Kamis, 06 Juni 2019
Macron urges Trump to fulfil the promise of Normandy at D-Day ceremony - Guardian News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehV-wwXHL1o
2019-06-06 14:28:27Z
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German Nurse Convicted of Killing 85 Patients - The New York Times
OLDENBURG, Germany — The former nurse’s crimes were “incomprehensible,” a German judge told the court on Thursday, reaching his arms across the breadth of the bench as if to capture in one gesture what he sensed his words had failed to define — the enormity of murdering 85 patients who had been placed in the care of the nurse but instead had found death.
“Your guilt is so large that one can’t explain it,” the presiding judge, Sebastian Bührmann, told the nurse, Niels Höge, in a courtroom packed with the relatives of the 100 patients whose deaths he was charged with orchestrating. “It is so large, you can’t show it.”
Mr. Högel is believed to be the most prolific serial killer in peacetime Germany, and perhaps the world. His trial in the 85 murders sought to provide a measure of comfort and answers to some of the victims’ families, more than a decade after they died. His conviction on Thursday was the third for the nurse.
[Read our previous coverage: Hundreds of Bodies; One Nurse]
Officials suspect Mr. Högel may have killed as many as 300 patients while working at two clinics in northern Germany between 2000 and 2005. He was accused of administering overdoses of drugs that caused cardiac arrest so that he could try to revive patients heroically. His colleagues called him “Resuscitation Rambo.”
In its sentencing, the court barred Mr. Högel from working as a nurse, emergency medical responder or any other job providing care. “We want to be sure that you never, ever again are able to work in such a job,” the judge said.
From the trial’s opening in October, Judge Bührmann had stressed that the purpose went beyond trying to determine guilt: It was to try to find answers to how and why the patients had died. But he acknowledged that in 15 cases, the court had failed to find enough evidence to support murder convictions.
“Despite all of our attempts, we could only lift part of the fog that hangs this trial,” he said. “That fills us with a certain sadness.”
Throughout the more than 90 minutes that the judge read out the sentencing, he repeatedly and directly addressed Mr. Högel. The former nurse, dressed in a black T-shirt and wearing a thick chain necklace, sat with his head resting in the palm of his right hand, listening passively.
“The human ability to understand capitulates when faced with the sheer number of deaths, week for week, month for month, year for year,” Judge Bührmann said. In the early days of the trial, going through the names of each patient, their medical records and the details of how and when they had died left him feeling “like a bookkeeper of death,” he said.
Mr. Högel had confessed to killing 43 his patients, and spent the early days of the trial going through the medical files of each of the 100 patients with the judge. For most of the others he told the court that he couldn’t remember, or couldn’t rule out, murdering the patients. He denied five charges outright.
[Read: A doctor in Ohio was charged with killing 25 people over four years.]
The court, citing his past behavior and expert testimony, questioned whether Mr. Högel’s statements had been truthful. “The most difficult part was evaluating what you said,” the judge told him, citing specific cases where written evidence contradicted the former nurse’s testimony. “You didn’t always tell the truth, and that makes it so difficult,” the judge said.
Under German law, a person convicted of murder can be sentenced only to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years, depending on the severity of the crime. Mr. Högel is already serving a life sentence for other murders, and the judge made clear that his record would ensure that he would not be eligible for early parole.
Citing the United States justice system, where for each death a life sentence is handed down, the judge said that even if Mr. Högel were to serve 15 years for each of the 85 murders, it would add up to 1,275 years in prison. “That is an indication of what I call incomprehensible,” he said.
The judge also said that Mr. Högel’s “complex bundle of motives” was also proving challenging to understand. He cited psychologist testimony and assessments that the former nurse was a narcissist who liked to cast himself as a hero. “You lacked empathy and depersonalized those whose deaths you caused,” Judge Bührmann said.
Prosecutors had sought to charge Mr. Högel with 97 murders, but the defense argued that only 55 cases had been proved beyond a doubt. The defense said that Mr. Högel should be found guilty of attempted murder in 14 cases and acquitted of an additional 31.
The verdict can be appealed, but Mr. Högel’s defense team did not indicated whether they would do so.
The true number of murders may never be known. Reluctance on the part of the directors of the first hospital where he worked, in Oldenburg, Germany, to alert authorities to their suspicions, followed by the reluctance of previous state prosectors to take up the case once the second hospital did alert them, cost precious time and evidence.
“That was time we can’t get back,” Judge Bührmann said. “Years passed and evidence was lost.” Many witnesses couldn’t remember, he added, while others deliberately sought to hide information.
In his ruling, the judge condemned the director of the main Oldenburg hospital by name for failing to take action that could have stopped Mr. Högel and saved lives. Instead, the hospital moved him first to a different ward, then wrote him a glowing recommendation and let him go. Weeks later, he took his next job in a hospital in nearby Delmenhorst, about 20 miles away. There, he continued killing.
Judge Bührmann ordered eight of Mr. Högel’s former colleagues to be investigated on perjury because of suspicion they had lied to the court or had withheld evidence in the most recent trial. Two doctors and two head nurses from the Delmenhorst hospital have been charged with manslaughter, and the authorities are investigating other hospital employees, also from Oldenburg. Mr. Högel could be called to testify in those trials.
After closing arguments on Wednesday, Mr. Högel read a prepared apology to the packed courtroom. “I would like to sincerely apologize for what I have done to each and every one of you,” he said.
For family members, his attempt at an apology fell flat. “He’s a liar through and through,” said Christian Marbach, whose grandfather was found to be a victim of Mr. Högel in a previous trial and had followed the recent proceedings.
More important, he said, is that other criminal investigations against the doctors and head nurses from the clinics where Mr. Högel worked and was allowed to kill would now be allowed to proceed.
“The wall of silence has been broken,” Mr. Marbach said. “Now it is very important that those who were in positions of power be brought to justice.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/world/europe/germany-nurse-serial-killer.html
2019-06-06 14:15:00Z
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Hell freezes over as Jim Acosta, Joe Scarborough praise Trump's D-Day speech - Fox News
President Trump’s speech on Thursday honoring the brave Allied fighters who "stood in the fires of hell" on the 75th anniversary of D-Day drew unexpected acclaim from two of his biggest mainstream media critics: CNN’s Jim Acosta and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.
“This is perhaps the most on-message moment of Donald Trump’s presidency today. We were all wondering if he would veer from his remarks, go off of his script but he stayed on script, stayed on message and, I think, rose to the moment,” Acosta said on CNN immediately following the speech.
The CNN White House reporter is often combative with Trump and members of his administration but praised Trump’s remark that the men who stormed the beach are among the greatest Americans who have ever lived.
“That could not be more of a fact check true,” Acosta said. “It was really one of those moments that Donald Trump needed to rise to in order to, I think, walk away from the cemetery, walk away from this hallowed ground and have people back at home saying, ‘You know what, no matter what I think about the current president of the United States, he said the right thing at Normandy. He did the right thing at Normandy.’”
PRESIDENT TRUMP'S SPEECH AT 75TH D-DAY ANNIVERSARY IN NORMANDY IN FULL
Even Jim Acosta and Joe Scarborough complimented President Trump’s D-Day anniversary speech.
Acosta then said Trump “hit all of the right moments” when paying respect to the D-Day heroes.
Over on MSNBC, recurrent Trump critic Scarborough echoed Acosta’s thoughts.
“[Trump] delivered what, again, I believe is the strongest speech of his presidency,” Scarborough said, noting that it was a “beautiful moment” when Trump acknowledged that many of the troops feel the “heroes were the ones that never came back” but the survivors formed a remarkable generation.
Viewers on the pair of liberal networks were presumably shocked, as Acosta and Scarborough typically condemn Trump’s every step. Acosta even has a book coming out titled, “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America,” which is billed as “an explosive, first-hand account of the dangers [Acosta] faces reporting on the current White House while fighting on the front lines in President Trump’s war on truth” as “public enemy number one.”
Acosta, who has raised eyebrows inside CNN for blurring the line between reporter and pundit, was recently named the media member who “hates” Trump the most by “Unmasked — Big Media's War Against Trump” authors L. Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham of the Media Research Center.
“He would proudly wear the moniker of the face of the Resistance if it was bestowed on him by us, but we won’t do that. No man in the world of journalism has made a mockery of his profession quite like this man,” Bozell and Graham wrote.
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” duo Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski share the second spot on the list of media members who clearly loathe the president. The married co-hosts were famously tight with Trump before eventually turning on him. They now criticize the president on a regular basis, but Scarborough had nothing but positive remarks about Trump’s D-Day speech.
Fox News’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/hell-freezes-over-as-jim-acosta-joe-scarborough-praise-trumps-d-day-speech
2019-06-06 14:06:20Z
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Trump, Macron mark D-Day 75th anniversary at Normandy - ABC News
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-visits-normandy-75-year-anniversary-day/story?id=63523054
2019-06-06 14:05:00Z
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German Nurse Niels Högel Convicted of Murdering 85 Patients - TIME
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https://time.com/5602121/german-nurse-niels-hogel-serial-killer/
2019-06-06 11:59:03Z
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German nurse who killed at least 85 patients jailed for life - CNN
Niels Hoegel, a 42-year-old former nurse who is considered Germany's deadliest post-war serial killer, was sentenced to life in prison at the District Court of Oldenburg.
While summing up the trial, the judge said Hoegel's actions were "incomprehensible: That's the word that characterizes this."
The health worker had previously confessed to killing 100 patients -- aged between 34 and 96 years old -- at two hospitals in northern Germany between 2000 and 2005. However Hoegel was acquitted of 15 cases on Thursday because there was not enough evidence.
Hoegel was accused of giving his victims various non-prescribed drugs, in an attempt to show off his resuscitation skills to colleagues and fight off boredom.
In past hearings, Hoegel said he felt euphoric when he managed to bring a patient back to life, and devastated when he failed.
Police suspect the true death toll may be as high as 200, but can't be certain as many patients were cremated before autopsies could be performed, reported Agence France-Presse news (AFP) agency.
The former nurse is already serving a life sentence for six convictions, including homicide and attempted homicide in 2008 and 2015. Those convictions led authorities to investigate hundreds of deaths and exhume the bodies of former patients in the clinics where he worked.
Hoegel asked his victims' families for forgiveness on Wednesday for his "horrible acts."
"I would like to sincerely apologize for everything I did to you over the course of years," he said during the hearing, AFP reported.
'Collective amnesia'
One of the biggest questions in the case is how Hoegel was able to murder so many people apparently under the watch of hospital staff.
Former colleagues at the Delmenhorst clinic where he worked admitted to having had their suspicions about Hoegel, according to AFP. But all the staff from the other hospital in Oldenburg who testified said they were oblivious to the rising death toll.
During sentencing Judge Sebastian Buehrmann criticized what he called staff's "collective amnesia," adding that Hoegel's killing spree was "incomprehensible."
About 126 relatives of the victims are co-plaintiffs in the trial, which has been running since October 2018.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/06/europe/german-nurse-niels-hoegel-jailed-grm-intl/index.html
2019-06-06 11:55:00Z
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D-Day 75th anniversary marked by Trump and world leaders: Live updates - CNN
US President Donald Trump singled out another veteran, Private Pickett, describing his ordeal on the beaches at Normandy.
"And today, believe it or not, he has returned to these shores to be with his comrades. Private Pickett, you honor us all with you presence," Trump said.
Private Pickett then rose to a huge round of applause, before Trump walked over to hug him. "Tough guy," Trump said, after returning to the podium.
"Today, America embraces the French people, and thanks you for honoring our beloved dead," Trump went on. "To all of our friends and partners, our cherished alliance was forged in the heat of battle, tested in the trials of war, and proven in the blessings of peace. Our bond is unbreakable."
He turned back to US troops who took part in the Normandy landings. "They were fathers who would never meet their infant sons and daughters, because they had a job to do -- and with God as their witness, they were going to get it done."
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/d-day-trump-commemorations-gbr-intl/index.html
2019-06-06 10:40:00Z
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