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UK police arrest Murdoch tabloid staff

2012-01-28T18:51:00.001Z

Police arrested four current and former staff of Rupert Murdoch's best-selling Sun tabloid and a policeman on Saturday in a probe into suspected payments by journalists to officers for information, police and the newspaper's publisher said. Police also searched the London offices of Sun publisher News International, News Corp's British arm, in a corruption probe linked to a continuing investigation into phone hacking at its now closed News of the World weekly tabloid. News Corp's Management and Standards Committee, set up in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, said Saturday's operation was the result of information it had passed to police. "News Corporation made a commitment last summer that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past would not be repeated," the committee said in a statement confirming the arrests of four "current and former employees" of the Sun. Three of the employees, all arrested at their homes, were a 48-year-old man from north London and two men from Essex, east of the capital, aged 48 and 56, police said. The fourth man, aged 42, was arrested after reporting to an east London police station. The fifth arrest was a 29-year-old police officer serving with the Met Police's Territorial Policing Command, who was arrested at the central London police station where he worked. All five were being questioned on suspicion of corruption. A Sun reporter, who asked not to be named, said: "Everyone is a bit shocked, there is disbelief really. But there is a big difference between phone hacking and payments to the police." The arrests included the Sun's crime editor Mike Sullivan, its head of news Chris Pharo, and former deputy editor Fergus Shanahan, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters. Also arrested was the paper's former managing editor Graham Dudman, now a columnist and media writer, the source said. Searches at News International's offices in Wapping, east London, and at the arrested men's homes, were expected to continue until the afternoon, police said. The operation takes to 13 the number of arrests in a probe into allegations journalists paid police in return for information, known as Operation Elveden, one of three criminal investigations into the news-gathering practices of the News of the World. Last week, News International settled a string of legal claims after it admitted that people working for the tabloid had hacked in to the private phones of celebrities and others to generate stories. Ad Feedback The phone hacking scandal drew attention to the level of political influence held by editors and executives at News International, and other newspapers in Britain. It embarrassed British politicians for their close ties with newspaper executives and also the police, who repeatedly failed to investigate allegations of illegal phone hacking.

Drug Users Could Avoid Jail Under New Guidelines Published By The Sentencing Council For Judges

2012-01-24T05:18:00.001Z

Friends socially sharing drugs and those using cannabis for medicinal purposes could escape jail under new guidelines for judges. Drug runners and small-time dealers caught with heroin, cocaine or thousands of pounds worth of cannabis could also avoid prison. Instead, low-level operatives caught with 6kg of cannabis, 20 ecstasy tablets, or five grams of heroin or cocaine are likely to receive a community sentence. The guidelines, which come into force on February 27, are expected to be met with mixed reaction. They state a prison sentence may not be necessary for people who supply small amounts of narcotics to share with their friends for no personal gain. They also urge judges for the first time to reduce sentences for cannabis possession if it is being used "to help with a diagnosed medical condition". It is the first time all courts in England and Wales have been given a comprehensive guideline setting out how the role of the offender and the quantity of drugs should influence sentencing. So-called drug "mules", often women forced or tricked into the crime, could face a starting point of six years if deemed to be playing a "lesser role" in bringing up to 1kg of heroin or cocaine into the country. This is compared to the 11-year starting point if the offender was one of the leading figures. Those caught with small amounts of cannabis could avoid jail But the Sentencing Council said offenders who were employed by someone else to import or export drugs regularly for profit would still face tough sentences of up to life in prison. It said tougher sentences could also be handed down to key players guilty of producing drugs on a large scale. Offenders in a leading role in the production or cultivation of 11lb (5kg) of heroin or cocaine or tens of thousands of ecstasy tablets could face up to 16 years in prison. Those producing industrial quantities of cannabis for commercial purposes could also face up to 10 years in jail. Anyone dealing to those aged under 18 would also face tougher penalties. Under the guidelines, street dealers will still face jail, with those playing a key role in selling class A drugs facing a starting point of four and a half years, with up to 16 years for a single incident, depending on the quantity of drugs involved.

Bikie dispute leads to car park shooting

2012-01-18T09:03:00.001Z

dispute between Comanchero motorcycle gang members led to a shooting in Adelaide's west on Monday night, police believe. Two shots were fired in the car park of the Findon Hotel about 10:00pm (ACDT). Detective Inspector Paul Yeomans says two men were arguing in the car park before one of them fired the shots at a dark-coloured sedan. "We don't think this is a random attack," he said. "We think that the two males are known to each other. We do think, even though it's early in the investigation, we do think it is linked to outlaw motorcycle gangs, in particular the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang." The cars sped-off after the shooting and police have not said why they suspect Comanchero members. The shooting is the latest instance of bikie-related violence in the past two months. But Attorney-General John Rau insists the situation is not out of control. "There are always going to be lunatics who go out there and break the law as these people have done and when they're caught up with the law will deal with them," he said. There is no sign anyone was injured in the incident.

Two reputed Rock Machine biker gang associates were nabbed by police

2012-01-18T09:00:00.001Z

Two reputed Rock Machine biker gang associates were nabbed by police just prior to a search of a St. Andrews home that netted drugs, ammunition and gang paraphernalia. Police said at about 3 p.m. Friday, Shane Allen Fischer, 31, and Nicole Joy Nykorak, 26, were arrested during a traffic stop at Highway 8 and Grassmere Road. The stop came about two hours prior to police executing two search warrants at the same alleged drug house on Lockport Road as part of a ongoing street crime investigation, police said Sunday. Police seized nearly $10,000 worth of cocaine and hash, along with coke-cutting agent, drug paraphernalia, ammunition, a bullet-proof vest and gang attire, Const. Jason Michalyshen said. The seizure of the armoured vest is significant, as it may prove to become the first test of provincial legislation that came into force Jan. 1 outlawing their use by the general public without a permit. Anyone unauthorized to have body armour and is caught with it faces a fine of up to $10,000, three months in jail or both. Michalyshen said he was unaware of any other pending arrests in the case. Fischer was out on bail at the time and was supposed to be living elsewhere, said police. Nykorak was out on statutory release from prison and is facing parole revocation, Michalyshen said. Police didn’t identify the gang involved, but said it was an outlaw motorcycle group. A police source said both have ties to the Rock Machine gang. Both suspects face “numerous” drug and weapons charges, police said. They are being held at the Winnipeg Remand Centre.

Movie fans must boycott Paul Ferris film..

2012-01-18T08:50:00.001Z

SENIOR policeman has urged film fans to shun a new drama about Scottish gangster Paul Ferris. Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan spoke out after a promotional trailer for the film was leaked online. And he said he believed few people in Scotland would have any sympathy for the production, made by a London-based company and shot down south. The sympathetic trailer shows Ferris, known as “the enforcer”, as a victim who was bullied as a child and whose road into vicious career criminality came as a reaction against the “monsters” of his youth. It also contains scenes similar to the 1980s classic childhood friendship film Stand By Me. One shows Ferris as a young boy sitting around a fire with his childhood pals saying: “When we’re old, we’ll always be together. “We’ll live in huge castles and be kings. We’ll fight monsters and demons.” DCS Carnochan, head of Strathclyde Police’s Violence Reduction Unit, said last night it was wrong that people should seek to profit from Ferris’s criminal career. He added: “There comes a point in our understanding of the importance of the effect of early years has on later life when you’re beyond the point of saying, ‘You’re worthy of our empathy.’ “I’ve seen nothing of the film, so it’s hard to comment completely, but I understand why people will have a problem with this. “I don’t think that anyone should profit from criminality. Whoever they are and at whatever stage, I think it’s wholly inappropriate.” The film stars Greenock-born Sweet Sixteen actor Martin Compston in the lead role, with support from Hollywood Scots John Hannah and Denis Lawson. Hannah plays Ferris’s former enemy Tam “The Licensee” McGraw, while Lawson plays his father. Opening scenes see the young child Ferris climbing walls around his home in Blackhill in Glasgow’s east end, walking his dog and making “forever friends” pacts. Compston then emerges as the snarling adult Ferris, hell-bent on retribution against his childhood oppressors, growling: “Every single day of my life those b******s have bullied me. They sucked the life out of me. No f*****g more.” The scenes are played out against a sentimental score of plaintive folk guitar. No one from producers Carnaby Films was available last night.

highranking member of the United Nation gang who had direct contact with Mexican cartels,

2012-01-18T08:45:00.001Z

British Columbia man executed in Mexico this week was a highranking member of the United Nation gang who had direct contact with Mexican cartels, the Vancouver Sun has learned. Salih Abdulaziz Sahbaz, 36, had spent much of the last three years in Mexico and was the key cartel contact for the notorious B.C. gang, police sources confirmed. But he also returned regularly to Surrey, B.C., where he had family ties. Sahbaz was shot nine times with a .45-calibre handgun early Monday and was found at an intersection in Culiacan, capital city of the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Sahbaz had taken over the Mexican end of business after two other UN gang members, Ahmet (Lou) Kaawach and Elliott (Taco) Castenada, were gunned down in Guadalajara in July 2008. He is believed to have owed money to at least one cartel after losing a shipment of cocaine and was working off his debt.

Whistle-blower links Serbian drug lords, SA gangs

2012-01-18T08:39:00.001Z

The head of a Balkan cocaine and crime syndicate is hiding out in South Africa under the protection of local gang bosses, underworld sources reveal. Fugitive Darko Savic – one of the world’s most wanted drug smugglers – is living under a different alias here, right under the noses of the authorities. And local crime bosses are helping him avoid detection by using their network of corrupt cop contacts. The revelation comes after the Daily Voice last week revealed how Serbian hitman Dobrosav Gavric lived in the Mother City for three years under the protection of slain crime boss Cyril Beeka. Beeka’s murder lifted the lid on the shadowy links between international crime syndicates and local mobsters. Today in an exclusive interview with the Daily Voice, a veteran former gangster turned whistle-blower confirms long-suspected links between SA crime gangs and Serbian drug lords. And he provides a chilling insight into a series of high-profile murders – including Beeka’s killing in March last year. In an interview with the Daily Voice, the terrified ex-dik ding reveals how: n He is now on the run and fears for his life after his mob bosses turned against him; n Someone “very near” to Cyril Beeka would have murdered him if the other attempt on his life failed; n Hitmen use their cop contacts to confirm the identities of targets before having them whacked; n International fugitive Darko Savic is hiding out in Gauteng with the help of local crime bosses. Savic has been linked to Czech criminal Radovan Krejcir, 42, a convicted fraudster who is also being investigated for Beeka’s murder. Krejcir was friends with both Beeka and Gavric, but it is understood he fell out with Beeka over a business deal. When the Hawks raided Krejcir’s Gauteng home after Beeka’s assassination in March last year, they found a “hit list” with Beeka’s name on it. At one stage Gavric – who was seriously injured in the shooting – was rumoured to also be a suspect in the hit. But in a sworn affidavit obtained by the Daily Voice, Gavric insists he was close friends with Beeka and that he is prepared to act as a future witness for the State. The hitman is wanted in Serbia where he was convicted for the murders of notorious warlord Zeljko “Arkan” Raznatovic and two others. Gavric will on Monday find out if his bail application is successful when he appears before Cape Town Magistrates’ Court. In an interview with the Daily Voice from his hideaway in George, Eastern Cape, the whistle-blower who identifies himself only as “Uncle Sam”, says Gavric is not the only wanted Serbian using this country to escape justice. “Serbian drug lord Darko Savic is hiding in Gauteng and protected by [local] underworld bosses,” he says. Uncle Sam, 65, also gave a detailed insider’s account of Beeka’s execution: “If the assassination had failed to eliminate Beeka, then someone else very near to him would have carried out the murder on that very same day.” He was also able to provide exact details about the cold-blooded murder of Yuri “The Russian” Ulianitski who was gunned down outside a restaurant in May 2007. “A half-hour before Yuri left the restaurant, a prominent businessman linked to the mob called the hitmen and told them that Yuri will be approaching the intersection of Otto du Plessis Drive and Loxton Road just before 10.30pm,” Uncle Sam says. Ulianitski was indirectly linked with Jerome Booysen, the alleged leader of the Sexy Boys who was last week named in court as a suspect in Beeka’s murder. “The Russian” had dealings with Beeka, but they too later had a fall-out – both were killed in similar shootings. Uncle Sam is himself currently on the run after he fell foul of his mob bosses who were indirectly linked to the Beeka killing and the Serbian fugitives hiding out here. He also counts convicted drug trafficker Glenn Agliotti as a contact. During our interview, he gave our reporter a phone number which he said was that of Agliotti. When we rang the number, a male voice confirmed he was Agliotti before asking to be handed back to Uncle Sam. The whistle-blower admits he ran a car fraud scheme that turned sour when the syndicate chiefs failed to pay his R790 000 fee for buying 30 luxury cars in his name. But he has kept a detailed diary of his criminal activities and those of his former mob colleagues. And he has threatened to use the 116-page hand-written diary to put them behind bars if they come after him. “I’ve got nothing to lose,” he says. “I need to warn the public that the mafia is running the country with the help of cops and top politicians and that they have ruthless killers who will take out anyone who threatens them.”

Gang stabs man 8 times in Sydney street

2012-01-18T07:50:00.001Z

Two men have been arrested after a man was stabbed eight times in Sydney's north-west overnight. Police say the 25-year-old man was attacked by a group of up to 10 men after being dropped off at shops in Telopea about 11:00pm (AEDT). His attackers ran off when the victim's two friends returned in their car. Emergency services were called and police arrested two men, aged 23 and 25, nearby. Detective Inspector Ken Hardy says the man was stabbed in the neck and body. "He's currently in Westmead Hospital undergoing surgery," he said. "Police have set up a crime scene. They're also talking to two males at Parramatta Police Station, who are assisting police with their inquiries at this stage." Meanwhile police have charged a man over one of two Sydney stabbings on Sunday night. A 43-year-old man was stabbed several times in the stomach outside a house in the city's west at Merrylands. A 28-year-old Yagoona man was arrested yesterday and charged with causing grievous bodily harm with intent to murder. He is being held in custody to face Fairfield Local Court today.

Spain's most famous judge, the charismatic and controversial investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzón, sat in the dock at the country's supreme court

2012-01-17T12:56:00.001Z

Spain's most famous judge, the charismatic and controversial investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzón, sat in the dock at the country's supreme court on Tuesday morning to face charges that may bring his career to an abrupt and dramatic end. Garzón, who ordered the arrest in London of Chile's General Pinochet, entered the court wearing his judge's gown for what may be one of the last times, as he faces being struck off as a magistrate for up to 17 years. He told the Guardian he was in good spirits, though he has privately said he believes his fellow judges are determined to find him guilty in this case or one of the two others he must face in the coming weeks and months. "I'm fine," he said before entering a courtroom decorated with a massive glass chandelier and large crucifix. A panel of seven judges was set to hear evidence over two or three days. In the first of three separate cases against him at Madrid's supreme court, Garzón is accused of breaking rules by approving police taps on conversations between defence lawyers and their clients in a corruption investigation focusing on the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy's People's party (PP). Crowds of protesters gathered outside the court to support the judge, whose supporters claim is the subject of a campaign of persecution triggered by his decision to investigate human rights crimes committed under Franco. A second, even more controversial, trial is to start next week. It will see Garzón accused of twisting the law in order to open a formal investigation into the death or disappearance of 110,000 people allegedly killed under Franco's regime. Garzón has pledged to fight, but privately believes he will be found guilty because he has made too many enemies. He was suspended because of the Franco case in May 2010, but denies all the allegations. Court sources said the hearing that starts on Tuesday will last two or three days. Rajoy was a ferocious critic of Garzón as he helped uncover a network of corruption involving PP regional governments in Valencia and Madrid. "Just because a judge is investigating a crime doesn't mean that he can do whatever he wants," said Ignacio Peláez, one of the lawyers whose prison conversations with clients were recorded. "Even criminals have certain rights." His defence is expected to argue that, since another judge backed Garzón's move to tape the defence lawyers' conversations, he cannot be accused of deliberately dictating measures generally known to be against the law. Both Garzón's supporters and the rightwing Clean Hands trade union, which brought the case against him for investigating Franco's crimes, believe the supreme court has programmed the corruption case first in order to draw attention away from the Franco case. "It is the only thing we agree on," said Miguel Bernad of Clean Hands. "He wants the Franco trial first so he can make out he is the victim of pro-Francoists. We want it first because we lodged our writ long before the others." Relatives of those killed by Franco's regime will be among the protesters. Argentinian Manoli Labrador, whose father, two brothers and sister-in-law were killed by the military juntas in Argentina, will join them. "He has always listened to the victims," she said. "That is why we must support him." Garzón made use of international human rights laws to bring groundbreaking cases against Argentinian junta thugs in Madrid, forcing Argentinian courts to eventually open their own investigations. The arrest of Pinochet brought two sentences from the law lords in the UK allowing for his extradition to Spain. That sparked a similar round of cases in Chile. A third case, involving allegations that Garzón should have ruled himself out of investigating a complaint against the Santander bank, has not yet been scheduled. Prosecutors claim Garzón had received money from Santander while on a year's sabbatical at New York University – something the university denies.

Thousands of children are being "needlessly dumped in prison" because of Britain's failing youth justice system

2012-01-15T16:37:00.001Z

Thousands of children are being "needlessly dumped in prison" because of Britain's failing youth justice system, a think-tank has warned. The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) said courts and prisons were being used to "parent children" and were expected to sweep up problem youngsters inadequately dealt with by other departments, such as social services. In a new report, the group called for a radical overhaul in the way the Government deals with young offenders. It said there needed to be a drastic cut in the 5,000 children a year currently given custodial sentences, arguing the imprisonment of youths between the age of 10 and 17 should be limited to the "critical few" guilty of the most serious or violent crimes. The CSJ said too many children are being taken before the youth courts for trivial reasons. The report cited one example where a child who had thrown a bowl of Sugar Puffs at his care worker, jumped out of the window, then climbed back in, was held in a police cell over a weekend on suspicion of assault and attempted burglary. The independent think-tank, set up in 2004 by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, urged a return to a "common-sense" approach to minor incidents with parents and teachers using their judgment to deal with them at a home or school level. It also criticised the widespread use of short sentences for young offenders, arguing they undermine justice and disrupt attempts to educate and rehabilitate them. Gavin Poole, executive director of the CSJ, said: "Many young people fall into the system unnecessarily and do not receive the help they need to free themselves from it. Custody is sometimes neither a protective nor a productive place for children, and community orders can be equally ineffective. Moreover, despite years of good intentions, many young people leaving custody are still not being provided with the basic support they need for rehabilitation." Among a series of recommendations, the CSJ said there should be no sentences shorter than six months and an emphasis should be placed on non-custodial punishments where underlying behavioural problems can be tackled more effectively. The group also said measures to prevent lawbreaking by young people should be the primary responsibility of child welfare services rather than the youth justice system. It added local services needed to work together to ensure that young people and their families receive the help they need early.

Michael Brown: From £1.6m villa to prison yard, downfall of the Lib Dem fraudster

2012-01-15T02:08:00.001Z

The knock at the door did not unduly disturb the man relaxing on the terrace of the £1.6 million villa overlooking the Caribbean. Even when his wife opened it to discover members of the Dominican Republic’s armed police outside, Darren Patrick Nally was unfazed. He was sure his secret was safe: he was not Nally, a man who said he was an Irish singer and had already been detained in prison on charges of failing to pay his debts. In fact he was Michael Brown, a 45-year-old British fraudster whose web of lies and deceit had made him millions – £2.4 million of which he had donated to the Liberal Democrats for their 2005 election campaign, becoming their biggest single donor. As he was arrested for unpaid rent at a former apartment, Brown was nonchalant. At the police station he told the local assistant prosecutor, Elizabeth Rijo, that he would pay the debt and be back home in time for dinner.

celebrity gangster-turned-author has been banned from the road after being caught more than one-and-a-half times the drink-drive limit

2012-01-14T22:25:00.001Z

David Courtney

A celebrity gangster-turned-author has been banned from the road after being caught more than one-and-a-half times the drink-drive limit.

David Courtney, 52, was pulled over on the M6 in the early hours.

He was driving a borrowed Vauxhall Vectra after his wife, the rapper JennyBean, had taken his car following an argument, a court heard.

Debbie Byrne, prosecuting, told Macclesfield magistrates court that Courtney had been spotted travelling southbound on the M6 in excess of 70mph.

Courtney, who was alone, was pulled over near Knutsford services and spoken to by officers.

A roadside breath test proved positive so he was arrested and taken to a police station in Middlewich.

There he gave two samples of breath, the lowest of which was 53 microgrammes of alcohol, in 100ml of breath, more than one and a half times the legal limit of 35.

Stuart Page, defending, said Courtney had a domestic dispute and his wife had taken all his belongings, including his car.

He spoke to one of his friends who owns a car hire company, who agreed to lend him the Vectra. He said he then drove to Chorley in Lancashire to see some friends and whilst talking to them, he had a couple of drinks.

He said he thought he was below the limit and OK to drive at the time of the offence on December 22.

Courtney, of Chestnut Rise, Plumstead, London, pleaded guilty to drink-driving.

He has a previous conviction for drink-driving in 2006, meaning he was subject to a minimum driving ban of three years.

He was also fined £100 and ordered to pay £40 costs as well as a £15 victim surcharge.

Courtney, is an ex-London gangster well known for his friendships with other hard men, such as the Kray twins, which saw him dubbed ‘the yellow pages of the underworld’.

He previously worked as a debt collector and claims he has been shot, stabbed and had his nose bitten off.

He also boasts to have been the inspiration for Vinnie Jones’s character in the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

He has so far written four books about gangland violence and written, produced and starred in his own film called Hell to Pay.

He refers to himself as David Courtney OBE, which stands for ‘one big ego’.

Goodwin Sentenced to 25 Years for Child's Rape

2012-01-12T23:59:00.001Z

A member of the Bandidos biker gang is headed to prison for 25 years following his conviction on multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. Wednesday jurors started considering the punishment for Ira Goodwin, 67, who was wheelchair bound and hooked up to an oxygen tank in court. Goodwin faced up to 99 years in prison for raping a runaway 12-year-old girl who was staying at his home. The jury heard testimony from the victim and Goodwin's wife about the girl being given methamphetamine and alcohol before the assaults. Marcia Goodwin is serving a 10-year sentence for her role in the sexual assaults Ira Goodwin is no stranger to prison with multiple convictions in his past, including a 30-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter back in 1984.

'Brutal' Illinois gangster had 10,000 'soldiers'

2012-01-12T23:26:00.001Z

A Chicago gang leader who prosecutors say oversaw a sophisticated and brutal organization with at least 10,000 "soldiers" in Illinois that beat, shot and extorted money from rivals -even while he was in prison -was sentenced Wednesday to 60 years in federal prison. Fifty-one-year-old Augustin Zambrano did not speak during the hearing and displayed no emotion when U.S. District Judge Charles Norgle imposed the maximum sentence that, because federal guidelines require he serve at least 51 years, means he will most certainly die behind bars. Calling Zambrano "a leader of this barbarian organization," Norgle said that in court filings the unimposing man with short, graying hair had shown no remorse and had not accepted any responsibility for his role in the Chicago-based street gang. Zambrano was convicted by a jury in April of racketeering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit extortion and assault with a deadly weapon after a trial in which prosecutors portrayed him as the "CEO" of the Latin Kings, a Chicago-based gang with members across the United States. Zambrano, who did not testify at the trial, smiled at friends and relatives, some of whom were quietly crying during the sentencing, and gave them a small wave as he arrived and left the courtroom. During the trial, prosecutors showed jurors the gang's written rules and even a constitution that governed the behavior of gang members, including an order to retaliate by shooting anyone who shoots a member of the Latin Kings. "He put systems in place that led to ... all of these shootings ..." Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Porter said Wednesday. "He enforced those systems in his reign as the Corona" (leader) for approximately a decade. Prosecutors said that while Zambrano did not take part directly in the violence, the shootings and beatings, including of a man whose hands were smashed and two others who were beaten because they spilled a beer on Zambrano's wife, happened when Zambrano was the gang's leader. In all, trial testimony covered about 20 shootings in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, where the gang is centered, including one in which someone died. "He is responsible for all of that," said Porter. Zambrano has been in and out of prison since he was a teenager for charges ranging from attempted murder to burglary to conspiracy to possess narcotics. Also known as "Big Tino" and "Old Man," Zambrano was among of some 30 suspects indicted in 2008 or charged in a superseding indictment a year later after an 8-year-investigation. Most of the others have been convicted or pleaded guilty, with some receiving sentences of more than 30 years in prison. But none of them outranked Zambrano, whom prosecutors said was a top leader of the nationwide Almighty Latin King Nation. Porter said the gang remains a very "large organization" with members in Illinois and around the nation, adding that while the conviction and sentencing was a blow to the Latin Kings, it did not destroy the gang. "I don't think any of us are kidding ourselves," he said. He also said prosecutors remain concerned that Zambrano will continue to run the gang from behind bars - in large part because Zambrano did just that from a prison cell "1,000 miles away" when he was serving time on a drug charge. Zambrano's attorney, Jim Graham, who argued for a shorter sentence that might allow him to someday walk out of prison, said that he will appeal the sentence.

US Marines identify 'urination' troops

2012-01-12T21:02:00.001Z

At least two of four US Marines shown in a video appearing to urinate on Taliban corpses have been identified, a Marine Corps official has told the BBC. The video, which was posted online, purports to show four US Marines standing over the bodies of several Taliban fighters, at least one of whom is covered in blood. The Marines have begun a criminal investigation and an internal inquiry. US officials and Afghan officials have condemned the video as "deplorable". The origin of the video is not known, but it was originally posted to YouTube. The BBC's Steve Kingstone says the official would not confirm the Marines' whereabouts, but news reports suggested the unit involved was based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina - a major military base. A US Marines spokesman, Lt Col Joseph Plenzler, told the AFP news agency that "we cannot release the name of the unit at this time since the incident is being investigated."

Thornton Heath man in South American jail after being caught with £20k of coke

2012-01-12T00:17:00.001Z

A young man has been jailed in South America for attempting to traffic drugs just three weeks after sneaking out of his Thornton Heath home without telling his mother. Former Stanley Technical School pupil, Nishit Patel, 21, left his home in Attlee Close, in secret on Christmas Day before flying 4,500 miles to Guyana. The next time his mum, part-time Tesco worker Amita, heard from him was on January 3 phoning from a Guyanese jail after being caught boarding a plane with 29 pellets of cocaine worth more than £20,000 inside him. On Monday, January 9, he was sentenced to four years in jail after he admitted drug trafficking. He was also fined $30,000 Guyanese dollars, about £95. Mrs Patel, 46, said she last saw her son, who changed his name to Nikesh after being teased at school, after lunch on Christmas Day. She said: “I came home and he had bags packed. I asked if he was leaving and he said no. I never know where he is going, he tells me nothing. “I didn’t even know where Guyana was. I asked why did you do it, and he said for the money.” On December 31 Guyana’s Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) at Cheddi Jagan International Airport saw Patel acting suspiciously and arrested him. Dennis Mahase a senior supervisor with CANU said Patel, who has spent his whole life in Croydon, missed his earlier flight home and was picked up by officials while he waited. He said: “When the officials began questioning him he complained about feeling unwell. After further question he admitted swallowing the pellets.” Taken to Woodlands Hospital in Georgetown, the country’s capital, Patel, was x-rayed and the pellets, containing 352 grams of the drug with a street value of around £20,000, were found. Mr Mahase added: “He admitted to us he had done this before in November and got away with it.” Mrs Patel said Nishit went off the rails after his grandparents and father died in quick succession four years ago. She said: “He was such a good boy. Very caring. It changed him. A son listens to his father but to his mother, not so much. It was very hard.” The family will now fight to have him extradited to the UK. She said: “I want to be able to see him. I know he has done wrong but he is my son. I have no idea what a jail out there is like.” A foreign office spokesman said: “We can confirm the arrest of a British national on December 31 in Guyana. “We are providing consular assistance.”

Cargo ship runs aground off Sweden, crew suspected drunk

2012-01-12T00:09:00.001Z

The captain and helmsman are both suspected of being under the influence of alcohol and we have launched an inquiry," coast guard spokeswoman Lotta Brandstroem told AFP. It was not immediately known why the Anke Angela, an 82-metre (270-foot) ship loaded with timber, ran aground around 0100 GMT in the Kalmarsund strait between the Swedish mainland and the island of Oeland. "The captain is a German national and the helmsman is Russian, and the other four crew members are from Ukraine and Cape Verde," Brandstroem said, adding that the vessel was en route from Moensteraas to Ireland with a cargo of wood. The ship was listing slightly on Wednesday and the coast guard was assessing the damage.

Wonga stops targeting students after Twitter protests

2012-01-12T00:01:00.001Z

Short-term lender Wonga.com has announced that it is taking down information on student finances from its website following accusations it was encouraging undergraduates to take out one of its high-interest loans. Earlier Wonga.com came under severe criticism after its website claimed that its loans can offer students "a little more financial freedom and independence". The claim attracted outrage on Twitter. One user, Neale Gilhooley, tweeted: "A pox on loan company #Wonga offering students loans at a sharking 4,214pc APR." On the "student loans" section of its website, Wonga.com says these government-backed loans – despite their very low interest rates – could encourage people to borrow too much. Student loans currently attract interest at 1.5pc or 5.3pc, depending on when they were taken out. "It's pretty hard not to get carried away when you're a student on a budget and have the option to borrow large amounts of money with a student loan. But the problem with student loans is that they potentially encourage you to live beyond your means," the website says. "They're intended for living and education costs, but it's all too easy to fritter away the money once you have it. Wonga encourages responsible borrowing because, depending on your trust rating, you can borrow as little as £1 up to £1000, as long as you can repay it within a month."

Outspoken Moroccan rapper awaits assault verdict

2012-01-11T23:41:00.001Z

A Moroccan rapper who has become one of the monarchy's boldest critics on Wednesday awaited a verdict after a trial on assault charges which his lawyers and right activists said were a ploy to muzzle the popular singer. Mouad Belrhouat, better known as El-Haqed, or "The Sullen One", has become the singing voice of a protest movement inspired by Arab uprisings, demanding a constitutional monarchy, an independent judiciary and a crackdown on corruption. The judge adjourned the case on Wednesday after an all-night hearing to consider his verdict, expected on Thursday. The 24-year-old rapper has been in jail since his arrest in September after a brawl with a monarchist. Bail requests by his defence team have been rejected and the trial has been adjourned six times. "The charges are a farce. El Haqed is being persecuted for his critical songs. The state is keeping him in jail and repeatedly adjourning his trial to silence him," said Khadija Ryadi, who chairs Morocco's main human rights group, AMDH. The rapper's cutting lyrics telling Moroccans to "wise up" have angered many monarchists. In one song he raps that the king spends so much time giving orders that he has little time to count his money in Switzerland. However, he has struck a chord with young Moroccans who are disenchanted with poor or non-existent jobs and one song "Bite just as much as you can chew" has received more than 600,000 hits on Youtube. ALL-NIGHT SESSION Belrhouat's trial is a test for the Justice and Development Party PJD.L, which like its Tunisian peers is a moderate Islamist party leading a government for the first time after it won elections in November. In a Casablanca court packed with Belrhouat supporters, the judge begun to hear the case in an unusually late session on Tuesday which continued through the night. Mohamed Bouawine, one of the 24 lawyers who have volunteered to defend the rapper, said his client faces up to three years in jail if found guilty. AMDH's Ryadi says Belrhouat has become yet another case among "dozens of prisoners of conscience" in Morocco. Local and international right groups say hundreds of Islamists have been jailed in what they said were politically-motivated trials rushed through after suicide attacks in Casablanca in 2003, that killed 45 people. Morocco's judiciary is meant to be given more independence under reforms crafted last year by the Arab world's longest-serving monarchy as it sought to preempt a popular revolt. The man whom Belrhouat is alleged to have assaulted said the injury left him incapacitated for 45 days but defence lawyers produced evidence suggesting he recovered far more quickly and was being used as a political pawn. Belrhouat's father Mohamed told Reuters he would not be supporting his son in court had the rapper done anything wrong. "My son was set up. The police and the ambulance turned up five minutes after the incident: This never happens here."

Once powerful Mexican drug lord Benjamin Arellano Felix pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court on Wednesday to drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering charges

2012-01-11T07:03:00.001Z

. Arellano Felix, 58, was the head of the feared Tijuana cartel run by his brothers and operated on the Mexico-U.S. border near San Diego until his capture in Mexico in early 2002. He was extradited to the United States last April, and prosecutors said his guilty plea marked the demise of the violent cartel that dominated smuggling on the California-Mexico border in the 1980s and 1990s. "Arellano Felix led the most violent criminal organization in this part of the world for two decades. Today's guilty plea marks the end of his reign of murder, mayhem and corruption," U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said. "His historic admission of guilt sends a clear message to the Mexican cartel leaders operating today: The United States will spare no effort to investigate, extradite and prosecute you for your criminal activities," she added. As part of a 17-page plea agreement, Arellano Felix admitted smuggling tons of cocaine and marijuana into California and conspiring to launder hundreds of millions of dollars. He also agreed to forfeit $100 million in profits under the plea deal, which is expected to land him 25 years in federal prison when he is sentenced on April 2. "It was a favorable deal to my client who faced a minimum of 40 years and a maximum of 140 years under the extradition agreement," defense attorney Anthony Colombo Jr. said. CARTEL A SHADOW OF FORMER SELF President Barack Obama's administration has worked closely with Mexican President Felipe Calderon in his army-led battle to crush warring drug gangs in a conflict that has claimed more than 46,000 lives since late 2006. At the height of his power in the 1990s, Arellano Felix smuggled hundreds of millions of dollars in narcotics through a 100-mile wide corridor stretching from Tijuana, south of San Diego, to Mexicali, south of Calexico. But after the death and capture of many of its leaders over the past decade, including three of Benjamin Arellano Felix's brothers, the Tijuana cartel, also known as the Arellano Felix Organization, is a shadow of its former self. Arellano Felix's brother Ramon, the cartel's flamboyant enforcer, died in a shoot-out in 2002. Francisco Javier is serving a life sentence in U.S. federal prison after being captured on a fishing boat in 2006, and Eduardo is in jail in Mexico awaiting extradition. With the downfall of the Arellano Felix brothers, the rival Sinaloa cartel run by Mexico's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, has largely taken over the cartel's valuable turf in Tijuana. Appearing before U.S. District Judge Larry Burns at the hearing, Arellano Felix was neatly groomed and dressed in an orange jumpsuit. He said he took medication for migraine headaches, but when asked by the judge if it affected his decision to plead, he replied, "no." Among the former kingpins serving time in U.S. jails is former Gulf cartel leader Osiel Cardenas, who was extradited to the United States by Mexico in 2007 and is serving a 25-year sentence in Texas without chance of parole.

Drug smuggling bid foiled

2012-01-11T06:59:00.001Z

Customs at the airport foiled an attempt by one Egyptian expatriate arriving from Cairo to smuggle 1,000 narcotic pills into the country. The concerned officers said the suspect had kept the contraband hidden in his shoes when they discovered it. He has since been handed over to Drug Prosecution. In a statement following discovery of the illicit drug, the Director General of Customs Ibrahim Al-Ghanim commended efforts exerted by customs men to uncover complicated smuggling cases.

Drug smuggling compartment specialist sentenced to 24 years

2012-01-11T06:56:00.001Z

A California man who specialized in building secret compartments in vehicles used to smuggle drugs received a 24-year sentence in what prosecutors said was one of the first cases against a specialist who worked for drug dealers but didn’t directly handle the drugs. Alfred Anaya, 40, a native of San Fernando, CA, was sentenced to 292 months in federal prison and forfeiture of $3.2 million. Anaya, said a Jan. 6 statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kansas, operated in the state. “Evidence showed the defendant installed sophisticated hidden compartments in dozens of vehicles,” said U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom. “He knew he was working for drug traffickers.” Anaya was convicted on one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine, as well as methamphetamine and marijuana, and two counts of attempting to intimidate a witness, said the statement. Convicted in the case along with Anaya were James Clark, 29, of Overland Park, KS, who was given a sentence identical to Anaya’s on the same charges. Curtis Crow, 30, of Leawood, KS, was sentenced to 147 months on conspiracy and drug distribution charges. Anaya and Clark were convicted in Feb. 2011 and Crow pleaded guilty, said the statement. Prosecutors showed the men were members of a California-based drug trafficking organization that operated a drug distribution center in Kansas between 2008 and 2009 that distributed cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana in Kansas and Missouri. Prosecutors also presented evidence that Anaya installed secret compartments including a 20-kilogram compartment in a Ford F-150, a 10-kilogram compartment in a Honda Ridgeline, a 3-kilogram compartment in a Toyota Camry and a 10-kilogram compartment in a Toyota Sequoia.

Four senior British police officers are under investigation over allegations of misconduct for partaking in a gangland killing case, news reports said.

2011-12-24T12:15:00.001Z

Staffordshire Police launched an inquiry into the murder of amateur footballer Kevin Nunes, 20, who was gunned down in a country lane in 2002, British media reported.

Nunes, a drug dealer who had been on the books of Tottenham Hotspur, was shot dead in an execution style killing after a gang dispute.

His killers, Levi Walker, Antonio Christie, Adam Joof, Michael Osbourne and Owen Crooks were all jailed for life after being found guilty of murder by a jury at Leicester Crown Court.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) will look into the handling of the investigation into case of the four officers, including the lead on police ethics. Five men were jailed in connection with the killing in 2008.

The IPCC confirmed that formal notice of investigation had been served on “a number of former and serving Staffordshire Police officers”.

Meanwhile, Northamptonshire Police Authority confirmed that its force's chief constable Adrian Lee and deputy chief constable Suzette Davenport were being investigated.

Lee is also the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers' ethics portfolio.

teenager who murdered a 16-year-old schoolboy outside a pub in Stretford has denied his motive was revenge for another gangland killing.

2011-12-22T00:03:00.001Z

A teenager who murdered a 16-year-old schoolboy outside a pub in Stretford has denied his motive was revenge for another gangland killing. Moses Mathias told Manchester Crown Court he intended to commit a robbery but instead fired at a vehicle carrying Giuseppe Gregory out of "fear for my life". He said he did not learn of the death in May 2009 until the next day. Àt the age of 15 he later went on the run. Mathias, now 18, remained at large until he was arrested in Amsterdam earlier this year on a European Arrest Warrant after a joint investigation by the Serious Organised Crime Agency and GMP. He was flown back to the UK in June and four months later admitted the murder of the youngster who was gunned down in the early hours of May 11 in a car outside the Robin Hood pub in Stretford. In March 2010, Mathias's associates Njabulo Ndlovu and Hiruy Zerihun, then aged 19 and 18, were jailed for life and ordered to serve minimum terms of 21 years and 23 years respectively after they were convicted of Giuseppe's murder. Their trial heard the pair carried out the attack in revenge for the murder of Zerihun's boyhood friend Louis Brathwaite, also 16, who was shot dead in a betting shop in Withington, south Manchester, in January 2008. They were affiliated to Fallowfield Man Dem, a splinter group of the notorious Gooch Gang, who targeted Giuseppe and his friends because of their association to the rival gang the Longsight Crew. Mathias, of no fixed address, also admitted possessing - with Zerihun and Ndlovu - an imitation firearm, a self-loading pistol, a .32 pistol and six .32 bullet cartridges. But now he has argued the basis of his plea and claimed he did not know Louis Brathwaite, saying in evidence that the plan was to enter the pub and "rob the tills".

two years of crisis and bank debt in Europe, the roaring euro party is over.

2011-12-19T02:46:00.001Z

Greeks are emptying their bank accounts, Italians are proposing that the Roman Catholic Church begin to pay nearly $1 billion in property taxes on lucrative hotels and businesses, and in the UK, protesters sans jobs have settled near 10 Downing in the wake of the nation’s biggest general strike in years. Spain has seen well-dressed panhandlers in Madrid. The Netherlands report higher bankruptcies and lower exports. French banks are cutting thousands of jobs. And in bailed-out Portugal, two religious and two civil holidays – weekdays off – will now fall on weekends, even as healthcare costs there have suddenly doubled in many hospitals. All across Europe, the severity of belt-tightening and public anger has brought a new stream of “austerity stories” to the fore: job cuts and their effect, new instances of ethnic hate, worry about social stability. Rising right-wing violence The majority of these stories flow out of Europe’s southern tier, the “less competitive” economies. Two Senegalese street traders in a Florence market were shot and killed Dec. 13 by a right-wing fanatic and three wounded. Higher piles of uncollected garbage sit on Greek streets and there’s an increase of drugs and crime there. Immigrants who used to be welcome labor five years ago in Greece, Italy, and especially in Spain, are now subject to heavy ID checks and public frowns, and there are more spasms of violence by vigilante groups. At times, the surly climate means that “Anyone who might pass for migrant runs the risk of being beaten up,” says Judith Sunderland of Human Rights Watch Europe. “There’s a gloomy mood… in ordinary neighborhoods that I visit… worry about jobs, benefits, social security and the cost of living,” says Pap Ndiaye, social historian at the Paris School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences. “On top of that, minorities are concerned about backlash or adding problems to the general population. A few years ago, minorities with degrees were leaving France for Great Britain but now the UK is no longer so hospitable. Now we are seeing a phenomenon of looking to the Americas. More professionals are moving to Montreal, for example… with no plans to come back to France.” Belt-tightening across the spectrum To ease austerity, Greece is selling ferryboats to Turkey and what appear to be third-world items like string, used auto parts, and TV antennas to improbable places like the Bahamas and the Marshall Islands. Italy this week said it will release some 3,300 prisoners with less than 18 months on their sentence – remanded to their homes – to save an estimated $500,000 a day. As Greece ekes out its EU bailout loans quarterly – the next tranche is still under negotiation – ordinary folks are depleting their bank accounts. The governor of the Greek central bank, Georgios Provopoulos, recently told parliament, "In September and October, savings and time deposits fell by a further 13 to 14 billion euros. In the first 10 days of November, the decline continued on a large scale.” The effect is to reduce the ability of banks to lend, he said. Some of the austerity effect may be indirectly positive. In Spain, archeologists outside Seville are glad that the building craze of the past 10 years has been halted, since planned shopping centers were to be erected on unexplored Copper Age settlements. Spanish police have also cracked down on a sophisticated forgery ring that was printing 50 euro notes out of a canning factory. In Italy, the 950 members of parliament that make nearly $200,000 a year are expected to cut their pay as the new government of Mario Monti seeks to deal with a cumulative 1.9 trillion euros in debt. Italy’s politicians earn twice that of French and German counterparts, and four times that of Spanish. Strains in northern Europe Yet various stresses and strains owing to new fracturing in Europe are not restricted just to the southern tier. Britain reports a 17-year high in unemployment even as EU figures show it has the 2nd highest living standard in Europe. London riots last August took place mainly among have-nots. Prime Minister David Cameron decided last week to opt-out of a German-French-engineered intergovernmental EU treaty designed to force discipline on EU states and stop future crises, seen as possibly isolating Britain. The decision highlighted an earlier decision by the town council of Bishop’s Stortford to alter an official 46-year old “sister city” or “twinning” relationship with the German town of Friedberg, near Frankfurt. The council is made up of mostly Tory or “euroskeptic” politicians and critics chided the town for downgrading the sister city status at a time of drift of European unity. More pertinently, perhaps, official November figures in the Netherlands, a more competitive state, show that some 610 businesses declared bankruptcy, an increase of 85 from October, and up from an average of roughly 500. Meanwhile, Dutch exports declined for the first time in two years in October. Dutch finance minister Jan Kees de Jager told reporters this week the country faces recessionary times and said there “are no taboos” in what may be cut in the budget. “We felt this coming. It is certainly not positive,” he said. “There are no easy times ahead of us.” The Netherlands will cut an estimated $24 billion under austerity measures, though the Freedom Party of anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders says it will not vote for cuts without a promise to end some $6 billion in foreign development aid.

Brits who invested their savings in their adopted countries may not be able to withdraw cash and could even lose their homes if banks call in loans

2011-12-19T02:35:00.001Z

Marbella, Andalusia, Spain (pic: Getty)

EMERGENCY evacuation plans for Brits living in Spain and Portugal are being drawn up amid fears of the euro collapsing.

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The drastic proposals emerged as a former Security Minister warned expats could be left stranded and destitute by the break-up of the single currency.

Brits who invested their savings in their adopted countries may not be able to withdraw cash and could even lose their homes if banks call in loans, worried ministers are warning.

The Foreign Office is preparing to bring them back from Spain and Portugal if the two countries are forced out of the euro, triggering a banking collapse.

A million Brits live in Spain and 50,000 in neighbouring Portugal – plus a million in the other eurozone countries.

And Baroness Neville-Jones, who only stepped down as a minister in May, called the situation “very, very worrying”.

The Tory peer – who once chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee for MI5, MI6 and other security agencies – said: “Spain is clearly a vulnerable area. If that happens, one of the things that will happen in a crash of that kind, is that the banks would close their doors. You would find that there are people there, including our own citizens, a lot of them, who couldn’t get money out to live on. So you would have a destitution problem.”

British planes, ships and coaches could be sent to pluck our citizens from debt-ridden Spain and Portugal

Commenting on the evacuation plans, she added: “I think they are right to be doing that. I think this is a real contingency that they need to plan against – very, very worrying.”

Officials are braced for a nightmare scenario where thousands end up penniless and sleeping at airports with no means of getting home. Planes, ships and coaches could be sent, with some expats being brought out through Gibraltar.

The Foreign Office could offer small loans while piling pressure on the banks to give Brits access to their funds.

Spanish and Portuguese banks guarantee the first 100,000 euros deposited by savers but many put limits on withdrawals in a crisis.

A powerful credit rating agency downgraded 10 Spanish banks last week, while another warned over the weekend the debt crisis was threatening to spiral out of control.

Spanish king forced son-in-law to quit job in 2006

2011-12-19T02:24:00.001Z

King Juan Carlos told his son-in-law in 2006 to cut ties with a company now mired in corruption allegations, an official at Spain's royal palace said Sunday. Authorities are probing the activities of a non-profit company run by Inaki Urdangarin between 2004 and 2006. "(The king) ordered him to stand down from his activities and he sold his shares," said the official, who works at the royal palace's press office, confirming reports in the Spanish press. "He was told he shouldn't work for himself and it would be better if he worked overseas." Urdangarin, 43, also known as the Duke of Palma de Mallorca, now works for Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica in Washington, where he lives with with his wife, Infanta Cristina. The scandal, the first to hit Spain's royal family in years, centres on Urdangarin's time at the helm of the Instituto Noos, now suspected of siphoning off money from contracts paid by the regional government of the Balearic Islands, where the institute is based. The royal palace did not uncover any lies or fraud in 2006, the source said. However, a royal legal advisor found signs the Noos institute was possibly involved in commercial activities not consistent its non-profit mission. On December 12, the royal palace froze Urdangarin out of official activities over the scandal. The royal family traditionally maintains a discreet profile in Spain, where Juan Carlos is widely respected, credited with guiding the country to democracy after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. The scandal has nevertheless caused anger at a time when ordinary Spaniards are being squeezed by spending cuts and a lack of jobs, with an unemployment rate of 21.5 percent.

Spain's longest-serving inmate received a government pardon yesterday that saw him and his family convinced that he would walk free immediately

2011-12-17T00:34:00.001Z

After 35 years in jail and eight successful breakout attempts, Spain's longest-serving inmate received a government pardon yesterday that saw him and his family convinced that he would walk free immediately – only for him to remain behind bars.

Since 1976, Spanish courts have found Miguel Angel Montes Neiro guilty of more than 30 robberies and armed burglaries, many committed while on the run. But even as a spokesman for the Spanish government, Jose Blanco, confirmed yesterday that Montes Neiro, 61, had received a pardon for two of his multiple crimes, another outstanding sentence – for robbery and illicit possession of firearms – will see him remain in jail.

Montes Neiro, from the province of Granada in southern Andalusia, was predictably delighted when news of the pardon broke yesterday lunchtime, telling his family by phone: "Don't come to the prison gates when I get out, I want to walk the first two or three kilometres so I can feel the fresh air like a free man."

However, it emerged that his pardon was only partial and that a court review of a 13-year sentence was still pending.

Montes Neiro spent his first night in the cells in 1966, aged 16, when he was arrested for stealing a packet of cigarettes. His first formal sentence came a decade later for desertion – but not before he had spent 10 days in army prison for stealing a sub-machine gun.

During his numerous breakouts, the most recent in 2009 when he spent two hours on self-imposed parole to attend the wake for his mother, Montes Neiro found the time to marry twice and have two children – and to commit a string of hold-ups and kidnaps.

Montes Neiro's record is as varied as it is long. He has been convicted of beating up hostages on three occasions, and he once formed part of a gang that broke into a Granada home and threatened to cut off a man's thumb unless his wife revealed the location of his safe.

His escapes include one from a maximum security prison in the Spanish colony of Ceuta in 1979, but perhaps his most dramatic breakout came in 1981: after hanging himself in a staged suicide bid, breaking two ribs, he escaped from prison hospital in a taxi.

On the run for a total of three years, his repeated recapture was facilitated by his tendency to remain in or near his home town. His one spell abroad, in Morocco, ended when he returned to Granada because he missed his family.

Spanish, Italian police smash drug smuggling ring

2011-12-11T13:30:00.001Z

Spanish and Italian police made five arrests while busting a drug-trafficking ring that for years smuggled cocaine from South America to Europe, investigators said on Friday. The group arranged for narcotics to be put on merchant ships headed to Europe. Just before the vessels arrived at their destination, the smugglers would dump cocaine packages overboard, Spanish police said in a statement. Members of the gang waiting in inflatable boats would then pick up the cocaine and take it to shore, from where it was distributed to customers in Spain and Italy, officials said.Two members of the group were detained in the Italian port city of Genoa in March in a joint operation by Spanish and Italian police. Police detained another three members of the group, including its leader, three months later in the northwestern Spanish coastal region of Galicia. "During the search of the home of the ringleader, police found a vault camouflaged behind the wall of the cellar, which housed security cameras that monitored the rest of the house as well as two large safes, cash, valuable watches, computer equipment and documents," police said in the statement. Police also seized 55 kilos (120 pounds) of cocaine, three cash-counting machines and five cars. Spain is the main gateway to Europe for cocaine from Latin America and for cannabis from north Africa

The alleged members of the Dominican-based Trinitarios gang all face charges of racketeering, narcotics conspiracy and gun trafficking

2011-12-07T23:25:00.001Z

Suspects accused of selling guns and drugs.

Authorities collared 38 Bronx and upper Manhattan gangbangers Wednesday after a two-year probe into a notorious crew, officials said.

The alleged members of the Dominican-based Trinitarios gang all face charges of racketeering, narcotics conspiracy and gun trafficking, authorities said.

The undercover investigation — which involved officers from the NYPD, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Homeland Security — netted about $25,000 worth of drugs and 12 firearms in Wednesday’s raid, police said.

One weapon recovered, a Mac-11 machine gun, was painted the same shade of green the gang uses in its colors.

Federal prosecutors said the crew committed and planned violent acts, including murder, to protect its turf from rival gangs that include the Bloods, Crips, the Latin Kings and Dominicans Don’t Play.

“We believe we put a big dent in the Trinitarios gang,” said Capt. Lorenzo Johnson, the commanding officer of the NYPD’s Bronx gang squad.

Six people who were connected to the gang members were also arrested, police said. Authorities were still looking for about 12 other members of the gang.

Prosecutors said the Trinitarios sold firearms, including semiautomatic rifles, a shotgun and handguns, and transported them across state lines.

Numerous members of the Trinitarios who were arrested are also members of a smaller splinter gang, the Bad Boys, prosecutors said.

Johnson said most of suspects were already “known to the department in some manner,” and had long terrorized several blocks in Washington Heights and parts of the Bronx, including Marble Hill.

“Anytime we can help the community feel safer is a good day,” he said.

Glenn Mulcaire, the private eye at the centre of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, has been arrested

2011-12-07T23:14:00.001Z

Glenn Mulcaire, the private eye at the centre of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, has been arrested by Scotland Yard detectives pursuing a fresh investigation into phone intercepts, according to a person familiar with the inquiry. Officers working on Operation Weeting – the Metropolitan Police’s second probe into phone hacking at News International, which owned the now-defunct Sunday tabloid – announced on Wednesday that they had arrested a 41-year-old man who was being held on suspicion of conspiracy to hack voicemail messages and perverting the course of justice. Mr Mulcaire is the 16th person to be arrested under the new operation, and has already served a six-month prison sentence in 2007 after pleading guilty to intercepting phone messages. He was arrested at his home in Surrey in a dawn swoop and held in a south London police station. Detectives on Operation Weeting have used the private investigator’s notebooks – which contain the names of nearly 5,800 potential victims and run to around 11,000 pages – as the basis for their investigation, trawling through the documents to identify those who may have been hacked. The hacking scandal was reignited this summer when it was revealed that the News of the World had hacked into the voicemail messages of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler after she went missing in 2002, leading her parents to believe that she was still alive. Last month, Mr Mulcaire released a statement through his lawyer, denying that he had deleted voicemail messages on Ms Dowler’s phone. “[He] did not delete messages and had no reason to do so,” the statement read. The Financial Times could not reach Mr Mulcaire’s lawyer for comment on Wednesday. Chris Bryant, a Labour MP and suspected hacking victim, told the FT he was “quite encouraged” that Mr Mulcaire had been taken in for questioning. “I always thought this was a logical next step, but not one [the police] would take unless they had sufficient fresh evidence to put to [Mr Mulcaire], and it seems now they do,” he said. News of the arrest came as lawyers for Andy Coulson, the News of the World’s former editor, argued in the High Court on Wednesday that the tabloid’s parent company should continue to pay Mr Coulson’s legal bills arising from the criminal investigation into phone hacking. It emerged during the course of Mr Coulson’s evidence that News Group Newspapers – a subsidiary of News International – had continued to reimburse Mr Coulson for legal fees relating to his involvement in the judge-led phone hacking inquiry and parliamentary select committee hearings. The court heard that Mr Coulson had received a letter from Tom Mockridge, the chief executive of News International, in August informing him of an “immediate cessation” of payments in relation to criminal legal fees.

co-defendant in the Hells Angels trial last week was found not guilty on several charges.

2011-12-07T15:50:00.001Z

co-defendant in the Hells Angels trial last week was found not guilty on several charges. Timothy David Hill, 45, of Rock Hill was acquitted on charges of attempted murder, attempted armed robbery, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy by a York County jury Friday. Hill was represented by public defenders Harry Dest and B.J. Barrowclough. The main defendant, 58-year-old William "Spook" Sosebee of Rock Hill, was convicted of attempted armed robbery, kidnapping, possession of a knife during a violent crime and first-degree assault and battery, according to a news release from the 16th Circuit Solicitor's Office. Judge John C. Hayes sentenced Sosebee to 10 years in prison with no parole. Sosebee was accused of stabbing Jim Moye of North Carolina at Wall Bangers Social Club on East Main Street. Moye, 58, is a member of Iron Order, another motorcycle club, and had stopped at Wall Bangers, according to the solicitor's office news release. Evidence at the trial showed that Moye, who had never been to the bar before, did not know that the Hells Angels considered Wall Bangers "their bar," according to the release. After Moye arrived, Sosebee approached him and beat him in the head with the handle of a Bowie knife, according to the solicitor's office. Sosebee put the knife to Moye's throat and demanded he hand over his Iron Order motorcycle vest. Moye refused and repeatedly asked to be allowed to leave. Sosebee then stabbed him in the abdomen. Moye survived after undergoing surgery at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. Officers were called to the hospital after the stabbing, but Moye would only say "it was a motorcycle thing," according to reports. A witness identified Sosebee to officers. At the time of the stabbing, Hill also had been arrested and charged and was called a member of the Red Devil, a support group of the Hells Angels, in a Rock Hill Police report. However, Hill was found not guilty last week by a York County jury and was released.

The Rise of the Dark Souls, the Black Mask, the Thunder Bikers and the Iron Beast are a sure sign the feared gang is trying to reclaim lucrative territory

2011-12-07T15:46:00.001Z

The Hells Angels, decimated by a series of raids, are reorganizing under the guise of four so-called puppet clubs, QMI Agency has learned. The emergence of the Dark Souls, the Black Mask, the Thunder Bikers and the Iron Beast are a sure sign the feared gang is trying to reclaim lucrative territory, say experts. Three of the four new Hells puppet clubs in Quebec have quietly announced their presence on the Internet. The Black Mask Facebook page says it has a base in Scott, east of Quebec City. Newly established in four regions of the province, the puppet clubs sport colours inspired by the Hells as well as jackets adorned with distinctive logos and marked "MC" for Motorcycle Club. Undercover Montreal police officers gathered information on the clubs by infiltrating a biker meeting at a Montreal bar in November, sources tell QMI Agency. Sixty aspiring bikers were met by three members of the Nomads, the select Hells chapter once run by Maurice (Mom) Boucher and now based in Ontario. Police gathered evidence, but didn't make any arrests. Montreal police and Quebec provincial police declined to comment for this story. But a provincial police investigator last month confirmed the Hells' push-back into Quebec. "The Ontario Nomads have some influence in Quebec that they had not had before 2009," said Insp. Michel Pelletier. He added that Quebec's Hells leadership needed reinforcements to run their rackets because nearly all of its members were nabbed in Project SharQc, a sweeping 2009 biker roundup. Hells clubs virtually disappeared following Operation Springtime 2001, the first of a set of massive raids that crippled Quebec biker gangs and ended a bloody 10-year war that claimed 150 lives, including those of bystanders. A 2003 report by the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada said biker proxy clubs allow higher-ups to stay out of the spotlight. "The outlaw motorcycle gangs will use clubs ... for criminal acts in order to avoid prosecution," said the CISC report. "However, it seems that the clubs are becoming increasingly rare because it is difficult to control and because of the success of (raids)."

US agents laundered drug money

2011-12-04T21:24:00.001Z

Anti-narcotics agents working for the US government have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds to see how the system works and use the information against Mexican drug cartels, The New York Times reported Sunday. Citing unnamed current and former federal law enforcement officials, the newspaper said the agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders. Some 45,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, when its government launched a major military crackdown against the powerful drug cartels that have terrorized border communities as they battled over lucrative smuggling routes. According to these officials, the operations were aimed at identifying how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are, the report said. The agents had deposited the proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents, the paper noted. While the DEA conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years, The Times said. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests, the report said. According to The Times, agency officials declined to publicly discuss details of their work, citing concerns about compromising their investigations. But Michael Vigil, a former senior official who is currently working for a private contracting company called Mission Essential Personnel, is quoted by the paper as saying: "We tried to make sure there was always close supervision of these operations so that we were accomplishing our objectives, and agents weren?t laundering money for the sake of laundering money."

DRUGS baron Curtis “Cocky” Warren is serving 13 years behind bars – but his tentacles still stretch around the globe.

2011-12-04T21:14:00.001Z

Curtis Warren

He is suspected of operating a £300million empire built on smuggling cocaine, heroin and cannabis in deals with criminal cartels in Latin America, the Middle East and Spain. And all from his jail cell.

But 48-year-old Warren faces the biggest challenge yet to his evil enterprise as police launch a double assault in the courts on his fortune.

Authorities in Jersey are set to haul him before a judge next month to face a £200million Confiscation Order after he was convicted of drug smuggling on the Channel Island in 2009.

And in a second attack the Serious Organised Crime Agency, in a rare move, is asking judges to impose a Serious Crime Prevention Order in the High Court in London to stop him in his tracks when he is released in 2015. Yesterday Warren’s legal team won an adjournment in the High Court to delay a hearing scheduled for this week so they can prepare the crime lord’s defence.

With typical arrogance he told his lawyers to fight the bid on the grounds it breaches his “human rights”.

The SCP order, signed by Alun Milford, the Chief Crown Prosecutor and director of the Serious Organised Crime Division, seeks to restrict Warren’s use of communication devices and public phones.

It demands that he never has more than £1,000 in cash, to “make it harder for him to buy drugs or reward criminal associates”. And a financial reporting requirement will “deter him from acquisitive crime and give law enforcement authorities the opportunity to investigate any wealth he comes into”.

A source said: “Curtis is almost untouchable. A mobile is vital to him. It’s all he needs to operate. There are thousands of mobiles smuggled into the prison system and he has the means to get one.”

Curtis Warren, from Liverpool, leaves The Royal Court in St Hellier

Warren is the only convicted criminal ever to appear on The Sunday Times rich list, which in 2005 described him as a “property developer” with an estimated fortune of £76million. But according to underworld sources his real wealth is four times that.

He appointed himself chairman and chief operating officer of a global operation to flood Britain with cocaine and heroin.

His criminal associates say Warren’s business philosophy was simple and effective – drugs are a product to buy and sell like oil and gold. He is a meticulous planner whose organisation resembles the layers of executives and managers you find in a City institution, said a police source who has followed Warren’s career.

Before the euro was introduced, he was said to be putting £1million a week in money-laundering scams after trusted couriers changed cash into German marks and Dutch guilders and moved it abroad.

Paul Grimes, a gangster turned supergrass after his son died from a heroin overdose, said: “Warren wanted to be the cock everyone looks up to. He loves the status.”

Even behind bars it is feared Warren still handles deals and keeps phone numbers in his head as he links supplies to smugglers.

Detectives believe he has villas in Spain, Turkey and Gambia, owned through an intricate web of associates who also operate a Spanish casino, Turkish petrol stations and 250 rental properties in the North West of England.

Warren says the claims are “ridiculous”, alleging that he only has a flat in Liverpool’s Albert Dock and a house on the Wirral.

Softly-spoken Warren started his criminal career at the bottom when he was just nine and living at home with his dad, sailor Curtis Aloysius, and mum Sylvia, a shipyard boiler attendant. He was recruited by a gang to climb through small windows and burgle homes. By 11 he was carrying out muggings and armed robberies in the tough estates of Toxteth, Liverpool.

At 18, he was sent to borstal for assaulting police. In an adult jail eh honed his talent for crime.

Warren started selling drugs on the street and rubbing shoulders with Liverpool’s biggest villains, who underwrote huge cocaine consignments with Columbia’s Cali mobsters worth millions.

GRAFTING

He does not drink or take drugs, allowing his photographic memory to be razor-sharp at all times – especially in jail. On the outside, he has always shunned flash cars and big houses and wears tracksuits instead of Armani suits so as not to attract attention.

“Cocky takes no unnecessary risks,” said an ex-associate.

Paul Grimes added: “Unlike me and my crew, he wasn’t out till all hours in the pubs and clubs. He wasn’t flash. If he was grafting it was all VW Golfs and Passats or a low-key Rover.” Streetwise Warren gave contacts nicknames, including The Vampire, The Egg On Legs and Cracker to throw eavesdropping police off the scent.

His methods developed a business worth hundreds of millions as the drug trade exploded in the 1980s. He became a trusted client of Colombian cocaine cartels, Turkish heroin producers and Spanish cannabis suppliers.

It enabled him to get huge quantities of drugs on credit.

As he left court on a technicality during a 1993 trial for smuggling cocaine worth £250million, he is said to have told Customs officers he was “off to spend my £87million from the first shipment and you can’t f****** touch me”. Grimes, who will be under witness protection for the rest of his life, said: “Warren is a parasite.”

As Merseyside turf wars worsened in the mid-1990s, Warren moved to Sassenheim in Holland.

When Dutch police intercepted 400kg of cocaine, the game was up – for the time being.

At other addresses controlled by Warren, officers discovered a £150million haul containing 1,500kg of cannabis, 60kg of heroin, 50kg of ecstasy, 960 CS gas canisters, three guns, ammunition and £400,000 in Dutch guilders. The bust put Warren behind bars for 12 years in 1997.

In 2005, Dutch police charged him with running a drug smuggling cartel from his cell but the case was dropped because of insufficient evidence.

On his release, Warren returned to his manor in Merseyside to take up his mantle as the King of Coke.

But within weeks he was busted plotting what he described as “just a little starter” to get himself re-established as the No1 drugs baron in Europe.

PROPERTIES

He was jailed again in 2009 for 13 years for trying to smuggle £1million of cannabis into Jersey – for which he is still behind bars at Full Sutton Prison near York.

Following his sentence at Jersey’s Royal Court, SOCA said Warren was on its Lifetime Offender Management List.

However, Warren could now have his vast fortune seized. After he was jailed, Jersey authorities said they were determined to force Warren to hand over his assets and are seeking a Confiscation Order for more than £200million.

Warren is determined to take his fight against the Confiscation Order – which could see police seize his properties purchased with proceeds of crime – all the way to the European courts.

His solicitor said his client will “fight it all the way”.

Last week, in a similar case that will strike fear into the London underworld, kingpin Terry Adams, 57, was jailed for eight weeks, for breaching a Financial Reporting Order, after authorities demanded details on his spending.

Officers are determined that this week’s application in the High Court will finally nail Warren’s sinister organisation.

It is understood that this is the first SCPO to be applied for through the High Court.

Breaching any SCPO can lead to five years in jail and an unlimited fine. But in true Cocky fashion, Warren laughs off the order as “a mere irritant” in his bid to remain the drug trade’s Numero Uno.

WARREN once killed a fellow prisoner in a fight.

Cemal Guclu, a Turk serving 20 years for murder, attacked him at Hoorn Prison, Holland, in 1999.

Warren punched Guclu to the ground and kicked him in the head four times. Incredibly, Guclu got up but Warren struck him again. He hit his head on the ground and later died.

Warren was convicted of manslaughter and had four years added to his sentence.

Mexico army seizes Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman drug lord's $15 million

2011-11-23T23:50:00.001Z

Mexico's army seized nearly $15.4 million from the organization of the country's most powerful drug lord, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, officials said Tuesday, marking a rare financial blow to cartels. The seizure was revealed the same day U.S. border police revealed the third discovery in a week of drug-smuggling tunnel under the border with Mexico. In Mexico, the military said it found the cash was found in a vehicle on Nov. 18 in the northern border city of Tijuana and that it was linked to Guzman's operations. The haul marked the second-largest cash seizure by the military since President Felipe Calderon sent the country's armed forces out to battle drug cartels in 2006, the statement said. Some $26 million was captured in September 2008 in Culiacan, the capital of Guzman's home state of Sinaloa. Only on msnbc.com 'Grateful to be alive': Teen rescues woman from fire Mexicans cross US border to sell their plasma Chinese consumers say: Fix this fridge or sledgehammers coming Black Friday 'flash mobs,' sit-ins urged Look out kids, here comes the 'Wolf Daddy' Move to ban alleged insider trading faces pitfalls Will Gingrich's comments haunt him? About 45,000 people have died in the conflict in the last five years and the government has captured or killed dozens of top level drug smugglers.

Inquest told how householder stabbed intruder as he waved knife

2011-11-23T14:56:00.001Z

householder, who stabbed to death a burglar trying to break into his cannabis factory, told an inquest he did not mean to harm anybody. Barry Day said he remembered grabbing a kitchen knife as the door to his house, in Beckside Road, Lidget Green, Bradford, was being kicked in, sticking the knife through a hole in the door and waving it. Shazad Habib-Ur Rehman, 32, suffered a stab wound to the chest and died in Bradford Royal Infirmary five days after the incident, in October last year. Mr Day, giving evidence yesterday at the inquest into Mr Rehman’s death, said he was not aware he had stabbed someone and did not intend to harm anyone. He said he was in fear. Detective Chief Inspector Simon Atkinson, of West Yorkshire Police’s Homicide and Major Enquiry Team, told the Bradford hearing consideration was given to prosecuting Mr Day, 62, for murder and a file was submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service, but the CPS decided there was insufficient evidence. He was prosecuted for cultivating cannabis, after 75 plants and a hydroponic cannabis factory were found upstairs at his house, and given a suspended prison sentence. The dead man’s three accomplices, who have all served prison sentences for attempted burglary in connection with the incident, told the inquest they had decided to burgle the house after hearing about the cannabis factory. Gareth Dobson, 23, of Windhill, said he kicked in the bottom panel of the door. He said Mr Rehman said to Mr Day: “We don’t want no trouble, we just want the weed. That’s when Mr Day lashed out and stabbed him with a knife.” The friends drove Mr Rehman to hospital. Mohammed Waqas Khan told the inquest: “We just wanted to take what there was and go. There was no intention to go in there to endanger anyone’s life.”

Gaddafi spymaster ‘must face trial over IRA crimes

2011-11-23T11:07:00.001Z

VICTIMS of Libyan-sponsored IRA terrorism in the UK have called for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s former spy chief to be tried in the International Criminal Court for his part in republican atrocities. Libya’s interim government reported on Sunday that Abdullah al-Senoussi had been captured. The interim government is keen to try him in Libya but international concerns have been raised about the possibility that he may not receive a fair trial. Representatives from the International Criminal Court are visiting Libya in order to make representations. Former intelligence minister Senoussi was seen as the right-hand man of dictator Gaddafi, who was killed shortly after his capture by rebel forces last month. IRA victims campaigners Willie Frazer and London-based Jonathan Ganesh believe Senoussi was the key link between the Libyan regime and the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland. Libya sent numerous shipments of arms and Semtex to the IRA throughout the Troubles, several of which were intercepted. In a joint statement, they said: “Colonel Abdullah al-Senoussi has been involved in the murder of countless people within Libya and has also been involved in the murder of Irish and UK citizens due to his unprecedented work with the IRA and other international terrorist organisations. “We are now drafting a detailed petition to the International Criminal Court to ensure that Colonel Senoussi will be held accountable for all his crimes against humanity. “Senoussi must be held accountable due to his involvement in the murder of all the innocent people who lost their lives due to the Semtex he supplied to the IRA.” Senoussi was one of the last senior figures from the Gaddafi regime still on the run. Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, was seized on Saturday and both he and Senoussi are wanted for alleged war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Senoussi, a brother-in-law of Col Gaddafi, is said to have been arrested at his sister’s home in the southern town of Sabha on Sunday. He has been accused of human rights abuses, including his implication in the 1996 massacre of more than 1,000 inmates at the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. Mr Frazer and Mr Ganesh added: “We are now calling on the international community to ensure that he must stand trial for his international crimes against humanity within the ICC. “Due to his involvement with IRA terrorism he became a defendant within our civil legal action within the USA judiciary during April 2006 as we desperately tried to bring him to justice. “This is an evil man who we will not allow to escape international justice. He must be immediately handed to the ICC for all his international crimes against humanity.”

Murder trial begins for two Hells Angels, five others

2011-11-23T10:36:00.001Z

two full-patch Hells Angels, made their first appearance in a Vancouver courtroom Monday for the June beating death of Kelowna resident Dain Phillips. The men - Hells Angels members Robert Thomas and Norm Cocks - as well as Cocks' father Robert, Anson Schell, Thomas Vaughan and brothers Daniel and Matthew McRae were charged with second-degree murder two weeks after the fatal assault on Phillips on June 12. They made their initial appearances in Kelowna Provincial Court, where five of the accused were released on bail. But Crown prosecutors have decided to proceed by way of direct indictment, meaning the case goes straight to B.C. Supreme Court without a preliminary hearing at the Provincial Court level. And prosecutors have moved the case to Vancouver, where the accused appeared Monday in a new high-security courtroom built for an unrelated gang murder case. Crown spokesman Neil MacKenzie said the decision to move the case to the Lower Mainland was made "given the number of the accused, the number of counsel involved and the demands the case would place on court resources in Kelowna." There is a ban on publication of evidence and submissions in the case. Justice Arne Silverman put the matter over until Dec. 19, with a tentative start date for the eight-month trial sometime in January 2013. Thomas, 46, and Norm Cocks, 31, appeared wearing red prison garb from the North Fraser Pretrial Centre, where they remain in custody. The others - Dan McRae, 21, Matt McRae, 19, Schell, 19, Vaughan, 22 and Robert Cocks, 53 - arrived with relatives and supporters, each being directed to seats behind bulletproof Plexiglas. No one from Phillips's family attended Monday. The Vancouver Sun earlier reported that Phillips, a married father of three, tried to intervene peacefully in a dispute two of his sons were having with a pair of brothers with whom they had attended Rutland secondary. When Phillips drove to a meeting place on McCurdy Road in the early evening of June 12, he was attacked by a group of men who had arrived in two separate vehicles. He died later in hospital. Insp. Pat Fogarty, of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, said after the arrests that Phillips was trying to resolve the problem when he was savagely attacked. The elder Cocks is president of a Hells Angels puppet club called the Throttle Lockers, while the four youngest accused were described by police as gang associates. The case is believed to be the first in the 28-year-history of the Hells Angels in B.C. where a club member has been charged with murder.

Latin Kings charged in Texas slaying

2011-11-22T22:49:00.001Z

Fifteen members of the Almighty Latin Kings have been indicted for alleged roles in 19 murders, including slayings of juveniles and a pregnant woman. One of the murders was in Big Spring, Texas, according to the indictment, made public Friday. The murders were done to control gang territory and further their illegal activities, according to the U.S. Justice Department. The indictment also alleges that two Chicago police officers robbed people for the gang, sometimes while in uniform, the Sun-Times reported. Several Latin King members already had been convicted in connection with a 2008 drive-by shooting in Big Spring where six people were shot with an AK-47. The victims included a woman who was 26 weeks pregnant at the time. She and another victim died of their wounds, the department reported.

Devastating report into the failures of police and care agencies to protect teenage girls who have been groomed, raped and sold by male gangs, most of whom are Asian.

2011-11-22T14:02:00.001Z

The mother of one teenager from Leeds, who attempted suicide after a gang rape, said her daughter was the victim of a 'broken system.'

'Everyone failed her,' she told The Times. 'There was no sharing of information.

'They (police) had the names and knew where they (abusers) worked yet the men who did this have never once been arrested or spoken to by the police.'

West Yorkshire Police vowed to look again at the case to see if 'there is evidence that can help bring evil men to book'.

Growing worry: CCTV footage shows now jailed gang members Mohammed Romaan Liaqat and Abid Mohammed Saddique meeting girls as they cruise the streets of Derby in a BMW

Jailed: Saddique, left, and Liaqat, right, were leaders of the paedophile ring in Derby and committed a catalogue of offences against vulnerable young girls

Children's charity Barnardos has been calling on the Government to take action on child exploitation since January with its Cut Them Free campaign.

Other caregivers have also suggested that political sensitivities are to blame for a near paralysis of the systems designed to keep children safe.

JOSIE'S STORY

Like most little girls, Josie lived for horses. She had an exemplary school record with 100 per cent attendance rate.

But at 13, the teen from Keighley, West Yorkshire, was given a laptop and quickly became addicted to Facebook.

Her father was then warned his daughter was spending a lot of time with older Asian men.

One even told the father he would 'slit his throat' when he answered the phone to him.

From there it got worse. Josie started disappearing overnight and began drinking.

Yet, when her father locked his daughter in her room to protect her, it was he who got into trouble with the police for false imprisonment.

He told The Times he has since collected every scrap of evidence to prove his daughter is being sexually exploited by gangs.

'The police kept saying that they're waiting until Josie realises it's wrong,' he said.

'Is that really the best they can do?

CHARLOTTE'S STORY

When the father of 14-year-old Charlotte looked at his daughter's Facebook profile, he discovered 'loads of male, Asian friends.'

Concerned, he started to restrict his daughter's activities. The teen from Keighley, West Yorkshire, then went to live with her mother.

He tracked down all the names and addresses of her friends he believed were involved and passed them on to police.

Meanwhile her school was reporting Charlotte had begun arriving looking 'dirty and extremely thin'.

She was going missing for days at a time, according to agency notes.

By October last year she 'admitted she has slept with different Asian males.'

The police told Charlotte's father they hoped to take action against the men.

That was 17 months ago and he is still waiting.

'There's no will to deal with this issue in Keighley' he said.

'What chance have these kids got if that's the attitude of the police?'

There is a culture 'which assumes that once a girl gets to 14 she's beyond hope of intervention - it's too late,' a source told The Times.

Police and care agencies often say that they cannot take action against suspects without the victim's co-operation.

However, a 2008 protocol established by the force and West Yorkshire's five local authorities states: 'Adults involved in child sexual exploitation... should be treated as child sex abusers and subjected to the full rigour of the criminal law.'

NICOLA'S STORY

Nicola is the only case in six who was groomed by a gang of white men.

The abuse began when she was 12 after a visit to Leeds from her family home in Bradford.

Nicola had thought they were 'really nice people' but by 13 she was doing drugs - 'everything but heroin'.

She was raped twice. The first time she was 'drugged up to the eyeballs' and remembers being dragged into a bedroom and gang raped.

Afterwards her mother took Nicola to the police station, only to be told that 'we don't deal with that here'.

In desperation Nicola's mother took her daughter to New Zealand and away from the gang.

She let her return four months later.

Nicola did return to her old haunts but discovered it wasn't really what she wanted.

'I used to think it was so exciting,' she told The Times. 'But after New Zealand, it was like seeing them with another pair of eyes.'

She hasn't been back since.

Children's minister, Tim Loughton, suggested two weeks ago that the plan will call on councils to act with a 'much greater urgency' to identify victims of sexual exploitation while taking 'robust action against those who commit these appalling crimes.'

As well as the gang rape case of the girl in Leeds, five new cases have been highlighted by The Times' investigation.

No one has been prosecuted for sex exploitation in any of them. Only one of the girls in the six cases had been in care.

One was groomed by white students, but in all the other cases, the perpetrators were Asian, mostly of Pakistani origin.

This pattern of abuse at the hands of male Asian gangs in the West Yorkshire area has been highlighted before, but never formally acknowledged.

In January the Asian ringleaders of a gang in Derby, who brought a ‘reign of terror’ to a city’s streets, targeting and grooming young girls for horrific sexual abuse, were jailed.

Abid Saddique and Mohammed Liaqat were told they would serve a minimum of 11 years and eight years respectively before they could be considered for release.

A DfE spokesman refused to reveal the contents of the National Action Plan but said: 'We are publishing an action plan this week and that will draw on work around the country to prevent sexual exploitation, identify those at risk and support victims.

'It will address the challenge of securing prosecutions and the need for robust action against perpetrators.

Former Royal Marine Carl Davies was raped before being stabbed and his body hurled into a roadside ravine

2011-11-20T11:44:00.001Z

Brutal: Ex-Marine Carl Davies was raped before being killed and dumped in a ravine, a new post mortem has revealed

Former Royal Marine Carl Davies was raped before being stabbed and his body hurled into a roadside ravine close to a military barracks on the paradise island of Reunion, a new post-mortem has confirmed.

A second examination of the body of the Kent man revealed he had been sexually assaulted prior to being beaten about the head and knifed in the stomach.

The first bungled autopsy put his death down to an accident.

As revealed by MailOnline yesterday, his family believe his murder was covered up to protect tourism there, which accounts for 70per cent of GDP.

A team of British detectives is due to arrive on the island to assist investigations, sources indicated at the weekend.

On the night of his death on November 9, Mr Davies had been out drinking in St Denis, the capital of Reunion, with two sailors who were serving on board the Cyprus-registered MV Atlantic Trader.

Mr Davies, 33, was employed on the container ship as a guard against Somali pirates who regularly prey on ships in the Indian ocean.

Four police officers stabbed in north London

2011-11-19T14:23:00.001Z

Four police officers were stabbed as they tried to detain a man after a disturbance in north London, Scotland Yard said on Saturday. Police said officers were called to an incident shortly before 9 a.m. on the main road in Kingsbury where they had tried to speak to a man before he ran into a butcher's shop and grabbed a knife. "Officers followed the man in an attempt to detain him and were subsequently assaulted," Chief Superintendent Dal Babu told reporters. "Four male police constables suffered stab injuries during the incident and have been taken by the London Ambulance Service to hospital." One was stabbed in the stomach, a second suffered head injuries and stab wound to his arm, the third was stabbed in the leg, and the last sustained stab wounds to a hand and also suffered a broken hand. Witnesses told media the suspect had been shouting at police beforehand and up to 10 officers had tried to calm him down. A 32-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and is being quizzed at a police station in the area.

private jets waved through customs and immigration checks

2011-11-15T12:23:00.001Z

Home Secretary Theresa May (Pic:PA)

THERESA May was fighting for her job last night after damning new documents fuelled the scandal of lax security at our borders.

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Leaked emails showed that thousands of private jet passengers were allowed into the UK without going through immigration or customs.

They also revealed the Home Secretary relaxed checks at airports on at least 2,500 occasions this summer.

And the Mirror can reveal passport applications are being secretly subjected to a controversial new “postcode lottery” trial scheme.

The High Risk Applications scheme is based on fraud statistics. Staff were given a list of postcodes to check against every new passport application or renewal. Applicants in areas deemed to be higher risk face several weeks additional delay in getting their passports.

In London, the only areas which get virtually no checks are postcodes that begin with WC and EC – the most central and prosperous areas. Meanwhile applications from women aged 50 and over are often waved through.

A source said: “It’s a classic Tory policy, and it discriminates against those they deem to be living in ‘poor’ areas.

“The whole thing smacks of elitism and snobbery. A lot of people are very unhappy with the process.”

These revelations come on the day ousted Border Agency official Brodie Clark gives evidence to MPs on how he was pushed out by Mrs May.

Borders boss Brodie Clark

Labour yesterday released the leaked emails showing UK Border Agency staff were told NOT to check passengers arriving in the UK by private jets – at the instruction of the Home Office.

From March 2, 2011, anyone on a private charter did not have to show their passports and could avoid customs. Figures show there are between 80,000 to 90,000 private flights each year, carrying two to three passengers.

The emails show an unnamed official at Durham Tees Valley Airport warned the UK Border Agency that the policy was putting the UK’s security at risk.

He said that staff “continue to feel uneasy about an instruction that is at odds with national policy and is creating an unnecessary gap in border security which, if exploited by the unscrupulous, could bring the Agency into disrepute”.

He also warned there was no way of checking if the number of people arriving in the country was the same as they had been advised.

His manager at the UK Border Agency’s Border Force said the “no checks policy” was part of a “new national strategy”.

In a further blow to Mrs May, other leaked documents showed how Britain’s borders were abandoned on hundreds of occasions over summer.

The Home Secretary ordered a pilot scheme, which ran from July to October this year, under which Border Agency staff could relax checks on passengers. It meant people arriving from the European Economic Area did not have the biometric chip in their passport checked, while children under 18 could be waved through.

These “level 2 checks” were used on at least 2,600 occasions. The relaxed regime was used to speed up queues at immigration control.

According to an email from a Border Agency Border Force official, the checks were relaxed 100 times in the first week of the trial and more than 260 times in the sixth week.

We revealed last week that officials warned Mrs May the easing of border checks could lead to a rise in child trafficking.

Mrs May admits to bringing in the pilot scheme without informing MPs. But she claims that Mr Clark went further by extending it to include passengers from outside Europe.

Mr Clark, who resigned last week, denies he acted without ministerial authority. His testimony to the Commons select committee could prove very damaging to Mrs May.

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said last night: “This is startling new information about the scale of the borders fiasco.

“Ten days on there are even more questions than answers about what on earth was going on at our borders.

“Last week the Home Secretary told us no one had been waived through without checks. But these documents show passengers on private flights weren’t even seen.

"Last week the Home Office wouldn’t admit to having figures about how often checks were downgraded. Now we know those figures exist and that checks were downgraded 260 times in one week alone.

“The Home Secretary needs to show she is capable of sorting this fiasco out rather than making it worse.”

Last night, the Home Office refused to comment on the trial.

The UKBA said: “It is not true that we don’t carry out passport and warnings checks on private flight passengers and will deploy officers to airfields where we have concerns.”

Ernesto Manuel Gonzalez, 53, arrived at Washoe County jail for proceedings related to the Sept. 23 shooting of Jeffrey "Jethro" Pettigrew of the Hells Angels inside a hotel-casino

2011-11-15T05:48:00.001Z

Vagos motorcycle gang member arrested in the slaying of a rival at a Sparks casino was transferred Monday to Reno from California to await a court appearance on a murder charge, authorities said. Ernesto Manuel Gonzalez, 53, arrived at Washoe County jail for proceedings related to the Sept. 23 shooting of Jeffrey "Jethro" Pettigrew of the Hells Angels inside a hotel-casino, Sparks police said. Pettigrew was president of the Hells Angels chapter in San Jose, Calif. The extradition of Gonzalez came after Hells Angels member Cesar Villagrana, 36, was rearrested Thursday in San Jose on an indictment charging him with murder in the case, Sparks police Detective Rocky Triplett said. Gonzalez's lawyer, David Chesnoff, wasn't immediately available for comment. Gonzalez was arrested Sept. 30 in San Francisco. Villagrana, of Gilroy, Calif., was with Pettigrew when he was shot. Two Vagos members were wounded in the casino shootout, and another was shot in the stomach the next morning by a gunman in a passing car. Triplett said Villagrana was charged with murder because he can be seen on casino security video drawing a gun and shooting at others. Villagrana was arrested the night of the shooting with a 9mm Smith and Wesson semi-automatic handgun that had been reported stolen in Arizona in 1998, police said. He was previously freed on $150,000 bail after being charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon, carrying a concealed weapon illegally and discharging a firearm in a structure. Villagrana has not entered a plea on any of the charges. Richard Schonfeld, defense co-counsel, told Sparks Justice Court Judge Susan Deriso during a court appearance that Villagrana came from a stable family and had no prior felony convictions.

Four-year sentence for fatal Maple Ridge stabbing

2011-11-15T05:42:00.000Z

A drunken argument between two men on their way to an after-hours bash at a Hells Angels clubhouse led to the fatal stabbing of one and a four-year sentence for the other. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Ronald McKinnon handed Coquitlam's Andrew Leach the jail term Monday after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter for killing James William Ball on Sept. 25, 2009. Leach has already been in jail for more than two years, so McKinnon credited him with double-time and said the sentence equalled an eight-year term. McKinnon addressed Ball's family in the New Westminster courtroom before pronouncing the sentence. "I can only express the court's sympathy for their very grave loss. Nothing done today is going to lessen their burden or make things easier. I read the very poignant victim impact statements which underscore the loss and pain this offence has occasioned to these innocent victims," McKinnon said. "I doubt that I am the first person to observe that this death was completely avoidable which makes it all the more tragic." Crown prosecutor Andrew Blunt read an agreed statement of facts and played a grainy, dark video of the fatal stabbing behind a Safeway on Lougheed Highway in Maple Ridge. Leach, Ball and a third man had been drinking at Club Climax in Maple Ridge until it closed at 2 a.m. They all decided to head to a nearby HA clubhouse for an after-hours party in a truck driven by the third man, Blunt explained. During the ride, Ball, 43, and Leach, now 28, began to argue. The driver pulled over behind the Safeway to relieve himself, as the conflict between the two men escalated and they got out of the truck. The Safeway video shows Leach repeatedly stabbing Ball, who is left slumped over a railing on the loading dock. The driver panicked and took off, though later returned for Leach, Blunt said. Ball was not discovered for more than three hours and later died from massive blood loss. McKinnon noted that the injuries to his neck, chest and abdomen wouldn't have been fatal if Ball had received help right away. "It seems apparent that immediate aid for Mr. Ball following his stab wounds would have saved his life," McKinnon said. Instead, Leach was dropped at his Coquitlam condo and learned the next day that Ball had died. The friend present at the crime scene ended up cooperating with police and wore a wire when he later met with Leach to get details of the stabbing. During the recorded meeting, Leach said "because he used a small knife, the wounds should not have been fatal." He explained that he had got rid of the murder weapon and burned his clothes. Leach was originally charged with second-degree murder. He pleaded guilty two months ago to manslaughter. The young father had no criminal history until the stabbing, McKinnon noted. "While one can evoke alcohol as a contributing factor, it does not excuse the crime nor does anyone suggest that it should," the judge said. "Perhaps it stands as a wake-up call to those whose consumption of alcohol tends to deprive them of reason and sense." He said he didn't know what the argument was about, "but it had to be something quite frivolous but made into a big deal because of alcohol consumption."

THE mother of missing Madeleine McCann said yesterday she still wished she could “stop time”.

2011-11-14T11:56:00.001Z

03:44 | THE mother of missing Madeleine McCann said yesterday she still wished she could “stop time”.

Poignant: Kate McCann

Kate McCann, who marked the fourth anniversary of Maddy’s disappearance in May, said she and husband Gerry would not give up on finding their little girl.

In a poignant message on the Maddy search website, she wrote: “My grandparents always said the years pass more quickly the older you get. It certainly feels that way. I still dream of being able to stop time.

“Our only alternative however is to continue doing as much as we can to the best of our ability to enhance the search for Madeleine. So that is what we’ll do.”

She added: “It is a big relief that our Government finally agreed to a review. It will be lengthy and difficult but definitely a major step.”

Maddy was nearly four when she vanished from her family’s holiday flat in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007.

Rio de Janeiro’s most wanted drugs baron who controlled the drug trade in South America’s biggest favela with fear and intimidation for 30 years has been arrested

2011-11-13T23:04:00.001Z

Rio de Janeiro’s most wanted drugs baron who controlled the drug trade in South America’s biggest favela with fear and intimidation for 30 years has been arrested after a high risk undercover police operation. Photo: AP

Antonio Francisco Bonfim Lopes, known as Nem, was captured after being discovered hiding in the boot of a car stopped at a roadblock, as police surrounded the sprawling Rocinha shanty-town in an attempt finally to wrest back control of the area.

Pictures showed Lopes, 35, looking anguished in handcuffs as he was led to an armoured vehicle by heavily-armed police following his arrest at around midnight on Wednesday.

Brazilian police said the man driving the car had claimed to be a Congolese diplomat in an attempt to avoid the vehicle being searched before the occupants offered a bribe of one million Brazilian reais (£357,000) for police to let them go.

Residents of Rocinha and wealthy neighbouring districts alike were gripped by fear amid concerns that the operation could lead to open street battles between police and criminal gangs armed with machine guns, assault rifles and grenades.

Twelve families were reportedly forced from their houses in the night by gang members who wanted to use them as hideouts, while children who attend schools in the area were being excused from lessons.

Wife of murdered Liverpool gangster Colin Smith appeals for information four years on

2011-11-13T22:56:00.001Z

THE wife of a Liverpool gangster who was shot dead outside a gym four years ago today called for his killers to be brought to justice. Caroline Smith made a public appeal for information on the anniversary of the death of husband and dad-of-six Colin Smith. He was gunned down as he left Nel’s Gym, in Alderwood Road, Speke, on Tuesday November 13, 2007. Caroline, who was with her husband for 13 years and had four sons aged between seven and 12 with him, said: “It has been four years since Colin was murdered and I cannot rest until the people who carried out this cowardly attack on my husband are caught and put before the courts. “I am convinced there are people out there who know who killed Colin and I cannot understand how they can stand by and say nothing. They are as cowardly as the person who pulled the trigger. “Our worlds were turned upside down the night Colin was killed and I ask anyone who has any information which could lead to the arrest of those responsible to contact the police, so we as a family can find some closure.” On the night of his death, 40-year-old Mr Smith, a passionate Evertonian, took his eldest son to football training. Police believe he was “lured” to the gym, in Alderwood Avenue, for the attack. As he left the gym at about 8pm to return to his black Ford Galaxy car, he was shot twice at close-range in the stomach. It was believed to be a gangland hit. Officers today appealed to anyone who was in the area at the time who may have seen anything which could help inquiries to come forward.

Police raid Perth bikie properties

2011-11-10T16:19:00.001Z

42-year-old Rebels motorcycle gang member is one of three people being questioned by police after a search of his home in Calista, south of Perth. Police say they found a 22 calibre, self-loading handgun, cash, cannabis and a trafficable quantity of what they believe to be methamphetamine during this morning's search of the Edmund Road house. No charges have been laid at this stage. Gang Crime Squad detectives have also raided a home linked to a bikie gang in Morley this afternoon. They say they were searching for stolen motorcycles, firearms and drugs. The raids are part of a continued effort by police to disrupt the activities of motorcycle gangs.

Joseph Patrick John Lagrue handed himself in at Solihull police station in September after the brawl between members of the Hell’s Angels and Outlaws biker gangs

2011-11-10T16:14:00.001Z

One of Birmingham’s ‘Most Wanted’ crooks is facing justice over a battle between rival bikers at the airport in which one man nearly died.

Joseph Patrick John Lagrue handed himself in at Solihull police station in September after the brawl between members of the Hell’s Angels and Outlaws biker gangs in January 2008.

Up to 30 people, some armed with hammers, machetes, knuckledusters, knives and a meat cleaver, were involved in the fight following a trip to Spain.

Families of holidaymakers were forced to dive for cover as the violence swept through the terminal.

A police source said Lagrue, 43, understood to be a member of the Outlaws, had played a “key role" in the violence.

But he was not tracked down following the incident and, in January last year, detectives named him as ‘wanted’ and added his face to their website.

A West Midlands Police spokesman said that following his arrest on September 27 he appeared before magistrates in Solihull charged with rioting.

He has pleaded guilty to the offence and will be sentenced later this month.

“Joseph Lagrue was wanted by police in connection since the investigation commenced and our efforts to track him down never ceased,” the spokesman said.

“This was a significant disturbance played out in the full glare of a busy international airport terminal.

"Families returning to Birmingham from their holidays were forced to take cover as two groups attacked each other with gratuitous violence.

“Weapons were produced and used and there were a number of injuries.

“The arrest of Joseph Lagrue brings this significant investigation to a close.”

The mob violence exploded near the arrivals hall of the airport after rival members discovered they were on the same flight from Alicante, in Spain.

Members of both gangs were met by associates, who provided them with weapons, as they arrived at the airport and began brawling in front of terrified families.

Several men were injured and one almost lost his life after suffering a serious head injury.

In July 2009, Neil Harrison, then aged 46, of Bell Green Road, Coventry; Paul Arlett, then 35, of Cradley Road, Dudley; Mark Price, then 50, of Westbury Road, Nuneaton, Warwickshire; Sean Timmins, then 38, of Brewood Road in Coven, Staffordshire; Leonard Hawthorne, then 52, of Penn Road, Wolverhampton; Mark Moseley, then 46, of Orchard Rise, in Birmingham, and Jeremy Ball, then 46, of Plant Street, Cheadle, Staffordshire, were each jailed for six years after being convicted of rioting.

Another man, Mark Larner, then aged 47, of Tudor Road, Upper Gornal in the Black Country, fled to South Africa “with a substantial amount of money” before being sentenced. He later handed himself in to police in Bristol and was jailed in November 2009 for six years.

A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said Lagrue had pleaded guilty and was remanded in custody until later this month when he is due to be sentenced at Warwick Crown Court.

The King of Spain’s son-in-law was at the centre of a corruption storm today as he came under investigation for siphoning off public money.

2011-11-10T16:02:00.001Z

Inaki Urdangarin - the husband of King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia's youngest daughter Infanta Cristina - is suspected of misappropriating cash paid into an NGO.

The former handball player now faces a possible interrogation by investigating judge Jose Castro and risks causing huge embarrassment for the royals.

It is claimed that his non-profit company, Instituto Noos, was given an enormous 2.3million euros (just under £2million) by the Balearic Islands’ regional government to organise two conferences on tourism and sport in 2005 and 2006.

The judicial investigation is looking into whether the bills for the events were inflated and if the money ended up in private companies run by Urdangarin, who is Duke of Palma, the capital of Majorca.

Urdangarin, 43, left Instituto Noos in 2006, months after the exorbitant sums paid by the Balearic government were revealed by the Socialist Party.

He said today: 'I cannot comment about on-going judicial proceedings.'

The prosecution claims Urdangarin and his associate Diego Torres created a network of societies with which they diverted public and private funds received by Instituto Noos.

Under suspicion: The former handball star is charged with creating a network of societies into which he diverted private and public funds

Regal scandal: Princess Cristina and Urdangarin (far right) pose with Spain's royal family King Juan Carlos, Queen Sofia, Crown Prince Felipe and wife Princess Letizia and Princess Elena

They are under investigation for document falsification, corruption, fraud and embezzlement, and Torres’s home has been searched.

The Royal Household expressed its 'absolute respect' for the legal decisions and added that it has 'nothing to say at this moment' as this is 'an investigation which must follow its course'.

The Duke and Duchess, who married in 1997, now live in Washington, DC. The couple have four children.

Urdangarin played in Spain’s national handball team at three Olympic Games, captaining the side for Sydney 2000.

James Murdoch giving evidence for a second time to the MPs' select committee

2011-11-10T15:42:00.001Z

James Murdoch giving evidence for a second time to the MPs' select committee, during which he claimed News of the World's former editor Tom Myler and lawyer Tom Crone did not tell him about 'widespread criminality' at the newspaper. Photograph: AFP/Getty

James Murdoch has accused the News of the World's former editor and senior lawyer of not telling him about suggestions of wider phone hacking at the newspaper in 2008.

Giving evidence for the second time about the News of the World phone-hacking scandal before MPs on the Commons culture, media and sport committee, Murdoch insisted that the context of the bombshell "for Neville" email was withheld from him by Colin Myler and Tom Crone when they discussed the payout to Gordon Taylor, the Professional Footballers' Association chief, in June 2008.

Murdoch, who oversees the now-defunct News of the World's publisher News International as News Corporation's deputy chief operating officer, told MPs that Crone and Myler had misled parliament with their testimony in the summer.

Crone, the former head of legal at the Sunday red-top, said in a written letter to the committee earlier this week that recently published emails appear to show that Murdoch knew about the "for Neville" email in May 2008 – more than two years before he maintains he was told about widespread hacking at the paper.

"After the resignation of [former News of the World editor Andy] Coulson, [former News International chairman Les] Hinton brought Myler in to clean things up and bring newspaper forward," Murdoch told MPs. "If he had known that there was wider-spread criminality I think he should have told me."

He later insisted that Myler and Crone did not "discuss elements of widespread criminality" with him in the 2008 meetings. He added that previous evidence given to the committee by Crone and Myler was "inconsistent and not right".

Murdoch said: "I've had time to reflect on all of these events and it is appropriate to reflect and to think that the whole company is humbled by this and learn why we couldn't get to grips with it as fast as we would have liked."

In a fractious and detailed line of questioning halfway into the session, Labour MP Tom Watson revealed that he had met the former NoW chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck on Thursday morning immediately before the hearing and he had told him that Crone had intended to show Murdoch the "for Neville" email in May 2008.

The "for Neville" in the subject line of the email in question is believed to refer to Thurlbeck. He maintains that he was not involved in or aware of phone hacking at the News of the World.

Watson quoted Thurlbeck as saying: "This is not some vague memory, I was absolutely on a knife edge. Tom took it to him. The following week I said 'did you show him the email?' He said 'yes I did'. Now he can't remember whether he showed it to Mr Murdoch or not."

Murdoch replied: "I remember what I was told at the time and I was not told at the time."

Ending his questioning, Watson likened News International to the mafia and asked Murdoch whether he had every heard of the phrase "omertà", which means a mafia vow of silence.

An audibly irritated Murdoch replied that he had not. Watson then accused the News Corp executive of being "the first mafia boss in history" who did not know what was going on in his organisation.

Murdoch responded by telling Watson, who has persistently pursued News Corp over the phone-hacking scandal for the past two years, he thought the comment was "inappropriate".

Brodie Clark, the £135,000-a-year head of the UK Border Force, approached the Home Secretary’s office for permission to weaken passport checks

2011-11-07T11:00:00.001Z

Whistleblowers last night blamed the latest border checks scandal on an official obsession with cutting queuing times at the nation’s air and sea ports.

Staff spoke out following the explosive revelations that a senior UK Border Agency official had secretly abandoned checks on passports and even anti-terror watch lists for non-EU citizens.

Theresa May will today give an emergency statement on the fiasco to MPs, which has led to the establishment of three inquiries.

Suspended: Brodie Clarke is now facing the sack after claims that he relaxed passport checks

Investigators are examining allegations that Brodie Clark, the £135,000-a-year head of the UK Border Force, approached the Home Secretary’s office for permission to weaken passport checks during the busy summer months. Senior figures say he was explicitly told ‘No’ in writing – but then went ‘rogue’ and implemented the proposal anyway.

Robert Dawes was finally arrested in Dubai on an international warrant but is now living free on the Costa del Sol.

2011-11-04T22:34:00.001Z

For five years a man named in a British court as "the general" has been pursued by detectives in a multimillion-pound operation.

Over the past decade Robert Dawes has moved from a two-up, two-down terraced house on an estate outside Nottingham to a base in Dubai and finally to a villa on the Costa del Sol.

Police believe he has left a trail of destruction as one of the heads of acrime syndicate that flooded the UK with millions of pounds of cocaine, heroin and cannabis. He has been identified in nine UK investigations involving large scale shipments.

Dawes is wanted in the Netherlands in connection with the murder of a teacher, Gerard Meesters; in Spain, where police have identified him as "the boss of an important English drug trafficking organisation"; and in the UK, where Nottinghamshire detectives are seeking him over the alleged commissioning of the murder of David Draycott in October 2002.

So when investigators from the Serious Organised Crime Agency, working with Spain's Guardia Civil, had Dawes secured in a Madrid prison this spring to face trial over the seizure of 200kg of cocaine, the belief was that the reign of a man described by Soca as a "highly significant international criminal" had ended.

But the Guardian has discovered that Spanish judges have been forced to drop the trial and free 39-year-old Dawes because the British authorities had failed to respond for months to a request for assistance.

Dawes is now back in his enormous villa near Benalmádena on the Costa del Sol with his wife and three children, enjoying his freedom.

After Dawes's release a few weeks ago, the Spanish courts issued a statement which made clear their hand had been forced by the failure of the British to respond to a request for documents sent in April through the highest diplomatic channels.

"The provincial court in Madrid has revoked the indictment of Robert Dawes ... and so he is at liberty," the statement said. "The magistrates ... understand that... it is necessary to wait for a response from the Commission of Dubai, with reference to the searches in the case, and, above all, the Commission of the United Kingdom.

"When the judicial authorities of those countries respond with evidence the case will be taken up again, but neither of the two commissions has yet commented and there is no indication of when they might do so."

Soca officials have been left embarrassed by the bureaucratic bungling. They say the request via a letter rogatory – the official method of requesting assistance between countries – was only received by the Home Office in August before being forwarded on to them in the same month.

The letter rogatory was sent to the Home Office via Eurojust, an organisation based in The Hague that is supposed to speed up co-operation on major criminal investigations between EU countries.

Asked by the Guardian this week about the case, Soca officials said they were planning to send an official to hand deliver the documents. A spokesman said: "We are supporting this Spanish-led investigation. Upon receipt of their request for evidence we took immediate action, in conjunction with the Crown Prosecution Service, to collate the material required.

"This process must take into account various legal and operational issues but it is Soca's intention to provide the material to the Spanish at the very earliest opportunity."

But it is not the first time that Dawes has slipped through the net, and some of his former associates have refused to co-operate with the authorities in the past because they believed he was an "asset" who was being protected.

Dawes grew up on the Leamington estate in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, and is thought to have began his criminal career in the 1990s working as an enforcer. By 2000 his name was cropping up in investigations from Scotland to London, where he is known to have associated with some of the UK's most notorious crime syndicates including the London-based Adams family.

By this time Dawes and his brother John – later jailed for 24 years for drug dealing and money laundering – had allegedly moved into large scale shipments of heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis.

In the Netherlands he became known in thousands of phone taps carried out by Dutch police as the "Derbyman".

In 2001, fearing the police net was closing in, Dawes left the UK for the Mijas Costa area of Spain – but could not resist making fleeting trips back to his old estate where he still owned two terraced houses that had been knocked together.

Soca began Operation Halbert in 2006 to target Dawes and his lieutenants. In August 2007 they seized £13m worth of drugs including 65kg of heroin in a major raid in Ruddington, Nottinghamshire. A month later, after receiving intelligence from Soca, officers from the Guardia Civil drug unit seized almost 200kg of cocaine just outside Madrid that was allegedly linked to Dawes.

But by then Dawes had fled Spain to set up a base in Dubai. He was eventually extradited in April this year to face trial in Madrid until his release by the Spanish a few weeks ago.

Man arrested over alleged police payments named as Sun journalist

2011-11-04T15:44:00.001Z

A Sun journalist has been arrested as part of Scotland Yard's investigation into alleged payments to police officers by newspapers. The reporter is believed to be Jamie Pyatt, district editor of the paper. The arrested journalist was taken to a South West London police station at 10.30am on Friday. Pyatt, 48, has been working at the Sun since 1987. He is the sixth person arrested by detectives working in Operation Elveden, which was set up in July following allegations that police officers had received up to £130,000 over several years from the News of the World for information, including contact details of the royal family. News International refused to comment on the arrest and saying it had "a very clear duty of care to employees and would not be making any comment on individuals". Scotland Yard also refused to confirm the identity of the person it arrested, but said in a statement earlier that it had arrested a 48-year-old man in connection with Operation Elveden. Its statement said: "He was arrested outside London on suspicion of corruption allegations in contravention of section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906, and is being brought to a south-west London police station." Operation Elveden is one of three Met investigations relating to alleged illegal activities by newspapers. The others are Operation Weeting and Operation Tuleta, set up to examine phone hacking and computer hacking, respectively. On Thursday, Scotland Yard confirmed to the Guardian that the number of people whose phones may have been hacked had reached 5,800 – 2,000 more than previously stated. So far 16 people have been arrested and bailed on allegations of phone hacking.

Italy government hangs by thread as coalition crumbles

2011-11-04T15:31:00.001Z

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's fate hung by a thread Friday and desertions from his crumbling centre-right coalition may have already robbed him of the parliamentary numbers he needs to survive. Berlusconi, caught in the crossfire from European powers and a party revolt at home, agreed at a G20 summit in France to IMF monitoring of economic reforms which he has long promised but failed to implement. But this may soon be irrelevant for the Italian leader, who will return to Rome later Friday to face what looks increasingly like a deadly rebellion by his own supporters. With financial markets in turmoil over the situation in Greece and Italy viewed as the next domino to fall in the euro zone crisis, calls are mounting for a new government to carry through reforms convincing enough to regain international confidence. Berlusconi has consistently rejected calls to resign and says the only alternative to him is an early election next spring, rather than the technocrat or national unity government urged by many politicians and commentators. Yields on 10-year Italian bonds reached 6.36 percent by early afternoon, creeping closer to 7 percent, a level which could trigger a so-called "buyers' strike" where investors take fright and refuse to buy the paper. Two deputies from Berlusconi's PDL party this week defected to the centrist UDC, taking his support in the 630-seat lower house of parliament to 314 compared with the 316 he needed to win a confidence vote last month. But at least seven other former loyalists have called for a new government and could vote against the 75-year-old media magnate. "The (ruling) majority seems to be dissolving like a snowman in spring," said respected commentator Stefano Folli in the financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore. Other commentators spoke of an "inexorable" revolt against Berlusconi. Even Defence Ministry undersecretary Guido Crosetto, a Berlusconi loyalist, said on television: "I don't know how many days or weeks the government has left. Certainly a majority relying on a few votes cannot continue for long." PATRONAGE Berlusconi, one of Italy's richest men, still has significant powers of patronage and he and his closest aides are expected to spend the weekend trying to win back support for a parliamentary showdown Tuesday. Some rebels have already threatened to vote against Berlusconi in the vote to sign off on the 2010 budget. Berlusconi faced concerted calls to resign when he lost a previous vote on this routine measure, which was almost unprecedented. Although it is not a confidence motion, he would come under huge pressure if he suffered a second defeat. "Unpopular prescriptions are necessary and this challenge cannot be faced with a 51 percent government," said UDC leader Pier Ferdinando Casini, in a reference to Berlusconi's weakness and a widespread feeling that the reforms can only be passed with a broad consensus. The premier has promised European leaders that he will call a formal confidence motion within 15 days to pass amendments to a budget bill incorporating new measures to stimulate growth and cut Italy's huge debt. That will be in the Senate where he has a more solid majority but it could still bring him down. Berlusconi, beset by a string of sex scandals and court cases, has consistently resisted pressure from groups ranging from a powerful business lobby to the Catholic Church to stand down.

Maurice Boland launches iTalk FM radio

2011-11-03T16:58:00.001Z

THIS month radio presenter, Maurice Boland, will launch iTalk FM, a new radio station on the Costa del Sol. The radio station will be based at the Five Star Kempinski Hotel in Estepona, according to Boland. Presenters include: Mat Court, Jack Jackson, Stephen Ritson, Sheila Sanderson , David Jelley, Richie Allan, and Maurice Boland, according to a statement from the presenter.

A man who fled to Spain after being charged in connection with a terrifying robbery has been jailed for 10 years

2011-11-03T14:32:00.001Z

A man who fled to Spain after being charged in connection with a terrifying robbery has been jailed for 10 years. Stephen Devalda provided a motorbike used by two robbers to get to and from the scene of a cash-in-transit raid. The robbers, who were carrying an imitation firearm and a machete, attacked a security guard collecting money from an Asda supermarket. Devalda, of Stanton Avenue, Salford, was arrested and charged in 2007 but he went on to skip bail and fled to Spain. A joint operation between the Serious and Organised Crime Agency and Spanish police was launched – and they tracked him down in Malaga in March. CCTV of the robbery Devalda, 28, who pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to rob and a bail offence, has now been handed a sentence of 10 years and three months behind bars. Detective Inspector Simon Cheyte said: “This was a pre-planned and violent attack which has left the security guard so traumatised and distressed that he has not been able to return to his normal work duties. “This investigation was carried out by a small team over a protracted period of time. They showed dedication and determination to bring this offender to justice and their resolve to succeed has lead to the conviction of a member of an organised and dangerous criminal gang from the Salford area of Manchester. “Thankfully these types of offences are extremely rare but we take them very seriously and are committed to carrying out full and thorough investigations to identify those responsible. “This should demonstrate the lengths Lancashire Constabulary will go to in order to arrest people and bring them justice. I am pleased with the sentence and hope it sends a clear message that this type of offence will not be tolerated.” The court heard how the armed robbery was carried out at Asda, in Colne, in May 2005. Two men in crash helmets arrived on a motorbike. The security guard was attacked with a machete after being knocked to the ground. The victim had a handgun pushed into his neck and a demand was made for money. He was then hit over the helmet with such force that he fell to the floor. One of the robbers shouted 'kill him' to his accomplice. He was ordered to tell a colleague to pass money out. The terrified guard curled up in a ball as the machete was used to rain blows to his head and upper arms. The court heard how the ordeal left him with both physical and psychological injuries. He had three lacerations to the upper arms and £25,000 in cash was stolen. The robbers made off on the motorbike and later switched to a getaway vehicle. Devalda pleaded guilty on the basis that he had been recruited by someone else. His role had been limited to providing the motorbike. A second man, Andrew Moran, 25, from Salford, was also charged with conspiracy to rob in connection with the raid. He appeared at Burnley Crown Court in March 2009 after a six week trial and was remanded into custody by the judge pending the result of the jury’s deliberations. Moran then assaulted a Group 4 security member, vaulted over the dock and ran from the court building. The jury later returned a guilty verdict and he was convicted in his absence of conspiracy to rob, for which he is to be yet sentenced. Moran is still missing and this week was named one of Britain’s most wanted criminals as part of a national Crimestoppers appeal. Det Insp Cheyte said: “We are determined to get Moran back before the courts to serve the time for his crime and I would urge anyone with any information as to his whereabouts to come forward and contact the police.” Moran is described as being around 5ft 8in, of stocky build with cropped fair hair. He has a Manchester accent

COLOMBIAN lingerie model dubbed "Narco Queen" was handed six years in jail

2011-11-03T14:22:00.001Z

COLOMBIAN lingerie model dubbed "Narco Queen" was handed six years in jail yesterday after trying to ship cocaine to Europe in her suitcases. Stunning Angie Sanclemente Valencia, 31, had denied helping her boyfriend recruit other beautiful young women to work for her international drug smuggling ring. The former beauty queen tried to take drugs from Argentina to Europe in late 2009 via Mexico. She was arrested in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in May 2010 after months on the run from police. Her attorney German Delgado said he would appeal the conviction. He insisted there was no proof, declaring that Sanclemente should be acquitted as she had no criminal record. Nicolas Gualco, her boyfriend, was also sentenced to six years and eight months for his role in the same plot. Sanclemente claimed during the trial in Argentina that she travelled to the country to marry Gualco and was not involved in the drug trade. She told the court: "I did not come here to commit crimes, I am not a narco-trafficker." She said all she had done for her boyfriend was "make a few calls", adding: "God knows I did it for love." Another man, Venezuelan Gustavo Paez Arneses, was sentenced to six years and two months for his role in the smuggling attempt.

Addicts may have glitch in frontal brain

2011-11-03T08:20:00.001Z

“The better we understand our decision-making brain circuitry, the better we can target treatment, whether it’s pharmaceutical, behavioral, or deep brain stimulation,” says Jonathan Wallis, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at University of California, Berkeley. Wallis says he was inspired to study the brain mechanism behind substance abuse after observing the lengths to which an addict will go to fulfill a craving, despite knowing the downside of a habit. He wanted to know what the drug did to the brain that made it so difficult to not make the right choice and what prevented the addict from making a healthier one. Straight from the Source Read the original study DOI: 10.1038/nn.2961 In the new study, published in Nature Neuroscience, Wallis targeted the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex—two areas in the frontal brain—because previous research has shown that patients with damage to these areas of the brain are impaired in the choices they make. While these individuals may appear perfectly normal on the surface, they routinely make decisions that create chaos in their lives. A similar dynamic has been observed in chronic drug addicts, alcoholics, and people with obsessive-compulsive tendencies. “They get divorced, quit their jobs, lose their friends, and lose all their money,” Wallis says. “All the decisions they make are bad ones.” To test the hypothesis that these areas of the brain are the key players in impaired decision-making, researchers measured the neural activity of macaque monkeys as they played games in which they identified the pictures most likely to deliver juice through a spout into their mouths. The animals quickly learned which pictures would most frequently deliver the greatest amount of juice, allowing researchers to see what calculations they were making, and in which part of the brain. The brains of macaques function similarly to those of humans in basic decision making. The exercise was designed to see how the animals weigh costs, benefits, and risks. The results show that the orbitofrontal cortex regulates neural activity, depending on the value or “stakes” of a decision. This part of the brain enables you to switch easily between making important decisions, such as what school to attend or which job to take, and making trivial decisions such as coffee versus tea or burrito versus pizza. But in the case of addicts and people with damage to the orbitofrontal cortex, the neural activity does not change based on the gravity of the decision, presenting trouble when these individuals try to get their brains in gear to make sound choices, the findings suggest. As for the anterior cingulate cortex, the study found that when this part of the brain functions normally, we learn quickly whether a decision we made matched our expectations. If we eat food that makes us sick, we don’t eat it again. But in people with a malfunctioning anterior cingulate cortex, these signals are missing, and so they continue to make poor choices, Wallis says. “This is the first study to pin down the calculations made by these two specific parts of the brain that underlie healthy decision-making,” Wallis says, who believes that a clearer understanding of how people with addictions make decisions may help remove some of the stigma of the condition. However, Wallis warned that the findings should not be used as a rationale for addicts to maintain unhealthy habits. Chronic drug and alcohol use changes the brain circuitry, and that can lead to unhealthy choices, he says. If anything, the findings offer hope that, through understanding the mechanism of addiction, treatment can be targeted at these risk-weighing, decision-making centers of the brain. “We know beyond doubt that addiction is a complex brain disease with significant behavioral characteristics,” says Susan E. Foster, vice president and director of policy research and analysis at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. “This research is an important contribution to understanding how the disease works. The challenge going forward is to sharpen our understanding, translate this knowledge into effective medical treatments and new prevention strategies and ultimately find a cure for this disease.” Researchers from the University of London and the University of Oxford contributed to the study that was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Chief Superintendent Mark Mathias from South Wales Police said: "Each addict can cost society not far off £850,000

2011-11-03T08:13:00.001Z

Photo: PA

Top officers warned of the increasing cost of drug-ravaged society with hundreds of millions is being spent on the increasing number of addicts.

Chief Superintendent Mark Mathias from South Wales Police said: "Each addict can cost society not far off £850,000.

"You work through all the treatment, all the criminal justice issues that arise - then you see a significant costs involved."

Police in Swansea have launched a £500,00 clampdown in the city known as the "heroin capital of Wales" where officers have seized 1,000 "deals" in the last two weeks.

Superintendent Phil Davies said: "Some of these drug dealers have stated they are untouchable.

"My message to them is there is no hiding place, we will find you, we will catch you and we will put you behind bars."

Addict Amy Protheroe, 20, who has been an addict since she was 13 has just started her fifth treatment programme in Swansea.

She said: "When you're a heroin addict you wake up and you think straight away: "Where am I going to get money from, where am I going to score from?'"

"You get up, you go out, you get the money for the heroin, you buy the heroin, you do the heroin and then it starts all over again.

"To be honest, heroin has wrecked my life."

Welcome to Oculto Café – Cordoba’s infamous Satanic saloon.

2011-10-31T23:53:00.001Z

GLASSES shoot across tabletops, busty vamps serve blood-red cocktails, and twisted locals raise a toast to an image of Aleister Crowley. Welcome to Oculto Café – Cordoba’s infamous Satanic saloon. The bar is situated in a maze of narrow, winding streets in the ancient ‘Old Town’ district. Stepping outside for a Marlboro, I scan my surroundings. It’s a chilly, moonlit night and the streets are deserted. Strain your ears, however, and you’ll hear muffled voices coming from dark balconies. It’s like a scene from Interview with the Vampire. As I re-enter, the room falls silent. A cross-eyed chap stares at me… well, I think it’s me… it’s hard to tell. Had my gothic guy-liner run, or had he caught a whiff of fresh meat? In this insular atmosphere, I feel as welcome as Gary Glitter at Tivoli World! Forget fruit machines and pool tables, it’s ouija boards and tarot cards that keep these punters amused. A little weakened, I seize a newspaper and hide in the corner. Alongside ads for ‘Black Angels’ and ‘Colombian Swallowers’, the classifieds are swarming with clairvoyants. I’m shocked! Isn’t Spain supposed to be a God-fearing country? But the truth is, up until the Inquisition (1478), Iberia was a hotbed of magic and sorcery. With the coming of Catholicism, however, mystics – including ‘witches’ and ‘healers’ were round-up and executed. For survival’s sake, Spaniards severed their ties with the ‘other side.’ Today, however, there is growing evidence that Spain is returning to its supernatural roots. Church-going is down (just 14.4%), and stories of Satanism are everywhere. In March 2011, an Almerian church was littered with satanic scrawls. Investigators claimed that the site had been used for a “black mass.” Tenerife’s Arona Cemetery has also been targeted by sinister cults. In 2008, graves were desecrated and animals sacrificed during “bizarre nocturnal rituals”. For sceptics, it’s easy to blame rebellious youth or drug-addicts for these atrocities. However, as someone who’s experienced dark forces – first hand – I try to keep an open mind. It all started in 2001 when I was filming a documentary at Devon’s Berry Pomeroy. In the castle grounds, I indivertibly captured an inhuman figure on camera. Whilst replaying the footage to BBC colleagues, the office computers went wild. In 2009, I moved my family to a 15th century cottage on the West Pennine Moors. Unbeknown to us, our ‘dream house’ was built on a Quaker burial site. During our six-month stay – we endured stamping noises, icy chills and orbs zipping round the lounge. At night, the constant thumping would deprive us of sleep, and we’d trudge into work like a couple of zombies. However, my most recent spooking occurred right here in Andalucia. One evening, I watched a can of Asturiana cider move sideways, hover and then drop off the table! Earlier that day, an old drinking buddy had been buried in Devon – was this his final ‘chin-chin’? Whatever it was, it scared the bejesus out of my missus and she hasn’t slept properly since. Two weeks on, and we’re sitting in Oculto, trying not to blush at orgy paintings. After some Dutch courage, I enquire about a séance at the bar. A black-toothed midget points towards a battered wooden door. Timidly, I wander down the corridor and knock on wood. It’s opened by a raven-haired gypsy. She’s both beautiful and grotesque: Penelope Cruz’s mum meets the Bride of Chucky. Without speaking – she beckons me in with a long, black talon. With low ceilings, purple walls and an absence of windows – the room is claustrophobic and unsettling. Under flickering candlelight, the Victorian death portraits seem to eyeball you from the walls. But it’s the cold air and fetid stench that’s really sending shivers down my spine. The woman glides over to a monolithic Ouija board and orders me to sit. She lays out a clutch of cards, including The Hanged Man, The Fool, The Stig, Jeremy Clarkson, Dog the Bounty Hunter, The Archbishop of Canterbury and Boy George. Okay… I lied about Boy George – but it’s all the scary ones! Suddenly, my stomach churns and I shout ‘Stop!’ I apologise for wasting her time – but I’ve got the heebie-jeebies. A floating cider is hardly The Ring – so why risk opening a fresh can of worms? I chat to Jose, a Pepe Reina lookalike in his late 20s. Around us, weirdoes chuck darts at an image of the Pope (only joking….it’s Desmond Tutu!) Jose is erudite and speaks fine English. Over Osbourne brandies, I pose the question: “So….Are you a Satanist?” “Of course”! Jose replies: Usually, I’d grab my coat, but by now, I’m immune to the madness. After dispelling myths of “priest-beating” and “baby-eating”, Jose insists that Satanists are “Perfectly normal.” Apparently, the only difference is they choose “indulgence over abstinence’, and prefer “vengeance” to forgiveness. Oh…..and they enjoy kinky sex and coke-snorting – but hey… so does the cast of Skins. By 1am I’m craving a Horlicks and a late night snack. I thank Jose and wish him a “hell-of-a-life.” We leave Occulto and hot-foot it to the Corredera for a greasy kebab. After filling our faces, we clamber into a taxi. We’re only 10-minutes from the hotel – but I’m bloated on beer and lamb offal. Back at the room, Jose’s words haunt me. Having spent the last five hours binge-drinking, ogling rude pictures and eating crap – could I be accused of “indulgence”? If Christianity equals modesty, chastity and turning the other cheek, what about all those times I’ve bought designer togs, belted a thug or lusted over lesbians? Perhaps I’m more Satanic than I thought? By bedtime, I’d seen no demons, virgin sacrifices or people snacking on goats’ head soup. This said, not everyone was as friendly as Jose, and the yokels at the bar seemed quite menacing. I’ve yet to decide whether Satanists are ordinary folk – daring to be different, or psychopaths to be avoided at all costs. I DO know, however, that pentangles are not for me. For one – I like animals too much to put their heads on sticks – and secondly, I root for the “goodies” when it kicks off on Buffy. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my time at Occulto and found the experience enlightening. Whatever they are (or aren’t), there’s a pub full of them in Cordoba, and if you ever feel like taking a walk on the wild side, you know where to head.

Body found in boot of crashed car on Alicante motorway

2011-10-31T16:53:00.001Z

Firemen called out to an accident on the A-31 Alicante-Madrid motorway early on Monday found an unidentified body in the boot of a car which had crashed into the central reservation at Sax and then burst into flames. The body was partially burnt but appears to be that of a man. Reports indicate that the deceased had been tied up and gagged. No other occupants were found at the site and the Civil Guard are now trying to identify the victim and the cause of death.

Hells Angels have had a rough year in California.

2011-10-31T16:40:00.001Z

The Hells Angels have had a rough year in California. Three Northern California members have died violently in the last month amid a turf battle with a rival biker gang. And law enforcement officials on both ends of the motorcycle club's home state are pursuing and jailing members, with 26 Angels and their associates arrested recently in San Diego. The violence spilled into public view in the unlikeliest of places two weeks ago when thousands of Harley-Davidsons rolled up to a San Jose cemetery on a sunny Saturday afternoon to bury a Hells Angels leader who was gunned down weeks earlier in a Nevada casino. A Hells Angel allegedly shot and killed a fellow member at the cemetery and fled — the latest sign of the in-fighting and violence that has plagued the gang in recent months. And if the deadly gunfire were not enough, a member was plowed down by a van a week later near Oakland, the alleged the victim of road rage. While no one is predicting the demise of the notorious outlaw motorcycle club, law enforcement officials and gang experts said the Hells Angels' recent woes still stand out for an organization they describe as violent, sophisticated and disciplined with loyal-to-the-death members. "They are the heavyweight champions of the biker gang culture," said Jay Dobyns, an agent with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who infiltrated the Hells Angels in Arizona for two years beginning in 2001. "And every other biker gang wants the belt." The organization has a long history in California, dating to its founding in 1948 by returning World War II veterans in the dusty town of Fontana and including a notorious incident during a Rolling Stones show in Altamont in 1969 in which a spectator was stabbed by a Hells Angel working security. A jury later acquitted the killer, finding he acted in self defense. The U.S. Department of Justice says the Hells Angels now have as many as 2,500 members in 230 chapters in 26 countries, and are a major source of drug-trafficking. Federal, state and local police have pursued the club for decades, infiltrating it with undercover agents, prosecuting suspects with harsh charges once reserved for the Mafia and indicting members on charges ranging from drug trafficking to mortgage fraud. Yet the club flourished. They opened chapters worldwide, aggressively enforced their trademarks in court like a responsible Wall Street corporation and won high-profile acquittals and other legal battles with law enforcement. The ATF, which handles many federal biker cases, said it arrested more outlaw motorcycle gang members last year than any other since 2003. Police in Germany, Canada and elsewhere also report a surge in motorcycle gang violence, with much of it connected to the Hells Angels. The California Hells Angels' current problems are partly rooted in a battle with the Vagos, a California-based motorcycle club founded in the 1960s. The clubs have been bitter enemies dating at least back a decade to a violent 2001 confrontation at a Costa Mesa swap meet. "These groups are trying to expand their membership and dominance," said Kent Shaw, the California Attorney General's acting head of law enforcement. "There's going to be a number of clashes and it seems to have gotten worse over the last couple years. It seems to be coming to a flash point." After dozens of Vagos took over a bar in Lakeport, Calif., and rode their motorcycles up and down the main drag, officials went so far as to close the downtown to traffic on May 14. Lake County Sheriff Frank Rivero said the Vagos were making a statement about controlling the region after one of its members was allegedly beaten by Hells Angels earlier in the year. So Rivero put up a road block that day after the California Highway Patrol and FBI warned that Hells Angels were traveling toward town. The Angels turned back before reaching the road block. But now the district attorney is investigating whether the sheriff violated the club members' civil rights with his plans to stop them. The sheriff is unapologetic. "It's a basic response," Rivero said. "I'm not going to tolerate gang violence in Lake County." A month later, a Vagos member and a friend were severely beaten in a casino. Four Hells Angels have been charged with assault. Three were arrested and the sheriff said they were bailed out by fellow Angel Steve Tausan, who owned a bail bonds company. A fourth is being sought. In September, the two gangs fought again. San Jose Angels leader Jeffrey "Jethro" Pettigrew was slain during a wild shootout with rival Vagos in a Reno-area casino on Sept. 23. It was at Pettigrew's burial where more violence occurred. Two shots were fired, and Tausan, Pettigrew's good friend and high-ranking Angel, lay bleeding with a mortal wound. Police suspect fellow Angel Steve Ruiz of firing on Tausan after they argued over the casino shooting and whether enough was done to protect Pettigrew, the president of the San Jose chapter. Police are now searching for Ruiz, who reportedly was hustled into a waiting car, leaving behind his motorcycle. Investigators initially feared Ruiz was killed and went so far as to dig up Pettigrew's grave in search of a body. But now police believe he is on the run with his girlfriend. San Jose police were out in force Saturday as Tausan was laid to rest at the same cemetery where he was killed during the Oct. 15 funeral. A police spokesman said there were no reports of any disturbances or violence. The Hells Angels didn't respond to numerous phone calls and email messages sent to their clubhouses in San Jose and Santa Cruz, where Tausan served as the chapter's sergeant at arms. The Angels have always maintained they are a club of motorcycle enthusiasts who are unfairly regarded as an organized crime syndicate because of the crimes of a few members acting independently. The club participates in charity events, such as "Toys for Tots" motorcycle runs and blood drives. "When we do right, nobody remembers," the club's Web site states. "When we do wrong, nobody forgets." Karen Snell, a lawyer who won a $1.8 million settlement in 2005 after the San Jose chapter filed a lawsuit claiming illegal police searches during a murder investigation, said Pettigrew, Tausan and the others involved with the case were serious businessmen with families. "They were really responsible clients," Snell said. "In my all my interactions with them, they were always gentlemen." Now Pettigrew and Tausan are dead. "We lost our brother, our father, our son and our friend," said Karen Tausan, Steve's sister. "He left a big hole in our family and we can only hope this will come to an end now."

A LARGE crowd of Rebels Motorcycle Club members turned out at St Peter's Cathedral yesterday for the funeral of a member.

2011-10-27T23:59:00.001+01:00

Rebels comfort each other outside St Peter's Cathedral. Picture: Dean Martin

Dozens of motorbikes lined Pennington Tce, North Adelaide, as more than 100 people gathered for the 1.30pm service for James Sean "Pappa" Petterson.

Members of rival motorcycle clubs, including the Finks, also attended the service.

A convoy of Rebels members on motorcycles were given a police escort to the service and flanked the hearse as it left the cathedral.

Uniformed and plainclothes police kept a watchful eye over proceedings from outside

Tens of thousands flee as floods sweep Bangkok

2011-10-27T02:50:00.001+01:00

Tens of thousands of Thais are fleeing flood-threatened Bangkok after the city's Governor ordered official evacuations for the first time since the crisis began. Floodwaters bearing down on the city have killed 373 people nationwide since July, causing damage that will cost billions to repair and shutting down Bangkok's second largest airport. Satellite maps of Bangkok last night showed a city almost entirely surrounded by water.

A deadly spat with origins in Halifax has an eastern Canada police dragnet hunting the gangster wanted for a slaying in Toronto.

2011-10-27T00:49:00.001+01:00

Darnell St. Clair Wright, 32, is wanted for first-degree murder in the Oct. 2 shooting of Jefflin Beals, 25, on Crawford St. near Trinity Bellwoods Park.

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TORONTO - A deadly spat with origins in Halifax has an eastern Canada police dragnet hunting the gangster wanted for a slaying in Toronto.

Toronto Police said Wednesday Darnell St. Clair Wright, 32, is wanted for first-degree murder in the Oct. 2 shooting of Jefflin Beals, 25, on Crawford St. at Lobb Ave., near Trinity Bellwoods Park.

Homicide Det.-Sgt. Wayne Banks said the two men had an ongoing dispute stretching back at least to 2009, when Beals was a target of a drive-by shooting in Halifax.

The father of two wasn’t injured in that attack and he refused to co-operate with police.

Banks said he’s still not yet clear about the motive of the murder, whether it was personal or gang-related.

Police said Beals, was in a friend’s car when a gunman approached on Crawford St. and opened fire.

Beals got out of the car and stumbled to a lane between two homes, but he died by the time emergency crews found him.

The victim had been staying with friends in Peel after arriving in the city just a few days before he was gunned down in the usually quiet area of west Toronto.

Banks said the gang Wright belongs to — the North Preston Finest — is suspected to be involved in the 2009 drive-by, but it’s unclear if the suspect was involved in that shooting.

“We believe he (Beals) was set up — that Wright found out he was in Toronto and that he was set up to be at that location,” Banks alleged.

The location of the murder, a residential street, “there’s no way it was a chance meeting, say like a night club or somewhere like that,” Banks said.

“He was there for a reason and they were waiting for him.”

But Banks doesn’t know yet what lured Beals to the spot.

He warns anyone who helped set up the ambush or is now hiding Wright will face charges.

“This isn’t just about arresting Darnell, this will be finding out anybody involved in the planning of it and anybody involved in the aiding and abetting after it,” he said.

Banks said there’s conflicting street information that Wright is in Halifax, and “we’re hearing information that he’s still in the city.”

Wright is considered dangerous, he said.

Real IRA terrorist has been jailed for 12 years after being found guilty of buying weapons and explosives which he wanted to use to “kill Brits.

2011-10-26T23:46:00.001+01:00

Michael Campbell (Pic: PA)

A Real IRA terrorist has been jailed for 12 years after being found guilty of buying weapons and explosives which he wanted to use to “kill Brits.”

Irishman Michael Campbell - brother of Omagh bomber Liam - was snared in a six year MI5 sting across three countries with agents pretending to be arms dealers.

Yesterday he was finally jailed by a Lithuania court after spending three years awaiting trial and having been snared by an amazing MI5 undercover operation.

Campbell, 39, was secretly filmed in a field in Lithuania pointing a high-power Barret sniper rifle which he later bragged he would use to kill British people.

Michael Campbell testing weapons in the Lithuanian countryside (Pic: PA)

Using secret filming Campbell was caught on camera inspecting the weapons stash in a lock-up garage (Pic: PA)

Campbell's shopping list for weapons (Pic:PA)

He was also recorded on video in a garage buying weapons and explosives from an undercover Lithiuanian agent he nicknamed “Rambo.”

But the hero of the MI5 plot was a cigarette smuggler - turned MI5 agent who went deep undercover using the cover name Robert Jardine.

Using his connections Robert Jardine coolly penetrated deep into the Real IRA network knowing he could have been killed if his cover was blown.

At one stage in his dealings with dark-haired Campbell and other terror suspects - who cannot be named for legal reasons - he was bundled into a padded van containing a shovel.

Sources have told The Daily Mirror he feared he had been rumbled and was being driven to his death - but it was just a Real IRA tactic to unnerve him.

Judge Arunas Kisielus of the Vilnius Regional Court sentenced Michael Campbell to 12 years in prison for weapons offenses and supporting a terrorist group.

Covert footage showed Campbell paid £5,200 for explosives, grenade launchers, detonators, AK-47s and an assassin’s rifle to Lithuanian agents posing as arms dealers.

He says on tape: “You imagine, with a six-hour timer, we could be over to London and back,” Campbell says in an audio clip after mulling over a price list for explosives and detonators. “Just tick, tick, tick, tick ... gone.

In court Campbell had pleaded not guilty.

The Real IRA’s worst crime to date was the 1998 Omagh bombing which killed 29 and for which Liam Campbell -Michael’s brother - was found liable in a civil trial.

MI5’s Operation Uncritical ruined a bid by the Real IRA to get guns and explosives to mount a deadly terror campaign on the British mainland.

Yesterday a senior security official said: “The conviction of Michael Campbell is the result of a successful joint operation between the Security Service and the Lithuanian authorities.

“Working closely together, along with a selfless and brave agent, they have put behind bars a senior member of the Real IRA whose intention was to kill innocent members of the public in Northern Ireland and in Britain.”

Courageously Jardine - who now lives in a secret location - for years risked his life to provide his MI5 handlers with intelligence about the Real IRA.

The agent, who was referred to in court as “Robert Jardine”, was a legitimate businessman based in southern England dealing in “imports and exports.”

But he also had an illicit sideline in smuggling cigarettes from Eastern Europe - and it was that which caught the eye of the security service and led him into a world of terrorist intrigue.

The Real IRA (RIRA) was using the contraband cigarettes to fund its terrorist activities and in late 2002 Jardine was recruited as an agent by MI5.

Two years later RIRA asked Jardine whether his contacts in Eastern Europe could help them get weapons. And - carefully directed by MI5 - he laid a trail of deception which drew in the terrorists.

The court heard that in January 2005 he handed over a price list to a contact.

The following July Jardine and the contact crossed the border into Lithuania where Jardine introduced her to “Tomas”.

In fact Tomas was working for the Lithuanian security service, the VSD - the first in a cast of “role-players” deployed to convince the RIRA that the offer of weapons was real.

The RIRA gave Jardine the first of two hand-written shopping lists of weapons they wanted to buy - including sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, hand grenades, detonators and Semtex plastic explosives.

Then, in late 2006, another RIRA man, moved to revive the arrangement. Jardine responded by saying he would provide the introductions but the republicans would have to cut their own deal. The “sting” was back on.

Then Michael Campbell entered the story.

On August 29 2007, Michael Campbell and another associate travelled to a lodge in the Lithuanian countryside belonging to the supposed arms dealer.

There they were given their first chance to test guns and explosives.

Next day they were introduced to a second dealer - whom the two Irishmen quickly nicknamed “Rambo” - who was to provide them with the actual weapons they wanted.

Like Tomas, however, Rambo was in reality working for the VSD.

Campbell and his colleague agreed to pay a deposit on explosives, detonators and timers.

Afterwards an excited Campbell was secretly recorded telling his associate: “Look at it this way, for one of them and one of them you have a bomb - for f****** a hundred quid.

“F*** me. You imagine us getting over to England if you’d ten of them and ten clocks in a holdall. You imagine, with a six-hour timer we could be over to London and back.

“Just tick, tick, tick - gone. Leave it anywhere.”

That October, Campbell met Rambo again in Marbella in southern Spain.

This time the RIRA man said he wanted a first instalment of weapons - including two rocket propelled grenades as well as the explosives - against the deposit.

On January 21 2008, Campbell went to Lithuania to inspect his purchase and finalise the arrangements.

That evening the couple dined with Rambo who the following day took Campbell to a lock-up garage where the weapons were stashed.

A hidden camera secretly filmed as Campbell examines one of the detonators and asks whether they would be “good for booby traps”.

“They would be good for under a car, wouldn’t they?” he says. “Anchored to the wheel and then the car goes round - bang.”

Campbell was also filmed paying a further deposit for a powerful Barrett sniper rifle - the type of weapon used to kill Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick, the last British soldier to die at the hands of the IRA in 1997.

When Rambo demands what it would be used for - saying he was not prepared to sell it just “to shoot roe deer or wild boar” - Campbell tells him: “No, no, we will be shooting from across borders. The border. You know, from one side to the other.”

Asked who the target would be, Campbell replies simply “Brits”.

“El Gallito” or “The Little Rooster”. Heavily tattooed, El Gallito appears more mature than his age, prosecutors said. State Attorney General Gaspar Garcia Torres said the boy claimed to have been in charge of the lucrative Isla Mujeres drug market

2011-10-26T09:23:00.001+01:00

Mexican police arrest 15-year-old alleged drug-gang operator in murders of 2 women Prosecutors said Saturday that a 15-year-old boy has confessed to running a drug trafficking gang on the Mexican resort island of Isla Mujeres and murdering two women who reportedly worked as drug dealers. It was the second time in less than a year that an extremely young male has been detained as a purported drug gang killer in Mexico. Last November, soldiers arrested a 14-year-old U.S. citizen who confessed to killing four people whose beheaded bodies were found hanging from a bridge. Comments Weigh InCorrections? Mexican officials say the involvement of youths in such crimes reflects the difficulty drug cartels are having in recruiting adults, but it also raise fears that Mexico’s drug violence may have accustomed young people to extreme levels of violence. The Isla Mujeres cases involve a youth who prosecutors in the Caribbean coast state of Quintana Roo identified only by his nickname, “El Gallito” or “The Little Rooster”. Heavily tattooed, El Gallito appears more mature than his age, prosecutors said. State Attorney General Gaspar Garcia Torres said the boy claimed to have been in charge of the lucrative Isla Mujeres drug market for a local gang known as “Los Pelones,” equivalent to the Bald or Shaved Heads. The gang is reputedly fighting the Zetas cartel for control of the area around the coastal resort of Cancun. A spokesman for the prosecutors office said the boy told investigators that he and two older associates slashed the throats of the two women at a hotel on Isla Mujeres. Their women’s bodies were found before dawn Thursday, and El Gallito was detained Friday. “He confessed to having full participation in carrying out these deeds, and from the start he claimed to have been in charge of drug sales in the area, in this case for the Pelones, and that his duties were to receive the drugs,” said the spokesman, who was not allowed to be quoted by name. The women were purportedly killed after they betrayed the Pelones gang by selling drugs they obtained from other sources. The boy was turned over to a youthful offender facility to face homicide charges. Because of his age, he cannot be identified or tried as an adult. In most parts of Mexico, youths are tried and sentenced in juvenile courts, but cannot be held after they turn 18. Last year’s case involved a 14-year-old U.S. citizen, who was identified by his family as Edgar Jimenez Lugo, known as “El Ponchis.” He was sentenced in July to three years in prison for homicide, kidnapping and drug and weapons possession. It was the maximum sentenced allowed for a minor. Authorities say the teenager confessed to working for the South Pacific cartel, which is allegedly led by Hector Beltran Leyva.

Man dead after N. Portland gang shooting

2011-10-26T09:15:00.001+01:00

A man who suffered life-threatening injuries in a gang-related shooting in North Portland Friday night died early Monday morning. An autopsy was planned for Monday for Deandre Clark, 25, according to Lt. Robert King. Police responded just after 10 p.m. to a shots fired call near N Haight Avenue and N Emerson Street, according to King. Officers arrived to find a group gathered in the street around a man who had been shot. Medical crews arrived and took Clark to a nearby hospital with life-threatening injuries. Police set up a perimeter around the scene and called in a K-9 unit to assist with the search, but did not find any suspects.

Brooklyn Woman's Death Result Of Feud Between Gangs

2011-10-26T09:08:00.001+01:00

Police officers on rooftops (NBC New York)

As police try to find the suspect whoseFriday afternoon shooting from a Brooklyn rooftop left a woman dead and another woman and an 11-year-old girl injured, the slain woman's family remains bereft. Zurana Horton, 34, was killed when picking up a child from P.S. 298 in Brownsville, at Pitkin Avenue and Watkins Street, and apparently died trying to shield other youngsters. One of Horton's children told the Post that she actually walked by the crime scene, not realizing her mother was the victim, "I was wondering where my mother was. I found out later [the body] was my mother. My little sister [Alexis] said, ‘Mommy died. She got shot.’"

According to the Post, the violence is due to a feud "stemmed from an ongoing beef between two warring factions, the Hoodstars and the Waves. Members of both gangs told The Post that they consider themselves the modern-day Bloods and Crips -- and sources say their violent feud has been raging for several years." Apparently residents are too afraid to call 911 and say the violence is worse at night, when the gangster "do not hesitate" to shoot.

While neighbors said that Horton, who had 13 living children (a 14th died of pneumonia a few years ago), was pregnant, but the ME's office said that she was not. Still, the tragedy is huge, as her children will be split up between Horton's mother and her ex-boyfriend, Oniel Vaughn, the father of eight of the children,who told the Daily News, "She gave her life for those kids, and she would have done it all again because that's just the kind of person she was. She was worried about the violence. She said she wanted to move and buy a house for her kids. Those kids were her life." He added, "I didn't tell the younger kids yet. The older ones know. They're devastated."

Police smash gun supply ring operating out of tiny suburban tobacco shop

2011-10-26T09:03:00.001+01:00

POLICE have smashed an alleged black market gun supply ring operating out of a tiny suburban tobacco shop. Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad detectives arrested the alleged leaders of the syndicate last week after a covert buy-up of the weapons and ammunition. The men allegedly used a Lakemba tobacconist shop, King of the Pack, as a front. Detectives are testing three firearms that the police bought to see if they had been used in any crimes, documents tendered in court reveal. George Boulos, 27, and Said Rawdah, 36, charged with numerous offences relating to possessing and supplying illegal firearms, were refused bail in court on Friday. Tobacconist Ayman Said, 50, charged with similar offences, was also refused bail. Instead of an undercover detective, police from Strike Force Snaidero enlisted a "registered source" who was given pre-counted "buy money" to purchase weapons. The court heard that on July 18 the registered police source, known only by a code name, went to the tobacconist and asked the owner, Ayman Said, if he could buy a gun. They negotiated a price of $5000, with Said allegedly telling the buyer the next step would be introducing him to a dealer. The following Monday, police say their source was introduced to Rawdah - the alleged dealer - who handed over a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver for $5000. Police later found it had been in circulation for more than 13 years. It was reported stolen from a break and enter on January 31, 1998. On August 20, the informant went back to the tobacco shop and, after asking for more guns, was introduced to Boulos, of Padstow, who told the informant he had access to plenty more weapons, including military-grade firearms, the court heard. "Those firearms were a 9mm pistol, a .22 calibre pistol, an AK-47 machinegun and numerous SKS assault rifles," police facts state. "Twelve days later, the pair met at Lakemba railway carpark, where for $13,000 the police source allegedly received a .22mm Jennings pistol, a 7.62mm pistol and ammunition. The buyer viewed the guns in a white van which was driven by an unknown man who was summoned with a phone call from Boulos, Burwood Local Court heard. Last Thursday, police arrested the trio at various locations. All three will reappear in court in December.

Florida a top source of guns linked to crimes in other states

2011-10-26T08:58:00.001+01:00

2,000 Florida guns last year were linked to crimes committed around the country, and experts say they likely came from the cars and homes of law-abiding Floridians. In 2010, law-enforcement officers around the country traced 2,251 crime guns to Florida, one of the states with the most guns traced in out-of-state crimes. It follows Georgia's 2,568 guns and Texas' 2,301, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Related Top states for crime guns Broward crime rises in first half of 2011 Video: Crimes caught on camera Photos Close calls: Crime artist's sketches Topics Personal Weapon Control Gun Control Interior Policy See more topics » That's because Florida has a huge number of gun owners, and burglars find the weapons when breaking into their homes and cars, authorities said. Video: Mother of pit bull attack victim discusses son's condition "In almost any burglary to a residence, a gun will turn up," Boynton Beach Police Sgt. Sedrick Aiken said. "There's a lot of stolen guns out there." In fact, South Florida last year had the most reported stolen guns in the state. That's 2,310 guns reported stolen in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, according to state records. The number does not include guns reported stolen and then recovered. Typical was the recent arrest of two suspects in Boca Raton, accused of taking $3,750 worth of hunting guns in the burglary of a home in Jupiter. The owner of the guns told police he kept them in a gun safe that was broken into. Richard Sasso, 23, and a 17-year-old boy were arrested in connection with the September burglary. The Sun Sentinel is not naming the juvenile because of his age. He told police they traded the guns for marijuana. It's unclear where the guns ended up. Stolen guns often are sold to criminals, who may end up crossing state lines, experts said. Florida guns also end up in the wrong hands in other states when people come to Florida because gun laws here are more relaxed, Aiken said. Unlike New York, for example, Florida does not require gun buyers to get a permit and allows people convicted of violent misdemeanors to own a gun. Florida also prohibits municipalities from enacting their own gun-control measures. New York is where most of Florida's crime guns — 358 — ended up last year. Not all guns used in crimes are traced through ATF, and not all guns traced are directly used in crimes. They could be guns found at a crime scene or in the possession of a suspected criminal. Marion Hammer, spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association in Florida, said Florida's laws have nothing to do with guns turning up in out-of-state crimes. Many state laws regulate who can sell a gun and to whom a gun can be sold, she said. "If anything, it's lax law enforcement," Hammer said. "I don't know if it's ATF or [the Florida Department of Law Enforcement] or who isn't enforcing it." In December 2009, Washington, D.C., police and FBI agents arrested dozens of alleged gun traffickers and seized 123 guns in an undercover sting, according to The Washington Post. Authorities posed as gun traffickers interested in buying illegal guns to sell to Mexican cartels. In the end, 44 people were arrested in the sting, and the trafficked weapons were traced to Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky. Federal authorities blamed the out-of-state guns for much of the violent crime in the capital. Gary Kleck, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University, said large-scale, interstate gun trafficking is rare, and often overblown by politicians who want to blame crime on outside factors. Rarely do criminals travel to Florida because they think it's easier to buy guns down South, he said. "This is not about gun trafficking. It's interstate migration," said Kleck, who has interviewed convicted felons and studied the movement of crime guns across state lines. The most common scenario is when someone buys a gun legally in Florida, moves out of state and has his or her weapon stolen in a home burglary. Or a burglar in Florida steals a homeowner's guns and sells it to a someone in another state. "The chances of a burglar coming across a gun here is that much greater than in other states," he said.

Cowell: Tweet for X Factor faves

2011-10-26T06:48:00.001+01:00

US X Factor judge Simon Cowell says he wants fans to use Twitter to vote for their favourite contestants. The Fox show has announced that from November 2, fans can cast a ballot by sending a direct message over Twitter to the official X Factor account. Viewers can also cast a ballot on the show's Facebook page and its official website. "It's a sign of the times," said Cowell, who believes more votes will come in as a result of expanding the process. "Sites like Twitter and Facebook give (the audience) a much bigger voice." Aside from social media, votes can be sent the old fashioned way, by making a phone call or sending a text message and by using a special App created for Verizon Android devices. Cowell uses the internet to gauge what people think of the series so far. He goes online during and after the show to see what people are saying and plans to join Twitter once he learns "how to type quicker". The US show is averaging about 12.5 million viewers an episode, but one thing that has hindered it in recent weeks is the Major League Baseball World Series. Games on Fox have pre-empted the show leading to confusion among viewers and causing some DVR devices to not record X Factor. Cowell says the conflict has been frustrating but they "knew in advance this was going to happen". He believes the ratings have been consistent so far and word of mouth will get people to tune in. On Tuesday's first live show, five acts were cut leaving 12 remaining contestants. With the competition heating up, so has the tension among its judges, who are each mentoring a class of contestants. Cowell has the girls, LA Reid is mentoring the boys, Paula Abdul is helping the groups and Nicole Scherzinger has the solo acts over 30. Cowell says Abdul claims to have the hardest category to mentor, but disagrees with her. He mentored the groups in the UK version of the show and "loved doing it".