Bloodsuckers and Bloggers

Staffordshire Police launched an inquiry into the murder of amateur footballer Kevin Nunes, 20, who was gunned down in a country lane in 2002, British media reported.  Nunes, a drug dealer who had been on the books of Tottenham Hotspur, was shot dead in an execution style killing after a gang dispute.  His killers, Levi Walker, Antonio Christie, Adam Joof, Michael Osbourne and Owen Crooks were all jailed for life after being found guilty of murder by a jury at Leicester Crown Court.  The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) will look into the handling of the investigation into case of the four officers, including the lead on police ethics. Five men were jailed in connection with the killing in 2008.  The IPCC confirmed that formal notice of investigation had been served on “a number of former and serving Staffordshire Police officers”.  Meanwhile, Northamptonshire Police Authority confirmed that its force's chief constable Adrian Lee and deputy chief constable Suzette Da

  A teenager who murdered a 16-year-old schoolboy outside a pub in Stretford has denied his motive was revenge for another gangland killing. Moses Mathias told Manchester Crown Court he intended to commit a robbery but instead fired at a vehicle carrying Giuseppe Gregory out of "fear for my life". He said he did not learn of the death in May 2009 until the next day. Àt the age of 15 he later went on the run. Mathias, now 18, remained at large until he was arrested in Amsterdam earlier this year on a European Arrest Warrant after a joint investigation by the Serious Organised Crime Agency and GMP. He was flown back to the UK in June and four months later admitted the murder of the youngster who was gunned down in the early hours of May 11 in a car outside the Robin Hood pub in Stretford. In March 2010, Mathias's associates Njabulo Ndlovu and Hiruy Zerihun, then aged 19 and 18, were jailed for life and ordered to serve minimum terms of 21 years and 23 years respectivel

   Greeks are emptying their bank accounts, Italians are proposing that the Roman Catholic Church begin to pay nearly $1 billion in property taxes on lucrative hotels and businesses, and in the UK, protesters sans jobs have settled near 10 Downing in the wake of the nation’s biggest general strike in years. Spain has seen well-dressed panhandlers in Madrid. The Netherlands report higher bankruptcies and lower exports. French banks are cutting thousands of jobs. And in bailed-out Portugal, two religious and two civil holidays – weekdays off – will now fall on weekends, even as healthcare costs there have suddenly doubled in many hospitals. All across Europe, the severity of belt-tightening and public anger has brought a new stream of “austerity stories” to the fore: job cuts and their effect, new instances of ethnic hate, worry about social stability. Rising right-wing violence The majority of these stories flow out of Europe’s southern tier, the “less competitive” economies. Two S

Marbella, Andalusia, Spain (pic: Getty) EMERGENCY evacuation plans for Brits living in Spain and Portugal are being drawn up amid fears of the euro collapsing. Advertisement >> The drastic proposals emerged as a former Security Minister warned expats could be left stranded and destitute by the break-up of the single currency. Brits who invested their savings in their adopted countries may not be able to withdraw cash and could even lose their homes if banks call in loans, worried ministers are warning. The Foreign Office is preparing to bring them back from Spain and Portugal if the two countries are forced out of the euro, triggering a banking collapse. A million Brits live in Spain and 50,000 in neighbouring Portugal – plus a million in the other eurozone countries. And Baroness Neville-Jones, who only stepped down as a minister in May, called the situation “very, very worrying”. The Tory peer – who once chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee for MI5, MI6 and other security a

    King Juan Carlos told his son-in-law in 2006 to cut ties with a company now mired in corruption allegations, an official at Spain's royal palace said Sunday. Authorities are probing the activities of a non-profit company run by Inaki Urdangarin between 2004 and 2006. "(The king) ordered him to stand down from his activities and he sold his shares," said the official, who works at the royal palace's press office, confirming reports in the Spanish press. "He was told he shouldn't work for himself and it would be better if he worked overseas." Urdangarin, 43, also known as the Duke of Palma de Mallorca, now works for Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica in Washington, where he lives with with his wife, Infanta Cristina. The scandal, the first to hit Spain's royal family in years, centres on Urdangarin's time at the helm of the Instituto Noos, now suspected of siphoning off money from contracts paid by the regional government of the Balear

After 35 years in jail and eight successful breakout attempts, Spain's longest-serving inmate received a government pardon yesterday that saw him and his family convinced that he would walk free immediately – only for him to remain behind bars. Since 1976, Spanish courts have found Miguel Angel Montes Neiro guilty of more than 30 robberies and armed burglaries, many committed while on the run. But even as a spokesman for the Spanish government, Jose Blanco, confirmed yesterday that Montes Neiro, 61, had received a pardon for two of his multiple crimes, another outstanding sentence – for robbery and illicit possession of firearms – will see him remain in jail. Montes Neiro, from the province of Granada in southern Andalusia, was predictably delighted when news of the pardon broke yesterday lunchtime, telling his family by phone: "Don't come to the prison gates when I get out, I want to walk the first two or three kilometres so I can feel the fresh air like a free man."

retired U.S. Navy officer was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison Monday for stealing $150,000 from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund by exaggerating injuries he said he sustained in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon. The sentencing capped a three-year legal journey for Charles E. Coughlin that included three trials, the last of which ended in his conviction in August on charges of filing a false claim and theft of government property. In sentencing the 52-year-old Severna Park resident to three years and five months in prison, Chief U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth called the crime a “serious offense” and ordered the former Navy commander to pay restitution of $151,034 to the federal government. “You have damaged your life and career,” the judge told Coughlin. Coughlin, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, said little during the hearing but told Lamberth that he took “responsibility for the errors and mistakes he made.” During sentencing and in court paper

  Spanish and Italian police made five arrests while busting a drug-trafficking ring that for years smuggled cocaine from South America to Europe, investigators said on Friday. The group arranged for narcotics to be put on merchant ships headed to Europe. Just before the vessels arrived at their destination, the smugglers would dump cocaine packages overboard, Spanish police said in a statement. Members of the gang waiting in inflatable boats would then pick up the cocaine and take it to shore, from where it was distributed to customers in Spain and Italy, officials said.Two members of the group were detained in the Italian port city of Genoa in March in a joint operation by Spanish and Italian police. Police detained another three members of the group, including its leader, three months later in the northwestern Spanish coastal region of Galicia. "During the search of the home of the ringleader, police found a vault camouflaged behind the wall of the cellar, which housed secu

   I understand that Hague, like the Chancellor, now believes this will happen soon. Osborne told Cabinet colleagues on Monday that the Merkel-Sarkozy plan for greater fiscal discipline within the eurozone was no solution to the current  crisis. Rather, he said, ‘it was like standing over a man having a heart attack and telling him that to avoid one in future he should do more exercise and cut down on cholesterol’. This view that the euro is unlikely to survive is why there are, so far, few worries about Britain being isolated by the eurozone bloc and its allies. The Government is also confident that the differences between the countries in the single currency will remain – that the Netherlands and Finland will continue to take a more liberal attitude to financial services and the single market than the French and the Italians. But there’s little doubt that Cameron’s decision to wield the veto changes Britain’s relationship with the other members of the European Union. The days

  Oakland police say a father of three was killed in bed near his sleeping wife and children when his house was sprayed with bullets in a drive-by shooting. Officer Kevin McDonald said one of many bullets passed through a wall and hit 46-year-old mechanic Thourn Nhep, who was pronounced dead at the scene when police arrived Saturday. Neighbors say a mid-size sedan sped away after the shooting. McDonald tells the Oakland Tribune (http://bit.ly/s7iXXn) the shooting was not random, but did not give further details of who was targeted and why. No one had been arrested. Nhep's 18-year-old daughter Sok told the Tribune it was the third time the house had been shot at recently. Sok said her father was a "good guy" who had nothing to do with violence.

Suspects accused of selling guns and drugs. Authorities collared 38 Bronx and upper Manhattan gangbangers Wednesday after a two-year probe into a notorious crew, officials said. The alleged members of the Dominican-based Trinitarios gang all face charges of racketeering, narcotics conspiracy and gun trafficking, authorities said. The undercover investigation — which involved officers from the NYPD, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Homeland Security — netted about $25,000 worth of drugs and 12 firearms in Wednesday’s raid, police said. One weapon recovered, a Mac-11 machine gun, was painted the same shade of green the gang uses in its colors. Federal prosecutors said the crew committed and planned violent acts, including murder, to protect its turf from rival gangs that include the Bloods, Crips, the Latin Kings and Dominicans Don’t Play. “We believe we put a big dent in the Trinitarios gang,” said  Capt. Lorenzo Johnson , the

  Glenn Mulcaire, the private eye at the centre of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, has been arrested by Scotland Yard detectives pursuing a fresh investigation into phone intercepts, according to a person familiar with the inquiry. Officers working on Operation Weeting – the Metropolitan Police’s second probe into phone hacking at News International, which owned the now-defunct Sunday tabloid – announced on Wednesday that they had arrested a 41-year-old man who was being held on suspicion of conspiracy to hack voicemail messages and perverting the course of justice.  Mr Mulcaire is the 16th person to be arrested under the new operation, and has already served a six-month prison sentence in 2007 after pleading guilty to intercepting phone messages. He was arrested at his home in Surrey in a dawn swoop and held in a south London police station. Detectives on Operation Weeting have used the private investigator’s notebooks – which contain the names of nearly 5,800 potential v

  co-defendant in the Hells Angels trial last week was found not guilty on several charges. Timothy David Hill, 45, of Rock Hill was acquitted on charges of attempted murder, attempted armed robbery, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy by a York County jury Friday. Hill was represented by public defenders Harry Dest and B.J. Barrowclough. The main defendant, 58-year-old William "Spook" Sosebee of Rock Hill, was convicted of attempted armed robbery, kidnapping, possession of a knife during a violent crime and first-degree assault and battery, according to a news release from the 16th Circuit Solicitor's Office. Judge John C. Hayes sentenced Sosebee to 10 years in prison with no parole. Sosebee was accused of stabbing Jim Moye of North Carolina at Wall Bangers Social Club on East Main Street. Moye, 58, is a member of Iron Order, another motorcycle club, and had stopped at Wall Bangers, according to the solicitor's office news release. Evidence at the trial showed that Mo

The Hells Angels, decimated by a series of raids, are reorganizing under the guise of four so-called puppet clubs, QMI Agency has learned. The emergence of the Dark Souls, the Black Mask, the Thunder Bikers and the Iron Beast are a sure sign the feared gang is trying to reclaim lucrative territory, say experts. Three of the four new Hells puppet clubs in Quebec have quietly announced their presence on the Internet. The Black Mask Facebook page says it has a base in Scott, east of Quebec City. Newly established in four regions of the province, the puppet clubs sport colours inspired by the Hells as well as jackets adorned with distinctive logos and marked "MC" for Motorcycle Club. Undercover Montreal police officers gathered information on the clubs by infiltrating a biker meeting at a Montreal bar in November, sources tell QMI Agency. Sixty aspiring bikers were met by three members of the Nomads, the select Hells chapter once run by Maurice (Mom) Boucher and now based in Onta

  Anti-narcotics agents working for the US government have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds to see how the system works and use the information against Mexican drug cartels, The New York Times reported Sunday. Citing unnamed current and former federal law enforcement officials, the newspaper said the agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders. Some 45,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, when its government launched a major military crackdown against the powerful drug cartels that have terrorized border communities as they battled over lucrative smuggling routes. According to these officials, the operations were aimed at identifying how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are, the report said. The agents had deposited the proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, o

Hector Morales, 38, is president of the motorcycle gang "No Remorse," according to a police report.  ( Orange County Jail  /  December  2 , 2011 )   Hector Morales, 38, is president of the motorcycle gang "No Remorse," His stepson, a juvenile, was charged with burglary to an occupied dwelling. A third suspected gang member, Jose Juan Velez, 22, was also arrested on a charge of resisting arrest. Police say he failed to comply with their commands during the investigation. Records show Morales has now been jailed more than a dozen times in Orange County since 2005, on charges including burglary and assault on a law officer