Federal law enforcement authorities have arrested a Northern Virginia man in connection with an alleged plot to carry out a series of BOMBINGS

Federal law enforcement authorities have arrested a Northern Virginia man in connection with an alleged plot to carry out a series of terrorist bombings at stations in the Washington Metro system, according to a federal indictment.

Virgin María told him to buy a flat with money from the faithful

Padre Ángel told the court that the Virgin María told him to buy a flat with money from the faithful

A priest from Picassent in Valencia who is accused of tax fraud has said that being a priest he thought that he did not have to pay any tax.

However the Valencia Archbishopric does not recognise Padre Ángel as a priest at all.

Padre Ángel claims that he has contact with the Virgen María and that he purchased a flat at her request. He set up his own religious order, La Junta de la Esclavitud del Sagrado Corazon de Jesús, (The Order of Slavery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) and purchased the flat and other land in Picassent, Gandía and Valencia with the money donated by the faithful.

He was on the accused bench of the Valencia Provincial Court on Tuesday and now faces a possible eight year prison sentence, accused of defrauding 386,139 € from the taxman between the years 1992 and 2003.

Read more: http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_27672.shtml#ixzz13bRQSMnU

Reuters Cameraman Dies, Leaving Seven Minutes of Violent Footage Behind - Hiro Muramoto - Gizmodo

Reuters Cameraman Dies, Leaving Seven Minutes of Violent Footage Behind - Hiro Muramoto - Gizmodo: "Reuters cameraman Hiro Muramoto died in a hospital after being shot in a Bangkok protest Saturday. His legacy, beyond his two children, will most likely be the seven minutes of footage found in his camera, turned in by protesters.
Reuters hasn't released the full, uncut footage of the event, but they have shared a few key scenes captured by Muramoto—red-shirted protesters carrying a variety of implements, soldiers collapsing after a grenade explodes nearby—that make the instances behind his eventual death but a small leap of the imagination."

Maurice "Papa Joe" Williams was found guilty of running a drug empire that brought hundreds and possibly thousands of kilos of cocaine to the region

Maurice "Papa Joe" Williams was the puppeteer pulling the strings of a huge central Ohio cocaine-trafficking enterprise, a federal jury decided today.Williams, 34, was found guilty of running a drug empire that brought hundreds and possibly thousands of kilos of cocaine to the region over a 10-year period. Jurors also concluded that Williams was guilty of conspiracy to distribute narcotics and marijuana and using a phone to distribute drugs.Many of Williams' relatives and friends attended the seven-day trial in front of U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus.Local, state and federal law-enforcement agents had been trying to nail Williams and his cohorts for years and finally charged him after wire-tapping 10,000 phone calls and convincing 11 co-conspirators to testify against him.He was indicted on 34 counts in February 2009.Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robyn Hahnert and David DeVillers laid out a case against Williams that had all the makings of a Hollywood thriller: fancy cars, expensive jewelry, drugs stashed in hidden compartments, messages in code.At the center was a man who had the following of a rock star, Hahnert said in closing arguments yesterday.Williams "lived the high life" with expensive cars and beautiful houses, DeVillers said. "Yet he never had a job."As the drug kingpin, Williams hardly ever touched the cocaine and, later, marijuana he brought to the area, DeVillers said."He has everyone else do his bidding. He was the legend. He was Papa Joe."The government built its case on recorded phone conversations between Williams and his assistants, conversations about "smokey robinson" and "nifty" both code words for marijuana and "piggies," the code for a pound of drugs.Police surveillance put Williams at area stash houses where drugs were brought in from Detroit or Atlanta or Houston and then distributed to dealers.And co-conspirators with names like "Little D," "Tone" and "Rabbit" testified that Williams called the shots while carefully ensuring that others did the dirty work of picking up and distributing the drugs.Williams' attorneys, Jeffrey Brandt and Matthew Robinson, did not call any defense witnesses. Instead, they relied on opening and closing statements to drive home the argument that the government had not proved its case against their client."The government has created a story that can't be backed up," Brandt said. He argued that the surveillance testimony, taped phone conversations and evidence found by police weren't enough to convict Williams without corroborating witness testimony.And the prosecution witnesses couldn't be trusted to tell the truth because they were trying to minimize their own prison time by testifying against Williams, Brandt said."I believe in my bones that he's innocent of the offenses of which he's charged," he said.A sentencing date has not been set.

State has “allowed itself to become drug dealer-in-chief”.

Drug users hooked on methadone are pleading with the Government to help them get off drugs completely instead of just parking them on the heroin substitute.
One former addict, Rosie, told The Times methadone is “almost more of a poison than heroin, there doesn’t ever seem to be an end to it”.And Jay, who started smoking heroin before he was 18, said he was given methadone in prison, instead of getting help to become drug-free. Clean
Jay said: “Most junkies I know want to be clean but if you can’t do it when you’re inside, when can you?” And he commented: “I came out needing drugs as much as when I went in.”

The Government is increasing its spending on methadone programmes, despite their low success rate, while only 850 prison inmates were put on an abstinence routine last year.

Residential-based abstinence programmes lasting at least a month have a one in four success rate, but after three years on methadone only three per cent of addicts are drug free, recent studies show. Financial Commentators have pointed out that the methadone industry itself is lucrative. Neil McKeganey, who works at the Centre for Drug Misuse at the University of Glasgow, said: “There’s considerable financial incentive that drug users remain drug dependent.”The Times reports that GPs in many parts of the country get paid around £220 per methadone patient per year and that pharmacists can get £200 administration fees plus about £1.50 per administered dose. Kathy Gyngell, a drugs policy analyst for the Centre for Policy Studies, said prescribing methadone to young offenders has become routine.
She added: “It might appear the easier option but it leads to longer term problems.
“Individuals who historically used their short sentences to gain clean time now feel the necessity to carry on using methadone, as it takes no effort other than presenting themselves at the healthcare door to get it.” The Times’ report concluded with the words of Jay, who is still a drug addict and expects to end up in prison again soon. He was asked why he didn’t just accept methadone every day instead of searching the street for heroin.Jay replied: “But where would it get me?
“All right, the craving for smack’s not there but you soon get the craving for the meth. “Nobody I know on a heroin ’script is getting any better. They’re just surviving.”Commentator Melanie Reid said methadone programmes make drug users into victims rather than encouraging them to transform their behaviour. An editorial in Wednesday’s Times asked why the State has “allowed itself to become drug dealer-in-chief”.The article continued: “Worst of all, methadone is an admission of failure. “It offers no cure beyond lulling people into an ambitionless state of numbness. “It should not be allowed to have the same effect on the debate that it has on its users.

“If methadone is the only solution on offer, we are not asking the right question”, the editorial said.

Chad Schaffner at risk for more life sentences than a cat with nine lives could survive

crime spree that puts Chad Schaffner at risk for more life sentences than a cat with nine lives could survive, the 37-year-old Indiana man yawned.He was equally nonplussed when Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Reeves announced the parolee's probable fate."It would be a total of 12 life sentences consecutive to each other," Reeves said.In just five months, Schaffner robbed 13 banks in six states, including Tennessee. These, however, were no run-of-the-mill heists. Court records show Schaffner, fresh out of prison for two Illinois robberies, seized control of the banks, wielding a gun, issuing orders and threatening to kill tellers.

In heist after heist, he ordered frightened tellers to lie down on the floor as he made his getaway."He told the tellers to lie on the floor and count to 60 and, if they did not comply, that he would return and send them all to hell," Reeves wrote of a July 29 robbery in Hendersonville, N.C.Schaffner told tellers at a Fletcher, N.C., bank that "he had a police scanner and would return and kill them if they called police."In another robbery, Schaffner struck three teller windows at once, walking from window to window with his gun and ordering each teller to fill his bag with cash - sans any dye packs or silent alarms, Reeves wrote.Schaffner, who was nabbed in Missouri in September after a state trooper there recognized him from a media report, is on the receiving end of two powerful weapons in the federal justice system - armed career criminal status and "the hammer."
"The hammer" is a moniker prosecutors have given the harsh consecutive sentencing federal law requires for criminals who use guns to carry out their misdeeds.
In Schaffner's case, the math works this way: As an armed career criminal, he faces life for each robbery and each related count of using a gun in a crime of violence. The hammer means each of those gun crimes will be stacked on top of each other and the life sentence for the bank robberies.Schaffner last month pleaded guilty to robbing banks in Jefferson County and Hamblen County. On Wednesday, he agreed via Assistant Federal Defender Tim Moore to have his out-of-state cases settled here in Greeneville.

Hells Angels violent biker war with the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club

Rising tensions between two biker gangs have Winnipeg police closely monitoring their actions.Police paid close attention to a bar at a St. Boniface hotel Saturday night following a tip that a fight could be imminent.The news follows a serious attack against a Winnipeg member of the Rock Machine Motorcycle Club inside a business on St. Mary's Road about three weeks ago.Sources tell CTV News the victim was lured to the business where he was then beaten.The victim had such serious injuries that he was unrecognizable.Officers say they had received information that the people responsible for the attack were Hells Angels members and a few of their associates.
The group was allegedly unhappy with the victim because he is a former member of the Zig Zag crew, which is a puppet club to the Hells Angels.He had apparently been seen around the city wearing his new gang's vest, which drew negative attention from the Hells Angels.Since the attack, police have been preparing to deal with some sort of retaliation.There were suspicions that members of the Rock Machine were going to attend a bar on Saturday night at the hotel because they knew associates of the Hells Angels frequented the place.Nothing appeared to happen at that bar Saturday night.Still, a number of Rock Machine members from outside the province have been seen in Winnipeg over the past week.Saturday night's events follow the execution of several search warrants, including one last week on Mighton Avenue in Elmwood.A 30-year-old man was arrested and a loaded nine millimetre handgun was seized at the home.CTV News has learned the man who was arrested is a member of the Redlined Club, a group which is considered a friend club to the Hells Angels.This arrest is also believed to be connected to the rising tensions between the gangs, say sources.Police have confirmed they were at the bar on Saturday night, but will not provide any further information.The public's safety was one of the main reasons police say they were there in such large numbers.
There has been trouble between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine in the past. Both groups were involved in a violent biker war in Quebec in the mid-nineties.
A truce was made but police say they are worried violence could erupt again.

24-year-old Howard Astorga, found guilty of first-degree murder

Four-year-old Roberto Lopez loved creating artwork out of glitter and sequins at a neighborhood arts and community center in the southern edge of Echo Park. It was while Roberto was near that neighborhood center that he was fatally shot a year ago last month by a gang member on parole. Today, a jury found that gang member, 24-year-old Howard Astorga, found guilty of first-degree murder, according to Associated Press. Astorga was firing his gun at a speeding car but one of those bullets struck Roberto instead. Astorga faces a prison sentence of 82 years to life.Since the murder, several groups have tried to organize residents of the neighborhood, wedged between Temple Street and Vista Hermosa Park, against crime.

Morgan Hill police are offering $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the gang-related death

Morgan Hill police are offering $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the gang-related death of a 24-year-old Hollister man, the city's first homicide in four years.
Sgt. Jerry Neumayer said today that detectives are still trying to figure out who killed Juan Jose Arrellano Jr. on Oct. 2.
Shortly before midnight that day, police responded to 911 calls from residents who heard multiple shots fired near the Crest Avenue apartments. The arriving officer found Arrellano on the sidewalk, bleeding from a gunshot wound in his upper body. He was pronounced dead at 11:35 p.m.
Witnesses told police they saw at least two young men, between 16 and 20 years old and wearing dark blue clothing, shoot Arrellano with a 9 mm handgun while shouting gang-related slurs.
Arrellano was the first homicide in Morgan Hill since 2005.
Officers flooded the area with the help of dogs from the Santa Clara County sheriff's K-9 unit and air support from San Jose police, but to no avail.

Capture of Raydel Lopez Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental apparently wipes out the existing leadership of the cartel headed by Teodoro Garcia Simenta

Capture of Raydel Lopez Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental apparently wipes out the existing leadership of the cartel headed by Teodoro Garcia Simental, who was captured last month. Teodoro and Manuel Garcia are brothers.Lopez, known as "El Muletas," and Garcia, known as "El Chiquilin," were arrested Monday in La Paz, a city in the southern end of the Baja California peninsula, said Amy Roderick, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.Mexico's Public Security Department confirmed the arrests in a brief statement, describing Manual Garcia as the gang's leader after his brother's arrest and Lopez as the current second-in-command. It said the arrests were the result of leads starting with the capture of Teodoro Garcia in La Paz on Jan. 12, but offered no further details on the operations.Roderick said there were no U.S. indictments pending against the suspects.The gang was known for its brutality, having executed, beheaded and mutilated hundreds of rivals in Tijuana, which is across the U.S. border from San Diego. Gang members pinned notes to corpses and dissolved bodies in caustic soda.Tedoro Garcia's arrest netted 19 mobile phones and two laptop computers. Twelve more cartel suspects were arrested in two raids in late January, including two men and a women who were allegedly about to dissolve a body in a bathtub with chemicals.Manuel Garcia is the youngest of three brothers. The oldest brother, Marco Antonio, was arrested in a shootout with Mexican authorities in Tijuana in 2004.
Teodoro Garcia was once considered a top hit man for Tijuana's dominant drug gang, the family-run Arellano-Felix cartel. He launched a new group affiliated with the Sinaloa cartel after law enforcement arrested or killed most of the Tijuana cartel leaders in 2008.

The splintered organizations have been involved in a violent turf battle in Tijuana, a valuable trafficking corridor to the U.S.

More than 1,500 people have been murdered in Tijuana since the beginning of 2008.

Across the country, more than 15,000 people have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown on cartels when he took office three years ago. More than 2,500 of the killings occurred last year in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

The military announced Monday that soldiers had seized more than 12 tons of marijuana found beneath a false floor of a tractor trailer. The drugs were found during a routine search at a checkpoint near San Felipe, a town in the central part of the Baja California peninsula.