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<p>A source said today that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taken into federal custody at his North Side home this morning. The U.S. attorney's office would not confirm the information, and a spokesman for the governor did not immediately return a phone call for comment.</p>

78 Pages of corruption by the numbers...........

COSTA MESA – Three teens, including the son of a former City Council candidate and community activist, have been arrested in connection with a shotgun attack on a teenage girl, police said today. The arrests stem from a July 28 shooting on Shalimar Drive – a notorious area barricaded with concrete stumps at all but one access point because of rampant gang activity – that resulted in a 15-year-old girl being hospitalized with a shotgun wound to the torso. The three suspects - one young man and two juveniles - were booked on suspicion of attempted murder, conspiracy and street...

Mexico: the danger of 'drug ballads'  Last Updated: 12:01am BST 01/06/2008       In the past two years, 15 mexican musicians have been murdered. Their crime: to fall foul of the country's drug barons. Ioan Grillo reports It was three in the morning and the Mexican group Banda Guasavena were driving back from a concert at a cockfighting festival, just over the border from Texas. The audience had been even more rapturous than usual and Fausto Castro-Elizalde, the band's horn player, recalls them chatting happily about the evening.   Grupo Cartel de Sinaloa pose in a cemetery full of extravagant...

RIVERSIDE Two recent shootouts between law officers and several members of the Soboba Indian tribe have prompted the Riverside County Sheriff's Deputies Association to warn the public that it considers the tribe's casino to be unsafe, it was reported on Saturday. The 3,700-member union considers the tribal reservation to be "unstable" as a result of "recent violence against Riverside County deputy sheriffs," the Los Angeles Times and Riverside Press-Enterprise reported. Tribal leaders shot back that the deputies union has brought the shootouts into the poitical arena, and said in an e-mail that "the recent tragic events were unrelated to the...

A federal appeals court on Monday upheld Gilroy's right to exclude members of a motorcycle club from the annual garlic festival because their garb violated a ban on clothing that could be associated with gang colors. In a 12-page ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the arguments of the Top Hatter motorcyle club, which argued their free speech rights were violated when they were ordered to leave the garlic festival in 2000. The club sued in federal court in San Jose, but a judge ruled against their arguments in 2005, prompting the appeal. The 9th Circuit concluded...

May 23, 1934: Police kill famous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde On this day in 1934, notorious criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police while driving a stolen car near Salles, Louisiana. Bonnie Parker met the charismatic Clyde Barrow in Texas when she was 19 years old and her husband (she married when she was 16) was serving time in jail for murder. Shortly after they met, Barrow was imprisoned for robbery. Parker visited him every day, and smuggled a gun into prison to help him escape, but he was soon caught...

Long before the O. J. Simpson trial, the "trial of the century" was the Lindberg baby kidnapping and murder case. The son of the most famous American family of the 20th century, (Colonel Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh) was kidnapped in 1932 and declared dead after being missing for six weeks. The body (so badly decomposed that proper identification was not possible), was presented to Charles Lindberg. Mr. Lindberg identified the body as that of his missing son, even though witnesses question even the sex of the corpse. Bruno Haupmann, a carpenter, and German immigrant, who had some acquaintance...

Critics of vulgar, violent, gangster-style rap music make a mistake when they write off rap stars as stupid, immoral and self-destructive. They may be immoral and self-destructive, but they're not stupid. As one of my readers observed in a thoughtful e-mail, they're making a rational economic choice. The reader wrote: "I had to stop and ask this question to myself: 'Would I call my mother a 'ho' or my sister a 'bitch' if I could make a couple of million dollars and get out of poverty and live a pretty good life?" In a line of work that dangles riches...

I was threatened to have my ass kicked the next time in San Diego because I dared quote Chris Rock who, at least in his stand up routine, claims to have as little use for niggas (as opposed to hard-working, law-abiding, descent black people) as I do. No one has yet to give me a reason to change that opinion. In fact, my opinions were vindicated, yet again, by the 403 arrests that tarnished the mid-February NBA All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas, According to Edward Lawrence of WLAS-TV, “It wasn’t the shootings, but the general rudeness of the NBA fans...

A federal appeals court refused yesterday to revive civil-rights claims against Gov. Rendell, District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham, and Teamsters Local 115, part of a lawsuit filed eight years ago by a man who says he was beaten and falsely prosecuted after protesting a 1998 appearance by President Clinton. The opinion by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is likely the end of the federal suit filed by Don and Theresa Adams, although Adams has said he will press civil claims involving state law in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. Neither Adams, 46, of...

By Emer Mullins The large increase in babies being born to immigrants in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is putting maternity hospitals in that city under strain, The New York Times has reported. Hundreds of babies are being born to Latino immigrant workers, who flocked to the city to work during the reconstruction. “The throng of babies gurgling in the handful of operational maternity wards here has come as a big surprise — and a financial strain — to this historically black and white city, which before the hurricane had only a small Latino community and virtually...

LOS ANGELES Police Friday announced a second arrest in the racially motivated shooting death of a 14-year-old black girl who was gunned down -- allegedly by two Latino gang members -- in the Harbor Gateway area of Los Angeles last month. A news conference was scheduled this afternoon to announce details of the arrest, but police earlier identified the second suspect as Jonathan Fajardo. The other suspect, Ernesto Alcarez, 20, is scheduled to be arraigned Monday on murder, attempted murder and hate crime charges that were filed Dec. 26. Cheryl Green, an eighth-grader at Stephen M. White Middle School, was...

A violent fight between clans in Khan Yunis in central Gaza on Saturday erupted into an all-out battle in which an officer of the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s new elite army was killed, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Five children and 24 others were injured in the fracas, which broke out Saturday night between two clans. The newly-created Interior Ministry Executive Force, made up of terrorists from various organizations, tried to break up the fight and was drawn into an armed battle.

Recent violence in Sao Paulo may just be the tip of the iceberg: Many parts of Brazil and indeed across Latin America, governments have capitulated to gangsters, and the rise of organized crime could end the recent leftward shift across Latin America. Garbage containers block the road into slum district Vigario Geral, one of the most dangerous favelas in Rio de Janeiro. A visitor approaches the barricade, two youths appear from the shadow of a nearby building. They're carrying machine guns, and handguns are tucked into their pants. "You want to go to church, right?" the older of the two...

Among the most important priorities of U.S. global policy is combating the international traffic in drugs and in persons (often a euphemism for women and children forced into prostitution). Because of the linkage and overlap among terrorist networks and organized criminal gangs, the battle against trafficking is also an integral part of the war on terror. Amazingly, that's what the international community seems to want to help establish in the Serbian province of Kosovo. When Kosovo was placed under United Nations administration and NATO military control at the end of the 1999 war, some hoped the province soon would meet...

Many of those on the left who are attacking President Bush for toppling Saddam Hussein were not so particular when Clinton was president. The man who sent American troops into Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, etc, did so with the support of liberal-leaning Congressmen and Senators. This fact needs to be borne in mind because I think provides a clue as to why the same Liberals are now snapping at President Bush’s heels. Taking a look at the 1972 George McGovern presidential campaign we find that it provided the means by which those who are deeply hostile to American values and...

An e-mail is bouncing around the Internet with photographs of alleged Bolivarian gunmen in an area of Caracas that appears to be 23 de Enero. Many appear to be teenagers, they are wearing Bolivarian t-shirts with Che Guevara's face super-imposed on Venezuela's national colors, and they are armed with Glock 9mm semi-automatic handguns. According to Pensamiento Militar Venezolano 2005, a strategic and tactical military defense document drafted under the direction of President Hugo Chávez, the core mission of these armed youths is to turn Caracas into a kill zone where escualidos will be hunted down systematically if the Chávez regime...

Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti's office confirmed Wednesday that it is investigating the alleged looting of a New Orleans car dealership by city police officers. More than 200 vehicles were taken from the Sewell Cadillac Chevrolet dealership in the Central Business District, and in the most chaotic hours after Hurricane Katrina, some New Orleans Police Department officers reportedly pulled up outside the mobile command center at Harrah's casino in bright, shiny Cadillac SUVs. The cars allegedly still had "2004" stickers in their windshields and "Sewell" medallions on the back. The fancy rides appeared at a time when a desperate force,...

New Orleans Gangs, Drug Dealers May Re-Emerge ElsewherePOSTED: 2:43 pm EDT September 27, 2005 BATON ROUGE, La. -- Hurricane Katrina did what authorities couldn't: put a stop to illegal drug operations in New Orleans and pushed its ruthlessly violent gangs from the streets of the city's poorest neighborhoods. The exact landing point of gang members isn't known for sure, though federal authorities suspect popular evacuation sites like Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Houston. But no matter where they land, the thugs from the Big Easy have been put at a distinct disadvantage, authorities say. "They are crippled," said U.S. Attorney Jim...