Colombia ( Police in Colombia Seize 3 Tons of Cocaine )

BOGOTA – Colombian police on Tuesday seized 2,877 kilos (6,337 lbs.) of liquid cocaine discovered in the Caribbean port of Cartagena, where seven tons of the drug in solid form were confiscated a week ago.

The liquefied cocaine was mixed with dielectric oil – an insulator – and concealed inside an electric transformer set to be shipped to the Guatemalan port of Santo Tomas de Castilla.

The drugs seized Tuesday belonged to Los Urabeños, a gang made up of former right-wing paramilitaries, Colombian police said.

Colombia’s largest-ever seizure of liquid cocaine came just a week days after authorities in the port of Cartagena discovered seven tons of cocaine bound for Europe.

The national police recently sent a special investigative team to Cartagena to look into suspicions that some cops assigned to the port were colluding with drug traffickers, Bogota daily El Tiempo said Tuesday.

The amount of cocaine confiscated at Colombia’s ports has been on the increase since mid-2013, prompting authorities to increase scrutiny of maritime terminals, the newspaper said.

Mexico ( Vigilantes Cut Deal with Mexican Government )

MORELIA, Mexico – The leaders of the community self-defense groups in 20 cities in the western Mexican state of Michoacan have reached an agreement with federal officials to begin demobilizing, officials said.

The vigilantes also agreed to work with federal authorities to strengthen efforts to identify Caballeros Templarios drug cartel “targets,” the office of the federal commissioner for security and development in Michoacan, Alfredo Castillo Cervantes, told Efe.

Federal officials met with Jose Manuel Mireles Valverde, who represented the vigilante groups, on Monday in Tazumbos, a community in the western state of Jalisco.

The leaders of the self-defense groups in the cities of Buenavista, Tancitaro, Los Reyes, Periban, Uruapan, Aguililla, Aquila, Chinicuila, Taretan, Patzcuaro, Coalcoman, Coahuayana, Lombardia, Ziracuaretiro, Apatzingan, Tepalcatepec, Churumuco, La Huacana, Mugica and Huetamo also attended the meeting.

Castillo and the vigilante leaders reached agreements covering legalization and coordination; demobilization; dialogue; compensation; legal solutions; and protection for leaders at the gathering, federal officials said.

One of the agreements calls for the creation of a rural state police force by May 11 that will be staffed by self-defense group members.

The first vigilante group was formed in Michoacan on Feb. 24, 2013, to fight the Caballeros Templarios cartel.

Vigilante groups operate in 30 of the state’s 113 cities.

The federal government deployed soldiers and police in Michoacan on Jan. 13 in an effort to end the wave of drug-related violence in the state.

Federal security forces killed the Caballeros Templarios cartel’s two top leaders, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez and Enrique Plancarte Solis, in February and March, respectively.

Moreno and other members of the Familia Michoacana gang formed the Caballeros Templarios organization after he was reported killed by the government in 2010.

The Caballeros Templarios cartel, which deals in both synthetic and natural drugs, commits murders, stages kidnappings and runs extortion rackets that target business owners and transport companies in Michoacan.

The cartel uses Michoacan’s 270 kilometers (168 miles) of coastline to smuggle chemical drug precursors for the production of synthetic drugs into Mexico.

California ( Man dies trying to save " homeless man " from being attacked ) video

London ( North Korea told London hairdresser to take picture down of Kim Jong-Un ) Oh brother ?

London (AFP) - British police said Tuesday they had intervened after North Korean embassy officials reportedly told a London hairdresser to take down a discount haircuts advert featuring leader Kim Jong-Un.

Mo Nabbach said two officials identifying themselves as being from the Stalinist state's mission took pictures of his M&M Hair Academy in Ealing, west London.

They then demanded to know his name and ordered him to remove the "disrespectful" poster from the salon window, he told the Evening Standard newspaper.

The poster featured a large picture of Kim's distinctive short-back-and-sides hairdo with the slogan: "Bad hair day? 15 percent off all gent cuts through the month of April."

"I told them this is England and not North Korea and told them to get their lawyers," the newspaper quoted Nabbach as saying.

"The two guys were wearing suits and they were very serious. It was very threatening."

Nabbach, who is also a fashion photographer, said he had since removed the offending picture.

His son Karim said they had put up the poster in response to a recent unconfirmed story that North Korean men are now only allowed to wear the same haircut as their young leader, who took power after the death of his father Kim Jong-il in December 2011.

"We didn't realise but the North Korean embassy is a 10-minute walk from the salon. The next day we had North Korean officials pop into the salon asking to speak to the manager," he said.

"He (Mo Nabbach) went to Ealing police station afterwards to file a report just in case anything happened to the salon overnight. Apparently they (the apparent North Korean officials) went to the police as well."

"We haven't had any trouble since then, if anything the poster has become a tourist attraction. It was just something that had been in the news, and the North Korean officials didn't even have the haircut.

"We always put up little offers in the window, it's harmless. We were just making light of a bad situation in North Korea."

Police confirmed that they had stepped in to resolve the issue.

Florida ( Teacher orders " hit on 7th grader " ) video

Syria ( Syrian government and rebel forces say poison gas has been used in a central village )

BEIRUT: The Syrian government and rebel forces say poison gas has been used in a central village, injuring scores of people, while blaming each other for the attack.
Syrian state television and medical sources in central Hama province swapped accusations Saturday over the attack that reportedly caused “suffocation and poisoning” of residents.
The main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, says dozens of people were hurt in a poison gas attack Friday in the village of Kfar Zeita.


State-run Syrian television on Saturday blamed members of the Nusra Front for using chlorine gas at Kfar Zeita, killing two people and injuring more than 100.
In August, a chemical attack near the capital, Damascus, killed hundreds of people. The US and its allies blamed the Syrian government for that attack, which nearly sparked Western airstrikes against President Bashar Assad’s forces. Damascus denied the charges and accused rebels of staging the incident.
Medics quoted by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights NGO said people choking from poisoning had been hospitalized after air raids with barrel bombs Friday on the town of Kafr Zita.
“Regime planes bombed Kafr Zita with explosive barrels that produced thick smoke and odours and led to cases of suffocation and poisoning,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.
But state television reported that Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front had released chlorine gas in a deadly attack on the town.
“There is information that the terrorist Al-Nusra Front released toxic chorine... leading to the death of two people and causing more than 100 people to suffer from suffocation,” it said.
“There is information that Al-Nusra Front is preparing to hit Wadi Deif in Idlib province and Morek in Hama province with toxic chorine or sarin,” the state broadcaster added.
There was no independent verification of either of the claims, which come after a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus last year.
The opposition and much of the international community blamed that attack, which reportedly killed as many as 1,400 people, on the Syrian regime.
The regime denied responsibility, in turn blaming rebels, but agreed under threat of US military action to turn over its chemical weapons stockpile for destruction.

California ( Sex offenders kill " while wearing GPS trackers ) failed system

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) — Two parolees raped and killed at least four women while
wearing GPS trackers, and there may be more victims, a California police chief alleged Monday.
Franc Cano and Steven Dean Gordon, both registered sex offenders, were both wearing ankle bracelets when the women were assaulted and killed last fall and earlier this year, Anaheim police Chief Raul Quezada said at a news conference.
Authorities at the news conference did not explain how Cano and Gordon allegedly managed to carry out the killings while under supervision, but Quezada said data from the GPS devices "was one of the investigative tools we used to put the case together."



Anaheim police Lt. Bob Dunn earlier said the two were complying with a requirement to check in monthly with authorities and police had no reason to watch them more closely and hadn't received any such request from other agencies.
The discovery of one woman's body on a conveyor belt at an Anaheim trash-sorting plant last month was the key to breaking the case, Quezada said. Investigators were seeking the other bodies.
"They put a stop to a serial killing that would likely have continued beyond this point," District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said at the news conference.
Quezada said authorities were confident that there was at least a fifth victim and perhaps more.
The department has contacted other places with missing-persons cases across the country, Dunn said earlier.
Police believe the men killed a woman in Anaheim this year and three in Santa Ana last October and November while on parole.
Cano, 27, and Gordon, 45, were arrested by investigators on Friday. Each man was charged Monday with four felony counts of special circumstances murder and four felony counts of rape.
If convicted, they could face a minimum sentence of life without parole or the death penalty. They were being held without bail and expected to be arraigned Tuesday.
Police at first didn't link the disappearances of the four women to the suspects, considering them missing persons rather than murder victims.
"These individuals were not on our radar whatsoever," Santa Ana Police Chief Carlos Rojas said of the suspects. "Our three missing in Santa Ana just completely went off the grid and we were trying to follow up as much as we could."
Santa Ana police searched a canyon, examined the women's cellphone records, alerted hospitals, put the word out on social media and even checked motels they were known to frequent but without success in finding them.
Then the naked body of Jarrae Nykkole Estepp, 21, was found March 14 on a conveyor belt at an Anaheim trash-sorting plant.
Once investigators concluded that Estepp was killed and that she had "a similar profile to our victims, we were able to ... move forward," Rojas said.
Police believe Cano and Gordon have known each other since cutting their ankle bracelets in 2012 and boarding a Greyhound bus to Las Vegas using fake names. The men were arrested by federal agents on May 8, 2012, after a two-week stay at Circus Circus Hotel & Casino, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada.
Both were wanted fugitives: Gordon traveled using the alias Dexter McCoy and Cano chose Joseph Madrid, authorities said.
Cano and Gordon were previously ordered to register as sex offenders after being convicted in separate cases of lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14.
Gordon was convicted in 1992 and also has a 2002 kidnapping conviction, according to the Orange County district attorney's office. Cano's conviction dates back to 2008, prosecutors said.
After fleeing Los Angeles in 2012, the two were rearrested and both pleaded guilty to failure to register as a sex offender. They were ordered to provide DNA samples and have their computers monitored by federal agents, according to the federal documents, which were first obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
The men also checked in with Anaheim police every 30 days, as required, and provided updated photos, fingerprints and addresses, Dunn said.
In fact, both men checked in earlier this month, Dunn said.
Cano was wearing a state-issued ankle bracelet and Gordon was wearing a federal GPS device, he said.
The string of disappearances in Santa Ana began in October after Kianna Jackson, 20, of Las Vegas, arrived in the city for a court hearing on four misdemeanor charges of prostitution and loitering to commit prostitution. Her mother said she stopped responding to her text messages soon after she arrived in Santa Ana.
Josephine Monique Vargas, 34, was last seen Oct. 24 after leaving a family birthday party to go to a store. The Times said Vargas had a rough past that at times involved drug use and prostitution, but her mother said she had been trying to better her life.
Martha Anaya, 28, asked her boyfriend to pick up their 5-year-old daughter so she could work on Nov. 12, then stopped responding to his messages later that night. Police said she also had a history of prostitution.
In the weeks before she was found dead at the trash-sorting plant, Estepp, had become a regular on a strip of Beach Boulevard in Anaheim long known for prostitution.