In a national first in the fight against the opioid crisis, a major drug distribution company, its former chief executive and another top executive have been criminally charged in New York.
Rochester Drug Co-Operative, one of the top 10 largest drug distributors in the United States, was charged Tuesday with conspiracy to violate narcotics laws, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and willfully failing to file suspicious order reports.
Laurence Doud III, the company’s former chief executive, and William Pietruszewski, the company’s former chief compliance officer, are individually charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Pietruszewski is also charged with willfully failing to file suspicious order reports with the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA.
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Laurence Doud III is taken into custody in New York on Tuesday.via NBC News
The FBI on Saturday said it had arrested Larry Hopkins, the leader of an armed group that is stopping undocumented migrants after they cross the U.S.-Mexico border into New Mexico.
The arrest came two days after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) accused the group of illegally detaining migrants and New Mexico’s Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered an investigation.
Hopkins, 69, also known as Johnny Horton, was arrested in Sunland Park, New Mexico, on a federal complaint charging him with being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
Police in Sri Lanka imposed an island-wide curfew starting Sunday at 6 p.m. local (8:30 a.m. ET Sunday) until the morning.
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The country’s authorities convened an emergency meeting involving the heads of the army, air force and navy, according to Sri Lanka’s economic reforms minister, Harsha de Silva.
He said on Twitter that all emergency steps had been taken and that the group would issue a statement on the blasts.
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Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe condemned the blasts on Twitter, calling on Sri Lankans to “remain united and strong.”
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Sri Lankan security personnel keep watch outside a church in Colombo after a blast Sunday.
Cocaine trafficking from Venezuela to the United States is soaring, even as the country collapses. And US and other regional officials say it’s Venezuela’s own military and political elite who are facilitating the passage of drugs in and out of the country on hundreds of tiny, unmarked planes.
A months-long CNN investigation traced the northward route of cocaine from the farmlands where much of it is grown in Colombia, and found that the number of suspected drug flights from Venezuela has risen from about two flights per week in 2017 to nearly daily in 2018, according to one US official. This year, the same official has seen as many as five nighttime flights in the sky at once.
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Planes loaded with Colombian cocaine used to depart from Venezuela’s remote southern jungle regions. Now they take off from the country’s more developed northwest region to reduce their flying time, US and regional officials also said.
Most people can agree that you don’t torture children to punish adults. You don’t rip children from their parents to serve as a deterrent or warning to others. Yet Trump followers aren’t normal. Last year, government officials and random followers told Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo to just shut up and follow orders:
Chief Acevedo told them off:
Now the Trump administration has ordered deportation against an 11-year-old girl from El Salvador who sought asylum with her family due to death threats from MS-13. The gang has reportedly been systematically killing her family members over a relative witnessing a murder and testifying against them in court.
The little girl has made all 10 of her appointments with ICE, yet a clerical error that occurred during Trump’s government shutdown didn’t have her scheduled for an appointment that she showed up for. She was told to go home but then was given a letter saying she never showed up—and would be deported back to El Salvador alone. You would think this would be an easy fix for the Executive Office for Immigration Review—but no. As of today, she’s still due for deportation.
When detectives in a Phoenix suburb arrested a warehouse worker in a murder investigation last December, they credited a new technique with breaking open the case after other leads went cold.
The police told the suspect, Jorge Molina, they had data tracking his phone to the site where a man was shot nine months earlier. They had made the discovery after obtaining a search warrant that required Google to provide information on all devices it recorded near the killing, potentially capturing the whereabouts of anyone in the area.
Investigators also had other circumstantial evidence, including security video of someone firing a gun from a white Honda Civic, the same model that Mr. Molina owned, though they could not see the license plate or attacker.
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Jorge Molina in Goodyear, Ariz. Detectives arrested him last year in a murder investigation after requesting Google location data. When new information emerged, they released him and did not pursue charges.Alex Welsh for The New York Times
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Laurence Doud III is taken into custody in New York on Tuesday.via NBC News
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Sri Lankan security personnel keep watch outside a church in Colombo after a blast Sunday.
James' World 2 