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BESSEMER, Alabama: A gunman fatally shot two bank employees during a robbery Monday morning at a Wachovia bank branch in Alabama, authorities said. Deputies later shot one suspect as he left the bank with a gun held to a female hostage's head, and they were searching for a possible second suspect, a sheriff's spokesman told The Birmingham News. The spokesman said two other employees were shot and wounded.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - A man stole $28 million worth of diamonds from an Antwerp bank where he had been a trusted customer for a year using a stolen Argentine passport, officials said Monday. Authorities now believe that he was using a false identity because a passport in that name was stolen in Israel a few years ago. ---------------------- They said he speaks English with an American accent and often wears a baseball cap, and they are appealing to anyone who got to know him during his time in the city to come forward. The bank discovered the theft on March...

A former Iraqi defence minister whose 10 months in office coincided with the disappearance of more than $US800 million ($1 billion) from the ministry's coffers is living openly in Amman and London despite a warrant for his arrest. Hazem al-Shaalan, a small businessman in London until Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003, rose in a year to take one of the most important jobs in the interim government that ran Iraq from 2004 to 2005. He left Baghdad before the next government discovered that a fortune had been looted from his ministry's account in what one senior investigator has called...

Great-grandmother Marilyn Devine had tears in her eyes when she walked out of the Allegheny County Jail and into the arms of her husband of 32 years. Clinging to him Thursday evening, she apologized for robbing a West Mifflin bank. And although she spoke well of guards who watched over her in confinement, she said she thinks she has been punished enough. "You don't know what stress it is to disgrace yourself and your family and spend four days in lockup, when you've been a good person your whole life," the 74-year-old Baldwin Borough woman said minutes after posting a...

DETECTIVES hunting the armed gang responsible for stealing up to £50million in Britain’s biggest cash robbery have arrested two people, police confirmed last night. Senior officers described the arrests for conspiracy to commit robbery as “a significant breakthrough�. The suspects, a man aged 29 and a woman aged 31, were arrested separately in South London. The arrests came hours after insurers offered Britain’s biggest reward of £2 million. Last night the couple, who have not been named, were being held at police stations in Kent as police searched two addresses in Forest Hill, South London. Adrian Leppard, the assistant chief...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Authorities in Kent, England, have appealed to the public for help in solving the armed robbery of a security company, which involved the kidnapping of a manager and resulted in the theft of 25 million pounds, or about $43.5 million. The incident at the Securitas security depot in Tonbridge began Tuesday evening, according to a statement issued by Kent Police's serious and organized crime unit.

A year ago tomorrow, a new institution called the International Freedom Center was formally designated by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. as one of the four cultural institutions for the World Trade Center site, all to be operated under the aegis of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. ... snip ...the International Freedom Center...will serve as a complement to the Memorial, bringing a universal "narrative of hope" to a place where hope is imperative... snip ...the International Freedom Center will host debates and note points of view with which you--and I--will disagree... snip Judge Learned Hand may have put it...

An armed robber with a proclivity for the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants struck his sixth bank Wednesday, working at what authorities call a "dramatic" pace and showing dangerous aggression. The suspect robbed the Hastings TCF Bank branch at Cub Foods, 1729 Marquette Blvd., about 7:10 p.m. He displayed a long-barreled handgun, demanded money and threatened to kill the teller, according to the FBI. He stashed an undisclosed amount of money in a SpongeBob gift bag and fled on foot. Authorities believe he is responsible for a string of robberies in the past three months at Cub Foods TCF banks in...

The Terri Schindler Schiavo Daily Threads are created month to month as we watch local and national news regarding Terri and her family. Since Terri's supporters are in every time zone, you may see something FIRST. Please share news with us that you don't see here already. Now, why would you want to do that? Terri's Daily Thread for September/October of 2004 was viewed over 15,000 times. Terri's November Daily Thread was viewed over 6,000 times. December's thread is over 3,000 views. More and more good folks are finding out about Terri and that judicial tyranny would take her life,...

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- As two men go before a federal magistrate in Orlando today accused of trying to steal a Brink's armored car containing $50.3 million, details of the crime are surfacing. Jose Alfaya, 31, Tampa, and Victor Moscoso, 34, Miami, are accused of trying to hijack the vehicle, while New Smyrna Beach Police Sgt. John Kosorok is being hailed as the hero who stopped them. All the money was recovered but two other suspects still were being sought Wednesday, officials said. According to an FBI arrest affidavit, Alfaya, a Brink's branch manager in Tampa, had been trying to...

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Police Sgt. John Kosorok knew something was wrong when he spotted a Brinks armored car parked up a dirt road west of the city Monday evening. Lauded as hero N-J/Mark I. Johnson Police Sgt. John Kosorok talks with reporters before going on duty Tuesday afternoon in front of the police station in New Smyrna Beach. The 15-year veteran of the NSB force and special response unit team leader is being credited with foiling a $50 million Brinks armored car robbery Monday night. He rolled up on the truck parked on a dirt road west of...

Local baker says rival stole his bread and butterEspionage, Philly-style: A N.C. man wanted the secret to a better hoagie, authorities say.By Michael Currie SchafferInquirer Staff Writer Industrial spies in Bavaria heist automotive designs. In the Silicon Valley, they take computer programs. And around here, apparently, hoagie-roll recipes.An underhanded search for a better bun, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor said yesterday, helps to explain why Mazen Fathi Said was being held on $2 million bail last night.Said, who operates a small bakery in Greensboro, N.C., has been arrested on charges of burglary, theft of trade secrets, and related...

THEY LOOTED THE MUSEUM? TOUGHOn our letters page last week, Douglas Anthony Cooper of Montreal chided me for my throwaway line about the anti-war crowd’s sudden interest in property crime: “Steal the photocopier from Baghdad’s Ministry of Genital Clamping and they’re pining for the smack of firm government.”“Some matters reside beyond the domain of comedy,” writes Mr Cooper. “The rape of the National Museum of Iraq and the torching of the National Library will be lamented by historians for centuries.” He concludes, “A man of Mr Steyn’s sensibilities – beneath the sneer I detect a partisan of Western civilization –...

ANTWERP, Belgium, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Belgian police have arrested four suspects in connection with last week's multimillion-dollar diamond robbery in Antwerp, the city's public prosecutor confirmed Tuesday. The alleged thieves, believed to be three Italians and one Dutch woman, will appear in court Thursday charged with masterminding the diamond capital's biggest-ever jewel heist. The news will bring some relief to Antwerp's tight-knit community of diamond cutters, buyers and sellers, who have dominated the global trade in the precious stones since the end of the 19th century. More than 80 percent of the world's diamonds pass through the prosperous Belgian...

(1010 WINS) (NEW YORK) Authorities on Tuesday continued to search for a bandit who reportedly made off with at least $2 million in cash after stealing an armored truck from Kennedy Airport. Port Authority spokesman Pasquale DiFulco said the armored truck was hijacked at 8:05 p.m. Sunday from cargo building 68 on Pilot Road at JFK, where Dunbar Armored Car Company is located. DiFulco said he had no details on the hijacking or how much money the vehicle contained. But newspaper reports said the truck was stolen at gunpoint by a masked bandit. It had just been loaded for delivery...

<p>Lee Harris walked into Le Central Bistro on Bush Street for lunch Wednesday wearing desert camouflage fatigues and carrying bulging duffel bags.</p> <p>That's odd, the wait staff thought.</p> <p>Then he ordered smoked salmon with a glass of red wine.</p> <p>Mon dieu!</p>

Burglars have stolen two paintings by Vincent Van Gogh from Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, Dutch police say. The thieves got in through the roof early on Saturday, police spokesman Remco Gerretsen told BBC News Online. The stolen paintings are well known to art lovers: View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Leaving the Church at Nuenen. Police have not yet put a value on them. The paintings are among Van Gogh's later works - executed in 1882 and 1885 respectively - and such works usually sell for millions of dollars. The museum, in the heart of Amsterdam, contains the world's...

 Burglar Puts Self on Fast-Track to Jail April 5, 2002 10:41 am EST TOKYO (Reuters) - A would-be burglar put himself on the fast-track to jail after the Tokyo building he sneaked into turned out to be a police dormitory. Police arrested the 50-year-old Chinese man after he tried to run away when challenged by an off-duty officer, the late edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Friday. "I'd never have guessed police lived here," the article reported the man as saying after he was pinned down by the officer. The unmarked building had been rented by the Tokyo...