Around the world: man who raped and killed British teacher jailed for life

A JAPANESE man has been sentenced to life for the rape and murder of British teacher Lindsay Hawker.

Miss Hawker, 22, was found dead at Tatsuya Ichihashi's apartment in Ichikawa City, east of Tokyo, in March 2007. Ichihashi, 32, admitted raping and strangling the English language teacher but said he did not intend to kill her.

The judges and jurors jointly hearing his murder trial at Chiba District Court sentenced him to life today.

Miss Hawker's parents, Bill and Julia, and sisters, Lisa and Louise, flew into Tokyo's Narita airport yesterday ahead of the hearing.

Clutching a small photograph of his daughter, Mr Hawker told Japanese reporters: "We expect to get the judgment we are hoping for."

At an earlier hearing he had asked the court to give Ichihashi the "heaviest punishment" possible. Under Japanese law the killer could have received the death penalty, but prosecutors called for him to get life instead.

Leeds University graduate Miss Hawker, from Brandon, travelled to Japan in October 2006 to work as an English teacher. She was last seen alive after giving her killer an English lesson in a coffee shop.

Sarkozy and Merkel agree deal

French president Nicolas Sarkozy's office said today he and German chancellor Angela Merkel had overcome differences and agreed on a common position before the emergency European debt crisis summit.

The pair held talks for seven hours in Berlin ahead of today's Brussels summit.

Australia will consider beefing up its privacy laws in the wake of the Rupert Murdoch phone-hacking scandal, the government said today.

Australia looks at privacy laws

The changes would give Australians the right to sue over serious breaches of privacy, something that is not guaranteed under current laws.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Mr Murdoch's Australian media company, News Limited, had some "hard questions" to answer about its operations.

Beatles photos fetch 223,600

Never-before seen photographs of the Beatles' first US concert in Washington DC were sold in New York for more than $360,000 (223,600).

Fifty photos taken a few feet away from the band at their February 11 1964 show at the Washintgon Coliseum were sold individually at Christie's auction house.

Pearl Harbour skull found

An excavation crew has unearthed a skull at the bottom of Pearl Harbour that archaeologists suspect is from a Japanese pilot who died in the 1941 attack.Archaeologist Jeff Fong said early analysis of the find has made him "75 per cent sure" that the skull belongs to a Japanese pilot.

Somalia: Tens of thousands of Somalis are feared dead in the world's worst famine in a generation, the United Nations said.

UN aid official in Somalia Mark Bowden said: "Somalia is facing its worst food security crisis in the last 20 years."

United States: A six-year-old girl bitten by a shark in North Carolina is recovering after her terrifying ordeal, her parents said. The girl's mother was just ten feet away when the attack happened.