Category World News

The former manager of the Harvard Medical School morgue has been sentenced to eight years in prison for the theft and sale of body parts, taken from cadavers that had been donated for medical research.

Cedric Lodge, who managed the morgue for more than two decades before being arrested in 2023, was given an eight-year sentence by a US District Judge in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

“He caused deep emotional harm to an untold number of family members left to wonder about the mistreatment of their loved ones’ bodies,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

The 58-year-old Lodge pleaded guilty to transporting stolen goods across state lines in May, with prosecutors stating that he had taken heads, faces, brains, skin, and hands from cadavers in the morgue to his home in Goffstown, New Hampshire, before selling them to several individuals.

Lodge’s wife, Denise, was also sentenced to one year in prison for her role in facilitating the sale of the stolen organs and body parts to several individuals, including two people in Pennsylvania, who then mostly resold them.

Prosecutors asked District Judge Matthew Brann in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to give Lodge 10 years in prison, the maximum sentence for the crime, which they said “shocks the conscience” and was carried out “for the amusement of the disturbing ‘oddities’ community”.

Patrick Casey, a lawyer for Lodge, asked the judge for leniency, while conceding “the harm his actions have inflicted on both the deceased persons whose bodies he callously degraded and their grieving families”.

Harvard Medical School has yet to comment on Lodge’s sentencing, but has previously called his actions “abhorrent and inconsistent with the standards and values that Harvard, our anatomical donors, and their loved ones expect and deserve”.

A US court ruled in October that Harvard Medical School could be sued by family members who had donated the bodies of loved ones for medical research. In that case, Chief Justice Scott L Kafker described the affair as a “macabre scheme spanning several years”.

Here is where things stand on Wednesday, December 17:

Fighting

• Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital and warned people to stay in shelters late on Tuesday night as air defences worked to repel a Russian attack.
• Russian forces launched a “massive” drone attack on Ukraine’s Sumy region, targeting energy infrastructure and causing electricity blackouts, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said on Telegram late on Tuesday night.
• Power outages were also reported in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Energy Mykola Kolisnyk said.
• A Russian attack on electrical substations and other energy infrastructure left 280,000 households in Ukraine’s Odesa region without power, Governor Oleh Kiper wrote on Telegram.
• Electricity was later restored to 220,000 homes, Kiper said, but extensive work was still needed to repair damaged networks.
• Russian forces shot down 180 Ukrainian drones in one day, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said, according to the state-run TASS news agency.
• The ambassador-at-large of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rodion Miroshnik, told TASS that Ukrainian attacks had killed 14 Russian civilians and injured nearly 70, including in the Russian-occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia regions of Ukraine, over the past week.

Ceasefire talks

• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz shared details about a potential European-led multinational force being considered as part of discussions on security guarantees for Ukraine.
• “We would secure a demilitarised zone between the warring parties and, to be very specific, we would also act against corresponding Russian incursions and attacks,” Merz told ZDF public television, adding that the talks “we’re not there yet”.

Regional security

• Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Sweden said in a joint statement on Tuesday that “Russia is the most significant, direct and long-term threat to our security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area”.
• After the Eastern Flank Summit in Helsinki, Finland, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that the grouping of European countries discussed an “anti-drone wall” that would require “billions in expenditure here”.
• Germany’s Federal Ministry of Defence said that it ended the deployment to Poland of its Patriot systems and soldiers from its Air and Missile Defence Task Force, after the mission concluded as planned.
• UK Secretary of State for Defence John Healey said the United Kingdom is spending 600 million pounds (more than $800 million) to buy “thousands of air defence systems, missiles, and automated turrets to shoot down drones” for Ukraine, during a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, according to the Kyiv Independent news outlet.
• German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius told the same meeting that Germany would “transfer a significant number of AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles” to Ukraine next year.

Reparations

• The leaders of 34 European countries signed an agreement in The Hague to create an International Claims Commission for Ukraine to seek compensation for hundreds of billions of dollars in damage from Russian attacks.
• “Every Russian war crime must have consequences for those who committed them,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said before signing the agreement.
• “The goal is to have validated claims that will ultimately be paid by Russia. It will really have to be paid by Russia,” Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs  David van Weel said.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

United States President Donald Trump has ordered “a total and complete” blockade of all US-sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

“For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” Trump said.

“Therefore, today, I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela,” he said.

Trump’s comments come a week after US forces seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela and as Washington has ordered a huge build-up of US military forces off the Venezuelan coast in an operation said to target drug smuggling.

The US military has killed at least 90 people since September in attacks on dozens of vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea near Venezuela, in what international law experts have criticised as extrajudicial killings.

Washington claimed the vessels were involved in drug trafficking but has provided no evidence to support its allegations.

Caracas has long said the deployment of US forces to the region was aimed at allowing “external powers to rob Venezuela’s immeasurable oil and gas wealth“.

Despite holding the world’s largest proven oil reserves, Venezuela has faced severe restrictions on its exports in recent years under US sanctions first imposed during the first Trump presidency.

This is a breaking news story. More to follow shortly.

Thousands of people have rallied across Slovakia to protest against changes to the judicial system that opposition politicians and critics say are destroying the rule of law, Slovak media reported.

Protesters filled much of a central square in the capital of Bratislava, and there were protests in eight other cities on Tuesday.

The biggest opposition party, Progressive Slovakia, called the protest after Prime Minister Robert Fico‘s leftist-nationalist government pushed legislative changes through parliament last week that dismantle the whistleblower protection agency and change the way the state deals with crown witnesses.

“They took a chainsaw to the rule of law,” Michal Simecka, the leader of Progressive Slovakia, told the crowd in Bratislava, according to a live video that streamed online.

“Slovakia is the only country where the government approves laws to make life easier for criminals and mafia,” he also said.

People carried Slovak and European Union flags as well as placards with slogans, such as “Fico’s government is helping Mafia”, and chanted “Enough of Fico” and “Shame!”

Fico’s critics claim that, under his government, Slovakia is following Hungary’s lead under Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Fico’s administration argues that the old whistleblower agency was politically abused. The administration has also weakened criminal codes for financial crimes, revamped the public broadcaster and pushed constitutional changes asserting national sovereignty over some EU laws, which has raised European Commission scrutiny.

Fico’s government has faced several large protests since coming to power in 2023. Tuesday’s rally was one of the biggest since last February, when tens of thousands demonstrated against what critics say is an increasingly pro-Russian foreign policy.

United States President Donald Trump has added five countries to the list of nations whose citizens are banned from entering the US, including Palestine and Syria.

The White House announced the expansion of the ban on Tuesday, as it intensifies its crackdown on immigration.

Tuesday’s order imposed a travel ban on six new countries – Palestine, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan and Syria – in addition to the 12 initially made public in June.

The decree did not refer to Palestine, which Washington does not recognise as a state, by name or even as the occupied Palestinian territory.

Instead, it describes the Palestine category as “Palestinian Authority Documents” and refers to Palestinians as “individuals attempting to travel on PA-issued or endorsed travel documents”.

The decision comes weeks after Trump declared a “permanent pause” on migration from what he called “all Third World Countries” in response to the shooting of two National Guard troops in Washington, DC.

“Several US-designated terrorist groups operate actively in the West Bank or Gaza Strip and have murdered American citizens. Also, the recent war in these areas likely resulted in compromised vetting and screening abilities,” the White House said.

“In light of these factors, and considering the weak or nonexistent control exercised over these areas by the PA, individuals attempting to travel on PA-issued or endorsed travel documents cannot currently be properly vetted and approved for entry into the United States.”

Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who is of Palestinian descent, slammed the ban, accusing Trump and his top aide Stephen Miller of pushing to alter the demographics of the country.

“This administration’s racist cruelty knows no limits, expanding their travel ban to include even more African and Muslim-majority countries, even Palestinians fleeing a genocide,” she said in a social media post.

The move to ban Palestinians from entering the US comes as Israel continues its daily deadly attacks in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where Israeli settlers have killed at least two US citizens this year.

Meanwhile, the ban on Syrians coincides with rapprochement between Washington and Damascus after Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa visited the White House in November.

“While the country is working to address its security challenges in close coordination with the United States, Syria still lacks an adequate central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures,” the White House said.

On Thursday, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard cited the mass shooting that killed 15 people at a Jewish festival in Australia to laud Trump’s immigration restrictions.

“Islamists and Islamism is the greatest threat to the freedom, security, and prosperity of the United States and the entire world. It is probably too late for Europe – and maybe Australia,” she wrote on X.

“It is not too late for the United States of America. But it soon will be. Thankfully, President Trump has prioritized securing our borders and deporting known and suspected terrorists, and stopping mass, unvetted migration that puts Americans at risk.”

Trump’s Republican allies have been increasingly using Islamophobic rhetoric, and calling for Muslims to be blocked from entering the country.

On Sunday, Senator Tommy Tuberville called Islam a “cult”, baselessly accusing Muslims of aiming to “conquer” the West.

“Stop worrying about offending the pearl clutchers,” he wrote in a social media post. “We’ve got to SEND THEM HOME NOW or we’ll become the United Caliphate of America.”