Sarah Beam, 41, who has worked as a teacher at Cypress Falls High School since 2011, is reportedly charged with endangering a child. Ms Beam said her 13-year-old son had tested positive for Covid-19 and she was taking him to the Pridgeon Stadium location for another test to confirm the result. She said she had placed the teenager in the car boot because she did not want to be infected herself. A health worker told her there would be no coronavirus test until the boy was allowed to sit in the back seat of the car. The teacher has now been arrested for allegedly locking her Covid-positive son in a car boot to protect herself from exposure to the virus as she drove to a testing site. Cy-Fair ISD Police Department said they were alerted that a child was in the trunk of a car at a drive-thru Covid-19 testing site. Law enforcement conducted a full investigation, resulting in a warrant for arrest. The child was not harmed.
Turkmenistan President orders extinguishing of decades old fire
Turkmenistan's president Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has ordered the extinguishing of the country's "Gateway to Hell", a fire that has been burning for decades in a huge desert gas crater. He has asked to put it out for environmental and health reasons, as well as part of efforts to increase gas exports. Mystery surrounds the Darvaza crater's creation in the Karakum Desert. Many believe it formed when a Soviet drilling operation went wrong in 1971. But Canadian explorer George Kourounis examined the crater's depths in 2013 and discovered that no-one actually knows how it started. The crater is in fact, one of Turkmenistan's most popular tourist attractions. According to local Turkmen geologists, the huge crater formed in the 1960s but was only lit in the 1980s. In the past there have been numerous attempts to end the fire, including in 2010 when Mr Berdymukhamedov also ordered experts to find a way to put out the flames.
Google maps help in capturing Italian mafia boss
Gammino Gammino, 61, a member of a Sicilian mafia group dubbed Stidda, had escaped Rome's Rebibbia jail in 2002 and in 2003 had been sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder committed several years earlier.
After a two-year investigation, Gioacchino was tracked down in Galapagar, a town close to Spain's capital Madrid. He lived under a fake name there. The breakthrough came when a Google Maps street view picture portraying a man who looked like him in front of a fruit shop. The photogram was key in triggering a deeper investigation and helped police to confirm the investigation they were developing in traditional ways. Gammino is currently under custody in Spain and would most probably be brought back to Italy by the end of February.
Tiger and Leopard stolen from Karachi zoo
A one-month-old leopard cub and an eight-month-old baby tiger were allegedly stolen from a private zoo in Karachi in Gadap. The Gadap police have registered a case on the complaint of Dr Shahid Jalil, a vet at the zoo, and an investigation has started into the robbery. The doctor has told the police that when he had arrived at work on January 6 and checked the cages of the animals, the cubs of a tiger and jaguar were missing. When the closed-circuit television camera footage of the zoo was checked, the night supervisor was absent from duty from 3am, the vet told the police. The doctor was of the view that the night supervisor was involved in the robbery.