Buddha NET

Man shot in Brunswick

Man shot in Brunswick

A gunman is on the loose after a man was gunned down in a busy Brunswick street late this afternoon. The man was shot several times outsi...

Bali jails Australian boy over cannabis possession

<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15884706"> </a>An Australian boy has been jailed for two months for possessing cannabis on the Indonesian island of Bali. The case sparked an outcry in Australia, where the media argued the 14-year-old was too young to be jailed. But Indonesian analysts hit back, criticising Australia for holding Indonesian youngsters in detention in people-smuggling cases. The teenager, who has not been named, will serve the rest of his sentence at an immigration detention centre. The jail term includes the time already served, so the boy, from New South Wales, is expected to be freed in two weeks' time. He will be deported to Australia at the end of his sentence. The boy bought a small amount of cannabis from a dealer on the island - a crime punishable by up to two years in jail. But the court treated him leniently after hearing that he had pre-existing drugs problems and had sought help from doctors. Drugs cases involving Australians in Indonesia regularly cause a huge outcry because of the country's extreme sentencing rules. The most notorious was that of the so-called Bali Nine, who were convicted of trying to import heroin. Most of them are serving lengthy prison sentences after having death penalties commuted on appeal.

Bali jails Australian boy over cannabis possession

An Australian boy has been jailed for two months for possessing cannabis on the Indonesian island of Bali. The case sparked an outcry in ...

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is pictured sitting in a plane in Zintan after his capture in Libya's rugged desert.

<div id="main-content-picture" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; background-color: #ffffff; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px;"><img alt="Saif al-Islam Gaddafi" height="276" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/11/20/1321789703033/Saif-al-Islam-Gaddafi-007.jpg" style="border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" width="460" /><div class="caption" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #666666; font-size: 12px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">Photograph: Ismail Zitouni/Reuters</div></div><div id="article-body-blocks" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; background-color: #ffffff; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">The man who led the fighters that captured Saif al-Islam has said that the late dictator's son tried to escape arrest by pretending to be a camel herder."When we caught him, he said, 'My name is Abdul Salem, a camel keeper,'" said commander Ahmed Amur on Sunday. "It was crazy."His unit, from Zintan's Abu Bakar al-Sadiq brigade, had been patrolling the vast southern desert of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/libya" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; text-decoration: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Libya">Libya</a> for more than a month when it was given a tip-off late last week that Saif al-Islam was close to the town of Obari."We knew it was a VIP target, we did not know who," said Amur, who worked as a professor of marine biology in Tripoli before the war.He said rebel units with pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns deployed in ambush positions in the desert near Obari, a small town that lies astride roads leading to both Algeria and Niger.As the informant had predicted, two Jeeps came into view at lunchtime on Friday, surging through the desert near the main highway that leads to Niger."When we saw the first car we fired shots ahead of it, not to hit, as a warning. It stopped. Then the second car belonging to Saif came," he said, speaking in English. "We shot warning shots, he (Saif's car) stopped in the sand. Saif and his aide came out of the car."He said rebel fighters approached on foot, Saif threw himself face down and began rubbing dirt on his face. "He wanted to disguise himself," he said.Amur raced up to him and ordered him to stand up, finding himself face to face with Saif al -Islam.But the most notorious son of the late dictator claimed he was not one of the world's most wanted war crimes suspects, but a simple camel herder – Abdul Salem being the equivalent of a British "John Smith"."His face was covered (with dirt), I knew who he was," said Amur. "Then he said to us, 'Shoot.' When the rebels refused to shoot, and identified themselves, Saif told them: 'OK, shoot me, or take me to Zintan.'"We don't kill or harm a captured man, we are Islam," said Amur, still clad in the green combat jacket he wore when making the arrest. "We have taken him here to Zintan. After that, our government is responsible."Zintan was on Sunday hemmed-in by checkpoints set up by its fighters, whose units fought some of the toughest battles of the war, ending in their attack on Tripoli in August.Omran Eturki, leader of Zintan council, says Saif must face trial in Zintan's own courthouse. "We can try him, it will not take too long, we don't need any new laws," he said, referring to questions over Libya's current legal limbo. "They are Zintanis who captured him so they will have to have him here."Eturki said it was better to try him in Libya than send him to the international criminal court, which has indicted Saif for war crimes and crimes against humanity."The judicial authorities can appoint the judges and the lawyers, but the trial must be here. As long as there is justice, that is it."He said Saif would get a fair trial. "There is no point to make a revolution for justice, and then you become the same killers. All the people of Zintan want to see him have a proper trial. We don't like to harm him. If we wanted to kill him we could kill him. We captured him so I think we have the right to try him."</div>

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is pictured sitting in a plane in Zintan after his capture in Libya's rugged desert.

Photograph: Ismail Zitouni/Reuters The man who led the fighters that captured Saif al-Islam has said that the late dictator's son tried ...

jailed for 30 years for gunning down a rival drug dealer outside Wandsworth Prison in South London

<div></div><div>Last week Rupert Ross, son of a Kings Road boutique owner, was jailed for 30 years for gunning down a rival drug dealer outside Wandsworth Prison in South London. In the days that followed the killing – with the police on his trail and his best friend already dead in a revenge shooting – 30-year-old Ross befriended investigative journalist Wensley Clarkson and in a series of videotaped interviews talked about the murder, his privileged background and the terrifying world of drugs, guns and gangs.<div class="floatRHS" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 20px; min-height: 1px; width: 308px; float: right; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: left; background-color: #ffffff; padding: 0px;"><img alt="Holding court: Waring a T-shirt for his interview with Wensley Clarkson, Rupert Ross seemed since but described the gang world with cold relish " class="blkBorder" height="444" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/12/article-2060854-0EC68D1400000578-685_306x444.jpg" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 1px solid black;" width="306" />Holding court: Waring a T-shirt for his interview with Wensley Clarkson, Rupert Ross seemed since but described the gang world with cold relish</div>On the face of it, the young man who strode into a restaurant near my house in Fulham, West London, in early summer 2009 couldn’t have been further from the stereotypical gang member.Casually dressed in jeans and a faded T-shirt, Rupert Ross had neatly cropped hair, an athletic build and a soft voice that veered between the well modulated tones of the privately educated middle-class boy he once was and the multi-racial street slang of the inner city.  Ross had approached me out of the blue through a contact to discuss being filmed for a TV documentary on street gangs. He earned his living running the drug trade on Fulham’s Clem Attlee council estate.I was wary at first. But the fact that he was a near neighbour of mine fuelled my curiosity.A week of promised meetings followed, but Ross never materialised. Through a go-between, I was accused of being an undercover policeman – a tricky situation only remedied when I was given a ‘clean bill of health’ by local criminals I’d written about in the past.Eventually, I met Ross and the ‘middle man’. Ross insisted on sitting with his back to the wall of the restaurant with a clear view of the front entrance ‘in case anyone I don’t like walks in’.  Fulham had been abuzz with talk of the gangland execution of 20-year-old drug dealer Darcy Austin-Bruce and a retribution killing a few days later.   <div class="relatedItemsTopBorder" style="min-height: 1px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: left; background-color: #ffffff; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"> </div><div class="relatedItems" style="min-height: 1px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: left; background-color: #ffffff; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><h4 style="min-height: 1px; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"> </h4></div>It was only when Ross began to talk that I gradually realised he could be Austin-Bruce’s killer.He was calm and eloquent and looked very different from the hard-nosed criminal mugshot that was released after his Old Bailey conviction last week. He seemed thoughtful, likeable and sincere, but veered alarmingly from talking about going straight to describing the gang world with cold, almost detached relish.<div class="artSplitter" style="min-height: 1px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: left; background-color: #ffffff; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><img alt="Chameleon: Ross looked like the ex-public schoolboy he was, when dressed in a smart shirt on his way to court" class="blkBorder" height="609" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/12/article-2060854-0EC68D4000000578-490_634x609.jpg" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 1px solid black;" width="634" />Chameleon: Ross looked like the ex-public schoolboy he was, when dressed in a smart shirt on his way to court</div>‘It’s kill or be killed out here in the real world,’ he told me. ‘Anything I’ve dealt with, I’ve dealt with myself. Death is part of my business. I’m the one selling drugs on that estate. No one else had the right to do so and sometimes people have to die if they get in the way.’I shifted a bit uncomfortably as Ross spoke about murder and gang ‘law’. Not through any fear for my own safety – I’d already been assured I was nothing more than a harmless ‘civilian’ – rather by the proximity of this ruthless subculture to my own middle-class neighbourhood.‘Without a gun, I feel naked. I feel vulnerable,’ he told me. ‘There is a bullet out there with my name on it. What will be, will be.’His mother, I learned, is Diana Lank, the hard-working and popular 55-year-old owner of the quirky Kings Road boutique Ad Hoc, who doted on Rupert and paid for him to go to a series of expensive private schools – including the £30,000-a-year Dulwich College. His grandfather is Herbert Lank, a retired Cambridge don and internationally renowned art restorer. A step aunt is the eminently respectable barrister Susan Rodway QC.<div class="floatRHS" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 20px; min-height: 1px; width: 308px; float: right; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: left; background-color: #ffffff; padding: 0px;"><img alt="Quirky: Ad Hoc, the Kings Road boutique run by Ross' mother Diana Lank" class="blkBorder" height="456" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/12/article-2060854-0EC68D3000000578-46_306x456.jpg" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 1px solid black;" width="306" />Quirky: Ad Hoc, the Kings Road boutique run by Ross' mother Diana Lank</div>Ross told me he wanted to speak out as a warning to youngsters. But it became clear that he really wanted to unburden himself about the murder of a former drug-dealing friend turned mortal enemy.He said: ‘The word is that I’ve killed the guy. People are saying I was the shooter. I’ve got people out to kill me. Apparently it is my fault he’s dead. But he had many enemies. He was out of control. He didn’t really care whose feet he trod on.’People may wonder why I didn’t go to the police after I met Ross, but he had made it clear to me from the start that he was not running away from them and he would face up to what he had done when they charged him.I don’t believe my interviews with him would have made any impact on their investigation at the time, as a contact told me murder squad detectives were seeking tangible, forensic evidence of his involvement rather than the content of a filmed interview.But I would have been more than happy to help them with their enquiries if they had come to me, as any law-abiding citizen would have been.As his trial revealed, a few days before our meeting, but unknown to me at the time, Ross had dressed in a smart suit to look like a visiting lawyer and gunned down his rival in front of a crowd of women and children outside Wandsworth Prison.He was clearly troubled by the incident, depsite the fact that in the months before the shooting, Austin-Bruce had kidnapped, stabbed and tortured Ross and fired shots at his car.During that first meeting, Ross made it clear that the execution – Austin-Bruce was shot five times – was intended to send out a clear message. ‘I was the main man – the guy in charge,’ Ross boasted.‘I controlled all the drugs on the estate. Nothing went in or out without my say-so. Sure I was motivated by money and power. I had a twisted sense of right and wrong but I knew that it was an unfair world. Some were born with a silver spoon like me and others had nothing.’Now he knew the police were on his trail. He believed he’d either be arrested or would die at the hands of a rival gangster. ‘There’s no point in running from the law. They’ll find you in the end,’ he told me.<div class="artSplitter" style="min-height: 1px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: left; background-color: #ffffff; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><img alt="Privileged: Teachers at Dulwich College told Ross' mother he was 'highly intelligent but often played truant', his friends described him as a a 'wannabe gangster'" class="blkBorder" height="377" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/12/article-2060854-0EBCA2C900000578-177_634x377.jpg" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 1px solid black;" width="634" />Privileged: Teachers at Dulwich College told Ross' mother he was 'highly intelligent but often played truant', his friends described him as a a 'wannabe gangster'</div>The Clem Attlee estate is a brutalist Sixties council project, just a stone’s throw from the million-pound houses of the well-heeled Fulham middle classes – including his own childhood home, where his mother still lives.Friends say that when Ross was ten his father committed suicide, and that this had a ‘profound effect on him’, making him unruly and difficult.But the Rupert Ross I met steadfastly refused to blame the tragedy on a chain of events that friends and family later claimed left him acting a ‘fantasy’ life as if he was a character from gangster films.Ross himself told me: ‘Knowing my mum thinks I am a killer is so hard. She brought me up well but I was my own man from a very young age.‘All the advantages in the world would never have stopped me from going on this path. It’s not her fault I am what I am.’<div class="floatRHS" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 20px; min-height: 1px; width: 308px; float: right; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: left; background-color: #ffffff; padding: 0px;"><img alt="Chilling: Ross' mug shot, he told Wensley Clarkson he felt 'naked and vulnerable' without a gun" class="blkBorder" height="423" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/12/article-2060854-0EBCA67100000578-768_306x423.jpg" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 1px solid black;" width="306" />Chilling: Ross' mug shot, he told Wensley Clarkson he felt 'naked and vulnerable' without a gun</div>One relative said: ‘His mother probably knows in her heart of hearts that Rupert’s guilty, but it’s hard for any mother to accept. She has tried her hardest to bring up Rupert responsibly but he was often on his own while she was out working, and inevitably he started to hang out with kids from the Clem Attlee estate.‘She tried to make sure any man she had a relationship with would be some sort of role model to him, which makes his career in crime all the more surprising. It’s hard to equate the vicious gangster with the polite, gentle character we all know.’Teachers at Dulwich College told Ross’s mother that her son was highly intelligent but often a truant. Contemporaries remember him as a ‘wannabe gangster’ who was expelled for taking drugs.Ross himself told me that he hated school. ‘I just didn’t need it. I was ready to be out on the streets working for myself from a very young age.’Before he had even hit his teens, Ross had started a gang, and was walking the streets of West London with a knife ‘for self protection’. They stole and sold car radios.‘That was my first taste of crime and I liked it,’ he said. ‘It seemed easy to me. I had found myself a new family on the estate and they were from a much harder world than I was used to but I mixed easily with them. It was as if I had found my place in life.‘Sure, there was rage in me. I wanted to be someone. I started using violence to get my way and it was kind of infectious. Then I started having guns, and everything just went crazy from there.’At the age of 17, Ross took over an empty flat on the Clem Attlee estate and set himself up as the area’s main drug supplier, ruthlessly controlling the estate’s burgeoning drug trade. He had already become addicted to cocaine and cannabis and had been convicted of the first of a series of crimes which was to include burglary, theft and drugs possession.It was a world where mobile phones were changed every week to avoid detection. And guns were also an everyday part of that lifestyle.<div class="floatRHS" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 20px; min-height: 1px; width: 308px; float: right; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-align: left; background-color: #ffffff; padding: 0px;"><img alt="Respectable: Eminent barrister Susan Rodway QC is Ross' step aunt" class="blkBorder" height="423" src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/12/article-2060854-0EC68CD900000578-951_306x423.jpg" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border: 1px solid black;" width="306" />Respectable: Eminent barrister Susan Rodway QC is Ross' step aunt</div>‘I always had a piece on me and in that flat I would watch any customers approaching with them in the sights of my gun – just in case they turned out to be the enemy. I even shot at one guy I didn’t know when he came up to my front door. Dunno if I hit him but he never came back. That sent a message out to my enemies.’Following his murder of Austin-Bruce, Ross had decided not to carry a weapon because he was under constant police surveillance.He told me: ‘Without a gun, I feel naked. I feel vulnerable. If someone walked in here now, I’d be a sitting duck. But the police are watching me as we speak.’ He pointed. ‘They are there, across the street.’Sure enough, there were two men in a Vauxhall estate car just opposite the restaurant.‘I can’t afford to be found with a gun now. At the moment, they have no evidence to link me to the killing.’It would be almost another year before Ross was charged with the murder of Austin-Bruce. Yet the murder had clearly affected him. He admitted in one candid moment: ‘It’s made me rethink everything. It’s madness out there and I got caught up in it all. I wouldn’t want anyone to take my path. It can only end in death and destruction.’He even claimed (and I believe him) that he’d presented himself at a local volunteer centre where he wanted to help teenagers to escape a culture of drug-dealing, robbery and violence.‘I want to help these kids avoid the pitfalls,’ he said. ‘I know better than anyone how easy it is to get sucked in. It really was a case of kill or be killed. I want to get away from that world now but I fear I may have left it too late.’A week after that first meeting, I got a panicky call from the ‘middle man’ saying that Ross wanted me to film him immediately ‘because he’s not sure how much longer he will be around’.By now he was so afraid of meeting in public that I agreed he could come to my home. It was there, with a camera rolling, that he told me of the revenge killing of his best friend Anthony Otton on the night of Austin-Bruce’s funeral.‘I was sitting inside a friend’s house when my best friend went outside to go home. I heard gunshots followed by a loud panicked knock on the door. I opened the door and my best friend fell to the floor. He’d been shot in the chest.‘The shooter then came behind him, shot through the door and ran off with no mask on. My best friend died there in the hallway. He only got hit once in the chest but it hit his main artery and it killed him.’Much to the frustration of police investigators, Ross refused to identify the man who shot dead his best friend. The case remains unsolved.Ross’s family include pillars of society from high-flying lawyers to academics, a hypnotherapist and even a Government drugs adviser. Contrary to some reports, his grandfather and step aunt Ms Rodway have rallied round his mother and given their full support.His family is deeply worried that Ross may be a target in prison. ‘Rupert has a price on his head. We all know that,’ a relative told me.Ross himself told me: ‘Prison doesn’t scare me. I’ll make it work for me just like everything else in my life.‘I don’t really fear anything any more. Not even death.‘I suppose in some ways I am emotionally dead. But the life I’ve led has made me that way. I wouldn’t have survived even this long if I’d let it all get to me.’The last time I saw Rupert Ross was a couple of days before he was arrested. He knew it was coming. His voice shook as we talked briefly on a street corner. He wore a hood and looked a haunted man. He told me: ‘I can’t help you any more.’With that he walked away. I knew I’d never see him again.<div style="text-align: left;"> </div></div>

jailed for 30 years for gunning down a rival drug dealer outside Wandsworth Prison in South London

Last week Rupert Ross, son of a Kings Road boutique owner, was jailed for 30 years for gunning down a rival drug dealer outside Wandsworth P...

Raids blunt medical marijuana season

Members of the local medical marijuana community gathered Saturday at a Medford venue to celebrate a harvest season like no other. The pa...

Cody Lumpkin is a 7-4 soulja till da end

<blockquote>Cody Lumpkin is a 7-4 soulja till da end. Or, in gangster-speak, he’ll be a Gangster Disciple until he dies. That’s how the 21-year-old Athens man shows himself to the world on his Facebook page, replete with photos of him flashing gang signs, posing with guns, bragging about money and disrespecting women. Whether or not he’s a genuine member of the notorious Gangster Disciples street gang, Lumpkin played the part last weekend when, police say, he killed a man with a gunshot to the head. The shooting happened Sunday night at Rolling Ridge Apartments off Kathwood Drive, where Jeremy Sean Buchanan was shot and killed by Lumpkin in an apparent robbery, which police said also was drug-related. “Cody Lumpkin gives every appearance of being a gang member,” said Robert Walker, a nationally-known gang expert who analyzed Lumpkin’s Facebook page Friday. He never directly states he’s a member of a gang, but Lumpkin uses what gang investigators call alpha-numeric code to tell people who he is. According to Walker and other gang experts, when Lumpkin wrote he is “7-4,” the corresponding letters are G and D, for Gangster Disciple. Also on his Facebook page, Lumpkin lists a well-known Gangster Disciple “prayer” as his favorite quote: “When i die $how no pity $end my $oul 2 6angsta city, dig a hole 6 feet deep and lay 2 $taffs acro$ my feet, lay 2 $hotguns acro$ my che$t and tell King Hoover i did my be$t.” He replaces the “G” in gangster with a six, because the Gangster Disciple’s symbol is a six-pointed star. The ode also pays tribute to the Chicago-based gang’s founder, Larry Hoover. “I see pictures of him with his friends, and everybody’s flashing signs, there’s weapons involved, so, yeah, I’d say he’s a gang-banger,” said Walker, a former agent with the U.S. Border Control and Drug Enforcement Administration who trains law enforcement agencies and others in gang awareness. Walker’s consulting firm, Gangs Or Us, maintains a website to educate the public, and another that only can be accessed by law enforcement officers to share gang intelligence. Just because a group calls itself the Gangster Disciples, Crips, Bloods or Latin Kings doesn’t mean they are affiliated with those national criminal synidicates, according to Sgt. Christopher Nichols, an Athens-Clarke police gang investigator. “The criminal street gangs most prevalent in the state of Georgia, to include Athens, are hybrid gangs or, as I like to call them, homegrown gangs” that adopt the names of the well-known gangs, Nichols said. They can be just as dangerous. “Though hybrid gangs may not pay dues to larger organizations, it does not mean that they are not the ‘real deal,’ ” Nichols said. “Hybrid gangs commit the same types of crimes as the traditional street gangs, but not on as large of a scale.” Some young men band together in gangs for a sense of belonging, a feeling they don’t get from their own families when there’s no parental guidance, Nichols said, or they bow to peer pressure. “They may have been exposed to it by other family members, they may have friends that are associated with criminal street gangs, or it may start out as youth without proper direction becoming involved in criminal activity,” Nichols said. Once a young man joins a gang, starts carrying guns, covers his body with tattoos and adopts the other trappings of a gangster, he might be on a path where violence is inevitable. “There is a saying, ‘You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?’ ” Nichols said. “No one likes to be called out or challenged. If a person portrays that they are ‘hard,’ then they cannot allow someone to embarrass them, especially in front of a group. “The person feels obligated to fulfill whatever image they have presented so that they are not all show,” he said. The violence sometimes turns deadly, according to Walker. “People who never thought they’d be killing someone find that once in a gang they are expected to kill,” he said. People have banded into small gangs for generations in Athens, usually groups that identified themselves either with the Eastside or Westside. But technology has made it easy for teens to learn the lingo of the big-time gangs, according to Nichols. “If a person wants to know something about gang culture, they can simply look it up on the Internet, view videos, print pictures and download reading material,” he said. “Technology has increased the rate of learning for those wanting to delve into the criminal street gang world.” Athens-Clarke police didn’t publicly acknowledge the community had a gang problem until 2004, when a duplex off North Avenue was raked with gunfire in a drive-by shooting to settle a beef between rival Hispanic gangs. But Jean Turner Horton literally saw the writing on the wall as early at 1999 when, as a state probation officer, she began snapping photos of gang graffiti on public housing. One photo depicted a six-pointed star with a “G” in the middle, a tag associated with the Gangster Disciples. Horton brought the photos to the Athens Housing Authority, which immediately adopted a zero-tolerance policy for gang activity. Since that drive-by, which wounded three men, Athens-Clarke police began taking measures to fight back, including graffiti eradication, collecting gang intelligence and requiring officers to undergo gang recognition training. “I’m really glad that Athens finally recognized it had a problem,” Horton said. “I can drive through Athens and not notice graffiti on the walls anymore.” Last year, an officer on patrol came across strange writings on the wall of a vacant house in West Athens that would be mumbo-jumbo to a lay person, but he recognized it for what it was. In one message on the wall, the tagger referred to a “Slob” — a derogatory term for a Bloods gang member — and replaced the “ck” in a profane word with “cc,” since the letters CK mean Crip killer in gang graffiti. Police didn’t believe the writings were made by genuine Crips, but found it disturbing nonetheless. “Anytime there’s gang tagging going on it’s of concern to the police department because it means they are trying to identify certain areas of the county and claim it as their territory,” Athens-Clarke Assistant Police Chief Tim Smith said. Walker was impressed with how far Athens-Clarke police have come in identifying gang activity and learning ways to suppress it. “Gangs are here to stay, and that’s why it’s important for police departments to take action, like getting proper training and arresting gang members,” he said. “We’ll cure cancer before we solve the gang problem.” Police will not discuss Cody Lumpkin’s possible gang ties while his murder charge is pending. But his gangster lifestyle shows how the problem can be just out of sight, until a tragic crime again brings it into the forefront. “There will always be things happening that the police do not know about,” Nichols said. That’s why the police need the help of others, including the schools, churches, community organizations and individual residents, he said. “Only by working together as a community can problems such as theft, drugs and gang violence be curtailed,” Nichols said. People who are suspicious of gang activity should report it immediately, he said. Athens-Clarke police also offers a gang-awareness presentation, and Nichols urged people who have questions about street gangs to call the police department.</blockquote>

Cody Lumpkin is a 7-4 soulja till da end

Cody Lumpkin is a 7-4 soulja till da end. Or, in gangster-speak, he’ll be a Gangster Disciple until he dies. That’s how the 21-year-old ...

Angry Birds” – which is basically a drone that has been specially developed to take down drug-running ultralight airplanes that are utilized by gangs in order to smuggle illegal substances

<p style="padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; background-color: #ffffff;"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-95393" height="353" src="http://cdn2.ubergizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/drug-plane.jpg" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-left: auto; clear: both; display: block; padding: 0px; border: initial none initial;" title="drug-plane" width="562" />Everyone with a modern smartphone would definitely have heard of Angry Birds before, and hey, even if mobile gaming is not your cup of tea, surely the name Angry Birds has passed by your mind from time to time during a conversation? Well, the US Border Patrol might get the help of “Angry Birds” – which is basically a drone that has been specially developed to take down drug-running ultralight airplanes that are utilized by gangs in order to smuggle illegal substances at the south of US from Mexico.<p style="padding-top: 5px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; background-color: #ffffff;">The drone will fire a net which entangles the propeller of the ultralight airplane, which in return stops the engine. As for another drone, that is slightly more violent in nature – it will perform a kamikaze crash straight into the ultralight in order to break its propeller. I think the kamikaze version has far more anger issues, and it would require less accuracy than firing a net at a propeller – what do you think? One thing’s for sure – there will not be any green pigs aboard the airborne drug mules…

Angry Birds” – which is basically a drone that has been specially developed to take down drug-running ultralight airplanes that are utilized by gangs in order to smuggle illegal substances

Everyone with a modern smartphone would definitely have heard of Angry Birds before, and hey, even if mobile gaming is not your cup of tea, ...

Son in milk-shake poisoning case sentenced

Son gets jail in attacks on man in milk-shake poisoning case No one can say Gilbert Ortiz isn't a survivor. In 1992, his wife poisoned him with an insecticide-laced milk shake. Ortiz nearly died. Nearly two decades later, his son - nursing a grudge over his mother's imprisonment - assaulted him. Twice. On Wednesday, a judge ordered the son, 21-year-old Jonathan Ortiz, to spend a year in jail and four years on probation. The unusual case began in March 1992, when Elizabeth Fuentes-Ortiz brought a McDonald's hamburger and a milk shake to her husband while he was working at Toys R Us in Redwood City. She told him the shake might taste funny because it was filled with amino acids to help him build muscles. In fact, the shake had been laced with Ortho Sevin, an insecticide. Ortiz went into convulsions 10 seconds after downing the concoction in the store's break room, police say. His heart stopped, his liver failed and he lapsed into a coma that lasted 11 days. But he survived and told police what had happened. By then, his wife had already made it to Mexico with Jonathan, then 2, in tow. In 2000, Fuentes-Ortiz was arrested near Guadalajara. She was convicted two years later of attempted murder and was sentenced to 13 years to life in prison. On June 25, 2010, Jonathan Ortiz stabbed his father, "screaming about what he had done to (Jonathan's) mother," said San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. The son took the wounded man to the hospital, where Gilbert Ortiz "made up a story about being robbed at knifepoint," Wagstaffe said. Then, on Oct. 17, 2010, Jonathan Ortiz attacked his father again, this time beating him, prosecutors said. The father again concocted a story that he had been attacked during a robbery. But a relative contacted police and revealed what really happened, Wagstaffe said. Jonathan Ortiz claimed self-defense. In September, he pleaded no contest to felony assault.

Son in milk-shake poisoning case sentenced

Son gets jail in attacks on man in milk-shake poisoning case No one can say Gilbert Ortiz isn't a survivor. In 1992, his wife poison...

James Murdoch is preparing to concede that News Corporation should have acted faster over the phone hacking scandal

<div id="main-content-picture" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 14px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; background-color: #ffffff; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px;"><img alt="James Murdoch" height="276" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/11/6/1320605271701/James-Murdoch-007.jpg" style="border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" width="460" /><div class="caption" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #666666; font-size: 12px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;">. Photograph: Miguel Villagran/Getty</div></div><div id="article-body-blocks" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; background-color: #ffffff; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/jamesmurdoch" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; text-decoration: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on James Murdoch">James Murdoch</a> is preparing to concede in front of MPs that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/news-corporation" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; text-decoration: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on News Corporation">News Corporation</a> should have taken further action earlier to investigate allegations that phone hacking was more widespread at the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/newsoftheworld" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; text-decoration: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on News of the World">News of the World</a> than the actions of a single rogue reporter.The News Corporation boss is to appear before the culture media and sport select committee on Thursday ready to admit that more could have been done between 2007 and 2010 when first insiders and later rival<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/newspapers" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; text-decoration: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Newspapers">newspapers</a> said the illegal practice was widely deployed.Fighting to save his career, Murdoch is aware he has to appear informed about how News Corp dealt with the hacking allegations – and he has to be prepared to admit that mistakes were made, including by himself.However, with advisers such as News Corp's acting chief lawyer Janet Nova flying in, it is not clear how far the company's legal team will allow James Murdoch to make the limited concessions planned. Friends of Murdoch say he is "surrounded" by people giving him advice, making it hard to proceed.The News Corp boss also plans to sidestep any questions about the size of the severance payment made to former <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/newsinternational" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; text-decoration: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on News International">News International</a> chief executive Rebekah Brooks. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/05/murdoch-phone-hacking-rebekah-brooks" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; text-decoration: none; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;" title="Murdoch gave loyal lieutenant Rebekah Brooks 1.7m pay-off, car and office">It was reported</a> at the weekend that the figure received was £1.7m, although it is understood the payment was in fact larger than this.Acutely aware of what is becoming a sensitive issue at the company, Murdoch is expected to say any payments made to Brooks cannot be discussed due to contractual confidentiality. News Corporation has no legal obligation to disclose the size of the severance because Brooks was not a director of the US-listed company.Murdoch was in charge of the News of the World and the company's other British newspapers as part of his job as executive chairman at UK subsidiary News International. He took over from Les Hinton at the end of 2007, nearly a year after News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed for his involvement in hacking into phone messages left for Prince William and Prince Harry's staff.Before Murdoch arrived Hinton agreed to pay Goodman a severance of £240,000, after Goodman launched an unfair dismissal claim. News International has said it found no evidence at the time that hacking went on more widely.A year later, Murdoch agreed to pay football boss Gordon Taylor £425,000 plus £200,000 to settle a phone hacking lawsuit. Controversy surrounds the payout – with former News of the World editor Colin Myler and chief lawyer Tom Crone saying Murdoch was told of an email that made it clear hacking went beyond Goodman. Murdoch has told the committee he had no knowledge of the email.He has also said he was not shown a separate report prepared for Tom Crone by QC Michael Silverleaf – which said that there appeared to be a "culture of illegal information access" at the News of the World. It is understood that he will offer new additional information about what he knew at the time.</div>

James Murdoch is preparing to concede that News Corporation should have acted faster over the phone hacking scandal

. Photograph: Miguel Villagran/Getty James Murdoch is preparing to concede in front of MPs that News Corporation should have taken furthe...

Fears of global recession as Italy teeters on brink

On a day of unremitting gloom and yet more market turbulence, the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, won a late-night confidence vote in parliament after making a speech in which he promised to start power-sharing talks to form a caretaker coalition government. Although he won the vote, 153-145, he is expected to step down, with a national unity government likely to take over. In a sign that the spread of the debt crisis to Italy could break up the single currency, the British Chancellor, George Osborne, admitted Treasury was undertaking crisis planning for a euro zone collapse. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, hinted at worse to come, saying this was only ''a stage of the global crisis''. There had been hopes that the G20 would agree to increase IMF resources by as much as $US250 billion to more than $US1 trillion, but disagreements about the wisdom of doing so, its structure, size and the contributors to the fund forced world leaders to pass on the issue to a meeting of G20 finance ministers in February. In financial markets an early rise in share prices was reversed after it became clear that divisions in the G20 would prevent a deal in Cannes

Fears of global recession as Italy teeters on brink

On a day of unremitting gloom and yet more market turbulence, the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, won a late-night confidence vot...