Congressman Caught on Tape, Documents Say

Allegedly scamming a Virginia businesswoman could prove to be a
major mistake for a Democratic congressman from New Orleans.

The FBI revealed Sunday that Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio,
voting record), under investigation for bribery, was videotaped
accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from an FBI informant whose
conversations with the lawmaker also were recorded. Agents later
found the cash hidden in his freezer, according to a court document
released Sunday.

At one meeting captured on audiotape, Jefferson chuckles about
writing in code to keep secret what the government contends was his
corrupt role in getting his children a cut of a communications
company's deal for work in Africa.

As Jefferson and the informant passed notes about what percentage
the lawmaker's family might receive, the congressman "began laughing
and said, 'All these damn notes we're writing to each other as if
we're talking, as if the FBI is watching,'" he told the
businesswoman, who was wearing an FBI recording device.

Jefferson has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing.

As for the $100,000, the government says Jefferson got the money in
a leather briefcase last July 30 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in
Arlington. The plan was for the lawmaker to use the cash to bribe a
high-ranking Nigerian official — the name is blacked out in the
court document — to ensure the success of a business deal in that
country, the affidavit said.

All but $10,000 was recovered on Aug. 3 when the FBI searched
Jefferson's home in Washington. The money was stuffed in his
freezer, wrapped in $10,000 packs and concealed in food containers
and aluminum foil.

Two of Jefferson's associates have pleaded guilty to bribery-related
charges in federal court in Alexandria. One, businessman Vernon
Jackson of Louisville, Ky., admitted paying more than $400,000 in
bribes to the lawmaker in exchange for his help securing business
deals for Jackson's telecommunications company in Nigeria and other
African countries.

The new details about the case emerged after the FBI searched
Jefferson's congressional office on Capitol Hill Saturday night and
Sunday. The nearly 100-page affidavit for a search warrant, made
public Sunday with large portions blacked out, spells out much of
the evidence so far.

The document includes excerpts of conversations between Jefferson
and an unidentified business executive from northern Virginia. She
agreed to wear a wire after she approached the FBI with complaints
Jefferson and an associate had ripped her off in a business deal.

Jefferson's lawyer, Robert Trout, said in a statement that the
prosecutors' disclosure was "part of a public relations agenda and
an attempt to embarrass Congressman Jefferson. The affidavit itself
is just one side of the story which has not been tested in court."

The affidavit says Jefferson is caught on videotape at the Ritz
Carlton as he takes a reddish-brown briefcase from the trunk of the
informant's car, slips it into a cloth bag, puts the bag into his
1990 Lincoln Town Car and drives away.

The $100 bills in the suitcase had the same serial numbers as those
found in Jefferson's freezer.

While the name of the intended recipient of the $100,000 is blacked
out, other details in the affidavit indicate he is Abubakar Atiku,
Nigeria's vice president. He owns a home in Potomac, Md., that
authorities have searched as part of the Jefferson investigation.

The Jefferson investigation has provided some cover for Republicans
who have suffered black eyes in the investigations of current and
former GOP lawmakers, including Tom DeLay of Texas, the former
majority leader.

Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California, a Vietnam-era
jetfighter ace, was sentenced in March to more than eight years in
prison for accepting bribes on a scale unparalleled in the history
of Congress.

By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer
news.yahoo.com

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Man Opens Fire in La. Church, 5 Killed

A man barreled into a church service and opened fire, killing four
in-laws and wounding his mother-in-law, then abducted and fatally
shot his wife, authorities said.

Anthony Bell, 25, of Baton Rouge, was arrested hours later Sunday at
a nearby apartment complex, where his wife was found dead, police
said. Three children whom he also abducted were found unharmed,
police said.

"This is going to be one of the worst days in the history of our
city," said Police Chief Jeff LeDuff. "This is senseless. This is a
total waste of human life."

Bell was charged with murder in the deaths of his wife and her
grandparents, great aunt and a cousin, officials said. He also was
charged with kidnapping and attempted murder.

His wife's mother, church pastor Claudia Brown, was hospitalized in
serious condition, police said.

The shooting spree at The Ministry of Jesus Christ church began
around 10 a.m. as the service was nearing its end, police said.
Church members wept as they watched investigators examine evidence
and search for clues.

Hours later, officers responding to a 911 call about a shooting at
the apartment complex found 24-year-old Erica Bell dead and Anthony
Bell holding the baby, Police Chief Jeff LeDuff said. He was
arrested without incident.

Authorities said neither he nor his wife lived at the complex, and
it was unclear whether she was killed there.

Police later said Anthony Bell had called 911, reporting that his
wife had committed suicide, according to an affidavit.

The other children were apparently dropped off somewhere else before
their mother was killed, LeDuff said. It was unclear whether Anthony
Bell was the children's father.

Police said the others killed were Erica Bell's grandparents,
Leonard Howard, 78, and Gloria Howard, 72; her great aunt, Deloris
McGrew, 68, and a cousin Darlene Mills, 47.

LeDuff said he did not know a motive for the shootings, but a
relative said Anthony and Erica Bell had domestic problems in the
past.

"She was getting on with her life and wanted to keep worshipping and
following God, and he just wanted to run on the streets," Brown's
brother, Jeffery Howard, told The New York Times. "He was in and out
of her life a lot."

Howard said the pastor had been shot in the back of the head but was
able to identify her attacker.

Brown founded the small church and most of its members are
relatives. It shares space in an old warehouse with a guitar shop in
a nonresidential area of Baton Rouge and is marked with a sign
saying, "A family that prays together, stays together."

"Everybody was good people," Charolyn Green, McGrew's daughter, told
The Times-Picayune. "That is what they did, they went there every
Sunday."

By DOUG SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer
news.yahoo.com

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Source of new Hoffa lead passed lie detector

FBI searches Michigan farm after ailing inmate recalls suspicious
gathering

MILFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. - The informant who is spurring the search
for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains is an ailing prison inmate who recently
passed a polygraph exam in the probe, says a government investigator
who is familiar with the FBI operation in Michigan.

The informant, Donovan Wells, 75, remembers “suspicious activity” on
what is now called Hidden Dreams Farm in Milford Township, Mich., at
the time Hoffa disappeared, the investigator said Friday.

The investigator spoke on condition of anonymity because some of the
information he was relating comes from records that have been
ordered sealed by a federal judge. Among them is an FBI affidavit
detailing the basis for the search warrant used to dig up the ground
on the horse farm.

Suspicious gathering recalled
On the day Hoffa vanished, the property was owned by Hoffa associate
Rolland McMaster, according to Oakland County, Mich., property
records. McMaster’s attorney says FBI agents visited the 93-year-old
retired Teamster this week.

Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975, at the Machus Red Fox
Restaurant about 20 miles from the farm, which McMaster owned
throughout the 1970s.

As one example of the account Wells is telling the FBI, the
investigator said Wells remembers seeing a number of cars on the
property at the time Hoffa vanished, and then a short time later the
cars were gone.

The information does not involve an eyewitness to the disappearance
or a killing, said the investigator.

Regarding Wells and the recent lie detector test, authorities think
he believes the story he’s telling, the investigator added.

The Detroit Free Press first reported Wells’ identity Thursday night.
Wells pleaded guilty in 2003 to one count of conspiracy to
distribute and to possess with intent to distribute marijuana,
according to records in U.S. District Court in Detroit. He was
accused of being part of a drug-trafficking ring and arranging for a
truck to transport hundreds of pounds of marijuana from Texas to

Michigan. On Jan. 15, 2004, he was sentenced to 120 months in prison.
According to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons Internet site, Wells has been
housed at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Ky. The site says
his projected release date is Dec. 27, 2012.

Witness in poor health
In a motion in 2003 for a reduced sentence, Wells’ attorney said he
had a heart attack in 1994, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in
1997, suffered three strokes in 2002 and underwent a quadruple
bypass in January 2003.

The motion described him as “significantly overweight” at 5-foot-9,
290 pounds, and said he was taking nine medications.
He was born on June 17, 1930, and his last address was in Walled
Lake, Mich.

At the horse farm, the FBI is bringing in cadaver dogs, demolition
experts, archaeologists and anthropologists and suggested
investigators might remove a barn.

Able Demolition in Shelby Township is on standby as FBI agents “work
their way toward the barn,” said Wendy Sitek, an officer manager at
Able.

High-tech search
Scientists who have conducted similar searches said they have many
tools at their disposal, including ground-penetrating radar and
electromagnetic surveying devices along with shovels and probing
devices. But unless they have a precise location, their task can be
arduous.

It is extremely difficult to find buried bodies,” said William Bass,
professor emeritus of forensic anthropology at the University of
Tennessee and an expert on human decomposition. “I hope they find
him, but the experience I’ve had is people will tell you there’s a
body out there, but trying to find it is like a needle in a
haystack.”

Earlier, a law enforcement official in Washington said the latest
search was based on information developed several years ago and
verified more recently.

Organized crime members had used a barn on the horse farm for
meetings, but the location was never used again after the day Hoffa
vanished, the official said.

The farm, about 30 miles northwest of Detroit, has three barns and
43 horse stalls on 65 acres of fields and woods.

“This is the best lead I’ve seen come across in the Hoffa
investigation,” said FBI agent Daniel Roberts, who has run the
Detroit field office for two years.

Mystery swirls around fate
McMaster’s lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, said he doubted the FBI would
find anything. He confirmed that FBI officials visited McMaster at
his home near Fenton, Mich., and asked about his Hidden Dreams farm.
Morganroth said McMaster was in Indiana on union business at the
time of Hoffa’s disappearance, and that to his knowledge, his client
was never a suspect.

For three decades, the disappearance has spawned endless theories
about the former Teamsters boss’s demise.

On July 30, 1975, Hoffa was supposed to meet with New Jersey
Teamsters boss and Mafia figure Anthony Provenzano and Detroit Mafia
captain Anthony Giacalone at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant.
Provenzano and Giacalone are dead.

Investigators have long suspected Hoffa was killed by the mob to
keep him from reclaiming the Teamsters presidency after he got out
of prison for jury tampering and fraud.

In 2003, authorities searched beneath a backyard pool a few hours north of Detroit but turned up nothing. The following year, they
pulled up the floorboards on a Detroit home and found bloodstains,
but the blood was not Hoffa’s.

By The Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12841274/

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Jokes that hurt everyone

I got an e-mail this week about a missing girl. As with anything
that I would consider publishing, I looked into it before sharing it
with my readers.

It turns out that someone started out playing a joke and posting
information about this missing girl. The joke went astray as it took
to the Internet like a wild fire to a dried up forest.

Caring people throughout the Internet passed this posting on in
hopes of helping to find this girl. It reached thousands if not
millions worldwide. Only to make fools of those who cared.

Actions like this hurt us all and affect the way we view things that
truly deserve out attention and time. What hurts more is that the
ones who started this joke never even had the courtesy of saying
sorry. They simply did the damage and fell off the face of the cyber
world.

What makes this even more interesting is where it originated. Many
of us have heard about the show Dateline and how they use
Myspace.com to set up what they think to be potential predators.
Well Myspace.com has mad a name for itself again. This time with us
and for being the source of where this joke started.

It is time that Myspace.com takes some action for the content that
goes on within their service or gets held accountable for it.

In the past I contacted Myspace.com in an effort to research how
blogging services are dealing with abuse of their service.
Naturally, they never responded. Also in browsing their service,
there are many profiles that could be considered suggestive,
profiles that are posted by what claims to be males or females under
the age of 18. I did not attempt to contact the parties that posted
these profiles due to the age posted; yet I could not help to wonder
why Myspace.com would not make it a point to contact these people.

I would also like to note that I made an attempt in contacting the
party who started this sick joke using the e-mail address provided.
I never got a response, however the e-mail went through. This shows
that Yahoo.com has not done anything about this either. We will be
contacting them as well.

Do your part and avoid using services that allow content like this
and report them when every you can.

By A. Wallace

Just to make our readers aware, I am posting the message below of
the FALSE missing girl report. If you get this in your e-mail,
delete it.

The e-mail:

Subject: Missing Girl

Friends,
Please look at this picture, read what her mother says, then forward
this message on.


Maybe if everyone passes this on, someone will see this child. That
is how the girl from Stevens Point was found by circulation of her
picture on tv. The internet circulates even overseas, South America,
and Canada etc. Thanks

Please pass this to everyone in your address book. We have a Deli
manager (Acme Markets) from Philadelphia, Pa who has a 13 year old
daughter who has been missing for 2 weeks.

Keep the picture moving on. With luck on her side she will be
found. "I am asking you all, begging you to please forward this
email on to anyone and everyone you know, PLEASE.

My 13 year old girl, Ashley Flores, is missing. She has been missing
for now two weeks. It is still not too late. Please help us.
If anyone any where knows anything, please contact me at:
HelpfindAshleyFlores@yahoocom
I am including a picture of her. All prayers are appreciated!! "

It only takes 2 seconds to forward this.
If it was your child, you would want all the help you could get.

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Time for a change

The Weekly News has grown past anything I have ever thought it would
amount to and with growth comes change.

When I started The Weekly News I had a few goals in mind. Primarily
I wanted to put out a weekly article on public safety and I need a
resource to do so.

As the site started growing I thought it would be a good place for
me to display some of my poetry and short stories. But then I asked
Mr. Jones to join our team by sharing his work. In doing so, I had
to make a choice to set aside my writing (as far as displaying on
the site) in this area and limit any poetry work shared with readers
to be that of Mr. Jones. This is not a choice that I regret in any
way; in fact I am very happy with Mr. Jones contribution to our site
and look for him to remain as the weekly author featured in The
Poet’s Corner for as long as he wishes to share with our readers.

Madeleine’s Corner has also proven to be a valued contribution. It
allows our readers to follow along with the thoughts and views of an
everyday person just like themselves. I also feel that Madeleine
also has some interesting thoughts and views worth sharing. Her
little corner of our site is a one that could not easily be replaced
by any one else. She was with us from almost the beginning and I
hope she will remain a part of us for a long time to come.
Madeleine’s writing has found a home in The Weekly News and will
always be a welcomed part.

This brings us back to the overall concept of The Weekly News and
the fact that it is time for a change.

As those on our mailing list know, I am planning to launch
Akpcsales.net on June 18 (yes my 41st birthday, I am getting older).
Shortly after that I will be making some major changes to The Weekly
News. The first change will be a new look. I will do a complete make
over of the site design and layout. I have a general layout planed,
but will be open to opinions/ideas from our readers.

The most important change is to be decided by you, the readers.

Do we go commercial with the site or do we remain geared towards our
users and not the dollar?

Below are the pros and cons of each scenario along with what it will
take to make them happen. This is a choice that I feel is up to the
readers to make. No opinions and/or involvement would force the
choice of going commercial (which is not the choice that I would
prefer).

Going Commercial with the site:
This would involve adding affiliated advertisements from third
parties to support the site, selling advertisement space, creating a
section requiring membership (paid or not is undetermined at this
point). It would also involve additional web space and would allow
us to host our stories on our own server instead of using a third
party for the full articles.
To go with a commercial site would require no additional involvement
by the readers, all work would be on my part.

Remaining geared towards our readers:
This would take a little more work and support from our readers. As
with going commercial, it would also involve additional web space
and would allow us to host our stories. But it would not require
third party ads and be a lot more user friendly. It would also keep
all the content geared towards the everyday reader and not towards
what sells.
To do this we would have to get a group of 10 people together
(location is not an issue, this can be done via the internet). Each
person would have their own area that they would be responsible for
(marketing, responding to reader feed back, research, proof reading,
etc.). Each of the 10 people would also have a say in all major
choices involving The Weekly News, including but not limited to site
design, content, marketing, etc. To prevent the site from going
commercial, each of the 10 people would also need to be willing to
contribute to the cost of maintaining the site, this would work out
to an annual contribution of $20.00. It will also take a commitment
of 3 to 5 hours a week from each of the 10 people. In other words,
if we go this route the weekly news will be owned by a committee of
10 people and no longer by just me.

There you have it. As much as I would like to keep things pretty
much the same and ad free, I am leaving it up to you, the readers.
Please send your comments and/or thoughts to
LocalNews@WorldBreak.com, please put in the subject line “Changes”

If you would like to be one of the 10 people as stated above, please
put in the subject line “1 of 10”.

The changes are going to take place either way; you are being given
a choice though. If no one sends in their comments or wants to be
part of the 10 people, we will be going commercial.

From now until such point that the changes are in place or our
committee of 10 is formed, this page (Other Stories) will be devoted
to weather or not our site goes commercial. I hope to soon be adding
a list of people joining committee members to this page in the very
near future.

This is truly your chance to make this site your own and in turn own
a part of this site.

Thank you,
A.Wallace

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