Man arrested in Spain over Madonna song leak

 

Spanish police have arrested and charged a man with illegally leaking an early version of a new Madonna song. The 31-year-old is alleged to have put a demo of Gimme All Your Luvin on the internet in November. The investigation began after lawyers traced the recording to Spain. The man, described by police as a big fan of the singer, was arrested in Zaragoza. Madonna's first studio album in five years is due for release in late March, with the first single out next month. Police have not named the man arrested, but confirmed his initials as J.M.R. Officers in the northern Spanish city said they found recordings of the song in a search of the suspect's belongings. Madonna, 53, was said to have been "very upset" when the song first leaked last month. Her manager, Guy Oseary, tweeted about the incident and asked fans to help police any further leaks. The singer's upcoming album, her first since 2008's Hard Candy, has already been completed and will be released as part of a new three album deal with Interscope Records. It was also recently announced that the star will perform during the high profile Superbowl half-time show on 5 February.

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Ryanair has cuts its Alicante services by 50% for next year

 

Ryanair has cuts its Alicante services by 50% for next year blaming the airport for forcing it to use ‘unnecessary’ airbridges. The airline, which claims the airbridges cost it 2million euros a year in fees, has appealed to the Spanish Commercial courts over the charges which is due to be heard in early February. Ryanair refutes claims from the airport that the airbridges are a safety issue and that Ryanair’s cutbacks were already planned. It added that if the compulsory airbridge use is withdrawn or if they win the appeal, the Alicante flights, traffic and job cuts will be reversed for summer 2012. Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said: “ AENA Alicante are now proving that inefficient airbridges and higher fees will result in the airport suffering route, traffic and job cuts. “We call again on AENA to reverse this abusive decision to force Ryanair and other airlines to use and pay for unnecessary airbridges at Alicante.” Ryanair had already cut its winter 2011/12 services at Alicante by 50%. A new base is being opened in Palma by Ryanair serving  17 new routes and sustaining up to 2,800 Balearic jobs. The new routes are Palma to Aarhus, Cork, Gothenburg, Haugesund, Kaunas, Krakow, Maastricht, Malaga, Magdeburg, Marseille, Oslo, Paris Beauvais, Poznan, Santander,Santiago, Stockholm, and Tampere. To launch the new flights, which go on sale tomorrow, Ryanair is having a seat sale from 9.99 euros for travel across European routes in late January and early February 2012.   This ends midnight on December 15th

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The methane time bomb - Climate Change

 

The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists. The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats. Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane – sometimes at up to 100 times background levels – over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf. In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through "methane chimneys" rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a "lid" to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age. They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years. Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane. The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth. Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden, one of the leaders of the expedition, described the scale of the methane emissions in an email exchange sent from the Russian research ship Jacob Smirnitskyi. "We had a hectic finishing of the sampling programme yesterday and this past night," said Dr Gustafsson. "An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface. These 'methane chimneys' were documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instruments]." At some locations, methane concentrations reached 100 times background levels. These anomalies have been seen in the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea, covering several tens of thousands of square kilometres, amounting to millions of tons of methane, said Dr Gustafsson. "This may be of the same magnitude as presently estimated from the global ocean," he said. "Nobody knows how many more such areas exist on the extensive East Siberian continental shelves. "The conventional thought has been that the permafrost 'lid' on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place. The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane... The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed." The preliminary findings of the International Siberian Shelf Study 2008, being prepared for publication by the American Geophysical Union, are being overseen by Igor Semiletov of the Far-Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1994, he has led about 10 expeditions in the Laptev Sea but during the 1990s he did not detect any elevated levels of methane. However, since 2003 he reported a rising number of methane "hotspots", which have now been confirmed using more sensitive instruments on board the Jacob Smirnitskyi. Dr Semiletov has suggested several possible reasons why methane is now being released from the Arctic, including the rising volume of relatively warmer water being discharged from Siberia's rivers due to the melting of the permafrost on the land. The Arctic region as a whole has seen a 4C rise in average temperatures over recent decades and a dramatic decline in the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by summer sea ice. Many scientists fear that the loss of sea ice could accelerate the warming trend because open ocean soaks up more heat from the sun than the reflective surface of an ice-covered sea.

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Hundreds of metres under one of Iceland's largest glaciers there are signs of an imminent volcanic eruption that could be one of the most powerful the country has seen in almost a century.

 

Mighty Katla, with its 10km (6.2 mile) crater, has the potential to cause catastrophic flooding as it melts the frozen surface of its caldera and sends billions of gallons of water surging through Iceland's east coast and into the Atlantic Ocean.

"There has been a great deal of seismic activity," says Ford Cochran, the National Geographic's expert on Iceland.

"There have been more than 500 tremors in and around the caldera of Katla just in the last month, which suggests the motion of magma. And that certainly suggests an eruption may be imminent."

Scientists in Iceland have been closely monitoring the area since 9 July, when there appears to have been some sort of disturbance that may have been a small eruption.

Eruption 'long overdue'

Even that caused significant flooding, washing away a bridge across the country's main highway and blocking the only link to other parts of the island for several days.

"The July 9 event seems to mark the beginning of a new period of unrest for Katla, the fourth we know in the last half century," says Professor Pall Einarsson, who has been studying volcanoes for 40 years and works at the Iceland University Institute of Earth Sciences.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

It means you actually see the crust of the earth ripping apart”

Ford CochranIceland expert, National Geographic

"The possibility that it may include a larger eruption cannot be excluded," he continues. "Katla is a very active and versatile volcano. It has a long history of large eruptions, some of which have caused considerable damage."

The last major eruption occurred in 1918 and caused such a large glacier meltdown that icebergs were swept by the resulting floods into the ocean.

The volume of water produced in a 1755 eruption equalled that of the world's largest rivers combined.

Thanks to the great works of historic literature known as the Sagas, Iceland's volcanic eruptions have been well documented for the last 1,000 years.

But comprehensive scientific measurements were not available in 1918, so volcanologists have no record of the type of seismic activity that led to that eruption.

All they know is that Katla usually erupts every 40 to 80 years, which means the next significant event is long overdue.

Eyjafjallajokull's relatively small eruption in 2010 halted air traffic across Europe

Katla is part of a volcanic system that includes the Laki craters. In 1783 the chain erupted continuously for eight months generating so much ash, hydrogen fluoride and sulphur dioxide that it killed one in five Icelanders and half of the country's livestock.

"And it actually changed the Earth's climate," says Mr Cochran.

"Folks talk about a nuclear winter - this eruption generated enough sulphuric acid droplets that it made the atmosphere reflective, cooled the planet for an entire year or more and caused widespread famine in many places around the globe.

"One certainly hopes that Katla's eruption will not be anything like that!"

The trouble is scientists do not know what to expect. As Prof Einarsson explains, volcanoes have different personalities and are prone to changing their behaviour unexpectedly.

"When you study a volcano you get an idea about its behaviour in the same way you judge a person once you get to know them well.

"You might be on edge for some reason because the signs are strange or unusual, but it's not always very certain what you are looking at. We have had alarms about Katla several times."

Changing climate

He says the fallout also depends on the type of eruption and any number of external factors.

Iceland is the only place where the mid-Atlantic rift is visible above the surface of the ocean

"This difficulty is very apparent when you compare the last two eruptions in Iceland - Eyjafjallajokull in 2010 and Grimsvotn in 2011.

"Eyjafjallajokull, which brought air traffic to a halt across Europe, was a relatively small eruption, but the unusual chemistry of the magma, the long duration and the weather pattern during the eruption made it very disruptive.

"The Grimsvotn eruption of 2011 was much larger in terms of volume of erupted material.

"It only lasted a week and the ash in the atmosphere fell out relatively quickly.

"So it hardly had any noticeable effect except for the farmers in south-east Iceland who are still fighting the consequences."

Of course, volcanoes are erupting around the world continuously. Scientists are particularly excited about an underwater volcano near El Hierro in the Canary Islands, which is creating new land.

But Iceland is unique because it straddles two tectonic plates and is the only place in the world where the mid-Atlantic rift is visible above the surface of the ocean.

"It means you actually see the crust of the earth ripping apart," says Mr Cochran. "You have an immense amount of volcanic activity and seismic activity. It's also at a relatively high altitude so Iceland is host to among other things, the world's third largest icecap."

But the biggest threat to Iceland's icecaps is seen as climate change, not the volcanoes that sometimes melt the icecaps.

They have begun to thin and retreat dramatically over the last few decades, contributing to the rise in sea levels that no eruption of Katla, however big, is likely to match.

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British woman falls off hotel balcony when having sex

 

There has been another case of balconing in Spain, this time in Adeje, Tenerife, and with the twist that the victim was having sex with her husband at the time she fell. The British tourist who fell several metres then got her ankle caught between the bars of an internal staircase was left hanging there, head down and totally naked until the emergency crews arrived. 49 year old A.M.A.M. had been having sex with her husband against the railings on one of the public areas of the hotel and in the frenzy, the railings gave way. The husband called the emergency services and the local and national police arrived with a fire crew. After their initial surprise, the managed to release the woman’s trapped right leg, and she was taken for observation to the Hospitén Sur.

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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 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 Libya 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."

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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 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.

Holding court: Waring a T-shirt for his interview with Wensley Clarkson, Rupert Ross seemed since but described the gang world with cold relish

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. 

 

 

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.

Chameleon: Ross looked like the ex-public schoolboy he was, when dressed in a smart shirt on his way to court

‘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.

Quirky: Ad Hoc, the Kings Road boutique run by Ross' mother Diana Lank

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.

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'

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.’

Chilling: Ross' mug shot, he told Wensley Clarkson he felt 'naked and vulnerable' without a gun

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.

Respectable: Eminent barrister Susan Rodway QC is Ross' step aunt

‘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.

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small-time drug dealer was tortured, killed and his body dismembered into six pieces 'behind closed doors' by a brutal drug gang

small-time drug dealer was tortured, killed and his body dismembered into six pieces 'behind closed doors' by a brutal drug gang, a court heard yesterday. 

Adam Vincent, 33, was shot with air rifle pellets and savagely punched and kicked in the weeks before his gruesome death.  

The gang then scattered his body parts in waterways across Lincolnshire, Sheffield Crown Court was told. 

Discovery: Adam Vincent's head, right arm and right leg were found in the River Ancholme, near Brigg in June, pictured

His severed leg was found sticking out of the water by birdwatchers at Tetney Lock near Cleethorpes on March 3 this year. 

After a police investigation two other parts were recovered and his head, right arm and right leg were found in the River Ancholme, near Brigg in June. 

Prosecutor Tom Bayliss QC said the five-strong gang believed Mr Vincent had stolen £5,000 from them and 'grassed' them up to the police.

The court heard Mr Vincent was a heroin addict and sold 'wraps' for the gang in return for using some of the drug himself.

 

 

At the time of his death he was living with the gang whose headquarters was based in a small bungalow in Scartho, Grimsby. 

Grimsby men Lee Griffiths, 43, his sons Thomas, 22, and Luke, 19, Lee's stepson Mark Jackson, 27, and Matthew Frow, 32, all deny murder between February 26 and March 4. 

They also deny conspiracy to pervert the course of justice by concealing Mr Vincent's dismembered body between the same dates along with Andrew Lusher, 43, also from Grimsby, who is alleged to have hired the van used to dispose of the body. 

Mr Vincent's severed leg was found sticking out of the water by birdwatchers at Tetney Lock near Cleethorpes, pictured, on March 3 this year

The three Griffiths and Mark Jackson further deny conspiracy to supply heroin between December 1, 2010 to March 7, 2011. 

Frow admits conspiracy to supply the Class A drug. 

Mr Bayliss said Mr Vincent was a close associate of the five men charged with murder. 

He did small-time drug dealing on their behalf and 'it was the gang he was associated with that killed him.' 

Three weeks before Mr Vincent's body was found three of the gang were arrested for drugs offences by police then released.

'Birdwatchers chanced on the leg just hours after it had been dumped'

Officers searched the bungalow, which is owned by Lee Griffiths, and where Mr Vincent had been living. 

Mr Bayliss said Lee Griffiths believed Mr Vincent had given information to the police and had stolen £5,000 and drugs from them. 

The gang began a 'sustained physical assault' on Mr Vincent and the violence continued for a fortnight ultimately leading to his death.

A post mortem showed Mr Vincent died from a blunt force trauma to the head. He had been struck at least three times with a weapon. 

Mr Vincent was last seen alive on February 27 and the following day it is claimed that one of the gang sent a text to his girlfriend which implied Adam Vincent had been killed. 

His body was dismembered after his death and a van, organised by Lusher, was allegedly used to dispose of it. 

The birdwatchers chanced on the leg just hours after it had been dumped.

Prosecutor Tom Bayliss QC told Sheffield Crown Court, pictured, the five-strong gang believed Mr Vincent had stolen £5,000 from them and 'grassed' them up to the police

 

Mr Bayliss said: 'Adam Vincent was killed behind closed doors by this gang. 

'All five of the defendants were participating in a joint enterprise which led to Adam Vincent's death.'

He said it was difficult to identify individual acts of violence but the prosecution claim anyone involved in it is guilty of murder even if they were not present when the fatal blow was delivered.

The court heard three of the gang were arrested for suspected drugs offences and the bungalow was searched. Drug paraphernalia was seized along with an air rifle on February 11.

Pellets matched to the rifle were found in Mr Vincent's body. 

Mr Bayliss said: 'Even before this one of the things that was happening was that Mr Vincent had been shot in the body by this a air rifle.

'It would have caused pain and injury. It was an indication of how he was being treated. 

'Mr Vincent's father Keith visited his son who was in hospital with pneumonia in late January. Mr Vincent told his dad he had had enough of his drug-taking lifestyle.'

'He said: ''I want to get away but they won't let me. I need to sort some issues out first.'

'He later added: 'You don't know these people. I'm trying to get it all sorted.''

Mr Vincent discharged himself against medical advice and was probably killed three weeks later. 

Mr Bayliss said witnesses spoke of how Mr Vincent would tell of being beaten up and how 'they couldn't let him go because he knew too much.' 

When Mr Vincent stole the money from the gang he was given 'a bit of a kicking' and was tied up in the house, it was alleged. 

Another witness said Lee Griffiths was becoming 'paranoid' about heroin going missing from the house and suspected Mr Vincent had been stealing it. 

The court heard that as early as January Mr Vincent was seen with a black eye and Thomas Griffiths was bragging he had shot him. 

A few days before Mr Vincent was killed Thomas Griffiths was seen to punch him in the face in the house and Luke Griffiths kicked him in the side while his father held a knife to Mr Vincent's throat. 

The victim was later seen in pain and by February 26 was described as having a 'shocking' appearance by a witness at a supermarket.

He was walking with a limp and had cuts all over his face.

'His facial expression according to a security guard was one of terror,' said Mr Bayliss. 

The hearing, which is expected to last at least six weeks, continues.

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IT’S prison or death out there. I’ve seen people get stabbed and my friend was shot dead last year... I was lucky it didn’t happen to me

“IT’S prison or death out there. I’ve seen people get stabbed and my friend was shot dead last year... I was lucky it didn’t happen to me.”

These are the chilling words of a 19-year-old Birmingham gang member who once roamed the streets of Lozells, selling drugs and fighting with rivals over territory.

He has since left that dark and dangerous life behind him and is on course to become a PE teacher.

Now he has helped make an award-winning film aimed at warning the next generation of the dangers of gangs.

It is being shown in schools across Birmingham to children the same age he was when he became involved.

Today, the teenager lifts the lid on the closed world of gang culture in our second city.

But even now he cannot be named for fear of retribution from the people he once saw as ‘family’.

“It started when we were at high school,” he told the Sunday Mercury.

“I was part of a group of friends who came together and decided no-one would trouble us if we had any problems. There were probably about 20 of us in Lozells and Aston.

“Back then, it felt more like a family than a gang.

‘‘You do everything with your gang.

“If you go to the city centre or something like the bonfire at Pype Hayes, you wouldn’t go on your own, you’d go with 20 or 30 people so you were safe.

“If we saw other gangs there would be a fight. And that could escalate really easily.

“Luckily, I was never a person to get stabbed but I’ve seen things like that and it’s not nice.

‘‘My friend was also shot and killed last year. He was just in a car; it was a long-term rivalry; they pulled up next to him and shot him.

“In the back of your mind you know you don’t want to be in that environment, but you’re probably safer with your friends than without them.

“If you get caught slipping by going somewhere and another gang sees you, you’re liable, They don’t care whether you’re still in the gang or not.”

Criminal

Yet what started out as friends sticking up for each other quickly changed into criminal behaviour as the teen’s gang began selling drugs to make money.

The wannabe teacher, who was once cautioned for possession of cannabis, added: “The aim was just to survive and to make money to live life.

“Everyone was selling it for someone else and just trying to make a bit for themselves.

“We would sell whatever drugs the buyer wanted really, if people want something you’ll end up trying to sell it.”

And he claimed his young gang members were led further astray by older kids who thrive on street violence.

“Peer pressure plays a big part,” he added.

“There were older figures but we never saw them as leaders. We saw them as older brothers. That’s the influence they had on us.

“There was loads of people our age with nothing to do. We were all young and easily influenced by the older generation.

“They used to say it was ‘robbery season’ where everything you want, you get. If you want a phone, you go and rob a phone.

‘‘It was callous and evil.”

And as the gang got older, the trouble they got into became more serious.

“I think half of our gang ended up in jail,” added the 19-year-old.

“That’s for everything from drugs to violence to robbery.

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Police wrest control of Rio's largest slum

 

Crack police forces were Sunday in full control of Rio's largest favela after launching a dawn assault to eject narco-traffickers who had been ruling the area for 30 years. "I have the pleasure to inform you that Rocinha and Vidigal (a neighbouring favela) are under our control. There were no incidents and no shots were fired. We don't have any information on arrests or weapons seized," Alberto Pinheiro Neto, chief of the military police, told a news conference. "The communities have been our control since (1900 AEDT) and we are withdrawing our armour and, in 45 minutes, we will reopen the streets," which had been closed since 0400 GMT ahead of the operation. Advertisement: Story continues below Built on a steep hillside overlooking the city and located between two wealthy neighbourhoods, Rocinha is home to 120,000 people. The long-anticipated operation in a city that has one of the highest murder rates in the country is part of an official campaign since 2008 to restore security in Rio before the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, which Brazil will host. Backed by navy armour and commandos and with two helicopters flying low overhead, hundreds of special forces police and 200 navy commandos punched their way into Rocinha and Vidigal at dawn. "The arrival of the UPP (a police unit set up to pacify the favelas) will be positive for the new generations to put an end to narco-trafficking. I want my sons to stay away from trafficking," said 51-year-old Carlos Alberto, who was one of the few Rocinha residents willing to speak to the press. But not everyone supported the police operation. A few women were seen crying. All access to the two favelas has been blocked since 2.30am (1102 AEDT). Earlier three vehicles blocked one of the avenues in the upper part of Rocinha. Dozens of policemen in the perimeter asked journalists present in the area to remain behind as they fanned out in the narrow alleys. Streets were deserted, with only a few residents watching from their windows as the troops made their advance. "We hope the pacification will not be just about ejecting the drug traffickers but also to bring sanitation, education, health," said community leader Raimundo Benicio de Souda, 4known as Lima. "There are people living (here) among cockroaches, urinating and defecating in a can," Lima told AFP, adding that for this reason "the pacification must have these people as a priority". William de Oliveira, president of the Favelas People's Movement, wearing a shirt with the inscription "I love Rocinha, said: "We want the people to be treated with dignity, respect, that those who have been involved in crimes be jailed but not assassinated" by police." Authorities estimate that about 200 criminals remained inside Rocinha following last week's capture of local drug kingpin Antonio Francisco Bonfim Lopes, also known as Nem. Nem was caught hidden in the trunk of a car, along with several accomplices and a few corrupt policemen who were protecting them. Nem was a model employee of a telecom company who "stumbled" into organised crime after getting a loan from a former Rocinha drug baron to pay for medical care for one of his daughters. To pay back his debts, he reportedly began dealing drugs and later took over as chief of the gang which controls Rocinha. The capture of Rocinha, the 19th favela to be pacified by police, recalled the huge operation launched by joint police and military forces to seize control of Rio's Alemao favela, home to 400,000 people in November 2010. Alemao was retaken after three days of clashes that left 37 people dead. Since Friday, heavily armed police had been besieging Rocinha, checking all cars going or leaving the area. Endemic and chronic urban violence has long tarnished the image of Rio, where more than 1.5 million people live in 1,000 slums spread throughout the city.

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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 party was held at The Venue on Narregan Avenue and included live music, information booths and speeches dealing with the raids conducted in October by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents that have left many medical marijuana providers reeling. "The raids are definitely a topic of conversation," said Lori Duckworth, the executive director of the Southern Oregon chapter of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, or SONORML. Duckworth said eight raids were conducted this season. DEA agents descended on gardens on Table Rock Road, East Gregory Road, Tolo Road and Old Stage Road — pulling hundreds of plants and loading them into dump trucks for disposal.

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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 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.

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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, 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.

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…

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