David Walker, the former U.S. Comptroller General and head of the Government Accountability Office, has a dire warning for America if the politicians fail to address the debt problem as reported by Heesun Wee for tech ticker:
David Walker says America's growing long-term debt is dangerously close to passing a "tipping point" that could trigger soaring interest rates and a plummeting dollar. In a worst case scenario, that could trigger a "global depression," he says, warning: "Nobody's going to bail out America." With the U.S. facing $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities and around $62 trillion in total long-term debt, what worries Walker most is what happens after the recession dissipates . . . . "I'm less concerned with the short-term deficits than I am the fact that we're not doing anything about those structural deficits that people used to call long-term," says Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General and head of the Government Accountability Office. "But the long-term is here."
Ricardo Valles de la Rosa, a reputed top leader within the U.S. and Mexico binational Barrio Azteca prison gang who was arrested in connection with the brazen assassination of U.S. citizens in Juarez, Mexico earlier this month, has told investigators that the intended target was Arthur H. Redelfs, a corrections officer from the El Paso County Jail, and not his pregnant wife and U.S. Consulate employee Lesly Ann Enriquez as reported by James C. McKinley Jr. for The New York Times:
Mr. Redelfs and Ms. Enriquez were ambushed by several gunmen as they left a child's birthday party in Ciudad Juárez. Their 7-month-old daughter was found wailing in the backseat. The gunmen also attacked a second car leaving the party, killing the husband of a second consulate worker and wounding two children. The Mexican authorities say Mr. Valles de la Rosa told them he had been ordered several days earlier by unnamed leaders of the gang in El Paso to track down Mr. Redelfs' white sport-utility car in Ciudad Juárez. * * * Mr. Valles de la Rosa, who goes on the street by the names El Chino and El 29, was born in Ciudad Juarez in 1964, but left for El Paso with his parents at age 6 and lived there for 30 years. The statement said he joined a gang and was jailed in El Paso in 1995 and came into contact with the Aztecas while in jail. He was deported to Ciudad Juarez in 2007, and there he worked as a lookout and enforcer for the Aztecas, whom authorities say work for the Juarez drug cartel run by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes on both sides of the border.
In Trenton, NJ a 15-year-old girl has been "charged with aggravated sexual assault, promoting prostitution and other crimes" for selling "her 7-year-old stepsister to have sex with as many as seven men and boys at a weekend party" as reported by The Associated Press.
Marc Klasfeld from Rockhard Films claims defends using children in his remake of the gangster flick Scarfaceas reported by Ninette Sosa for CNN: "It's just a video aimed at illustrating the pervasiveness of sex and violence in our media culture -- and how it blankets children on a daily basis."
Organized criminals in Alberta have better technology than police, are wise to investigators' tactics and may be buying influence in the provincial justice system, a House standing committee on organized crime heard Monday in Edmonton. Joe Comartin, an Ontario New Democrat who sits on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, asked officials testifying Monday if they have seen incidents in which organized crime has financially corrupted Alberta police, prosecutors or judges. "The answer to that is yes," said Calgary Police Chief Rick Hanson, who said at least one investigation into allegations of such corruption is currently underway in Calgary. * * * "Unfortunately, as it relates to Calgary, I think we've been incredibly naive," Hanson said.
In separate incidents minutes apart on March 13, gunmen attacked two similar cars leaving a child's birthday party in Juarez. They killed consulate employee Lesley Enriquez and her husband, Arthur Redelfs, who worked at the El Paso County jail. The couples' infant daughter was unharmed in the back seat of the car. Jorge Salcido, the Mexican husband of another consulate employee, was killed minutes before Enriquez and Redelfs in a similar attack. Two of Salcido's young children, who were riding in the back seat of the car, were wounded. Although the investigation continues, Mexican officials quickly blamed the Azteca gang for the killings. U.S. federal, state and local police raided the El Paso homes of suspected Barrio Azteca members on March 18, arresting dozens of men on outstanding warrants. * * * Founded inside the U.S. prison system by El Paso street gang members, the Barrio Azteca has members throughout Texas, the U.S. southwest and parts of Mexico. Barrio Azteca is closely allied with the Juarez Cartel, which has controlled smuggling routes and local street sales in the city, which borders El Paso, U.S. and Mexican officials say.
In the El Paso, TX area the Mexican cartels are recruiting U.S. children as young as twelve to run drugs for them, and they are getting murdered in the trade as reported by The Associated Press. And yet earlier this month U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler stated "that the Obama administration is not seeing evidence of spillover violence warranting a stepped-up U.S. response" to drug cartels as reported by Peggy Fikac and Stewart M. Powell for the Houston Chronicle. Has anyone from Homeland Security been following the news from the Texas border towns within the last year? Meanwhile, on the south side of the border, "ten children, youths and young adults between the ages of 8 and 21 were gunned down, presumably by drug traffickers, in the northern Mexican state of Durango" as reported by CNN.
Nine teenagers in western Massachusetts have been charged "with involvement in a months-long campaign of bullying" that resulted in the suicide of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince last January as reported by CNN:
Phoebe Prince's body was found hanging in the stairway leading to her family's second-floor apartment in South Hadley, Northwestern District Attorney Elizabeth D. Scheibel told reporters in the western Massachusetts town of Northampton. "It appears that Phoebe's death on January 14 followed a torturous day for her when she was subjected to verbal harassment and physical abuse," she said. * * * The harassment that day, by one male and two females, "appears to have been motivated by the group's displeasure with Phoebe's brief dating relationship with a male student that had ended six weeks earlier," she said. But that day's events were not isolated; they "were the culmination of a nearly three-month campaign of verbally abusive, assaultive behavior and threats of physical harm toward Phoebe on school grounds by several South Hadley students," Scheibel added.
Two of the defendants -- Sean Mulveyhill and Austin Renaud -- have been charged with statutory rape.
In Germany police have arrested 11 people for allegedly trafficking cocaine on behalf of Italy's 'ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia as reported by The Associated Press:
Investigators believe the group regularly sent couriers from Italy to Germany with several kilograms of cocaine which were delivered to customers in the Munich area. Bavarian police say they are investigating 18 people, most of them Italian, while police in Brescia, Italy, are conducting a parallel probe against the main suspects.
Michael Persico -- son of reputed Colombo boss Carmine "The Snake" Persico and brother of reputed ex-acting boss Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico -- was denied bail today following his indictment earlier this month for allegedly participating in a kickback and extortion scheme involving debris removal at the World Trade Center ground zero site. In denying bail for Persico, U.S. District Judge Sandra Townes said as reported by Janon Fisher for the New York Post: "He has ties to organized crime that he has been surveilled meeting with the hierarchy of the Colombo crime family, including Ralph Deleo -- the acting boss. He directs the acts of violent men and no amount of surety could protect the community."
Meanwhile, Jerry Capeci reports for The Huffington Post that Steven Marcus -- "a sleazy fixture in trucking and the demolition contracting business for decades" -- wore a wire for the feds that helped bring about the recent indictment involving the alleged scheme at World Trade Center site:
Prosecutors say that Marcus tape-recorded about 800 conversations for the FBI during the investigation. Sources say this treasure trove of mob business discussions will lead to additional charges in the coming months against members and associates of the Gambino and Genovese families who were also snared by the smooth-talking Marcus. "He's a truck broker in the construction industry," said one source. "He had dealings with everyone in the industry. There's lots of people looking over their shoulders."
In San Jose, CA two alleged associates of 28-year-old Kaushal Niroula -- the so-called "gay grifter" who is charged with four others in the December 2008 murder of 75-year-old retired art dealer Clifford Lambert in Palm Springs -- have been arrested "in what a police captain calls a 'convoluted Bernie Madoff real estate scheme'" as reported by Lisa Fernandez for the Mercury News:
Headed by the San Francisco Police Department, officers on Tuesday arrested telecommunications executive Jay Chandrakant Shah, 45, at his sprawling property called the "Shah Ranch" on Quimby Road. They also arrested Melvin Lee Emerich, an attorney and real estate broker who lives in Santa Cruz and has an office in San Jose. Police, who after a year of investigation are still trying to connect all the dots, say Shah and Emerich were involved with falsifying documents at the recorder's office to make it appear as if they were buying luxury condos at One Rincon Hill with stunning views of the bay in San Francisco. In arrest warrants, police allege the two then reaped $2.2 million in loans from the fraudulent transfers of property.
In April 2009 SF Weekly ran a cover story by Matt Smith on Niroula who also is known as the "Nepalese Prince" or "Prince Little Stuff":
Kaushal Niroula, 26, aka the Nepalese Prince, aka Prince Little Stuff, enters a Palm Springs courtroom and offers to shake the judge's hand. Short and neatly dressed, with attractively dainty features, Niroula is the suspected ringleader of a bizarre murder-larceny case that has riveted this desert Mecca of gay high society since early December. That was when Clifford Lambert, 74, a retired art dealer known for his taste in younger men, vanished without a trace. * * * [P]olice issued arrest warrants for a cast of characters drawn from the San Francisco gay social scene, including David Replogle, 60, an attorney known among some colleagues for pushing ethical boundaries; Daniel Garcia, 27, a longtime client of Replogle's; and Russell Manning, 67, a former Union Square art gallery employee. Niroula, a spiffy-dressing Nepalese immigrant with a haughty British accent, apparently served as the hub of this alleged gay-grifter crew that drew victims and coconspirators from the Castro bar scene. When Niroula was arraigned on March 11, attorneys, police, victims, and former friends already suspected him to be one of the more prolific and ruthless con men ever to hit California.
Attorney Replogle and the young Garcia have a history together according to Smith:
The Lambert case bears odd similarities to a 2003 lawsuit, detailed in the March 18 SF Weekly story "The Thomas White Affair," in which Replogle extracted a $7 million settlement from White by alleging he had abused Garcia and several Mexican youths. White's attorneys now say the Palm Springs case bolsters their claim that Replogle obtained the settlement through fraud.
In "The Thomas White Affair," Smith writes that the arrest of Replogle and Garcia "now throw into question Replogle's own innocence in the Thomas White affair," and "could cast doubt on their credibility and raise the possibility that two alleged con men led U.S. law enforcement officials on a costly international manhunt while unfairly condemning a man to a half-decade in a Mexican jail":
As in the White case, the allegations against Replogle in Palm Springs suggest the attorney became associated with a group of young men who knew a wealthy, older homosexual man and then managed to extract money from him. * * * Unsealed litigation documents, meanwhile, allege that Replogle may have been more mercenary than anti-sex-abuse missionary in his pursuit of White. "I think [the Palm Springs arrest] puts the allegations against [White] in a different light," said Stuart Hanlon, White's attorney. "He's always said he was set up and framed by Garcia and Replogle. Now there are allegations that they have a reputation of doing this kind of thing." White is accused of having sex with numerous Mexican boys whom he invited into his mansion. Garcia claimed White abused him when he was a teenager. According to statements by Garcia, a former friend of Garcia's, and a private investigator hired by White, Garcia and Replogle traveled together numerous times to Mexico to recruit additional boys as plaintiffs. Since then, questions of the financier's guilt or innocence have pivoted on whether the boys were honest victims, or mere opportunists responding to an invitation to testify their way out of poverty.
Meanwhile, in the Lambert murder case, the Nepalese Prince has fired his third defense attorney, and has received permission from the court to represent himself as reported by Matt Smith for SF Weekly: "it's possible Niroula's decision to defend himself is merely an extension of his megalomaniac fantasy life."
The Nepalese Prince also fancied himself a princess, and would dress in drag as Kylie Monali as reported by Kristal Hawkins for trutv.com: "classmates at Xavier School and the Kathmandu Academy in Nepal had teased him for being too effeminate, dubbing him 'Kaulie' or 'Kylie' (a name he would later adopt for his drag queen alter ego Kylie Monali)." The trutv expose includes a lovely photo of Kaushal Niroula as Kylie Monali, and provides exhaustive details on the muliple fraud schemes which he allegedly perpetrated against older wealthy gay men and others.
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