VENEZUELA
Group: American moved to dangerous prison
Venezuelan authorities have transferred a U.S. filmmaker accused of espionage to a notoriously unruly prison where more than 20 inmates were killed in a 2011 riot, a human rights group official said Friday. Patricia Andrade of the Miami-based Venezuela Awareness Foundation said Timothy Tracy was moved Wednesday from the secret police lockup in Caracas to the El Rodeo II prison. She said her sources are relatives of other transferred prisoners she cannot name for security reasons. Tracy was making a film about Venezuelan politics when arrested April 24 at Caracas’ airport.
INDIANA
Agency rejects abortion law appeal
A federal agency denied Indiana’s appeal of an administrative ruling barring the state from denying Planned Parenthood Medicaid funds because it performs abortions, the state attorney general’s office said Friday. The agency announced the decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services just a few days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up a separate court case involving the same law. Both decisions this week effectively nullified Indiana’s ability to enforce a 2011 law targeting Planned Parenthood, saying it denied women the right to choose their own medical providers.
MEXICO
Kidnap victims linked to drug dads
The mothers of two of the 11 young people kidnapped from a Mexico City bar acknowledged Friday that the youths’ fathers are serving prison sentences for drug-related crimes. But both mothers said the fathers’ arrests in 2003 had nothing to do with Sunday’s mass abduction. Seven young men and four young women haven’t been seen since they visited a bar, where they were apparently abducted. The mothers said Friday that nobody who wanted revenge for their husbands’ past crimes would wait 10 years to attack the families.
WASHINGTON
Air Force base letter carried ricin
The FBI confirmed that the lethal poison ricin was on a letter sent to Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington state earlier this month. Authorities said Thursday that three ricin-tainted, hand-addressed letters postmarked May 13 in Spokane were mailed to President Barack Obama, a federal judge in Spokane and a post office in that city. The FBI said Friday a fourth letter that was also postmarked May 13 in Spokane and sent to the nearby Air Force base also contained ricin. Matthew Ryan Buquet, 37, is accused of sending one of the letters containing ricin and a death threat to U.S. District Judge Fred Van Sickle. Buquet was arrested May 22.
TURKEY
Police raid sit-in against tree removal
Turkish riot police used tear gas and water cannons Friday to end a peaceful sit-in by hundreds of people trying to prevent trees from being uprooted in an Istanbul park. The dawn raid ignited a furious anti-government protest that took over the city’s main square and spread to other cities. In a victory for the protesters, an Istanbul court later ordered the temporary suspension of the project to uproot the trees. But demonstrators around the country kept up protests denouncing what they called a heavy-handed crackdown and a government seen as displaying increasingly authoritarian tendencies.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Capone letter, medical notes up bid
Al Capone was a ruthless Chicago gangster best known for his 1929 “Valentine’s Day Massacre” of seven members of rival bootlegger Bugs Moran’s gang. But few know of his tortured demise — not at the hands of mobsters or federal agents — but in the throes of dementia and violent outbursts that marked his final struggle with syphilis. A file of medical records, a letter from Capone to one of his doctors, an official copy of his death certificate and photographs of him alive and dead are being offered for sale by RR Auction of Amherst, which obtained the collection from the family of the late Dr. Kenneth Phillips of Miami — Capone’s primary physician. Bidding ends June 19.
WYOMING
Reactor-building teen ousted from fair
A Wyoming high school senior who built a nuclear reactor was disqualified from the International Science and Engineering Fair this month on a technicality. It seems that Conrad Farnsworth, 18, of Newcastle had competed in too many science fairs. Officials at the University of Wyoming, which sponsors the state event, said after the international fair that the director acted outside her authority. Farnsworth is one of only about 15 high school students in the world to successfully build a nuclear fusion reactor, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.
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