73 Lives Later, Jamaican Drug Lord Gets 23 Years
The question, now that Jamaican drug lord Christopher Coke has received the maximum sentence of 23 years after 73 people died in a raid on his compound, is was it worth it?
The Obama administration is "on the verge of" signing off on a proposal from the FBI that would make it easier for the agency's to intercept online communications. Please allow us to offer a tip that may help you avoid the Feds' steely gaze.
The question, now that Jamaican drug lord Christopher Coke has received the maximum sentence of 23 years after 73 people died in a raid on his compound, is was it worth it?
Though police already have a detailed confession from Pedro Hernandez, the alleged killer of Etan Patz, they took the unusual and melodramatic step of having him sign a photograph of the child, an image that has kept the case in the public mind for 33 years.
Even with suspected foot-mailing murderer Luka Magnotta in custody, more body parts have been turning up in Canada this week, but thankfully at least one appears to be a fake.
Of all the photos Luka Magnotta posted to the web before he was arrested for allegedly killing and dismembering a Chinese student in Montreal, Labatt Beer really wishes the Montreal Gazette had chosen one that didn't prominently feature one of its bottles.
In a twist of international law, Lawyers for Megaupload are saying U.S. piracy charges against the company should be dropped, but not necessarily those against its founder, Kim Dotcom.
One person is dead and seven are injured after a gunmen opened fire in the middle of Toronto's Eaton Centre food court on Saturday evening.
An Orlando judge revoked George Zimmerman's bond yesterday and ordered him to return to jail. ThinkProgress obtained the prosecutors' motion that shows exactly how the Zimmermans deceived the court, and how their phone conversations while he was in jail busted them.
The judge in George Zimmerman's second-degree murder case revoked his bond on Friday, saying he misrepresented his financial status in his original bond hearing last month.
Now that police have identified the victim in that gruesome Canadian dismemberment murder, we can start putting together a basic sequence of what they think happened, where, and to whom.
"While I do not belive I did anything illegal… I did an awful, awful lot that is wrong," Edwards said outside the courtroom after a jury acquitted him of one count and the judge declared a mistrial on the other five.
Luka Magnotta, the 29-year-old model suspected in killing and dismembering someone, then sending the body parts to Canadian political parties, is now the subject of an international manhunt, and INTERPOL is on the case.
Luka Rocco Magnotta, the guy who police suspect of killing a man and then mailing his body parts to political parties, had a bizarre and wide-ranging web presence before he became Canada's most salacious murder suspect.
Remember the story of Richard Descoings, the French academic who died mysteriously in a Midtown hotel room last month? The mystery has been solved: he had a heart attack.
Dharun Ravi's apology on Tuesday came too late to save him from serving jail time, as the judge in his case said on Wednesday the reason he rejected a corrections official's suggested sentence of no incarceration was that he'd never heard him say sorry.
The Miami Zombie has a name: Police told local press that the naked man they shot to death when he wouldn't stop eating another guy's face is 31-year-old Rudy Eugene, and that he was in the depths of the world's worst acid trip when it happened.
New York is expected to arraign the first legitimate suspect in the 33-year-old disappearance of Etan Patz as early as Friday, but from the facts made public by both police and reporters, there's as much reason to doubt they've got the right man as to believe it.
Fugitive penguins. Monkeys on a plane. Presidential pot smoking. Just in case you don't have enough surreal news to think about today, try this little gem: Silvio Berlusconi enjoyed a sexy "Burlesque version of President Barack Obama."
This should give you pause if you're thinking of working in Chinese finance: A Singaporean banker has just been released after nearly three months in detention, and ordered to stay in China for another year, because she worked for a client who fled the country as a fugitive.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn may face justice for allegedly raping a woman in the United States after all, even though no U.S. law enforcement agency will pursue it.
However much a U.S. defendant might complain about getting railroaded, there's really just no comparison with China, where the nephew of a controversial political activist has been charged with a capital offense and barred from choosing his own lawyers.
The story of how a Washington, D.C., cyclist who recovered his stolen bike isn't the biggest news of the day, nor the most dramatic, but it's an absolute inspiration to those of us who love our bikes and fear having them stolen.
It's always fascinating to get a look inside insular communities like New York's ultra-Orthodox Jews, but glimpse provided by The New York Times' Sharon Otterman and Ray Rivera Thursday is quite disturbing since it's about how child sexual abuse often goes unpunished.
Twitter joined the battle to keep New York's District Attorney out of Occupy protestor Malcolm Harris's tweets on Thursday in what might be a landmark move.
Former NYPD officer Michael Pena was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison Monday, after being convicted in March on three counts of predatory sexual assault.
Daniel Chong, the UC San Diego student who spent five days in a DEA holding cell after agents forgot he was there, unsurprisingly sued the agency, asking for $20 million -- but just as a starting point.
An ancient Myspace page from 2005 does not make George Zimmerman look like a very good guy, and yet as his attorneys have rebranded his Web presence of late, they've apparently found the page is one patch they can't scrub.
It was a colorful, tiring, largely peaceful day in New York, where Occupy Wall Street and May Day activists had sprawling marches, massive rallies, and a couple scuffles with police, all to protest corporate greed and money in politics.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn had been hoping his legal entanglements in the United States would end on Tuesday when a Bronx judge decided whether to accept his argument that diplomatic immunity protected him from a lawsuit, but the judge did no such thing.
As Occupy Wall Street plans big, nationwide demonstrations for Tuesday's "general strike," the City of New York is still dealing with the protesters it rounded up in the biggest single Occupy-related mass arrest: The 732 taken into custody on the Brooklyn Bridge last October.
So far, former John Edwards aide Andrew Young has sounded a bit like a spurned lover in his testimony in Edwards' campaign finance trial, but on Friday he sounded more like a scared lackey, saying he covered for Edwards out of fear for his own life.
So far, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has primarily left the job of speculating about whether he was set up on charges of attempted rape to others, but in an interview with The Guardian, he established just how paranoid he is about that.
Judge Kenneth Lester did not order Zimmerman back into custody after learning about $200,000 Zimmerman had raised online, saying he would wait to make that decision until he had all the facts about Zimmerman's donations and PayPal accounts.
Everybody's heard about George Zimmerman, but as a lengthy Reuters feature about him shows, we actually know very little about him and the community he patrolled as neighborhood watch captain.
You may have already forgotten about the Fox News mole, but Fox News sure hasn't, and as a crew from the New York District Attorney's Office dropped in on the mole, Joe Muto, at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, it was clear his infamy at the network would last longer than 15 minutes.
Prosecutors don't have to get a warrant to subpoena your tweets, even if you delete them, because they're public information owned by a third party, a New York judge ruled on Monday.
Bill Lee, the chief of the Sanford Police force when it didn't arrest George Zimmerman back in February, apparently thought this whole Trayvon Martin thing would blow over, and only stepped down temporarily last month so he wouldn't be a distraction.
George Zimmerman has been pretty quiet since he became the focus of one of the most racially-charged crime stories in years, and he should probably stay that way because the couple of times he's spoken out, it hasn't gone well.
After a hearing that took an unexpected twist when he apologized to Trayvon Martin's family, George Zimmerman has been granted $150,000 bail, with conditions that he'll be monitored, have a curfew, and can't drink.
Last week an independent report found all kinds of blame in the U.C. Davis pepper spray incident, from the administration to the police rank and file, but the first real-world casualty is university police chief Annette Spicuzza, who left the force on Wednesday.
Of the three people arrested Thursday in the U.K. press corruption probe, the highest profile belongs to Duncan Larcombe, the royal editor for The Sun, who Scotland Yard made it clear was arrested based on information provided by his employer, News Corporation.
Local news beats CNN in predicting this story: George Zimmerman got a new judge today after the sitting judge in his murder trial has recused herself over a conflict of interests.
Britain is finally getting ready to start prosecuting some people for the whole News International phone-hacking fiasco, and they include four journalists and a cop, along with six others whose files Scotland Yard sent to prosecutors on Wednesday.
When George Zimmerman appears before a judge on Friday, it probably won't be the same one he saw last week, as she plans to announce Wednesday whether she'll leave the case, something she already said she'd do should one of the lawyers request it.
The attorneys in the George Zimmerman case did not argue over sealing the case file from public view, nor did a judge resist signing an order doing so, but on Monday that order became the subject of a new legal kerfuffle as media outlets sued to open the court file.
Reuters' scoop revealing a possible motive in the alleged killing of Brit Neil Heywood in China also offers a glimpse of how difficult reporting can be in a nation where information is so tightly controlled by the government.
George Zimmerman might get out of jail as early as next week, his lawyer said late on Thursday, telling the Associated Press Zimmerman would most likely get a bail hearing on April 20.
In a court appearance that lasted all of three minutes, George Zimmerman had his arraignment and bail hearing scheduled for May 29, and will stay in custody until then.
The city of Lille, France, is shocked—shocked!—to learn that prostitutes may have been operating out of its beloved Hotel Carlton, the once-discreet destination now synonymous with the case that saw Dominique Strauss-Kahn accused of aggravated pimping.
After telling the Today show that she believed Trayvon Martin's death was an accident, his mother, Sybrina Fulton has now retracted that comment and says it was no such thing.
Tuesday was a bad day for Chinese politician Bo Xilai and his family: First Bo was suspended from the 25-member Politburo that runs China, then his wife was reportedly arrested for the murder of a British businessman.
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