World's worst serial killers

Agencies
June 6, 2019

Paris, Jun 6: Former German hospital nurse Niels Hoegel, who was handed a life sentence on Thursday for murdering 85 patients in his care, is believed to be the most prolific serial killer in the country's post-war history.

Police suspect that Hoegel's final death toll may be more than 200.

Here are some of the other most notorious serial killers of the past decades.

Siberian ex-policeman Mikhail Popkov was found guilty in December 2018, at the age of 54, of 56 murders. He was already in jail for 22 killings.

Between 1992 and 2007, he raped and killed women with an axe or hammer after offering them late-night rides, sometimes in his police car. He also killed a male policeman.

He is Russia's worst serial killer of recent times.

Samuel Little, a 78-year-old drifter, confessed in November 2018 to 90 murders between 1970 and 2005, and law enforcement authorities have corroborated more than 40 of them so far.

If all 90 confessions are confirmed, Little would be the most prolific known US serial killer.

The former boxer, arrested in 2012, targeted mainly drug addicts and prostitutes, many of whom were never identified. The FBI in February 2019 released 16 portraits drawn by him in an attempt to identify some of his victims.

Alexander Pichushkin was sentenced to life in prison in Moscow in 2007 for 48 murders, most between 2002 and 2006.

Aged 33 at his trial, Pichushkin said he wanted to kill one person for each of the 64 squares on a chessboard, and crossed out a square for every kill, hence his nickname.

His victims were mainly elderly alcoholic men he met in a park.

Yang Xinhai was executed in China in 2004, aged 35, after murdering 67 people in a three-year rampage that ended in 2003.

Characterised as an introverted drifter, he entered rural homes and sometimes slaughtered entire families with an axe, hammer or spade.

Police listed robbery and rape as motives but Yang was also described as a deranged killer who enjoyed what he was doing.

US truck painter Gary Ridgway confessed in 2003 to strangling 48 mainly prostitutes and runaways from 1982 to 1984, but he is suspected of more.

Nicknamed the "Green River Killer" after the Seattle waterway where his first victims were found, he was 54 years old when he was convicted and jailed.

Harold Shipman, a family doctor near Manchester, was sentenced to life in 2000 after being convicted of killing 15 of his elderly patients with fatal doses of morphine. He hanged himself in prison in 2004, aged 57.

An inquiry found that Shipman, nicknamed "Doctor Death", had killed around 250 patients between 1971 and 1998, making him the country's worst serial killer.

Luis Alfredo Garavito was jailed for 835 years in 2000, aged 42, for murdering 189 boys over a five-year span until 1996.

Known as "The Monster of Genova" after his birthplace in Colombia, Garavito gained access to his victims -- aged between eight and 16 -- by posing as a charity worker, salesman, monk or disabled person.

In 1992 Andrei Chikatilo, 56, was sentenced to death for 52 sexually motivated killings between 1978 and 1990.

The former teacher, known as the "Butcher of Rostov" after the area in southern Russia where he was particularly active, was executed in 1994.

In 1980 Colombian Pedro Lopez Monsalve was arrested at a market in Ecuador after attempting to abduct a young girl. He later confessed to having strangled at least 310 children from poor backgrounds in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

The "Monster of the Andes" was sentenced to 16 years in prison in Ecuador and then extradited in 1994 to Colombia where he was interned in a psychiatric hospital.

Freed several years later, he disappeared and would today be in his 70s.

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News Network
February 12,2020

New Delhi, Feb 12: Unidentified people opened fire at the convoy of the newly elected Aam Aadmi Party legislator Naresh Yadav in Southwest Delhi when he and his supporters were returning home after visiting a temple after his victory, killing a party volunteer, police and a senior AAP leader said.

The firing incident happened in Kishangarh village late Tuesday night.

Police said they have detained a person for questioning and the incident appears to be a case of personal enmity. Sources said seven rounds were fired at the MLA's convoy.

Another person injured in the incident has been admitted to a hospital.

AAP leader Sanjay Singh identified the dead party volunteer as Ashok Mann.

“Convoy of MLA Naresh Yadav attacked in Mehrauli, Ashok Mann killed. Naresh Yadav was returning home after visiting a temple,” Singh said in a tweet in Hindi.

“At least one volunteer has passed away due to bullet wounds. Another is injured,” AAP tweeted.

Ankit Lal, AAP's social media in-charge, added that miscreants in another car opened fire on the MLA's convoy near Fortis Hospital.

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News Network
March 20,2020

New Delhi, Mar 20: The coronavirus pandemic will leave behind a global recession with small businesses, self-employed and daily wagers taking the worst hit, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra said on thursday.

"The virus will eventually be conquered, but it will have left behind a global recession. The costs of that are incalculably high at this time. The most fearsome toll will be on small businesses, the self-employed & those whose lives depend on meagre daily wages," Mahindra said in a tweet.

Apart from the toll on lives, the legacy of Covid-19 may well be deaths due to stress, loss of livelihoods, a rise in homelessness and in extreme situations, civil unrest, he added.

"The only global experience that has lessons for us in the current situation is the last world war. In the aftermath of WW2, the US came up with the Marshall plan to revive Europe, effectively a giant fiscal pump-priming," Mahindra said.

In the US, the government dramatically dismantled regulations and opened up the economy to trade and these actions led to a boom-cycle that stretched to 1975, he added.

"This time, there will be no victors, only the vanquished. So every country will have to create its own post ‘virus war” marshall plan & take care of those in society who are hit the hardest. Perhaps we too can build the foundations of a sustained global growth cycle," Mahindra said.

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News Network
January 15,2020

Jan 15: Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is facing a bitter welcome during his India visit this week as the country’s antitrust regulator initiated a formal investigation just hours before his arrival and trader bodies comprising millions of infuriated small store owners announced demonstrations.

Bezos is in New Delhi for the Smbhav summit, an Amazon India event for small and medium businesses. The billionaire is scheduled to conduct a fireside chat with Amazon India chief Amit Agarwal, anchoring an event that also features Infosys Ltd. co-founder Narayana Murthy and retail billionaire Kishore Biyani, who recently sold a stake in his retail group to Amazon. Ahead of the event, Bezos paid his respects at Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial, wearing a white tunic and a rust-colored Indian vest.

The small businesses that Amazon’s CEO is hoping to endear himself to, however, are organizing in opposition. The Confederation of All India Traders announced that members of its affiliate bodies across the country would stage sit-ins and public rallies in 300 cities to raise a war cry against the world’s largest online retailer. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, the confederation’s Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal alleged that Amazon, much like Walmart Inc.-owned Flipkart, was an “economic terrorist” who engaged in predatory pricing that deprived the government of tax revenue and “compelled the closure of thousands of small traders.”

India’s e-commerce market is projected to grow to $150 billion by 2022, according to a 2018 report by software industry group Nasscom and consulting firm PwC India. Competition for this rapidly expanding sector is intensifying as Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, prepares to go live with JioMart, an online shopping platform challenging Amazon and Walmart directly. The latter’s Flipkart Online Services Pvt is also delving deeper into the countryside in its pursuit for more customers. Amazon, for its part, opened a huge office complex in the southern city of Hyderabad in September, underscoring its commitment to the country.

The Competition Commission of India said it would probe the deep discounts, preferential listings and exclusionary tactics that Amazon and Flipkart are alleged to have used as anti-competitive levers. India’s trade bodies have long argued that both retail giants were flouting rules by promoting sales and discounts through their favoured sellers, many of whom they have preexisting commercial arrangements. The regulator has ordered for the investigation to be completed within two months.

Bezos last visited India in 2014 under starkly different circumstances. During that trip, the Amazon founder wore local festive garb, rode atop a festooned truck for a photo opp and presented Amazon’s Indian unit with a giant check for $2 billion. Since then, Amazon has pledged a further $3.5 billion to expand in the country.

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