote: “I loved my time at OpenAI.

“It was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit.

“Most of all, I loved working with such talented people. (I) will have more to say about what’s next later.”

Altman helped start OpenAI as a non-profit research laboratory in 2015.

But in the past year, he was thrust into the global spotlight as the face of OpenAI after ChatGPT exploded into public consciousness.

On Thursday, he took part in a CEO summit at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation conference in San Francisco, where OpenAI is based.

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Altman predicted AI will prove to be “the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions we’ve had so far”.

But he also acknowledged the existential threat posed by the quantum leaps being taking by computers, and the need for guardrails to protect humanity.

“I really think the world is going to rise to the occasion and everybody wants to do the right thing,” Altman said.