Latest news with #Lovells
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Daily Mail
Teenager who murdered British mother in her Australian home has sentence REDUCED - as family say they are 'broken' by the decision
The family of a British woman murdered during an invasion on her Australian home have been left 'broken' by the teen killer's sentence being reduced by almost 18 months on appeal. The boy, who cannot be named as he was aged 17 at the time of the offences, fatally stabbed Emma Lovell in the heart after he broke into her family house in North Lakes, north of Brisbane, at about 11.30pm on Boxing Day in 2022. Following a successful appeal on Friday, the teen will now serve a minimum of about eight years and four months in detention instead of about nine years and nine months before he is released under supervision. Victims of youth crime ambassador Lyndy Atkinson, who had worked with the Lovells since before the original sentencing, said the family now felt additional trauma. 'They are a broken family ... (the teen defendant) will be able to get out and live his best life,' she said. 'Lee Lovell has lost a wife, his two girls have lost a mother. To me, it is still on the side of the offender and victims are continually being left behind.' Queensland Attorney-General Deb Frecklington said the appeal was an unacceptable outcome and claimed it was caused by the previous government's 'weak laws'. 'I am now looking at my options to make an appeal to the High Court,' she said. Queensland opposition leader Steven Miles said he did not want to 'score cheap political points' but was shocked by the decision and thinking of the family. Mrs Lovell's husband Lee, who was wounded during the home invasion, was unable to attend court on Friday when the appeal decision was handed down. The home invasion led to 'adult crime, adult time' changes in Queensland law that allow for youth offenders to face a mandatory life sentence for murder with a minimum 20 years before parole. 'The murder of Emma Lovell rocked the state and Queenslanders made it very clear enough is enough and change needed to occur,' Ms Frecklington said. 'The community and Emma's family will be devastated by this outcome and our thoughts are with them on another very difficult day they should never have had to endure.' Justice Tom Sullivan in May 2024 sentenced the teen, then aged 19, to a maximum of 14 years with a requirement to serve 70 per cent of that time in detention, after he found the crime to be 'particularly heinous'. The Court of Appeal on Friday allowed the teen's appeal against the length of his sentence, with two of the three judges agreeing it was 'manifestly excessive'. In his dissenting opinion, Justice John Bond stated he was 'respectfully' not able to find the sentence unjust or plainly unreasonable. Justice David Boddice found the 14-year sentence should stand but reduced the detention period to 60 per cent. He cited the teen's guilty plea, 'genuine remorse and prospects of rehabilitation' as special circumstances justifying his release from detention after serving less than the statutory 70 per cent. The teen had appealed Justice Sullivan's 'particularly heinous' finding in a bid to get his overall sentence reduced to 10 years. However, Justice Boddice found Justice Sullivan's decision to impose the maximum overall sentence available at the time was correct as the offences were 'properly described as provoking a sense of outrage'. The teen now has five years left to serve in detention after 500 days of pre-sentence custody in May 2024 were recognised as time served. The teen's male co-offender, also a juvenile, was acquitted of murder at a judge-only trial in October. He was found guilty of burglary and assaulting Mr Lovell, and in December he was sentenced to 18 months' detention - time he has served.
Chicago Tribune
12-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Remembering astronaut Jim Lovell, one of a rare kind
It is a long way from Lake Forest to the moon — 240,000 miles, give or take — and Jim Lovell made that trip twice, never setting foot on the moon but seeing things that few people have ever seen and living a life of estimable grace. Lovell, who was 97 years old, died Thursday in that leafy northern suburb where he had lived for decades. It was where, for a time, he operated with his son Jay a terrific restaurant named Lovells and filled it with some of the memorabilia he had accumulated during his long, high-flying and honor-filled career. There were awards aplenty, models of aircraft and spacecraft, a moon rock and a framed 'Apollo 13' movie poster signed by actor Tom Hanks, who portrayed Lovell in a 1995 film based on the mission. Most obituaries contained the many facts of his long life: childhood dreams of being a rocket scientist; losing his father at 5 and growing up in poverty in a one-room Milwaukee apartment with his mom; college at the University of Wisconsin and the U.S. Naval Academy; marrying his high school sweetheart, Marilyn, the day he graduated in 1952, and remaining together for 71 years, until her death in 2023; four children, many grandchildren; picked for the astronaut program and joining two Gemini missions; two Apollo missions that made him one of the first three astronauts to fly to and orbit the moon; ticker tape parades, the cover of Time magazine, becoming president of the National Eagle Scout Association, success in business… Emphasis was understandably given to Hanks, who posted his thoughts on the internet, saying in part, 'There are people who dare, who dream, and who lead others to places we would not go on our own. Jim Lovell, who for a long while had gone farther into space and for longer than any other person of our planet, was that kind of guy. His many voyages around Earth and on to so-very-close to the moon were not made for riches or celebrity, but because such challenges as those are what fuels the course of being alive.' The word 'hero' justifiably peppered the stories and television segments over the weekend. But this was a man who wore that tag lightly. One night, shortly after his restaurant opened in 1999, I asked him what experience he had in the business and he told me proudly that when he was in college, money was so tight that he worked at an off-campus restaurant washing dishes and busing tables. 'That'll teach you a great deal,' he said. Self-effacing, gentlemanly and energetically friendly, Lovell was an astronaut, a member of a very exclusive club. There have been 600-some people who have flown into space. By comparison, there have been more than 900 Nobel Prize winners and more than 3,500 Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. To know him was to like and admire him. Local best-selling author Robert Kurson was compelled to post on the internet, shortly after hearing of Lovell's death: 'Jim's most outstanding quality was his warmth and kindness, how welcoming he was to those who asked to shake his hand, to take his picture, to describe the first Earthrise ever witnessed by humans.' He would know, because he wrote a book, 2018's 'Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon' (Random House), that vividly captured that 1968 flight and its crew. That was, Kurson feels, 'the greatest space story of them all,' the story of how Lovell and fellow astronauts Frank Borman and Bill Anders became the first humans ever to leave Earth for another destination and how this mission helped save the country's space program. The three of them are gone now, Borman dying in 2023, Anders last year and Lovell on Thursday. But they come to vivid life in the book. Kurson's internet post was touching, intimate: 'Jim smiled a lot when we talked, but never more than when he spoke about his family… We were on a radio show together and the host asked what impressed me the most about Lovell. I responded by saying that, more than anything, Jim was a regular guy, one of the nicest guys I'd known, a good guy. The host recoiled and scolded me, asking how I could describe such a legend, a man with so many singular and astonishing accomplishments, as a regular guy. But, to me, after watching Jim talk to diners at his son's restaurant even as his own meal got cold, after seeing him sketch trajectories and launch angles in my notebook so I could understand difficult concepts, after hearing him describe the moon to children, I felt like his standing as good guy was as important as going to the moon, and when Jim gave me a little smile after I took that guff from the host, it felt like he might have thought so, too.' I met Lovell a number of times. I liked him plenty. After his restaurant closed in Lake Forest and relocated to Highwood as cozy/casual Jay Lovell's, I would drop in whenever I was up north, hoping to run into the astronaut again. There was no one quite like him. On Sunday, Kurson told me another thing. He said, 'In all the time I knew Jim, he expressed just a single regret — that he'd been forced to give up flying at age 85.'
Globe and Mail
29-07-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay $42-million after U.S. jury finds talc caused man's cancer
Johnson & Johnson JNJ-N must pay more than US$42-million to a Massachusetts man who alleges that he developed mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer, after using the company's talc products for decades, a jury found on Tuesday. Paul Lovell and his wife Kathryn sued the company in 2021, claiming Johnson & Johnson's products contained asbestos and Paul was sickened after he inhaled the fibres. They claimed J&J knew the product contained asbestos and would be inhaled when it was used, but did nothing to warn consumers about the risks. The jury awarded the Lovells $42,608,300 for pain and suffering, medical expenses and other damages. Reuters watched the proceeding through Courtroom View Network. In a statement, attorneys for the Lovells said they hope J&J will acknowledge its liability and not make the family go through years of appeals to confirm that the company's baby powder caused Paul Lovell's disease. Erik Haas, J&J's global vice-president of litigation, said the verdict was based on 'junk science' and the company plans to immediately appeal. The company says that its products are safe, do not contain asbestos and do not cause cancer. J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the U.S. in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product. In the past year, the company has been hit with several substantial verdicts in mesothelioma cases. In April of last year, an Illinois jury awarded a woman with mesothelioma US$45-million. Several months later, an Oregon jury awarded another woman US$260-million. In October, the company was hit with a US$15-million verdict in another mesothelioma case, and earlier this year, a jury awarded a Massachusetts woman US$8-million. However, the company has had success on appeal. In September, an Oregon state judge granted J&J's motion to throw out the US$260-million verdict in a mesothelioma case and hold a new trial. Cases alleging Johnson & Johnson's talc products caused mesothelioma are part of sprawling litigation in federal and state court claiming the products cause that and other cancers, including ovarian cancer. Johnson & Johnson is facing lawsuits from more than 63,000 plaintiffs who say they were diagnosed with cancer after using baby powder and other talc products, according to court filings. That number is as high as 100,000 when counting claimants who haven't sued, Haas has said. The number of lawsuits alleging talc caused mesothelioma is a small subset of these cases. The vast majority allege ovarian cancer. Johnson & Johnson has sought to resolve claims through bankruptcy, a proposal that faced stiff opposition from some plaintiffs' attorneys and has been rejected three times by federal courts. In March, a U.S. bankruptcy judge rejected the latest proposal, which would have seen the company paying US$10-billion to end thousands of lawsuits over claims its talc products caused gynecologic cancers. Lawsuits alleging talc caused mesothelioma were not part of the last bankruptcy proposal. The company has previously settled some of those claims but has not struck a nationwide settlement.
