Grenades, Smoke, Explosions As Hundreds of Cops and Troops Move In On Accused Drug Lord Christopher Coke

As hundreds of troops and police officers close in on alleged drug lord Christopher Coke, explosions and steady gun fire can be heard throughout the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica. Plumes of smoke are rising from the barricaded community and journalists are hearing reports of as many as 15 dead, but caution that at this time they are unable to confirm that tally.

PHOTO Heavily armed police patrolled the Jamaican capital on Monday after at least three people were killed in an outbreak of violence by suspected supporters of an alleged drug lord who faces extradition to the United States

Armed police officers patrol a street in Kingston, in this May 24, 2010 frame grab. Heavily armed police patrolled the Jamaican capital on Monday after at least three people were killed in an outbreak of violence by suspected supporters of an alleged drug lord who faces extradition to the United States. Collapse
Coke is wanted by U.S. authorities for alleged drug and firearms offenses committed while running an international drug gang called the Shower Posse out of the Jamaican capital's slums. Earlier Monday, he told the Jamaican police who are trying to capture him so he can be extradited to the U.S., "I will not surrender," according to U.S. authorities.

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25 killed in Karachi political-ethnic violence

Karachi: The paramilitary Pakistan Rangers were called after political-ethnic violence in this southern port city claimed 25 lives, said a media report on Thursday.

The violence -- which began late Tuesday, continued through the day Wednesday and spilled over to Thursday morning -- targeted activists of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) the Awami National Party (ANP) the Muhajir Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) and the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI).

FBI Says Badly Decomposed Body is Kayleah Wilson, Launches Homicide Investigation

The body, found Wednesday just one mile from where Kayleah went missing nearly two months ago, was identified through dental records, said Greeley, Colorado, Police Chief Jerry Garner at a press conference today.

"The Weld County Coroner's Office has identified the boy as that of Kayleah Wilson," said Garner. "The information that has been provided says that the death does not appear to be accidental and as a result, a homicide investigation has begun."

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Woman Considered Dead Found Alive, Disoriented

A month ago, a mother and father identified a body in a morgue as their daughter's. A funeral was held and the family mourned its loss.

But it turned out that 39-year-old Tea Buric was still alive. This week police had found her when they showed up at an apartment in the southern city of Split to investigate a report of domestic violence.

Buric was disoriented and lacked identification, so police checked her fingerprints and discovered she had been identified by her family as dead.

The body found floating in the Split harbor on April 15 turned out to be that of a 44-year-old woman who had disappeared earlier that month, Split police said.

Police spokeswoman Marina Kraljevic-Gudelj said in an interview on Thursday that police didn't use DNA to identify the well-preserved corpse because four relatives, including the parents, had identified it.

Local experts also said the DNA procedure, considered expensive in Croatia, is generally only used if a corpse cannot be identified or appears to have been the victim of a crime.

The parents of Buric and the 44-year-old deceased woman declined to discuss the case.

Thailand protests: Toll rises as six found dead in temple refuge

With an uneasy peace holding in Bangkok , the death toll from the violent army crackdown has reached 14 today when the bodies of six protesters were found inside the temple designated as a refuge for women and children.

The military declared that it had retaken control in central Bangkok but a city-wide curfew was extended for another three days. The government declared a state of emergency across 23 provinces, mainly in the north of the country, which is an anti-government redshirt stronghold.

The discovery of the bodies took to 82 the total number of deaths during two months of clashes between government troops and protesters.

The redshirts' fortified protest camp in central Bangkok was stormed by troops early on Wednesday. Demonstrators had occupied some 300 hectares (740 acres) of the capital for more than a month.

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Foreign student IDs handed to police

THE identities of half a million foreign students will reportedly be handed over to police across the country to find out if any attacks against them were racially motivated.

Following a request from the Institute of Criminology, the Department of Immigration will release the names and ages of present and former students from China, India, South Korea, Malaysia and the United States to state and territory police, Fairfax newspapers reported.

The Institute of Criminology will utilize the information to investigate whether foreign students are more likely to be victims of crime than likewise aged Australians.

Al-Qaeda 'planned 2010 FIFA World Cup attack'

A senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq who was arrested 2 weeks ago had been planning an attack against the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa next month, an Iraqi security spokesman said on Monday.

Abdullah Azzam Saleh Misfar al-Qahtani, a 30-year-old Saudi, "participated in the planning of a terrorist act in South Africa during the World Cup", said Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Atta.

He added that Abdullah Azzam Saleh Misfar al-Qahtani, who was in charge of "security" for the terror network in Baghdad, was in contact "with the terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri to organize the plan hatched by al-Qaeda".

Ayman al-Zawahiri is al-Qaeda's number 2 and deputy to Osama bin Laden.

Atta declined to give further details on the plan or comment on how the information was obtained.

Indiana man gets 125-year term for molesting children

COVINGTON, INDIANA — A 32-year-old Indiana man convicted of molesting children as young as 2 months old with his girlfriend has been sentenced to 125 years in prison.

Stephen Quick II of Veedersburg received the same judgment that 26-year-old Samantha Light received in December. Fountain Circuit Court Judge Susan Orr Henderson found Quick guilty of 3 counts of child molesting in March. Light pleaded guilty to child molesting charges.

Prosecutors say the pair made videos of themselves molesting children Light was baby-sitting.

The mother of one victim called the couple "the most disgusting pair I could think of."

Quick told the judge he plans to appeal his convictions and sentence.

Searches resume for 2 people feared drowned

EMERGENCY services workers have resumed their search for a woman lost on the NSW Central Coast after a horror weekend rock fishing trip, also for an American man missing after a swim on the state's far north coast.

The middle-aged woman was on a rock fishing trip at Flat Rock, Catherine Hill Bay, NSW, on Sunday with her partner and one more middle-aged couple, along with the 25-year-old son of one of the couples when they were apparently flooded by freak waves.

The bodies of 4 of the group had been recovered by yesterday afternoon before police scaled down their search for the remaining missing woman, who is presumed to have drowned.

They resumed their search this morning. In the meantime emergency services workers are also looking for a missing American man who went swimming near Byron Bay, on the far north coast.

He was reported missing by friends about 12.20pm yesterday.

Iran says mothers can visit 3 jailed Americans

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's foreign minister is confirming that the mothers of 3 Americans arrested along the Iraqi border in July will be allowed to visit them in a Tehran prison.

Manouchehr Mottaki said on state television late Monday that the Iranian government has ordered its U.N. mission in New York to issue visas to the mothers.

Manouchehr Mottaki says Iran made the decision on humanitarian grounds. Iran has accused Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal of illegal border crossing, espionage and having links to U.S. intelligence. Their relatives and the U.S. government have left without the spying accusations and called for their release.

Dagestan bomb explosion equivalent to 1.5 kg of TNT

The bomb that went off on Friday night at a railway station in Derbent, Republic of Dagestan in the Russian volatile North Caucasus region was equivalent to 1.5 kg of TNT(Trinitrotoluene), investigators said on Saturday.

The explosive device was placed in a garbage dumpster close to the platform where passengers were gathering to catch an intercity train. The explosion wounded at least 8 people, 3 police officers and 5 civilians, and a woman died of wounds in the hospital, a police source earlier said.

Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus republics, in particular Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, have seen an upsurge of militant violence recently, with frequent attacks on police and officials.

The Kremlin has pledged to wage "a ruthless fight" opposed to militant groups but also acknowledged a need to tackle unemployment, organized crime, clan rivalry and corruption as causes of the ongoing violence in the region.

29 dead after tornado, storm in southwestern China

BEIJING – A tornado and strong winds swept through southwestern China early Thursday, killing at least 29 people and injuring nearly 200 people, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

Over 70,000 people were relocated after torrential wind, rain and hail lashed the city of Chongqing overnight, the ministry said on its site. 1 person remains missing and 190 have been hurt, it said.

1000s of buildings have been damaged in the hardest hit counties of Liangping and Dianjiang, disaster relief officials said, as said by the official Xinhua News Agency.

In Dianjiang, storms destroyed 980 residential buildings and damaged more than 10,000. The damage was estimated at more than 120 million yuan ($17.6 million), a county government spokesman said.

Xinhua said the tornado struck the area around 2 a.m. Thursday. Winds reached up to 70 mph (112 kph), while heavy rains pounded the area over a 24-hour period.

The Chongqing municipal civil affairs bureau has sent 300 tents, 1,000 quilts also emergency lights to the affected regions. As well, municipal health authorities have dispatched 2 teams of medical workers to storm-hit areas.

Grenada man hauls bucket of Two human heads to police

ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada – A Grenada man with 2 severed human heads in a bucket walked into a precinct station and presented his haul to horrified police, authorities said Tuesday.

The 32-year-old, whose name wasn't released, was held when he entered the Grenville station late Monday and he has yet to be charged, said police spokesman Troy Garvey.

Investigators released few details regarding the grisly slayings in St. Andrew parish, but said the man is a suspect. Troy Garvey didn’t say if there were other suspects or a motive for the killings. Police later found 2 hacked-up, headless bodies in a rural field, including the owner of a local tavern.

Tillman Thomas, Prime Minister as well as national security minister of Grenada called the beheadings an "indescribable act" that underscores the need for a "structured approach to anger management."

"This is a tragedy not just for the people of St. Andrew but for all of Grenada," Troy Thomas said Tuesday.

The beheadings have appalled islanders in the Caribbean country of 91,000 who are accustomed to crime reports of robbery and theft.

Death penalty returns in Taiwan, Four executed

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan executed 4 people on Friday, the justice ministry said, in the island's first cases of capital punishment since 2005 when the sentence became a sensitive political issue.

4 inmates convicted of crimes connected to a murder case were executed late on Friday, the ministry said in a statement, following years of fractious debate that saw the ministry's chief quit last month in protest.

"The justice ministry gave death penalty orders to the 4 people on April 28 and the order was carried out on April 30," the one-line statement said.

Ex- Justice Minister Wang Ching-feng and Amnesty International have urged Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou to scrap the death penalty.

Abolition of the law, which is widely supported, might hurt the government ahead of November local polls. A further 40 inmates remain on death row, the ministry said on Friday. Around 500 inmates were executed between 1987 and 2005.

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Finnish, Mexican killed in ambush on caravan

OAXACA, Mexico – Mexican officials say a Finnish man also a local political activist were killed when their humanitarian caravan was ambushed in a remote, restive area of Oaxaca state.

The Oaxaca attorney general's office said Wednesday that Jyri Antero Jaakkola of Finland and Oaxacan activist Beatriz Alberta Carino Trujillo apparently died of gunshot wounds in the attack.

An eyewitness says that around 40 people traveling in the caravan scattered during the gunfire Tuesday. Most are still missing, including 2 journalists from the Mexican magazine Contralinea.

The area involved is the scene of a decades-long difference of opinion between a group demanding greater local autonomy as well as militants with links to Oaxaca's ruling party.

Mortar fire kills 2, injure 14 Iraqi soldiers at Baghdad post

BAGHDAD — 2 Iraqi soldiers were killed Tuesday in an overnight mortar attack on a security station in a Shiite neighborhood in northern Baghdad, police and hospitals officials said. Another 14 people were injured in the 1 a.m. attack on the joint Iraqi army-police office in the capital's Hurriyah area, the officials said.

3 mortars hit the security station, according to 2 Iraqi police officials, and an army colonel was among the wounded. A hospital official confirmed the casualties. All 3 officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media.

No one immediately claimed liability for the attacks. It was the 2nd big attack in Hurriyah in less than a week. Last Friday, a car bomb at the district's Hadi al-Chalabi mosque killed 8 people and wounded 19. The bombing was part of what appeared to be a coordinated strike on Shiite worshippers across Baghdad.

In all, 72 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in the Friday bombings that also targeted Sunni police officials in the country's western Anbar province. And Tuesday, unidentified gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on an Iraqi soldier in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, police said.

Kirkuk Police Colonel Ahmed Shameran, identified the victim as Khalil Ibrahim, a 27-year old army lieutenant who was attending Kirkuk University. An unidentified person with Khalil Ibrahim was injured. Kirkuk is about 180 miles north of Baghdad.

6 police, 1 civilian killed in Ciudad Juarez,Mexico shootout

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO - 6 police officers and 1 civilian were killed Friday in a shootout in Ciudad Juarez ( the most violent city in Mexico) , on the border with the U.S., a local police officer told AFP.

"There are 6 police and 1 civilian dead but there could be more," the officer said, requesting anonymity. Police came under fire as they attempted to stop a cavalcade of vehicles carrying alleged drug gang hitmen, he added.

The shootout occurred in the southeast of the notorious border city across from El Paso, TX where more than 2,660 people were killed previous year.

Two Republican senators on Monday proposed sending 3,000 further US National Guard soldiers to the border as drug-related violence has intensified across northern Mexico in recent weeks.

Over 22,700 people have died in suspected drug attacks as Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico launched a military crackdown on organized crime after taking office in late 2006.

Eleven missing in oil rig blast may not have escaped

11 workers missing from an offshore oil platform may not have escaped after a massive explosion, officials said Thursday.

Crews continued to search by air and water for those missing from the Deepwater Horizon, which burned for nearly a day prior to sinking into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday.

Vice president of rig owner Transocean Ltd Adrian Rose said crew members who survived Tuesday's explosion indicated the missing could have been near the blast and unable to escape.

Officials had hoped they might have been capable to get to a covered lifeboat with supplies.

The rig was doing exploratory drilling about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana and the rescue crews have covered a 1,940-square-mile search area by air 12 times and by boat 5 times.

Quake strikes near Pacific island of Tonga

A 5.9-magnitude quake hit near the Pacific island of Tonga on Thursday, but no casualties or damage were reported and no tsunami warning was issued. The earthquake struck 65 miles (135 kilometers) northeast of Hihifo, Tonga, at a depth of 21 miles (35 kilometers).

Many residents of American Samoa felt the earthquake and went out to look at the ocean while listening to radio broadcasts."Nothing is registered on our censors for tsunami waves," as said by Carol Baqui, a forecaster in American Samoa weather service.

No tsunami warning was issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Hawaii. Police in the Samoan capital, Apia, said they’ve no reports on the temblor. "We didn't feel any earthquake," an officer, who refused to be named, said.

Julie Dutton, a geophysicist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Golden, Colorado, it was a relatively small earthquake. "Right now we don't have any reports of it being felt. It's pretty far off the coast so we're not anticipating anything damaging," Julie Dutton said.

Preliminary estimates put the earthquake at 6.2, but that was later downgraded to 5.9.About 90 % of the world's temblors occur in the so-called "Ring of Fire" - an arc of earthquake as well as volcanic zones that stretches around the Pacific Rim.

Church pedophilia scandal grows in Latin America

SAO PAULO - The imprisonment of an 83-year-old priest in Brazil for allegedly abusing boys as young as 12 in a case involving lurid videotape and a congressional investigation is the latest scandal to hit the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America.

The allegations against Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa — and 2 other Brazilian priests — have made huge headlines all over the Catholic nation and come amid accusations of sexual activity by priests across the region and in Europe and the U.S.

The scandal erupted when Brazilian television network SBT last month broadcast a tape of Luiz Marques Barbosa in bed with a 19-year-old that was widely distributed on the Internet and the station said the video was secretly filmed in January 2009 and sent namelessly to the network.

It was not clear if the 19-year-old, identified as a former altar boy who had worked with Luiz Marques Barbosa for 4 years, had previous sexual relations with the priest.

SBT reporters went to Barbosa's house and confronted him. Asked if he ever ill-treated boys, Barbosa said he might only answer such a question "in confession" and cut off the interview. Brazil's legislature launched a sex abuse investigation, which produced allegations Luiz Marques Barbosa molested boys. The elderly priest was under arrest late Sunday.