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Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

Youths, all 17, are being held at county jail Three 17-year-old male Bokencamp Children's Shelter detainees from Honduras were arrested by police about 8 p.m. Monday following an assault on four center staff members. Staff members told police that Edgardo Casco-Perez, Sergio Davine-Paz and Javier Nunez-Ramirez appeared to be plotting an escape attempt and they attacked staff members who attempted to separate them, according to a Tuesday police brief. The teens are suspected members of an El Salvadoran street gang, the brief said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol agents asked police to book the teens on...

Team rescued 120 women from grim conditions when it dismantled the operation in Houston The farewell party was in full swing at midnight when police came for Maximino "El Chimino" Mondragon, his accomplices and his victims — scantily dressed women and girls he forced to sell beers and sexual favors under the flashing lights of a revolving crystalline disco ball inside his strip mall bar off Hempstead Highway. Mondragon was celebrating his retirement at El Potrero de Chimino bar, also known as the Wagon Wheel. He had a one-way ticket back to his native El Salvador and blueprints in the...

Three members of the Salvadorian MS-13 gang were charged with murder Wednesday in the stabbing death of a man found dumped in a west Harris County street. Eliseo Perez, Carlos Rodriguez and Joaquin Guevara — all 20 years old — were each charged in the stabbing death of Ernesto Garcia, 26, which was discovered Sunday, Harris County Sheriff's Office homicide detectives said. All three have been arrested. Garcia was found about 1 a.m., lying in the road at Mounds and Fry.

WASHINGTON — During World War II, more than 25,000 European Jews became citizens of El Salvador, a country most had never visited and few ever would. The country, roughly the size of Israel, would come to justify its Spanish name as "the savior" thanks to bogus certificates that made thousands of Jews citizens of El Salvador and kept them from being deported to concentration camps. The signature on nearly all the certificates was that of George Mandel-Mantello, a Romanian Jewish refugee who in the early 1940s sought help from a Salvadoran acquaintance in Switzerland. The El Salvador consul general in...

AMERICANS HAVEN'T PAID much attention to El Salvador since the 1980s, when the country was being torn apart by a civil war and the Reagan administration was trying to balance its support for the anti-Communist military regime with a push for free elections. In those days, the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (known by its Spanish acronym, FMLN) was waging a bloody guerrilla campaign. Today, the FMLN is a legitimate political party with heavy representation in the Salvadoran National Assembly. By this time next year, it may control both the Assembly and the presidency--which should alarm anyone who cares...

MEXICO CITY -- Police say they have found 154 illegal migrants inside a semitrailer. Federal police official Arturo Herrera says many of the migrants were suffering from severe dehydration after spending nearly a week cramped inside the semitrailer. Herrera says police stopped the rig along a highway in the Gulf state of Tabasco. Inside the tractor-trailer, authorities found 140 Guatemalans, seven Ecuadoreans, four Hondurans, two Salvadorans and one Chinese. The driver was detained and the migrants were turned over to immigration authorities for deportation.

LA JOYA, Texas — Local police are accustomed to dealing with illegal border crossings, but they were astounded by the video of 15 Chinese immigrants unfolding themselves from the back of a red Suburban near this small border town. The vehicle appeared abandoned when police rolled up early on a recent Saturday morning. But when Border Patrol agents arrived and swung open the double rear doors, the Chinese immigrants tumbled out, squinting in the sunlight. "They were in bad shape," said La Joya Police spokesman Joe Cantu. The immigrants were silent, able to communicate only with hand gestures. One man...

BULLETIN TROPICAL DEPRESSION ONE-E ADVISORY NUMBER 1 NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL EP012008 800 PM PDT WED MAY 28 2008 ...TROPICAL DEPRESSION FORMS NEAR COSTA RICA...EXPECTED TO BRING HEAVY RAINS TO PORTIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICA... AT 8 PM PDT...0300 UTC...THE GOVERNMENT OF COSTA RICA HAS ISSUED A TROPICAL STORM WARNING FOR THE PACIFIC COAST OF COSTA RICA. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE ALSO EXPECTED TO SPREAD ACROSS THE PACIFIC COAST OF NICARAGUA DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS. FOR STORM...

HARLINGEN - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents announced the arrest of 56 fugitive immigration violators Friday in a four-day sweep of South Texas. The majority of those detained were located in the Rio Grande Valley, including Juan Alonso Salas, 20, who was found at his Harlingen home Monday, the agency said in a statement. A federal judge ordered Salas, who has previously been convicted on drug possession and assault charges, deported in January 2005, but he has remained in Cameron County since then. "If you ignore a federal immigration judge's deportation order, ICE will find you, arrest you and...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE DELTA — The Wasit Provincial Reconstruction Team leader and 214th Fires Brigade commander briefed the Wasit Provincial Council last week on reconstruction efforts in the province. More than $38 million dollars have been spent on those efforts in Wasit province since Jan. 1, 2007 by Coalition forces and the PRT. “We have done a lot as a team, and it has been a team effort,” said Col. Peter Baker, the 214th FB commander, “but there is more to do so that essential services are available to all. “We are working on developing processes and systems to put...

AL KUT — Coalition forces conducted an assessment of the al Kut Water Company last week. Lt. Col. Mario E. Murcia, an engineer with El Salvador’s Cuscatlán Battalion’s Civil Military Cooperation team, visited the water company to assess its capacity and maintenance. The water company supplies 300,000 residents of the city with water, said Diaa Mohammed Obed, an engineer and supervisor of the water company. Using five pumps, water is carried from the Tigris River to the plant for treatment. Once treated, four additional pumps carry the water from the plant to residents in the city. The company also uses...

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico -- Police rescued 83 illegal migrants Friday from the hidden compartment of a cramped, sweltering cargo truck carrying animal feed through southern Mexico. At a roadblock near the Guatemalan border, the panicked migrants alerted officers to their presence by screaming and banging on the walls of the truck, Mexican immigration agent Mario Lopez said. Lopez said the migrants were dehydrated, bruised and scraped. He said 76 were from Guatemala, five from El Salvador and two from Brazil. Earlier this week, 54 illegal migrant workers from Myanmar suffocated in the back of an unventilated truck in Thailand. In...

BANQUETE-Authorities near Banquete searched for illegal immigrants who jumped out a truck following a high speed chase Wednesday evening. Officers rounded up more than two dozen illegals in two separate locations. Some of the immigrants come from as far away as the middle east. Fifteen of them were caught in the Mathis area and nine more were later captured just south of Banquete. San Patricio County Sheriff, Leroy Moody, told KRIS 6 News that he believes there are more out here hiding out in a thick brushy line of trees, and if it were not for strong winds, a DPS...

The Salvadoran Cuscatlán Battalion delivered $4 million in medical supplies to the al Kut Director General of Health Warehouse April 1. The supplies, donated by the International Red Cross, are for Iraqis affected by the recent upsurge in violence by criminals. The donated supplies will replenish what was used during the civil unrest in the city and will increase supplies on hand. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Stacy Niles. FORWARD OPERATING BASE DELTA — The Salvadoran Cuscatlán Battalion delivered $4 million in medical supplies to the al Kut Director General of Health Warehouse April 1.“It is very important...

Members of rival El Salvadorian gangs were arrested by Border Patrol agents over the weekend just north of Laredo on Interstate 35, an indicator of the increasing through traffic by violent gang members the Laredo Police Department has noticed in recent months."Mostly they're transient," said Sgt. Armando Elizondo, supervisor of LPD's Juvenile Enforcement Team, which deals with local gang activity. "They use this area as a crossing point." Sunday, a 22-year-old gang member was arrested by agents at the Texas Travel Information Center at the 18-mile marker on the interstate at about 2 p.m. He had tattoos showing he's a...

WINONA - Skipping school is usually met with fines and the threat of jail time; but, for two sisters, the punishment was much worse - they were deported. Smith County Justice of the Peace Mitch Shamburger said he presided over truancy court last month when Brisa and Lluva Amante, both 17, snickered in his courtroom. The John Tyler High School students were before him for skipping school and Shamburger said he fined them each for the action and told them to go to school every day and not to come back to his courtroom. "I thought they would take it...

How expensive is illegal immigration for the U.S.? The answer may depend on who you ask. Some argue that, overall, illegal immigrants help our economy while others insist their presence creates a fiscal deficit in the billions. Recently, Action 4 News gained exclusive access and insight on the costs of detaining and deporting illegal immigrants. It is just after 4 a.m. But already the nation's largest detention center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) in Raymondville, Texas is bustling with activity. The crew has been preparing for hours to deport a group of 132 Hondurans to their country....

LA JOYA, Texas — A man driving a car full of suspected illegal immigrants lost his ear as he tried to flee from police. The 22-year-old Mexican national had turned into a brushy field from a farm-to-market road Sunday when he tried to open the door and jump from the car, said Joe Cantu, a La Joya police spokesman. The car door bounced against a tree and slammed shut on the man's head, cleanly severing his ear, police said. Police and Border Patrol agents found four of the six passengers who fled the car after it came to a stop....

A man involved in a kidnapping and attempted murder that ended with an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador shot in the head and left for dead on the Mexican bank of the Rio Grande pleaded guilty Thursday to kidnapping charges. Rogelio Isai "Koki" Garcia, 25, pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to kidnap and one count of using a firearm during a violent crime. The first count is punishable by up to life in prison. The second, which has no maximum sentence and will run concurrently with any other convictions, will ensure Garcia receives a minimum...

New Haven (WTNH) _ Veterans are outraged that a war memorial in New Haven has been vandalized. The Vietnam War Memorial at Long Wharf was spray painted with the threatening words "Kill whites MS 13." Seeing this just crushed the veterans we spoke to. The names on that wall that are covered in paint, are the names of those who fought and died for this country in the Vietnam War. Tonight, police are investigating whether this is the work of a violent street gang, but the veterans we spoke to, say whoever they are, aren't as tough as they might...

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico is going high tech to better track the movements of Central Americans who regularly cross the southern border to work or visit. Starting in March, the National Immigration Institute will distribute cards containing electronic chips. Those items will record every arrival and departure of so-called temporary workers and visitors, mostly from Guatemala. The cards will replace a non-electronic pass formerly given to area residents. Officials say the purpose is to guarantee security for workers and visitors. Statistics from the institute show that more than 182,000 undocumented migrants were detained in Mexico in 2006. Most were...

To duck radar, gangs ditch tattoos, go for college look CHIMALTENANGO, Guatemala — Tattoos, baggy pants and tank tops are out. Smart blazers and university recruits are in. It’s an extreme makeover for Central America’s gangs. Facing harsh crackdowns by government security forces and citizen vigilante groups, they are trying to lower their profile. The Mara 18 and Mara Salvatrucha gangs are known throughout Central America and the United States for their brazen tactics, including beheading their enemies and covering entire buildings and even their bodies with gang symbols. Now, according to anti-gang operatives, these traditionally uneducated and aimless youth...

Border Patrol agents arrested a member of the violent Mara Salvatrucha gang early Wednesday morning, said Greg Salinas, a Border Patrol spokesman.The gang member, a 37-year-old Salvadoran man, has a long criminal history in the U.S. and has been deported twice before, Salinas said. Agents from the Laredo North station caught the man, whose name was not immediately available, on a ranch near Mines Road at about 2 a.m. on Saturday, Salinas said. He was with several other people who were also illegally entering the country. The man had tattoos identifying him as a member of the gang. Agents confirmed...

HOUSTON — A teenage girl who faced a murder charge after fatally stabbing a 15-year-old member of the notorious MS-13 gang during a brawl at a park pleaded guilty Friday to a lesser crime, avoiding prison time. Ashley Benton, 17, pleaded guilty to aggravated assault as part of a plea bargain with prosecutors. She was given five years deferred adjudication probation, meaning if she completes her sentence without problems, her conviction will be erased. Prosecutors say Benton murdered Gabriel Granillo by plunging a double-bladed knife into his heart during a June 2006 fight. Kent Schaffer, Benton's attorney, portrayed her as...

Border Patrol agents assigned to the Laredo North station, working with officers from the Laredo Police Department, apprehended six illegal immigrants on Friday afternoon. Agents patrolling near Father McNaboe Park, located off of Mines Road, observed several suspicious people come out from a landing area on the river, get into a black Lincoln SUV and speed off along Rancho Viejo Drive. Border Patrol agents in another vehicle saw the SUV pull into a driveway. They pulled in behind the SUV to conduct an immigration inspection. Upon seeing the Border Patrol vehicle, the driver of the SUV sped away, striking another...

MEXICO CITY — The bodies of two dozen people washed ashore Friday in southern Mexico, a state official said, after a boat believed to be carrying Central American migrants capsized in the Pacific Ocean. Oaxaca's state government later released a statement saying three people were confirmed dead and 20 others missing following the shipwreck. It said there was one survivor and authorities were searching for bodies near the towns of San Francisco Ixhuatan and San Francisco del Mar, about 200 miles from the Guatemalan border. It wasn't immediately possible to reconcile the different statements, but an official said that flooding...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25, 2007 – The U.S. state of Georgia and the Republic of Georgia in Eastern Europe might seem like strange strategic partners. But since 1993, the National Guard has breached barriers between American states and international states with positive results. The mission of the National Guard Bureau’s State Partnership Program is to buttress bilateral relations with burgeoning U.S. allies. “The program is a long-term, enduring relationship between a state in the United States and one of the international countries that’s either emerging or wants to establish a relationship with the United States,” said Army Lt. Gen. H Steven...

A twice-deported Salvadoran immigrant was charged with strangling an acquaintance during a fight Sunday, Prince William County police said Wednesday. Christian Molina, also known as Jose Maximino Flores-Perales, 30, of 9011 Whispering Pine Court, Manassas, was charged with the murder of 51-year-old Ronald Dean Hollingsworth. The two men were at a mutual friend's house at 10625 Dumfries Road - a rundown house near a gas station by Old Dominion Speedway. The two had been drinking when they began to fight, Hernandez said. Molina then strangled Hollingsworth, police said. A third man, whose name was not released, was also at the...

Sweden Cuts Aid to Countries that Oppose its Pro-Abortion Stance Said to be "very concerned" about abortion policies of Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Peru Matthew Cullinan Hoffman CENTRAL AMERICA, August 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Sweden announced on Tuesday that it would completely sever aid to several countries that oppose its pro-abortion policy, including Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Peru. Although the government of Sweden did not publicly attribute the decision to the abortion policies of the Latin American nations, the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa yesterday quoted anonymous sources who stated that the Swedish leadership, "was very concerned about the...

The 8-year-old boy with close-cropped hair and a missing front tooth stepped off the yellow bus, looking lost and clutching a coloring book against his chest. A two-hour drive away, at the airport in the capital city of San Salvador, a man with shaggy hair and pursed lips walked off an unmarked white plane with his hands cuffed behind his back. Behind him came another 77 convicts -- most returning to their homeland for the first time in years. The boy and the convicts had something in common: They were deportees, returned home on separate days last month. The convicts...

Contact: Payson Sheets Payson.Sheets@colorado.edu 303-492-7302 University of Colorado at Boulder CU-Boulder team discovers first ancient manioc fields in Americas Prehistoric manioc plantation buried by volcanic ash about 600 A.D. may help explain how Maya supported dense populations CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Payson Sheets maps ancient household at site of Ceren in El Salvador. A University of Colorado at Boulder team excavating an ancient Maya village in El Salvador buried by a volcanic eruption 1,400 years ago has discovered an ancient field of manioc, the first evidence for cultivation of the calorie-rich tuber in the New World. The manioc field was discovered...

THE grim execution-style shootings that killed three college students in a Newark schoolyard two weeks ago bore many hallmarks of gangland slayings, and the culprits clearly wanted it that way. Three of the four victims, two women and two young men aged 18 to 20, were forced to kneel facing a wall before being shot in the head. Both women, one of whom survived, were slashed in the face with a machete or knife. And the MySpace page of one of the six suspects, a 16-year-old who is still at large, pays loving homage to one of the country’s most...

As officers swarmed the hallways and courtroom where a 17-year-old girl is on trial for murder, attorneys on both sides told jurors this morning what they thought the evidence would show in the stabbing death of Gabriel Granillo. "It's a fact that Ashley Benton killed Gabriel Granillo," defense attorney Kent Schaffer said. "And it's a fact that it was self-defense." Prosecutor Mia Magness said Granillo was running away from a fight when Benton stabbed him through the heart. Both sides agreed that the slaying took place during a gang fight between MS-13, a notorious international gang, and the Montrose-area gang...

Immigration and Customs enforcement officials arrested a suspected smuggler from El Salvador today after police found 30 undocumented immigrants in a southwest Houston apartment, authorities said. The raid resulted from a 6:45 p.m. call Monday from a person who told a 911 operator that a large group of people was in the apartment and they ''were being held against their will,'' Houston Police Department spokesman John Cannon said today. Inside the two-bedroom apartment in the 6500 block of Gessner, police found men, women and teenagers from Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras, said Leticia Zamarripa, an ICE spokeswoman. She said three...

At a recent UCLA forum on terrorism, Los Angeles officials said the city's estimated 40,000 gang members are an attractive target for terrorists like al-Qaida. "There are many, many more people who consider themselves jihadists now," said L.A. Police Deputy Chief Mark Leap. "And criminal enterprises are being used to support terrorist activities." ... There's also a wartime imperative to get control of the borders so that L.A. and other cities plagued by gangs can devote more resources to head off future terror attacks. The least thing we need is an "axis of evil" within our own borders that finds...

San Salvador, May 11, 2007 / 12:59 pm (CNA).- The president of El Salvador, Elias Antonio Saca, reaffirmed his pro-life position this week and said he was moved by Pope Benedict XVI’s defense of human life during his visit to Brazil this week, and he called on the presidents of Latin America to think twice about receiving the Eucharist if they support abortion. “I think the words of His Holiness Benedict XVI will truly moving,” Saca said in reference to the Pope’s discourse upon arriving in Brazil.  During his remarks the Pope reiterated his opposition to abortion and euthanasia and...

The Prince of Wales was a "most likeable person", President Gaddafi a "mad clown" and Michael Jackson was "surprisingly shy". The private diaries of Ronald Reagan, which are about to be published for the first time, reveal a US president who was worried about imminent Armageddon but who also fretted about how he would handle chopsticks in front of the Chinese. The man who was credited with ending the Cold War reveals that he was "lonesome" when his wife, Nancy, was away and refused to talk to their son, Ron Junior, after he hung up on him. His carefully handwritten...

El Salvador “An Army Opposed to Abortion” Says Nation’s PresidentEuropeans at World Bank attempting to force developing countries to accept abortion to get loans By Hilary White SAN SALVADOR, May 2, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Comments from El Salvador’s President, Elias Antonio Saca, have challenged international abortion and population control agencies who are targeting his country. “We are an army of defenders of our Christian faith, we are an army opposed to abortion,” Saca said in response to the approval of legalized abortion in Mexico City. In April, it was revealed that European interests at the World Bank are attempting to...

Again the other day, he found himself in the small, gravel- covered plaza. Late at night, alone, the sky above him black but punched through with starlight. Drawn there by the memory of the boys and girls, the playmates he knew as a child. The relatives, uncles and aunts and cousins. Those who died, shot or hacked to death, in what was once a tiny, obscure Salvadoran village called El Mozote. "I go out there and listen," says Rev. Esterminio Chica, 34, known to the parishioners of St. Mary's in Elizabeth as Padre Mino. "Then, in the darkness, I begin...

Oswaldo Martinez is facing murder and rape charges in the death of 16-year-old Brittany Binger.As it turns out, James City County police had seen him before, having stopped him for DUI last year.Police told us Martinez didn't have a driver's license, but his brother showed up at the scene and produced a Social Security card.Martinez went through the courts system as a first time DUI offender, got a 90-day suspended sentence and a $250 fine.Now, nearly a year later, police have linked Martinez, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, to the teen's rape and murder.Authorities went back to the DUI...

As the LAPD cracks down on the city's most violent street gangs, federal and county officials have launched their own campaigns to apprehend and deport gangsters who are in the county illegally. For the first time, federal immigration officers are tracking incarcerated gang members, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is creating a database of gang members who are in the U.S. illegally. The FBI is also strengthening its ties to international police agencies and hopes to create a gang intelligence center in El Salvador. "We want to connect the dots the same way we have been doing with...

NUEVO LAREDO Authorities said Friday they had arrested 10 people smugglers and 42 Central American migrants headed to the United States. Victor Jimenez, a commander with Mexicos Federal Agency of Investigation, or AFI, said the group was caught Thursday walking on a dirt road to avoid an immigration checkpoint about 16 miles south of Nuevo Laredo. "All the undocumented migrants were from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras," Jimenez said. "The guides were all Mexican." The alleged smugglers were turned over to federal prosecutors and the Central American migrants were sent to a detention center in Mexico City pending their deportation,...

A total of 124 undocumented immigrants have been discovered in two stash houses in the Upper Rio Grande Valley in the last week, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Tuesday night, authorities found 24 Mexicans and 30 people from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Colombia in San Carlos. Their discovery comes in the middle of what ICE spokeswoman Nina Pruneda called ?smuggling season.? During the first five or six months of the year, ICE and U.S. Border Patrol see an increase in the number of people illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border; many returned to their home countries for the...

EDINBURG ? Former Justice of the Peace Reynaldo Salazar said no one was more surprised than he when 80 illegal immigrants were found crammed into two trailers on his north Edinburg ranch this weekend. ?I was freaking out,? said Salazar, a justice of the peace from 1999 to 2000. ?I said, ?How can that many people be in one place??? Edinburg and McAllen police descended on the ranch on Saturday following a tip that they would find stolen trucks there. They discovered five stolen Ford pickup trucks and, after some further investigation, 80 illegal immigrants ? many of them women....

'Bondage' ambassador recalledFrom correspondents in Jerusalem March 14, 2007 12:00am ISRAEL has recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found bound, drunk and nude. The long-time diplomat, Tsuriel Raphael, had been removed from his post, ministry spokeswoman Zehavit Ben-Hillel said. Two weeks ago, El Salvador police found Mr Raphael in the yard of his residence, tied up, gagged with a ball and drunk, Israeli media reported. He was wearing sex bondage equipment, the media said. After being untied, Mr Raphael told police he was Israel's ambassador. Ms Ben-Hillel said Mr Raphael had been recalled, though he had not...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has recalled its ambassador in El Salvador after he was found drunk and naked with sex toys lying nearby in the yard of his official residence, Israeli media reports said on Monday.

"Israel is replacing its ambassador in El Salvador after the envoy was found outside the embassy, drunk, wearing only bondage gear, officials said. "Our ambassador has been recalled immediately," a foreign ministry official told AFP news agency. San Salvador was Tzuriel Refael's first post as ambassador, after promotion in 2006 from a foreign ministry position. re."" "Haaretz website reports that police found Mr Refael in the Israeli embassy compound two weeks ago. He was inebriated, his hands were tied and he was gagged with a rubber ball in his mouth. In spite of his drunken state, the naked figure was...

A suspect in a rape case was captured Monday because an alert pedestrian saw a man dragging a weeping 15-year-old girl down the street by her neck, police said. Jorge Alberto Ek-Luna, 26, was arrested near San Rafael High School as he tried to kidnap the girl using a broken bottle to threaten her, police spokeswoman Margo Rohrbacher said. Ek-Luna, a recent immigrant from Mexico who was staying in San Rafael, was booked on charges including rape, kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon.

The state has spent more than $200,000 to educate a suspect to stand trial in a slaying that still reverberates in the lives of the victim's friends. JAMES CITY -- Two years after Brittany Binger's death, a simple memorial still stands at the entrance of Whispering Pines Mobile Home Court.