Bernie Madoff's son commits suicide
NEW YORK, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- Mark Madoff, son of swindler Bernard Madoff, hanged himself in his New York apartment Saturday, the second anniversary of his father's arrest, police said.
Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne told The New York Times Madoff's father-in-law found the body hanging by its neck with a dog leash from a pipe in the living room ceiling.
"Mark Madoff took his own life today," his lawyer Martin Flumenbaum said. "This is a terrible and unnecessary tragedy."
A city official told the Times the first call, for a "possible suicide," came via 911 at 7:27 a.m. The call came from Madoff's home at 158 Mercer St. in Soho, in Lower Manhattan.
Browne said Madoff's "2-year-old son was asleep in an adjoining bedroom. Apparently, the son-in-law had indicated that someone should check on the child; had made some notification to the wife that he should check on the child."
Madoff was chatting via computer with his wife Stephanie, who was out of town, before taking his own life, sources told the New York Daily News. She became worried and called her father to check on him.
Mark Madoff and his brother, Andrew, were never charged criminally in their father's fraud but were being sued for millions by trustees for the victims.
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Climate change to get $100B U.N. boost
CANCUN, Mexico, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- U.N. talks in Mexico on curbing global warming resulted in a $100 billion projected tab but no definitive implementation, the BBC said Saturday.
The international talks that concluded Friday in Cancun resulted in an agreement to raise and pay out $100 billion through 2020 to assist poor nations affected by global warming and give them assistance in developing energy with less carbon output, the report said.
The U.N. talks that lasted two weeks are the latest attempt to rein in the global temperature increase to below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, The Daily Telegraph said.
Based on agreements reached in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, the U.N. effort has met with dissention from various countries on the protocol's industrial ramifications.
Meanwhile, Bolivia was the most vocal opponent of the draft passed Friday, with chief negotiator Pablo Solon saying the carbon reduction targets fell short, the reports said.
"This is tantamount to making us responsible for a situation my president has described as genocide and ecocide," Solon said.
Knox appeals murder conviction in Italy
ROME, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- The American student convicted of killing her British roommate in Italy three years ago says her conviction is a "terrible mistake."
Amanda Knox, 23, told an Italian appeals court she didn't kill Meredith Kercher three years ago and called her conviction a "terrible mistake," The Daily Telegraph reported.
"That girl is not me," Knox said of the prosecution's portrayal of her.
Knox said she is not the "dangerous, diabolical, jealous and uncaring" person she had been described as at her original trial.
"What you are going through, and what Meredith went through is unacceptable and incomprehensible," Knox said to the victim's family. "I don't know how you must feel, your suffering over a lost life."
Kercher was found partially naked and with her throat cut, in the bedroom of a house she shared with Knox. Prosecutors said Knox and her boyfriend killed Kercher, and attempted to make the crime scene look like someone had broken into the home.
Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison in the death; her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 25, was sentenced to 25 years.
Bloody bombing mayhem in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- A rash of bombings by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan killed more than 20 people, government and NATO officials said Saturday.
Abdul Rahman Mangal, deputy provincial governor of Paktia province, told CNN seven road maintenance workers were accidentally killed by Afghan and NATO forces targeting a Taliban suspect Saturday.
In the northern province of Kunduz, a Taliban suicide bomber injured five Afghan soldiers and nine civilians at an army checkpoint, the BBC reported.
Meanwhile in the southern province of Kandahar, a bomb exploded near a police station, injuring at least 100 people Saturday, CNN said.
The carnage followed a road mine explosion Friday in a village in Helmand province that killed 15 people riding in a truck, the BBC said. A provincial spokesman said four other people were wounded in the attack the government attributed to Taliban rebels.
Cables might endanger Britain's Catholics
LONDON, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- The diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks contain information so inflammatory they could lead to violence against Catholics in Britain, officials said.
The cables were sent from the Vatican embassy in Washington and describe a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, The Guardian reported Saturday.
The cables said the British ambassador to the Vatican warned that the pope's invitation to Anglican opponents of female priests to convert to Catholicism en mass was inflammatory, and could lead to discrimination and violence against Catholics in Britain.
The cables said the surprise move by the Vatican placed Williams in an "impossible situation," and "Anglican-Vatican relations were facing their worst crisis in 150 years as a result of the pope's decision."
Among other things, the cables said U.S. diplomats thought the pope was instrumental in securing the release of 15 British sailors captured and held by Iran in 2007, and that the Vatican refused to let its officials testify before an Irish commission investigating the abuse of children by priests.
A cable also said the pope is responsible for the Vatican's resistance to Turkey joining the European Union, and that it wanted a reference to Europe's "Christian roots" included in the EU constitution.
