A former police officer who fatally Tasered a 95-year-old Australian woman after she refused his orders to drop a knife has been spared jail, with the victim’s family decrying the sentence as a “slap on the wrist.”

Kristian White was found guilty of manslaughter after shocking Clare Nowland with the Taser while on police duty in the early hours of May 17, 2023, in a case that sparked public outcry.

Last November, a jury rejected his claim that Nowland posed a threat and found the former senior constable guilty of breaching his duty of care by deploying his weapon against the elderly woman, who later died of her injuries.

Sentencing White on Friday, New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison said the former officer’s actions were “a terrible mistake,” but that his crime fell at the lower end of objective seriousness.

Police were called to Nowland’s nursing home in Cooma – about 70 miles south of the capital Canberra – after the great-grandmother, who was showing signs of dementia, refused repeated requests by staff to surrender knives she was holding and return to her room.

After responding to the call-out, White spent about three minutes trying to convince Nowland to put down a steak knife, before saying, “Nah, bugger it,” and deploying his Taser.

Nowland, who had a walking aid, fell and hit her head, fracturing her skull. She died in hospital a week later, surrounded by family.

White was sentenced to a community corrections order for a period of two years, and 425 hours of community service. The order allows convicted criminals to serve their sentence in the community under some restrictions, such as curfews and alcohol bans.

Harrison said in his sentencing that a jail term was not necessary given White had already lost his job and become an “unwelcome member” of the Cooma community as a result of his actions.

Furthermore, he said, White does not represent a risk to the community or of reoffending. He said imposing community service work would be an “appropriate and adequate method” of meeting the sentencing conditions of punishment.

White had served as a police officer for 12 years before being removed from his position following his conviction.

The ‘axis’ of the family

Nowland’s eldest son, Michael, told reporters outside the court in Sydney that the verdict was “really disappointing for the family” and was “a slap on the wrist for someone that’s killed our mother.”

“It’s very, very hard to process that,” he told reporters.

Over the course of the trial, some of Nowland’s children and grandchildren read victim statements to the court, describing her as the “axis” of the family.

She had raised eight children alone but also had made time for others in her community, they said. Nowland also had dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Michael Nowland told the court in February of his “shock, disbelief and anger” at hearing what had happened to her.

“I could not process how a normal human being, let alone a police officer, could possibly perform such an inappropriate and inhumane act on a frail, 95-year-old lady who weighed 47 kilos (103 pounds),” Michael Nowland said.

Gemma Murphy, Clare Nowland’s daughter, said she’d be forever haunted by the former officer’s bodycam video, that showed the moment he deployed the Taser on her mother.

“The irreverent footage of my mother’s last moments has left an indelible mark on my psyche. It is a grotesque image that I cannot erase, made even more unbearable by the echoes of Kristian White’s words – ‘Nah, bugger it’ and ‘got her.’”

“The utter disregard (White) displayed for my mum in her time of need and care will forever echo in my ears,” she said.

Several of Nowland’s relatives told of their distress at the media coverage, with one of her daughters, Jennifer Jordan, describing how her mother, a “humble, independent person,” would have been “mortified” by the large attendance at her funeral.

White ‘misread’ the situation, judge rules

White was one of two police officers called to the Yallambee Lodge nursing home by staff who asked for help with a resident who was holding two knives.

While the deployment of a Taser was unlawful and dangerous, Justice Harrison ruled that White made “an error of judgment” and that his actions were motivated by an “honest but mistaken and unreasonable belief about the existence and nature of the threat that was posed.”

“The simple but tragic fact would seem to me to be that Mr. White completely, and on one available view inexplicably, misread and misunderstood the dynamics of the situation,” Harrison said.

In a letter to Nowland’s family provided to the court, White apologized and expressed regret.

“I deeply regret my actions and the severe consequences they have caused, to not only Mrs. Nowland, but also to your family and the greater community,” White wrote. “I understand that my actions were adjudged to be wrong and have caused great harm not only to Mrs. Nowland, but also the emotional pain it caused to others, and for that, I am truly sorry.”

White’s defense lawyer Warwick Anderson told reporters outside court Friday that the former officer’s family were “very relieved” at the outcome, according to public broadcaster ABC.

“They’re now going to take their time and move on with their lives,” Anderson said.

A powerful 7.7 earthquake hit central Myanmar on Friday, close to the country’s second city of Mandalay, home to around 1 million people and historic temple complexes, with tremors shaking buildings as far away as the Thai capital of Bangkok.

Video posted online from both countries showed panicked residents running from swaying residential towers as dust fills the air, and traffic comes to a sudden stop on busy city streets.

Myanmar is already reeling from more than four years of civil war sparked by a bloody and economically destructive military coup, with has seen military forces battle rebel groups across the country. It remains one of Asia’s poorest nations and is ill-equipped to deal with major natural disasters.

“We saw other people running out of the buildings too. It was very sudden and very strong.”

Another resident said phone networks in the city home to around 8 million people were briefly down following the quake but were now running again.

The epicenter was in nearby Sagaing region, which has been ravaged by the civil war, with the junta, pro-military militia and rebel groups battling for control and all running checkpoints, making travel by road or river extremely difficult.

A resident in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai, who also did not want to be named, said “I felt it for about ten seconds in my room then I figured out I couldn’t stay inside. So I rushed out on to the street.

Tremors were also felt in China’s southwestern Yunnan province, according to Xinhua.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

At 64 and 60 years old, Antoinette and Brucie-Baby are thin and bony. Their skin hangs looser than it did in their youth, but their eyes still gleam with energy.

But these aren’t just any sexagenarians we’re talking about; these are geckos, believed to be the world’s oldest on record, discovered on a small island in New Zealand.

Marieke Lettink, an expert on reptiles and amphibians, was part of the team that found the pair of Waitaha geckos on Motunau Island, off the coast the country’s South Island. It was an “exciting” moment, she said, adding that it was humbling to realize “that these animals are older than us and still out there doing their thing.”

They were found during a five-yearly survey on the island. “That also means it’s worth going back in five years’ time because we don’t actually know how long they can live for. Every time we go, every trip we’ve done … the oldest gecko we catch is always older than us,” Lettink said.

During each survey, the team sets up a grid of traps on the small island, typically catching a few hundred geckos over a few days. The geckos come out at night – so the team also goes trekking in the dark with flashlights to look for geckos perched on leaves and bushes.

The surveys have been going on since the 1960s, when the late conservationist Tony Whitaker began marking geckos on the island with a practice called toe clipping – which involves clipping a certain number of toes on the geckos, each with a unique pattern. The practice is no longer used by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation.

It was Whitaker’s markings on Antoinette and Brucie-Baby – named after Whitaker and fellow conservationist Bruce Thomas – that helped Lettink identify the lizards.

“It made me think of Tony, who started the work. It was quite a poignant moment,” she said.

Both geckos were fully grown when they were marked – so they could be even older than the 60 and 64 years recorded.

That’s far older than the average lifespan of geckos worldwide, at only about a decade. And this discovery places Waitaha geckos in the top ranks of other long-living lizards – most of which are far larger and better known.

“It’s now actually bypassed all the older lizards, with things like the iguanas and the big Komodo dragons – you know, really big lizards that are quite famous,” Lettink said. “And this is a humble, drab brown gecko that’s not famous at all.”

There are a few reasons it may have lived so long – the main one being that Motunau Island is predator-free, without any of the introduced species that have decimated native animals across mainland New Zealand.

The success of reptile survival in predator-free spaces is one reason conservationists across the country are trying to establish more safe sanctuaries – for instance, building a fenced area to keep predators out and eliminating invasive predators within.

But skewing the ecosystem that way can allow mice populations to thrive. They can prey on geckos, posing another problem, Lettink said – so some groups have set up specific sanctuaries just for lizards and geckos.

There are other factors behind their longevity too – like the cool climate and the island lifestyle, said the Department of Conservation’s Biodiversity Ranger Kaitlyn Leeds, who was on the survey team with Lettink, in a news release.

The team had actually seen Antoinette once before, about a decade ago, and they assumed that would be the last time. “And here, 10 years later, they look no different – they’re still going,” Lettink said.

It makes her hopeful that by the next survey, in five years, they might be able to find a few more of the original geckos tagged in the 1960s. Or better yet – there might be many older geckos out there that just haven’t been found yet. “That would be really exciting,” she said.

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday visited the high-security El Salvador prison where Venezuelans who the Trump administration alleges are gang members have been held since their removal from the United States. The tour included two crowded cell blocks, the armory and an isolation unit.

Noem’s trip to the prison — where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside — comes as the Trump administration seeks to show it is deporting people it describes as the “worst of the worst.”

The Trump administration is arguing in federal court that it was justified in sending the Venezuelans to El Salvador, while human rights activists say officials have sent them to a prison rife with human rights abuses.

At the prison, Noem toured an area holding some of the Venezuelans accused of being gang members. In the sweltering building, the men in white T-shirts and shorts stared silently from their cell without making a sound.

When Noem exited the building, the men could be heard shouting an indiscernible chant.

In a cell block holding Salvadoran prisoners, about a dozen were lined up by guards near the front of their cell and told to remove their T-shirts and face masks. The men were heavily tattooed, some bearing the letters MS, for the Mara Salvatrucha gang, on their chests.

After listening to Salvadoran officials, Noem turned her back to the cell and recorded a video message.

If an immigrant commits a crime, “this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem said. “First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”

In a post on X Wednesday, Homeland Security indicated it would continue working with El Salvador, saying that Noem was slated to discuss how the US can “increase the number of deportation flights and removals of violent criminals from the US” during her visit with President Nayib Bukele.

Since taking office, Noem has frequently been front and center in efforts to highlight the immigration crackdown. She took part in immigration enforcement operations, rode horses with Border Patrol agents and was the face of a television campaign warning people in the country illegally to self-deport.

Noem’s Wednesday visit is part of a three-day trip. She’ll also travel to Colombia and Mexico.

The Venezuelans were removed from the US this month after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and said the US was being invaded by the Tren de Aragua gang. The Alien Enemies Act gives the president wartime powers and allows noncitizens to be deported without the opportunity to go before an immigration or federal court judge.

In a setback for the administration, an appeals court Wednesday kept in place an order barring the administration from deporting more Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.

A central outstanding question about the deportees’ status is when and how they could ever be released from the prison, called the Terrorism Confinement Center, as they are not serving sentences. They no longer appear in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s online detainee locator and have not appeared before a judge in El Salvador.

The Trump administration refers to them as the “worst of the worst” but hasn’t identified who was deported or provided evidence that they’re gang members.

Relatives of some of the deportees have categorically denied any gang affiliation. The Venezuelan government and a group called the Families of Immigrants Committee in Venezuela hired a lawyer to help free those held in El Salvador. A lawyer for the firm, which currently represents about 30 Venezuelans, said they aren’t gang members and have no criminal records.

The US government has acknowledged that many do not have such records.

Flights were in the air March 15 when a federal judge issued a verbal order temporarily barring the deportations and ordered planes to return to the US.

The Trump administration has argued that the judge’s verbal directions did not count, that only his written order needed to be followed and that it couldn’t apply to flights that had already left the US.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that about 261 people were deported on the flights, including 137 under the Alien Enemies Act.

Bukele opened the prison in 2023 as he made the Central American country’s stark, harsh prisons a trademark of his fight against crime. The facility has eight sprawling pavilions and can hold up to 40,000 inmates. Each cell can fit 65 to 70 prisoners.

Prisoners can’t have visitors. There are no workshops or educational programs.

El Salvador hasn’t had diplomatic relations with Venezuela since 2019, so the Venezuelans imprisoned there do not have consular support from their government.

Video released by El Salvador’s government after the deportees’ arrival showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down.

They were later shown at the prison kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform – knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs – and placed in cells.

For three years, El Salvador has been operating under a state of emergency that suspends fundamental rights as Bukele wages an all-out assault on the country’s powerful street gangs. During that time, some 84,000 people have been arrested, accused of gang ties and jailed, often without due process.

Bukele offered to hold US deportees in the prison when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited in February.

At the prison Wednesday, El Salvador Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro showed Noem a cell holding Salvadorans he said had been there since the prison opened. “No one expects that these people can go back to society and behave,” he said.

Sudan’s army said Wednesday it had recaptured Khartoum’s international airport, and the military chief flew back to the capital for the first time in nearly two years of war, bringing the military closer to regaining full control of the city from the rival Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group.

Footage put out by the military showed army chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan landing at Khartoum International Airport, kissing the ground and raising his fist in the air to troops as he emerged from the helicopter onto the tarmac.

“Khartoum is now free. It’s over. Khartoum is free,” Burhan is heard telling cheering troops, according to video footage aired by Al Jazeera television. He later went to the Presidential Palace, the pre-war seat of the government which troops wrested from RSF control on Friday.

The RSF is still believed to hold scattered positions in Khartoum, and the government had not yet declared full victory in the city. But Burhan’s return capped a series of gains by his forces in the capital and marked a major symbolic landmark in the war. Burhan and his military-led government had to flee Khartoum, moving to the Red Sea coastal city of Port Sudan, soon after the war erupted in April 2023.

The war broke out when the military and the RSF turned against each other in a struggle for power. Their battles around Khartoum left the RSF in control of the airport, Presidential Palace and other neighborhoods, as the fighting spread around the country.

Seizing the capital doesn’t end the conflict, as the RSF still controls parts of the western Darfur region and other areas.

Earlier in the day, the military announced it had recaptured the RSF’s last major stronghold in Khartoum, the Teiba al-Hasnab camp. There was no immediate RSF comment.

“This is a pivotal and decisive moment in the history of Sudan,” Information Minister Khalid Aleiser, spokesman of the military-controlled government, declared on social media. “Khartoum is free, as it should be.”

Military control of the airport, along with calm in Khartoum, could allow aid groups to fly more supplies into the country where the fighting has driven some 14 million people from their homes and pushed some areas into famine.

At least 28,000 people have been killed, though the number is likely far higher.