`A convicted Vietnamese robber who escaped from prison 20 years ago chose a sly way to hide from the law — inside the police force and as a member of the ruling Communist Party.
A police newspaper reported Friday that Ngo Thanh Tam, 51, was re-arrested Tuesday, two decades after joining the police under a false identity in the Central Highlands province of Dak Nong.
The An Ninh Thu Do (Capital Security) newspaper described Tam as a “dangerous criminal” on the national wanted list. After his arrest he was purged from the party, which he joined in June.’
`Madin Azad Amin was intending to travel to Turkey with his mother when he was stopped by officials on August 16 after they spotted a grenade-like object in Mr Amin’s baggage, said AP.
Rather explaining the nature of the item in front of his mother, Mr Amin told the officials it was a bomb.
The item was in fact a section of a penis pump, AP reported Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Lorraine Scaduto as having said.
`Every speed camera fine issued by the Roads and Traffic Authority since 1999 may be invalid, after a judge ruled the photos used to convict drivers were meaningless.
The decision in the Sydney District Court by Judge John Nicholson, SC, could cost the State Government hundreds of millions of dollars, said Dennis Miralis, the solicitor who won the case. [..]
He found that to be given weight as evidence the digital cameras that took the photos had to be calibrated every day. The authority calibrated its cameras once a year, Mr Miralis said.
He said every person convicted on such evidence since 1999 – when digital cameras came in – had been improperly convicted.’
`Eighteen Indonesian prisoners broke out of jail using an unusual weapon – the chilli pepper.
Prisoners at Pematang Siantar jail in Sumatra mixed hot chillies with water in plastic bottles to spray at guards.
The fiery liquid temporarily blinded the guards, allowing prisoners to grab their keys and make the break for freedom.’
`Meow. A Pennsylvania judge is being asked to decide whether that word is a harmless taunt or grounds for misdemeanor harassment.
Police have charged a 14-year-old boy with that crime. Michael Loughner is accused of meowing whenever he sees his 78-year-old neighbor, Alexandria Carasia.
The boy’s family got rid of their cat after Carasia complained that it was using her flower garden as a litter box. Now, she said, the boy makes meowing sounds every time he sees her.
He said he’s only meowed at her twice.’
`A thief in Perth is stealing expensive motorbikes while on test rides after leaving dogs behind as security.
Police believe one man is responsible for stealing two bikes and abandoning two dogs in two separate thefts this month.
The first theft occurred almost two weeks ago after a Wanneroo man advertised his motorcycle for $10,000, officers say.
“A man arrived at his house with a dog and was given permission to take the bike for a test ride, leaving his dog with the seller,” police said.
“The man did not return with the bike, or for his pit-bull terrier dog.”‘
`A husband and wife in Mozambique face multiple charges after confessing to exhuming corpses to eat the flesh and powdered bones, say police.
They were arrested in the western village of Vanduzi last weekend in possession of human organs.
In a confession, the couple said that eating human flesh strengthened their power to heal people, police say.’
`A suspect has been arrested “for the December 26, 1996, murder of JonBenet Ramsey,” the district attorney in Boulder, Colorado, said Wednesday.
A law enforcement source identified the suspect as 41-year-old John Mark Karr, a one-time school teacher and American citizen who has lived in Conyers, Georgia.
It is the first arrest in the decade-long investigation of child beauty pageant contestant’s slaying. The breakthrough came as a surprise to many who feared the case might never be solved.’
`Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has questioned the culture of complaint over the detention of David Hicks, arguing that no one criticised the detention of “Middle Eastern boys” accused of gang rape for nearly five years before they were convicted.
Comparing supporters of the Adelaide-born terror suspect to communist sympathisers during the Cold War, Mr Ruddock said yesterday he had not heard many complaints when suspects in Sydney’s vicious gang rapes were held for many years as a result of successive legal challenges.’
`East Pennsboro Police Chief Dennis McMaster has seen a lot of horrible things in his long career as a police officer.
But he says nothing was more shocking than seeing bees flying in and out of an open tumor in the side of a dog named Merrick.
McMaster says the insects had built a nest in the 9-year-old yellow Labrador retriever found June 26 by a letter carrier in the 300 block of West Perry Street.’
`Indian TV journalists keen for a story encouraged a protester to burn himself to death, giving him matches and fuel, a report quoting police in India said.
The journalists in the eastern state of Bihar kept the cameras rolling as Manoj Mishra, who was demanding back pay, suffered 90 per cent burns to his body, The Indian Express newspaper said.
Police later filed a case against the journalists, accusing them of abetting suicide, the daily said.’
`Police have been looking for a disgruntled McDonald’s customer who ran into two other customers with her car after a dispute over who was next in line.
Melinda Ann Thomas, 34, and Linda Ann Thomas, 51, were standing in a crowded line around 8:30 a.m. Saturday as they waited to order breakfast, police said. A cashier opened a new line and they stepped to the front of it – a move that angered another customer who was waiting to order.
According to the report, the unidentified woman started yelling at them and threatened to kill them.’
`Cocaine traffickers may be using submarines to smuggle drugs into Europe, Spanish police said on Monday after finding a 35-foot-long submarine drifting off the country’s northwestern coast. [..]
Although the Galicia Civil Guard have never seized a smugglers’ submarine before, traffickers have been known to use submersible craft elsewhere to ferry cocaine between shore and mother ship.
In 2000, Colombian police found a 100-foot-long submarine with the capacity to carry up to 200 tons of cocaine worth billions of dollars still under construction in the Andes mountains near Bogota.’
`Thieves in Germany stole E7500 ($12,480) from a man by throwing faeces at him from behind and then pick-pocketing him while they pretended to help clean up the mess, authorities said overnight. [..]
The two women then began briskly wiping the filth from the man’s clothing with paper towels they had with them. They were soon joined by a man, who also came bearing paper towels.
Only when the man went to take his foul-smelling trousers to cleaners did he notice that E7500 ($A12480) had been taken from his back pocket by one of the would-be helpers, police said.’
‘A 34-year-old man released three pit bulls into an Independence neighborhood where they attacked three men because he wanted to “cause some excitement,” prosecutors said in filing criminal charges Friday. [..]
According to documents filed with the county charges, a man who lived next door to the house where the dogs were kept told police that Smith had told him he was planning to release the dogs “to see what kind of trouble he could cause.”
The neighbor, Earl Howard Jr., warned him not to but testified he later saw a window in the house open and the three dogs jump out.
He said he saw Smith at the window, laughing.’
`An American tourist who ran naked through a peaceful Swiss town, vandalized a church and escaped from police clutches by jumping into a lake could have been on hallucinogenic mushrooms, a local magistrate said. [..]
He started babbling incoherently in the hotel lobby, stripped and ran naked along the quayside, broke a stained glass window in the nearby protestant temple with a stool and set a precious 1898 bible alight, police in Morges said.
After being seized and handcuffed by police, he made a leap for freedom into the lake and bit two people who tried to help him while he was hanging on to a boat.’
`Three would-be thieves broke into a bank in northern Malaysia but failed to make off with any cash as they yanked out the wrong machine – a cheque deposit machine instead of an automated cash dispenser, the national news agency Bernama reported Wednesday.
The three men broke into the entrance area of the bank in the northern town of Bukit Mertajam early Wednesday, and tied a rope – attached to two vehicles – around a machine, police district investigation chief Chor Ah Sing said, according to Bernama.
They jerked the machine off its hinges, sending it crashing to the ground floor, Chor added.’
`A group of 10 to 15 masked individuals entered Taco Bell, 3244 S. Western Ave., around 10:46 p.m. Tuesday to return a three-year stash of fire sauce packets, police say.
The group returned six 40-gallon trash bags filled with approximately, 25,000 sauce packets to the restaurant.
With the stash was a note stating that they had been accumulating the sauces over three years and kept them stored in the trunk of a vehicle, but felt guilty about keeping them and decided to return them to the restaurant.’
`The suspected terror plotters arrested in Britain had planned to conceal their liquid or gel explosives inside a modified sports beverage drink container and trigger the device with the flash from a disposable camera.
ABC News has learned exclusively that the plotters planned to leave the top of the bottle sealed and filled with the original beverage but add a false bottom, filled with a liquid or gel explosive. The terrorists planned to dye the explosive mixture red to match the sports drink sealed in the top half of the container.’
`In the last action-packed adventure, Barbie found herself charged with disorderly conduct, and sentenced to six months in Malibu State Penitentiary!’
`A man drank 12 pints of cider at a party before stealing a pet goat and taking it for a ride in a stolen car, magistrates in Neath have been told.
Carl Myles, 20, of Trallwn, Swansea, untethered the animal and bundled it into the back of a farmer’s Volvo before taking to the wheel. [..]
District Judge Richard Williams told Myles: “It seems to me you did this purely out of immense stupidity.”‘
`Robbery is never funny. Except when it’s described by Toledo police officers with a peculiar sense of humor. Early this morning, Scott Gibson, 44, was returning from the grocery store with a gallon of milk when, as he told cops, he was surrounded by “5 fat black girls” in the parking lot of a Kentucky Fried Chicken. As described by officers Patrick Sutherland and Kristi Eycke in the below Toledo Police Department incident report, one of the “hefty felons” asked Gibson to surrender his milk. Believing that he was being pranked, Gibson just laughed at the request. But, as cops reported, he realized it was no joke when the “rotund robbers” began “pelting him with a flurry of chubby fists.” After the assailants tore the milk from his hands, they relieved Gibson of his Motorola cell phone.’
`An 18-year-old has pleaded guilty to animal cruelty for a videotaped incident in which he and two friends lit a turtle on fire and danced around it.
Joel Charles Ross of Hawley admitted they set the large snapping turtle on fire. He said they did it not once, but twice, and dressed up differently because they wanted to make their video “more funny and exciting.”’
`A North Texas man in jail on charges of impersonating a police officer and robbery said he did it to save lives.
Micheal Reilley said he saw someone driving a pickup truck erratically on Interstate 30 in Dallas Sunday morning.
Reilley, thinking the driver of the truck was under the influence, called 911 and said he was an Arlington officer in need of assistance. [..]
Before Dallas police arrived, the driver of the pickup truck, Carlos Lopez, pulled over.
Reilley, still claiming to be a police officer, also pulled over. The two men started fighting after Reilley identified himself as a officer and asked for Lopez’s wallet. Reillen then shot Lopez 10 times with a Taser gun, police said.’
`The Bush Administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading prisoners of war, US officials say.
The amendments would alter a US law passed a decade ago that made violating the Geneva Conventions a criminal offence they said. The conventions generally ban the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.’
‘A man who sued the city for entering his apartment without a search warrant after he was mauled by his 450-pound pet Siberian tiger demonstrated a lot of nerve in taking the city to court, a judge said as he threw the lawsuit out. [..]
Police removed the 10-foot-long tiger, Ming, and an alligator, Al, from Yates’ East Harlem apartment. Yates served 3 1/2 months in jail after pleading guilty to reckless endangerment. [..]
Police determined that the situation was an emergency because there was a large tiger that had recently mauled a man roaming around inside an apartment, the judge said.’
`Authorities in Orlando, Fla., continued a search Friday for several men who threatened to kill some restaurant employees unless they dropped their pants during a robbery, according to a Local 6 News report.
Orlando police said the unidentified men forced employees into a room with a safe at the Wing House restaurant located on Kirkman Road Wednesday and forced them take off their pants.
The culprits escaped with nearly $3,000 in cash, police said.’
`”Catch me if you can.”
Those were the parting words of a taunting missive containing a white power sent to a police station earlier this week.
Police had no trouble finding their suspect: He signed the letter and included his return address on the envelope.
Abdullah Date, 18, was charged with sending the threatening letter to the 73rd Precinct in Brooklyn’s East New York section, and ordered held without bail, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday in Brooklyn federal court. The white powder turned out to be harmless.’
`A woman with a fake bomb strapped to her stomach forced the evacuation of two city blocks in Daytona Beach on Wednesday morning. The woman claimed she was forced to strap a bomb to herself by a man with a knife.
It turns out it was all a ploy for the woman to get her hands on some prescription drugs. [..]
With a suspicious bulge she called a bomb strapped to her stomach, 23-year-old Maria Gonzalez brought Mason Avenue to a halt. She had gone into Steve’s Pharmacy earlier, demanding prescription drugs or she’d blow up.’
`For two months, from mid-November 2004 to mid-January 2005, Odd languished in the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, trying to figure out why he was there, and desperately trying to convince somebody – anybody – to set him free.
Odd, 42, was jailed at the request of a Philadelphia assistant district attorney – not as punishment for a crime, but to ensure his testimony as a witness in a murder case.
Yet, even after the murder charges were dismissed, no one bothered to release Odd from prison.’
