An armed gang targeted a luxury yacht off a Mediterranean island with German financiers in a daring heist, officials said Monday. Masked gunmen stormed aboard the yacht off the French island of Corsica, overpowered crew and guests and made off with 138,000 ($204,000) from its safe.
It was the first time such a security breach has occurred in French waters, officials said. Speaking French with a Corsican accent, the men, armed with rifles and handguns, boarded the 55-metre Cayman Islands-registered Tiara just before midnight on Sunday and quickly overwhelmed the 10 crew members and nine German passengers, police said.
The operation only took a few minutes and, apart from the threat of their weapons, the robbers did not commit violence against the ships occupants, according to a source close to the investigation. Nor were they interested in the wallets or the jewels of those on board the Sardinia-bound yacht, the source added.
Once they grabbed the money from the safe they made off on the same rubber dinghy they had arrived in.
Tiara was moored off Porto Vecchio in the south of the island at the time of the robbery. In 1997, two English tourists were robbed at sea, but the manner of this raid was completely unique, police said. The prosecutors office in the Corsican capital Ajaccio has opened an inquiry which is leaning on police from further south, along with those from Porto-Vecchio. Ajaccio prosecutor Jose Thorel confirmed the Tiara was carrying 138,000 in its safe.
As of late Monday, the investigators search for the assailants dinghy was ongoing, while they were still questioning the passengers and crew. Those renting the yacht for the month - at a cost of 180,000 a week, according to prices listed on the Internet by its charter company - were wealthy members of the German financial world who preferred to remain anonymous, the investigative source said.
They arent known personalities but people with a solid financial foundation, was all the official would say.
The art-deco styled Tiara has five cabins and at least one marble bathroom and can sleep up to a dozen passengers. Its rear deck is large enough to fit a helicopter. It is a well-known sea fixture for Corsicans who watch it pass by regularly.
Unless your an Islamic fundamentalist, in which case you'll probably wonder what all the fuss is about. [Whoops! Did I say that?]
A San Antonio couple is accused of trying to trade sex with the woman's 5-year-old daughter for an apartment, a used car and child care for her 10-month old daughter.
Jennifer Richards, 25, and her married boyfriend, Sean Michael Block, 40, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Stein Nowak on Friday. Richards is charged with using interstate facilities to transmit information about a minor. Block is charged with distributing child pornography. Nowak ordered Block held. Richards' detention hearing was delayed until Tuesday, the San Antonio Express-News reported Sunday.
According to an affidavit, the investigation began when an informant told the FBI about a text message allegedly sent by Block reading: "Nice piece 5 yrs old belongs to my gf and she wants to sell it." It.
Richards and Block crafted a deal that, in addition to the apartment and used car, included child care for Richards' 10-month-old daughter, whose sexual service the couple intended to sell later, Rex Miller, the FBI's lead agent on the case, testified. What will you take for the gf?
The couple had also hoped to blackmail the informant, Miller said. That only works if he's not an informant.
Richards "was of the belief that these sexual interactions would be a positive experience for [her daughter] and that Richards would receive sexual gratification" from watching, according to the affidavit. So if I think I would receive gratification watching you thrash on the end of a pitchfork, does that make it OK?
Authorities said both children are no longer in Richards' custody and that neither child was sold for sex. That goes without saying. In most states, anyway.
After reviewing computers the couple used and listening to taped conversations, Miller determined Block and Richards were making further plans to abduct, rape and "carve up" a teenage runaway. I wonder how long it will take before the American legal system decides what to do with this poor fellow with the difficult childhood.
Block allegedly sent an e-mail with a link to a Russian child pornography site, according to the affidavit.
Ronald Guyer, Block's lawyer, acknowledged the severity of the charges. But Guyer told the judge that there was no evidence that the behavior progressed beyond Block's fantasy. I didn't know that a fish could talk.
"There has been no action on his part," Guyer told Nowak. Great. Then why don't you let him babysit your daughter while you are working feverishly on his defense.
Richards' attorney did not return a call or e-mail left Sunday. Yeesh! Can't it wait 'til Monday? Vultures.
The couple worked at the Cheesecake Factory at North Star Mall, where he was a bartender and she was a waitress.
Court records show that Block's now-estranged wife, Sarah Block, filed for a protective order earlier this week on behalf of the couple's 14-month-old child. Her lawyer said she filed for divorce Friday. Probably too late.
#2
What kind of slimeball, shitbag, human turd of a lawyer or public defender would touch this case with a 10ft. cattleprod? And to make assertions like "There has been no action on his part", as your defense?! Throw this guy down a well before he rapes or kills a child.
#4
Perfesser, I know what you mean. Especially the guy - prisoners don't like child molesters. Any sentence the guy gets is likely to be a life sentence.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
08/26/2008 12:33 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Rambler.... as hard as I try I just can't generate any sympathy for the 'poor misunderstood guy'...
And Bigjim - I would guess that his lawyer is a public defender who got the short straw in the office draw.
#6
CF, I didn't say I have any sympathy for the guy. Just that even if he is sentenced for only a year or two, it could very well end up being a lifelong sentence for him.
Not that I endorse that sort of thing.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
08/26/2008 14:23 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Not that there's anything wrong with it....
[/Jerry Seinfeld]
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Tok, AK ||
08/26/2008 23:10 Comments ||
Top||
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- The LPGA Tour boasts players from all over the world, and it wants all of them to be able to speak English. Golfweek magazine reported on its Web site Monday that speaking English will be a requirement starting in 2009, with players who have been LPGA members for two years facing suspension if they can't pass an oral evaluation of English skills.
The tour held a mandatory meeting with South Koreans last Wednesday at the Safeway Classic to inform them of the new policy.
"Hopefully, what we're talking about is something that will not happen," deputy commissioner Libba Galloway told Golfweek. "If it does, we wouldn't just say, 'Come back next year.' What we would do is work with them on where they fell short, provide them the resources they need, the tutoring ... and when we feel like they need to be evaluated again, we would evaluate."
There are 121 international players from 26 countries on the LPGA Tour, including 45 players from South Korea.
Golfweek said that while South Koreans were informed of the rule, LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens has not given them a written explanation. But the message already appears to be lost in translation. The magazine said every South Korean player it interviewed believed she would lose her card - not be suspended - if she failed the English evaluation.
Angela Park - born in Brazil of South Korean heritage and raised in the United States - said the policy is fair and good for the tour and its international players. "A lot of Korean players think they are being targeted, but it's just because there are so many of them," Park said.
Seon-Hwa Lee, the only Asian with multiple victories this year, said she works with an English tutor in the winter. Her ability to answer questions without the help of a translator has improved in her short time on tour. "The economy is bad, and we are losing sponsors," Lee said. "Everybody understands."
The policy was endorsed by at least one tournament director, Kate Peters of the LPGA State Farm Classic. "This is an American tour," Peters said. "It is important for sponsors to be able to interact with players and have a positive experience."
#1
So do American lady golfers have to speak Korean in Korea? And German in Germany, Portuguese in Brazil, and so on?
Believe me, I am all in favor of someone who emigrates to the US speaking English, but making people who are only visiting speak fluent English seems stupid.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
08/26/2008 14:55 Comments ||
Top||
#2
"The economy is bad, and we are losing sponsors,"
maybe the sponsors are leaving because nobody watches this. pure economics dumbshit.
i don't think the ability to speak a particular language has a big impact. MLB has many players from several non English speaking countries who speak through a translator, and those sponsors do OK.
Or maybe watching golf is just freaking boring, or maybe its the annoying whispering play by play guy and his sidekick, the "Quiet / Polite Applause" cue card thingy holding dork.
It's no secret cats hate baths, but at least one feline in central Germany now has a good reason -- Bonny was sealed behind her neighbour's bathtub for seven weeks.
The gaunt Persian-mix was recently pulled from underneath the tub by plumbers after the neighbour heard crying and scratching during her morning shower. It wasn't until her husband was called to investigate that the source of the noises was identified. But then the couple immediately thought of Bonny.
The cat's disappearance was well-known in the building. After a burst pipe caused water damage in several flats, Bonny's owner Monika Hoppert and her neighbors left their doors open to help air out the building. Bonny apparently escaped and hid in the neighbor's bathroom, where plumbers tiled her in while making repairs.
After determining the source of the scratches, the neighbors called Hoppert over. She easily recognized the meow. Workers were summoned and retrieved a near-lifeless Bonny. "I took her straight to the veterinarian. He wanted to put her to sleep right then," Hoppert told TheLocal. "I haven't been back since."
Hoppert hand-nursed her half-comatose cat back to life, using a syringe to feed and provide water to Bonny. It's a miracle. She's almost back to her normal self now," Hoppert said.
A local veterinary specialist suspects some water had pooled beneath the tub, offering a tiny bit of sustenance to the fearful feline. That, and a small cask of amontillado.
It's "sensational that the cat lived so long," Ingo Nolte, a professor at the Hannover Veterinary School, was told local daily Schaumburger Nachrichten. Nolte said the cat may have set a survival record.
The cat's seven weeks behind a tub may have cost it more than a few lives, but it has earned the obligatory 15 minutes of fame. "The phone started ringing at 6:30 this morning with television teams," Hoppert said. The photo at the link deserves a caption contest :)
Gustav will be traversing warm waters and will have favorable conditions for strengthening. Its therefore appears likely Gustav will become a major hurricane. The NHC agrees: MOST INDICATIONS ARE THAT GUSTAV WILL BE AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE IN THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA IN A FEW DAYS. And, I would add, in the Gulf of Mexico a couple of days after that.
such a forecast trend raises alarm bells vis a vis New Orleans, not necessarily because its the most likely target (again, its way too early to know that), but because the Big Easy remains by far the most vulnerable American city to a direct hit from a major hurricane which, I remind you, Hurricane Katrina was not; Katrina made landfall well east of New Orleans as a weakening storm, and was by no means the worst-case scenario.
Bottom line, if I lived in New Orleans, and I didnt own a car, I would start asking around among my friends who do own cars: Are you going to be around this holiday weekend? If theres an evacuation, can I have a ride? Just in case.
People are buzzing about Gustav because it seems to have the best chance of any tropical system since the record 2005 Atlantic hurricane seasons Katrina, Rita and Wilma to traverse the central Gulf of Mexico, where the loop current stands ready to aid in the rapid intensification of a hurricane.
A glance at the Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential map shows that, if it follows the expected track, Gustav will be traversing some of the most explosively warm waters in the entire ocean:
If GFDL or NGPS models are right, don't look for me here Monday.
#3
One good thing for Louisiana is that Bobby Jindal is governor, not Kathleen Blanco. I would expect that he will not hesitate to activate the National Guard, and call for federal aid as soon as necessary.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
08/26/2008 13:17 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Any way we can redirect it to Denver by Thursday or Friday?
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
08/26/2008 13:30 Comments ||
Top||
#5
I'd be very surprised if Jindal doesn't already have the La. National Guard on at least partial alert. That guy is on top of things.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil rose on Tuesday as Hurricane Gustav took aim at U.S. oil and natural gas installations in the Gulf of Mexico as it churned through the Caribbean.
Weather models showed Gustav either entering the Gulf -- home to a quarter of U.S. oil production and 15 percent of natural gas output -- by early Sunday or veering toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
"All of the oil platforms off Texas and Louisiana will probably be at risk, but that's real long-range," Eric Wilhelm, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc, told Reuters, adding that Gustav could hit the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 3 hurricane.
U.S. crude rose 30 cents to $115.41 a barrel by 12:41 p.m. EDT. London Brent crude traded down 7 cents to $113.96 a barrel.
#7
The Seattle papers today hava a long-woe-is-me piece about Katrina vicitms STILL suffering due to fraudulent contractors. One (dumb)victim even stated that she had forked out a lot of money to an unlicensed contractor who took it and fled, but she is now on her THIRD unlicensed contractor.
Sorry, there is no vaccine for terminal stupidity. (BTW, where are all the woe-is-me articles about the folks along the Mississippi who lost everything in this year's floods?)
They better have plans to move everyone completely out of S New Orleans and 15 ft above sea level. And if it hits there as a cat 5, stop with the nonsense of rebuilding there. Rebuild to the north like they should have last times. New Orleans rises to the N, Old Orleans stays south in the above the waterine areas (whcih is where al the tourist, business and historical stuff is anyway).
The cinema movies will be a new method to combat terrorism from now on, said the Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister for Defense and Security Affairs, Rashad Al Alimi, in an opening ceremony of the first Yemeni film on terrorism. The 105-minute film portrays how terrorists recruit poor, unemployed, and school drop outs to be potential suicide bombers under the name of defenders of the religion and nation.
The film deals with a very important issue which is to uproot the malignant seed of terrorism, and also educate people about its ideas that have nothing to do with Islam and Yemeni traditions, said Fadhel Al Olofi, director of the film, in the opening. The film, The Losing Bet, comes in the framework of a strategic security plan for fighting terrorism. It gives a clear picture on the causes of terrorism, and also raises awareness about the dangers of terrorism in society, said Rashad Al Alimi.
Al-Alimi said that the Yemeni government is doing many things to overcome this serious problem. We have published two books about terrorism. This film is one of the means to deliver our message to all people and reach our goal of fighting terrorism. Such film can have a real impact on people.
In the film, the 14-year old Yemeni girl, Shayma, forms an excellent friendship with the European tourist Maria, in her 20s, at one of the tourist sites near the city of Sanaa. Shayma, who became the only supporter of her poor family after her brother joined an armed group calling Jihad, was very famous for her languages skills she learned from tourists. Shayma is not only an actor in the film, but she also works as a tourist guide and speaks English, French, Spanish and Italian. While Maria and Shaymas friendship grew, a group of terrorists including Shaymas brother were planning to kill tourists to get closer to Allah.
Despite the fact that Maria was injured and lost her father in a suicide bombing that targeted a group of tourists, her friendship with Shayma, who lost also her brother in the same incident, continued. Will you come back again to Yemen, Maria? Shayma asked. Yes, I will. My father loved Yemen. And I love it too, Maria answered at the end of the film.
The opening ceremony of the film was attended by senior state officials, Arab and non-Arab diplomats, leaders of the Yemeni security agencies. The film will be shown in schools and colleges before being shown on television channels.
CHICAGO - The University of Illinois at Chicago has opened records from a nonprofit organization Barack Obama served on that's linked to former '60s radical William Ayers.
Those records include 140 boxes of documents from a school reform group called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers was instrumental in starting and Obama chaired in the 1990s.
Ayers teaches at the university. He has a controversial past that some supporters of Republican John McCain want to highlight because of his past work with Obama.
Several news organizations, including The Associated Press, began reviewing the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge on Tuesday. The group was awarded nearly $50 million by a foundation in the 1990s to help reform city schools.
#6
Don't know what's missing, but now they have plenty of people pawing through what's there. Whereas before it would have been Stan Kurtz and the NRO by himself.
Shrewd, these Obama people, real shrewd ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/26/2008 16:36 Comments ||
Top||
#7
According to the first reports I read about this -- several weeks ago.... the final report of the project was not "hidden."
It got attention cause it pointed out the "failure" of the project. Kids did not produce any better than when those 40 millions dollars were funneled into the school system.
Managing a project with a budget of $40 million is a massive managerial project. It's looking like, the only executive/admin/make decision job that The One had, he botched it. Regardless of the team, as "director" it was his to fail or succeed.
And of course, that ole adage, "follow the money" will be revealing. But, I'd hammer the "failure" of the project.
In a previous life, I did some pretty extensive educational "counselling" for the Chicago city schools (and other large city districts throughout the US. You can be success in those inner city schools). I was appalled at attitudes, competency, etc. but we were able to have some successes. And I didn't work with a budget of $40 million.
Projects -- include not only working budgets, but personnel, vision, actionable objectives, and directing the traffic to put all the pieces together. Decision making is often, "on the spot." Especially if you are dealing with the "public" who all, having attended school, are experts.
The One, his failure to make this project a success is now advocating "change" with a national budget that measures in the trillions. It's a nightmare to only be imaged.
PATNA: This is India's Katrina, only the challenges could be bigger. Like the Mississippi breached the levee to drown an unsuspecting New Orleans in the US, the mighty Kosi river in north Bihar has broken its embankment to pick up a channel it had abandoned over 200 years ago, drowning towns, numerous villages and rendering over a million homeless. Many are reported to have died.
Officials here say it's a catastrophe unlike annual floods. The brimming river has breached its embankment near the Bhimnagar barrage, close to the Nepal border, and is rushing down as a miles-wide stream to the Ganga, over almost 100km south. Unlike floods, this is not calm water but an angry torrent, making relief work very difficult.
Bihar CM Nitish Kumar said on Monday that over 2 million people have been affected by the Kosi. Ranjeeta Ranjan, MP from Saharsa, one of the flood-hit districts, said that over a million have become homeless. She said that over a hundred have died and she had personally seen bodies in the roiling waters.
What's alarming officials is that the 3km wide breach is growing by about 200 metres a day. The Bhimnagar barrage is just 12km away, and should the breach reach the barrage, huge inhabited areas of Supaul, Saharsa, Araria, Madhepura, Katihar and Purnea districts would be drowned, spelling an even bigger disaster.
Repair work on the breach has to be undertaken in Nepal, but when an Indian team reached there, it had to leave in the face of violent protests. Officials say full Central involvement in disaster management is essential both to take up the issue with Nepal and for assistance in relief.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/26/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
The threat potential was a 'known' for decades, there was no surprise. And given the quick return to the same pathetic patronage politics of the place, likely to repeat.
LAUREL, Miss. Federal officials say nearly 600 suspected illegal immigrants were detained in a raid on a manufacturing plant in southern Mississippi, making it the largest such sweep in the country. More than 100 of those caught up in Monday's raid on Howard Industries were released based on humanitarian concerns, mostly because they have children. Most of the rest were transferred to a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Jena, La. Nine 17-year-olds were transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
#1
Howard Industries produces a wide range of quality products and services for global markets, including distribution and power products for utilities-
Howard Industries Utility Products Division. ... Howard Industries, Inc. PO Box 1588 Laurel MS 39441 (601) 425-3151 Marketing@Howard-Ind.com.
#3
those released will pick up their kids, scoot to a new ID (someone else's stolen ID) and location, and surprise, surprise! Not appear for their deportation hearing. Go figure
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/26/2008 20:12 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
