Eideard

Mom — and the unpaid-for bodywork Mom is wanted in Germany for

The mother of a German national suspected of one of the worst arson sprees in Los Angeles history appeared before a U.S. magistrate judge Tuesday in the German government’s effort to extradite her on fraud charges…

His mother, 53-year-old Dorothee Burkhart, was arrested by Los Angeles police during a traffic stop on December 28, a day before the first of 52 fires, mostly in parked cars, that investigators suspect were part of a series of arsons.

The son, who was arrested Monday, was charged with one count of arson of an inhabited dwelling. He is likely to face additional charges as the investigation moves forward, said Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa…

It did not appear that she knew her son had been arrested a day earlier on the arson charge…

A federal extradition complaint said she is wanted in Germany on 19 counts of fraud, including an allegation that she defrauded the doctor who performed breast augmentation surgery on her in 2004. The other fraud charges center on rent and security deposits for apartments in Frankfurt, Germany, the complaint said.

Dorothee Burkhart left Germany last October for California, where she lived with her son in a Hollywood apartment, according to the extradition complaint.

Investigators seized press clippings of arson attacks in Germany from the apartment, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity…

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said officials believe — and hope — the fires were set by one person. But they will proceed as though others may be involved until they know for sure, Beck said…

Los Angeles County Reserve Sheriff’s Deputy Shervin Lalezary, who draws a salary of $1 a year, was hailed as a hero for arresting Burkhart. Lalezary, an Iranian-born lawyer who moonlights as a deputy, pulled over a van in Hollywood driven by a man who resembled the person seen on the surveillance video. With the help of backup officers, he then arrested the driver, Burkhart.

This will probably put a crimp in mom’s new career in California. Apparently, she’s been advertising her services for “sensual tantra massage” and offering “full body hot oil body to body sliding massage”.

Another example of how NOT to dress for a casual stroll through customs

A stunning model proved to be more than meets the eye after she was arrested by Italian police trying to smuggle more than £250,000 of cocaine into the country inside breast and buttock implants.

The 33-year-old woman, identified only by the initials MFM, was held by officers as she tried to distract them with her plunging neckline and tight-fitting outfit at Rome’s Fiumicino airport. But her plan backfired as they were so captivated by her looks they pulled her over for questioning and discovered the drugs when she failed to explain why she had been to South America.

The woman had flown to Rome from Sao Paolo in Brazil and a search by female officers revealed the fake breast and buttock implants she was wearing had also been used to hide 5.5lbs of cocaine…

”She had tried to distract them with a plunging neckline and tight outfit but they stopped her for questioning because she was so alluring and her story about why she was in South America just fell apart.

‘She actually became quite aggressive and was taken away for more detailed questioning by two female officers and that’s when the drugs were found hidden in the plastic breast and buttock implants.

‘The extremely pure cocaine crystals were found moulded into the implants that she was wearing…’

Commenters almost everywhere seem to agree it was a nutty attempt to sneak the drugs through – by making this babe look even more curvaceous. I would think that NOT attracting attention makes more sense than focusing the eyeballs of customs coppers on her bosom and butt.

An argument over a Facebook status update resulted in battery charges for a Pecos, Texas, man on Monday.
According to documents filed in Carlsbad, NM, magistrate court…Benito Apolinar, 36, pleaded not guilty to one charge of battery on a household member.

At 12:08 p.m. on Monday, Carlsbad police officers were dispatched to the 2300 block of West Church in reference to a fight in progress…

Police arrived to find several people outside of the residence, and a woman yelling inside of the home. The woman, later identified as Dolores Apolinar, was taken aside by police to get her statement. She was observed to have a red mark on her left cheek, said police.

The woman told officers that she and Apolinar had been married for 15 years, and have children together, but were recently separated. He was in Carlsbad to drop off his children with their mother, where he allegedly arrived drunk.

According to the complaint, Dolores Apolinar would not let him into her home because she is on house arrest and feared she would get in trouble.

An argument ensued when Benito Apolinar refused to leave the home. The two reportedly yelled at each other before Apolinar came into the residence and allegedly pulled Dolores Apolinar’s hair before punching her in the cheek…

He told police that…the whole incident began with a Facebook status update.

According to the complaint, Benito Apolinar posted a comment on his Facebook page about the anniversary of his mother’s passing, but Dolores Apolinar did not click on the “like” button beneath the update…

“That’s amazing everyone ‘likes’ my status but you, you’re my wife. You should be the first one to ‘like’ my status,” he allegedly told his wife…

The bond was set at $3,000.

Add a laugh track to the courtroom appearance and sell it as “Like” Gone Wild.

Ireland stepped up its battle with the Roman Catholic Church over child abuse Sunday, with Justice Minister Alan Shatter vowing to pass a law requiring priests to report suspicions of child abuse, even if they learn about them in confession.

The Catholic Church regards information learned in confession as completely confidential. But under the law proposed by Shatter, priests could be prosecuted for failing to tell the police about crimes disclosed in the confession box.

Shatter said in a statement through a spokesman last week that priests’ failure to report what they learn in confession “has led sexual predators into believing that they have impunity and facilitated pedophiles preying on children and destroying their lives.”

The minister’s comment to a local radio station Sunday comes after the Vatican rejected Irish accusations that church leaders sought to cover up extensive abuse of young people by priests in Ireland…

“In a spirit of humility, the Holy See, while rejecting unfounded accusations, welcomes all objective and helpful observations and suggestions to combat with determination the appalling crime of sexual abuse of minors,” the statement says…

Released July 13, the 421-page report into the handling of abuses in the diocese of Cloyne demolished claims by the Catholic Church in Ireland that policies it put in place in 1996 had enabled it to get a handle on the problem.

It also accused Bishop John Magee, who was responsible for policing abuse in his diocese, of not backing the policies himself and failing to take action against abusers.

Time is long past for churches to be removed as a law unto themselves, superseding the law of sovereign nations. And, yes, that includes the question of paying taxes like any other corporate body.

 
Chetan Baghat is India’s best-selling English-language novelist. According to Time magazine, one of the 100 most influential people in the world…His books deal with the lives, fears, aspiration and troubles of young Indians.

At the time I write this, millions of my countrymen are on the streets, fighting for a strong anti-corruption law. Many more are glued to their TV sets, watching developments as the initially defiant Indian government looks on track to eat humble pie.

This fight is led by Anna Hazare, a 74-year-old activist, who is on hunger strike until parliament considers the bill that would establish a Lokpal – ombudsman – with the power to investigate and punish corrupt politicians and civil servants.

Hazare had fasted in April and forced the government to agree to include his team in drafting the bill. His non-violent yet aggressive, Gandhi-like method of protest, together with his anti-corruption cause, struck a chord with Indians. Thousands of non-government organisations fight for social causes every day in India, but none has ever achieved this kind of support. From rickshaw drivers to software engineers, from businessmen to spiritual leaders, people from all walks of life back Anna. So do I…

Cynics thrive in India, and they have ample evidence to support their attitude. After all, things have not changed much over the past five decades – governance is as incompetent and corrupt as ever, and the guilty are almost never punished…

And yet, something is different about India’s class of 2011. Despite all the Uncle Cynics, people from all walks of life came forward to fight for the bill. From their parents’ generation that said “nothing will ever change”, they came forward to say: “I am the change…”

Though the government agreed to engage with Anna in April, it backtracked and insulted, ignored and snubbed his team during the drafting of the new legislation…In a serious lapse of judgment, the government arrested Anna from his home on the morning of 16 August. News spread, and the nation exploded on to the streets. By evening, the government wanted to release him. In a masterstroke, Anna refused to come out of jail, and continued his fast there. The country is in a frenzy, and the government is in a fix…

What has happened? How has a sleepy, defeatist India suddenly been galvanised into action? Why do our people, used to a feudal-colonial setup for centuries, suddenly want their politicians to be accountable, rather than treat them like kings? It is difficult to answer these questions at the moment, as we are still in the middle of the movement. However, a few things are clear: India seems to have suddenly woken up to an intense craving for the good and the honest.

Overdue.

An airline stewardess struggling to lift her bag at a German airport led to the discovery of a 6-million euro coin fraud.

The customs officer who stopped the stewardess in early 2010 found thousands of one and two euro coins in her bag…

The incident sparked an investigation that has uncovered a forgery ring stretching to China and potentially implicating employees of German airline Lufthansa…

The Frankfurt prosecutors’ office said on Thursday it carried out dawn raids on offices and residences and arrested six people, four of whom are from China.

It suspects them of having smuggled coins that had been taken out of circulation or bits of those coins into Germany from China, where they had been sent as scrap metal.

The suspects then put the coins back together and exchanged them for a total of 6 million euros at the Bundesbank from 2007 to 2010, the prosecutors said…

Old euro coins are taken out of circulation by removing the inner part of the coin from an outer ring and thus effectively turning them into scrap metal.

The investigators recovered around 3 tonnes of coin pieces as well as a machine for putting them back together, prosecutors said in the statement.

Are there any plans for preventing counterfeiting that actually work? Yes – there are sophisticated and subtle systems for detecting equally intricate counterfeit currency; but, then you’re stuck with ordinary human beings at the point of sale unable to detect the differences, anyway.

This effort seems like it depended on simple machinery re-assembling the coins.

Shahid Balwa arrives at a court for his hearing in New Delhi
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Indian police have made the first arrest of a company executive in a multi-billion dollar telecoms corruption scandal that has rocked the Congress party-led government and undermined Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The scandal, one of several during the Congress party’s second term, has not yet threatened the survival of the coalition because it holds enough seats in parliament, and Singh is still seen as one of the few politicians skilled enough to hold the government together.

But it has already led to the arrest of the former telecoms minister and the opposition, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, is going after the prime minister, accusing him of allowing graft to go unchallenged…

Authorities arrested Shahid Balwa, vice chairman of a joint venture with Abu Dhabi’s Etisalat, overnight on allegations two Indian telecoms firms got favorable treatment when licenses were awarded in 2007-2008 in the world’s fastest growing mobile market…

Police suspect government officials colluded with the private sector in selling them lucrative 2G mobile licenses below market value and are now probing whether anyone received kickbacks…

India’s mobile market is huge with around 730 million subscribers, roughly equivalent to Europe’s population. The number of subscribers is growing at some 17-18 million a month…

The executive arrested in Mumbai was managing director of DB Realty and vice chairman of Etisalat DB, an Indian telecoms joint venture with DB Group, which controls DB Realty.

While every nation has unique roots forming any culture of corruption, there is no way to complete a successful move into regional or global leadership without some level of confrontation of that corruption. Those nations that best meet – and defeat – that culture will grow into the fullest appreciation of their capacities.

A planned trip to Switzerland by George W. Bush was canceled after human rights activists called for demonstrations and threatened legal action over allegations that the former president sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects.

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and several European human rights groups said they were planning to file a complaint against Bush and wanted Swiss prosecutors to open a criminal case against him once he arrived in the country.

In what would have been his first European trip since leaving the presidency, Bush was scheduled to speak in Geneva on Feb. 12 at a dinner in honor of the United Israel Appeal. A lawyer for the organization said Bush’s appearance was canceled because of the risk of violence, and that the threat of legal action was not an issue…

“President Bush was looking forward to speaking about freedom and offering reflections from his time in office,” David Sherzer said in an e-mailed statement…

Organizers of a rally outside the Hotel Wilson, where the speech was scheduled to take place, had called on demonstrators to each bring a shoe, an effort to echo the assault on Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in 2008 when an Iraqi journalist threw a shoe at him…

“Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he canceled his trip to avoid our case,” the Center’s statement said. “The message from civil society is clear: If you’re a torturer, be careful in your travel plans. It’s a slow process for accountability, but we keep going.”

Never forget.

Coppers playing with the catapult

In a brazen attempt reminiscent of a medieval siege, Mexican smugglers tried to use a hefty catapult to hurl drugs north over the U.S. Border.

The Mexican military seized 45 pounds of marijuana, a sports utility vehicle and a metal-framed catapult just south of the Arizona border near the small town of Naco last Friday, following a tip-off from the U.S. Border Patrol.

Surveillance video taken by National Guard troops deployed to support the Border Patrol caught a group of men apparently attempting to pull down a metal beam and load or test the catapult, which was powered by powerful elastic and mounted on a trailer close to the metal border fence.

“It looks like a medieval catapult that was used back in the day,” Tucson sector Border Patrol spokesman David Jimarez told Reuters…

The U.S. Border Patrol seize hundreds of tons of marijuana and other drugs each year, smuggled over or under the line using a variety of means, including trucks, clandestine tunnels, horseback and even micro-light aircraft — although the catapult was new, Jimarez said.

“I have not seen anything like that in my time before as a Border Patrol agent … although we are trained to handle any kind of a threat that comes over that border,” he added.

See? Everyone learns something from watching the Discovery Channel.

A 32-year-old man from Palm Springs, California, was arrested Wednesday on federal charges of threatening U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, in two profane phone messages to McDermott’s Seattle office.

The messages were left, according to court records, as Congress was debating a tax and unemployment insurance bill that was eventually passed and signed into law on December 17…

Charles Turner Habermann is charged with threatening a federal official in two voicemails on December 10, according to the complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle. That charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, prosecutors said.

In the first voice message, a man authorities identified as Habermann threatens to kill McDermott, his friends and family.

“I’ll round them up, I’ll kill them, I’ll kill his friends, I’ll kill his family, I will kill everybody he (expletive) knows.” Habermann allegedly said in the voicemail message, according to an affidavit filed in federal court by FBI special agent Dean W. Giboney.

“I’d like to remind you McDermott that if you read the constitution all the money belongs to the people. None of it belongs to government,” Habermann allegedly said in the voicemail, according to the affidavit…

Habermann told agents that he never had any intention of hurting anyone because he had too much to lose, referring to a $3 million trust fund, the affidavit said.

What a wonderful guy.