A man once accused in the death of Natalee Holloway has been arrested on murder charges in a Peru killing, CNN reports. Peruvian officials announced Wednesday that Joran van der Sloot is the prime suspect in the death of 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel, Chilean police confirmed he had entered their country two days earlier.
Further details about the arrest weren't immediately available, but police in neighboring Chile had been checking hotels for the young Dutchman, long suspected in Holloway's 2005 disappearance.
In Lima, police Gen. Cesar Guardia said at a news conference that Flores was found Wednesday in a room at a hotel where van der Sloot had been staying and that she had been seen with the suspect early Sunday, when she was killed.
The killing occurred exactly five years after the May 30, 2005, disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway during a high school trip in Aruba, a Dutch Caribbean island where van der Sloot's late father was a prominent judge. Prosecutors said van der Sloot is still their main suspect in the case even though he was never charged.
The Dutch government said Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for van der Sloot in the Peru killing. But Rodriguez, the Chilean police official, said authorities there had received only a request to locate the suspect, not an arrest warrant.
Guardia, the Peruvian police general, said the 22-year-old Dutchman was in Peru for a poker tournament and appears with the dead woman in a video taken at a Lima casino early Sunday. The two were later seen entering the hotel by one of its employees about 5 a.m. and the Dutchman departed alone about four hours later, he said.
"We have an interview with a worker at the hotel who says she saw this foreigner with the victim enter his room," said Guardia.
The woman's body was found face down on the hotel room floor Wednesday, abrasions on her face and body, and signs of trauma, Guardia said. He said she was clothed.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2010 14:08 ||
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#1
maybe she heard him confess to killing Natalie, then he sobered up and killed her.
The Mexican government is opening a satellite consular office on Catalina Island -- a small resort off the California coast with a history of drug smuggling and human trafficking -- to provide the island's illegal Mexican immigrants with identification cards, The Washington Examiner has learned.
The Mexican consular office in Los Angeles issued a flier, a copy of which was obtained by The Examiner, listing the Catalina Island Country Club as the location of its satellite office. It invites Mexicans to visit the office to obtain the identification, called matricular cards, by appointment.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican whose district includes Catalina Island, said handing out matricular cards will exacerbate an already dangerous situation.
"Handing out matricular cards to Mexicans who are not in this country legally is wrong no matter where it's done," he said. "But on Catalina it will do more damage. It's a small island but there's evidence it's being used as a portal for illegals to access mainland California."
Rohrabacher added, "If there were a large number of Americans illegally in Mexico and the U.S. consulate was making it easier for them to stay, Mexico would never permit it."
Mexican officials with the consular office in Los Angeles could not be reached immediately for comment. The matricular consular identification card, is issued by the Mexican government to Mexican nationals residing outside the country, regardless of immigration status. The purpose is to provide identification for opening bank accounts and obtaining other services. But the cards are usually used to skirt U.S. immigration laws, since Mexicans in the country legally have documents proving that status, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said.
In 2004 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI officials called the card an unreliable form of identification. The agency said that Mexico lacks a centralized database for them, which could lead to forgery, duplication, and other forms of abuse.
Officers with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said their agency was asked by Mexican officials not to enforce U.S. immigration laws on the island while the cards were being issued.
"It amazes me every time that the Mexican government has the gall to tell us what to do," said an ICE official, who asked not to be named. "More surprisingly is how many times we stand by and let them. This is just an example of one of hundreds of requests we've had to deal with."
In April, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies seized a boat carrying large quantities of marijuana and detained three Mexican nationals who said they were being smuggled into the United States.
The island has a sizable Mexican migrant population. Most are undocumented low-income workers.
UPDATE:
Mexican government officials have moved their satellite consular office from the Catalina Island Country Club to a Catholic Church -- citing protection under the Geneva Convention.
#1
Manuel Noreiga also took refuge at a Catholic Church in Panama. How'd that work for him? BTW, states are not signatories to the GG. I don't recall Congress passing implementing legislation requiring local or state police abide by it. Church sanctity is determined locally by both the behavior of officials and the church. IIRC while people may claim 'protection' in its walls, it's often the case that it is merely the practice rather than written law being observed. So, you think the lefties are going to scream 'separation of church and state' here? /rhet question
[Dawn] A taxi driver drove his vehicle on a shooting spree across a tranquil stretch of northwest England on Wednesday, methodically killing 12 people and wounding 25 others before turning the gun on himself, officials said.
The rampage in the county of Cumbria was Britain's deadliest mass shooting since 1996 and it jolted a country where handguns are banned and multiple shootings rare.
The body of the suspected gunman, 52-year-old Derrick Bird, was found in woods near Boot, a hamlet popular with hikers and vacationers in England's hilly, scenic Lake District. Police said two weapons were recovered from the scene.
Three of the wounded were in critical condition in a hospital. The shootings had ''shocked the people of Cumbria and around the country to the core,'' Police Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said.
Police said it was too early to say what the killer's motive was, or whether the shootings had been random. Some reports said Bird had quarreled with fellow cab drivers the night before the killings.
Peter Leder, a taxi driver who knew Bird, said he had seen the gunman Tuesday and didn't notice anything that was obviously amiss. But he was struck by Bird's departing words.
''When he left he said, 'See you Peter, but I won't see you again,''' Leder told Channel 4 News.
The first shootings were reported in the coastal town of Whitehaven, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) northwest of London. Witnesses said the dead there included two of Bird's fellow cabbies.
Police warned residents to stay indoors as they tracked the gunman's progress across the county.
Witnesses described seeing the gunman driving around shooting from the window of his car.
Victims died in Seascale and Egremont, near Whitehaven, and in Gosforth, where a farmer's son was shot dead in a field. Workers at the nearby Sellafield nuclear processing plant were ordered to stay inside while the gunman was on the loose.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2010 00:00 ||
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But...this can't happen! They have gun control!
Nicolas Sarkozy has been caught up in a long-simmering kickbacks scandal after police in Luxembourg named him as the creator of a company that handled tens of millions of dollars in illegal funds.
An inquiry appeared to implicate the French President yesterday in a case involving the sale of French submarines to Pakistan in 1994. It will strengthen suspicions of French investigators that money from the contract was funnelled to finance a 1995 presidential campaign managed by Mr Sarkozy, then budget minister.
Two French judges believe a dispute between France and Pakistan over unpaid commissions led Pakistani agents to bomb a bus carrying French-employed shipyard workers in Karachi in 2002. Fourteen people died in the attack, 11 of them French. The attack was originally blamed on al-Qa'ida.
Last year, Mr Sarkozy dismissed as fantasy allegations that money intended for secret commissions to middlemen during the sale of the submarines had been used to finance the 1995 campaign of Edouard Balladur. Mr Balladur, then the prime minister, was backed by Mr Sarkozy in a race against Jacques Chirac. After Mr Chirac won, he halted further payment of the submarine commissions, it has emerged from the inquiry.
A parliamentary investigation has determined that pound stg. 80 million in commissions was paid by DCN, France's naval shipyards, to middlemen in the submarine deal. At the time, such commissions were not illegal in France but kickbacks, known as "retro-commissions', were.
Luxembourg police, working for the French judges, said Mr Sarkozy in 1994 "directly supervised" the creation of a Luxembourg offshore company called Heine. Its purpose was to channel the secret payments.
"Eventually, part of the funds that passed through Luxembourg came back to France to finance French political campaigns," the police report said.
"In 1995, references lead us to believe in the existence of a form of retro-commission to pay for political campaigns in France . . . We stress that Edouard Balladur was a candidate in the 1995 presidential election against Jacques Chirac and that he was supported by part of the RPR (Gaullist party), including Nicolas Sarkozy."
The President is immune from legal action while in office and there was little sense of political crisis in Paris yesterday. There was no comment from the Elysee Palace.
Splash! Could that be the sound of Lord Mandelson hitting one of the Dolce hotel's four pools? Or Robert Zoellick of the World Bank? Paul Volcker of the US Economic Recovery Advisory Board? Or merely the euro taking another dive?
That is the thing about the Bilderberg group's top secret meetings: you never know quite what is going on behind the police checkpoints.
Across the world, secretaries to the rich and the powerful have blocked out the next three days in their bosses' calendars for their annual gathering, this time at the Dolce in Sitges, one of Spain's most exclusive resorts.
Normally, every minute of their working lives is accounted for but, each year, a couple of hundred of the world's financial elite and the more business-friendly members of the political class disappear from view; supposedly to save the planet from the dangers of parochialism, the nationalist genie.
It is all terribly confidential -- breathe a word about it and you're out of the club -- but the Bilderberg watcher Daniel Estulin claims to have a copy of the agenda. The big question this time around is whether the euro will survive. "They are afraid that the countries in trouble will leave and the euro will fall apart," said Mr Estulin. "The biggest nightmare is if EU members return to nationally orientated policies."
That would certainly explain why the keynote address is being given by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister. The Piigs -- Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain -- are of concern to the Bilderbergers. After all, the club was set up in 1954 by a Polish exile, Joseph Retinger, to create a European bulwark against the spread of communism. It provided the germ of the European idea; Franco-German reconciliation, the entry of West Germany into Nato, the Maastricht treaty -- all were cooked up in annual fireside chats.
Now, according to Mr Estulin's information, the Bilderbergers are nervous that the erosion of the euro could nudge the world back into recession while public services cuts could trigger unrest and radicalise the political climate.
Plenty to talk about at the Dolce, then. The Bilderberg protesters, sure that they can smell a good oldfashioned capitalist conspiracy, will be holding fringe meetings in the town. The hunt will be on to find a chambermaid ready to ransack hotel litter bins for evidence that evil work is afoot. It has been easier to get nuggets of information out of Bilderberg since hotel staff started to read Dan Brown and talk about the illuminati.
Could it be, though, that the Bilderbergers are simply having fun, away from their spouses, on their annual jamboree? The secret of Bilderberg could be that there is no secret. Certainly, the hotel offers plenty of distractions for stressed CEOs: qi-gong courses, excellent fish, fine wines and bicycle tours.
Henry Kissinger, 87, the former US Secretary of State, and David Rockefeller, 95, the former chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, are the elder statesmen of Bilderberg -- but the leaked invitation list reveals that the gathering is made up primarily of elderly white gents. What? No racial quotas? Better get Obozo in there immediately to straighten things out!
Remember Richard Perle, 68, George Bush's erstwhile Prince of Darkness? He could perhaps form a Prince of Darkness sub-group with Lord Mandelson. Paul Wolfowitz, 66, formerly of the World Bank? Mario Monti, 67, EU commissioner for the single market between 1995 and 1999?
Only the possible attendance of George Osborne, 39, the British Chancellor, will reassure hotel staff that they are not dealing with a Saga Holidays tour. Other members of this clandestine coven include Queen Sofia of Spain and Queen Beatrix of Holland. No doubt their views will be sought on the Swedish royal wedding later this month. Is it right, for example, that a young princess should marry her personal trainer? Fortunately, the Dolce has a team of personal trainers on hand ready to chip into the debate.
Last year Bilderberg held its meeting at the Nafsika Astir Palace hotel in Greece and apparently failed to spot how close their host country was to melting down. Watch out, Spain!
The weather forecast is for three days of sunshine -- time for the Bilderbergers to slink out of the shadows.
Street walkers in Cartagena, on Spain's southern Mediterranean coast, have complained that the imam of a local mosque has launched a campaign of intimidation to get them off the streets. Yazid Koudri, president of the Islamic community of Cartagena and the imam of the Ennour mosque, has been accused of sending a team of "Muslim guards" onto the streets to prevent the women from working.
Police confirm that they have received several complaints from prostitutes working in the streets around the mosque, including one woman who claimed the imam had tried to run her over in his car. Others said the imam sent a team of his faithful onto the streets encouraging them to "insult the sex workers" and "threaten violence".
Mr Koudri has openly lobbied authorities to crack down on the red light district, which has emerged on several streets around the mosque in what local newspapers have termed a "jihad against prostitution". Last month, he presented a petition to the city hall, calling for more policing of the area. The letter had more than 200 signatures, believed to be collected from among the 300 people who regularly worship at the mosque. "We are not against what these women do," Mr Koudri stated. "But ask that they don't do it in the streets where our children walk."
Members of the mosque have reportedly been placed at the entrance to streets favoured by prostitutes to prevent any Muslim passing through, an act which the women complain has led to a drop in clients. The local prosecutor has applied for a restraining order to prevent the imam going within 200 yards of the sex workers.
#6
"Members of the mosque have reportedly been placed at the entrance to streets favoured by prostitutes to prevent any Muslim passing through, an act which the women complain has led to a drop in clients."
Posted by: European Conservative ||
06/03/2010 18:13 Comments ||
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That's the goal of sweeping new education benchmarks released Wednesday called the Common Core State Standards, a project that aims to replace a hodgepodge of educational goals varying wildly from state to state with a uniform set of expectations for students. It's the first time states have joined together to establish what students should know by the time they graduate high school. As long as it doesn't pull anybody down, participation is voluntary, and individual states can pick and choose. If this is followed too closely, it seems to this noob that the Department of Education might try to step in and start regulating things. The DoE is encouraging this, FWIW.
#1
Gee, way back in the 80s, the Army's Training and Doctrine Command thought it would probably be a good idea to standardize common tasks across the service so that training at Fort Lewis or Fort Benning in, say, First Aid was consistent, that the training to standard as a measurement for,say, execution of laying mortar rounds was adjudged to the same evaluation level at Fort Hood as at Fort Drum. They also decided to implement a feedback system to evaluate the effectiveness of both that which is trained and how it is trained. If its not working, then actually fix it. Then again the government was playing for the whole thing. Note however, it has been effective in taking kids who were largely not the top of their class in the traditional educational system and molding them into the finest force history has ever seen.
Now why shouldn't 4th grade level arithmetic standards in Farmington New Mexico be any different than in Brockton Massachusetts? Other than the excuses, by those who have been given lots of tax money, which are employed to rationalize their inability to deliver.
#2
The first iteration will likely be the last that works well to promote actual useful standards. As soon as most states have signed on the effort will be riddled with leftists who will seize control and use it to promulgate the teaching of their favored social policies as the true and correct path for civilization. Not that that will be much different than what goes on in the public schools now mind you.
#4
"Having consistent standards across the states means all of our children are going to be prepared for college and career, regardless of zip code."
Just once Id like to hear some egghead bureaucrat admit that the concept of equal outcome in education is illusionary. Wouldnt it be refreshing, for change, to have some muckity-muck acknowledge that Education is no different then any other institution? Just put away the children are our future speech and admit that equal opportunity is the mandate. Then again, what better way to guaranty perpetual job security and funding then to insist on utopian ideals? And dont forget its all about the kids.
#5
Equal outcome is illusory. However that does not invalidate minimum or improved standards for functional citizenry. Let's face it. A lot of public education in this country is crap with no consequences to the taxpayer funded educational establishment for turning out crap and wasted human potential. Why should the teaching profession be exempt from testing, measurement and continuous improvement of their product?
Posted by: ed ||
06/03/2010 12:57 Comments ||
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#6
I deeply distrust this. Every villain with an agenda concentrates on corrupting the public schools. Seriously, with a real pedophile as the federal "Safe Schools Czar", *any* initiative taken by *anyone* involving the schools has to be very suspect.
Think of it in terms of the PTA on one side, and Stalinist zampolits on the other side. Utterly ruthless extremists willing to commit the time, effort and energy to get control of children and the teaching curriculum.
Ordinary parents who want their children to have a good education are powerless against such thugs.
A local lawmaker recently received what he calls his "highest honor."
State Sen. Ron Alting (R-22nd district) received a bracelet today from the Frantz family in Lafayette. It was specially made in honor of their son, Matthew Frantz, who was killed in Iraq in January 2006.
Matthew's mother, Marilyn Frantz, said the bracelet was the least they could do for Alting's efforts to establish Gold Star license plates in Indiana. The license plates are now available for the parents, spouses, siblings and children of anyone who died while serving in the military on active duty.
Frantz said Sen. Alting was instrumental in making these license plates available in our state.
"Our sons and daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers...they lost their lives for our country, and it's in honor of them," she said.
"I have in my office awards from presidents and pictures with vice presidents, dignitaries from all walks of life," Alting said. "There's none that's more emotional, more closest to my heart and meaningful than [receiving this bracelet]."
Alting said people who are eligible for a Gold Star license plate and would like one for their vehicle, only need to walk into the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. He said they need to bring the military-issued death certificate for their loved one, but there is no charge for a gold star license plate above the regular fee for a license renewal.
[Straits Times] SENATOR Benigno Aquino III could be officially declared the next Philippine president on Monday, four weeks after his landslide win in the May 10 polls, with lawmakers set to soon complete their canvass of votes.
Mr Aquino, only son of the country's revered democracy icon, Cory Aquino, has an insurmountable lead of more than 5 million votes over his nearest rival, former President Joseph Estrada, based on unofficial tallies from the election commission.
The deadline for Congress to declare the winners in the presidential and vice-presidential elections is June 30.
'It's safe to say that we'll be able to proclaim by Monday,' Juan Miguel Zubiri, Senate majority floor leader and a close ally of outgoing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, told reporters.
By Tuesday, lawmakers had confirmed 203 vote tallies out of a total of 278 from provinces, cities, embassies and consulates.
The canvass showed Aquino had 9.6 million votes, or 42.5 per cent of more than 22.5 million votes counted, and Estrada had 5.9 million or 26.3 per cent. The election commission has estimated around 38 million people voted on May 10.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2010 00:00 ||
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[Straits Times] THAI anti-government protesters have vowed to return to the streets after an army crackdown ended their nine-week protest, but with most of their leaders detained or in hiding, it could take months to revive their campaign.
Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy is still recovering from modern Thailand's worst political violence, which killed 88 people and wounded more than 1,800 as troops dispersed protesters from central Bangkok.
The occupation of an upscale commercial district by thousands of red-shirted protesters representing the rural and urban poor decimated the vital tourism industry, sent foreign investors fleeing Thailand's capital markets, and will shave a point or two from projected economic growth this year, the government says.
Calm has returned since troops forcibly dislodged protesters demanding immediate elections from their fortified encampment in ritzy central Bangkok on May 19, providing a window of opportunity to dip back into what had been one of Asia's hottest emerging markets. The window might not stay open for long.
Thailand remains fundamentally divided between what some analysts see as a peasant and proletariat movement largely backing ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and what they call an aristocratic 'establishment elite' of royalists, military brass, bureaucrats and the educated middle class.
Mr Thaksin, ousted in a 2006 coup, or his proxy parties have won every election in Thailand over the past decade, and would most likely win the next one, whenever that is.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2010 00:00 ||
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[Straits Times] THAILAND'S prime minister won on Wednesday more than half the votes in parliament after a two-day debate of an opposition no-confidence motion aimed at blaming him for recent political violence, according to an official tally.
Thanks to his ruling coalition's majority in the lower house, the censure motion submitted by the opposition was rejected by 246 votes to 186, said House Speaker Chai Chidchob.
But his deputy prime minister and four other cabinet members won by narrower margins, in some cases winning barely half the 475 parliamentary votes, the result of a rift between two small parties in the coalition who withheld support from some of the ministers. Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said the result 'may be problematic' but insisted it had not affect government stability.
'Mr Abhisit has emerged reasonably strong from the debate, at least among the powerful middle classes,' said Sombat Thamrongthanyawong, head of the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), a graduate institution. 'Since he is the incumbent who has the support of the coalition, he won't feel the need to go to the polls soon,' he added.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has the support of a six-party coalition and had been expected to survive the no-confidence vote, as indicated by the parliament's official tally.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2010 00:00 ||
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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.
Splash! Could that be the sound of Lord Mandelson hitting one of the Dolce hotel's four pools? Or Robert Zoellick of the World Bank? Paul Volcker of the US Economic Recovery Advisory Board? Or merely the euro taking another dive?
