Free Republic

Eighteen current or former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officials have been indicted in five separate criminal cases in connection with a wide-ranging investigation into allegations of abuse and misconduct inside L.A. County jails. The four grand jury indictments unsealed Monday and one criminal complaint allege that deputies beat jail inmates and visitors without justification, unjustly detained people and conspired to obstruct a federal investigation into misconduct at the Men's Central Jail. Sixteen of the defendants were arrested Monday and are expected to be arraigned this afternoon in federal court.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian prosecutors froze bank accounts and seized assets of dozens of suspects in a widening corruption probe of senior government officials believed to have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds, the Palestinian attorney general said. The suspects have been barred from leaving the Palestinian areas and their names have been forwarded to officials at the Gaza-Egypt and West Bank-Jordan crossings, Attorney General Ahmed al-Meghani told The Associated Press late Wednesday in a telephone interview. Earlier this week, al-Meghani said his investigation concluded that Palestinian Authority officials may have stolen billions of dollars from...