Dumper truck driver goes on two hour rampage after row over air conditioning

                                                                                Photo: Archant Norfolk

A drug fuelled dumper truck driver left a 37-mile trial of destruction in a two hour rampage after rowing with his bosses over the air conditioning in his cab, according to The Telegraph.

Nicholas Churchill, 40, wrecked three police cars and smashed in to road signs across Norfolk after going berserk in his huge 30-tonne vehicle.

He was chased by six police cars and a helicopter as he caused more than £26,000 worth of damage along the busy A11 from Norwich to Brandon last summer, a court heard.

Churchill went crazy after rowing with his bosses because his cabin was too hot but was told to get on with his job, Norwich magistrates' court heard.

Shoppers fled as his truck careered down a high street and over a pedestrianised square before coming to a halt near his home.

                                                                                                Photo: Archant

He admitted being under the influence of drugs at the time when police finally stopped and arrested him.

Churchill, of Brandon, Suffolk, also admitted aggravated vehicle taking and dangerous driving, driving dangerously, and criminal damage.

Norfolk Police were left to pick up a repair bill of £26,572.36 while the truck suffered around £1,500 worth of damage.

Fergus Harold, prosecuting, said: "The vehicle he was driving that day attracted a significant police pursuit and caused a large amount of damage to the vehicles involved.

"It started off as a case that had little justification.

"The defendant was at work driving his vehicle and had taken issue with his employers about the air conditioning in his cab."

                                                                                          Photo: Archant

Mr Harold added: "He was told to get on with his job.

"But instead he has taken his vehicle onto the highway, and there followed a lengthy pursuit with a number of police cars and the helicopter dispatched."

Churchill was convicted of drink-driving eight years ago, the court heard.

Jeremy Kendall, defending, said there was "significant personal mitigation".

Churchill was given an interim driving ban and remanded on bail to be sentenced at Norwich Crown Court on February 5, when he could face jail.

Rolling Stone magazine publishes interview conducted late last year as Mexico weighs drug kingpin's extradition to US.

The interview between Guzman and Penn was purportedly held in late 2015 in a hideout in Mexico [Rolling Stone]

A secret interview given by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the recaptured Mexican drug kingpin, to the American actor Sean Penn helped authorities locate his whereabouts, according to a Mexican law-enforcement official,.

The interview between Guzman and Penn, purportedly held in late 2015 in a hideout in Mexico, appeared on Saturday on the  website   of Rolling Stone magazine.

An anonymous Mexican official said it was the Penn interview that led authorities to Guzman in a rural part of Durango state in October.

News of Penn's secret meeting came as Mexican officials weighed the possibility of extraditing Guzman to the US, something they had ruled out earlier.

Authorities aborted an earlier raid because Guzman was with two women and a child. But they were able to track him to Los Mochis, Sinaloa, where he was captured on Friday.

He was arrested after a shootout in Los Mochis, six months after he escaped Mexico's most-secure prison. Five people were killed during the operation that caught Guzman, who has twice escaped from prison.

Arely Gomez, Mexico attorney general, said on Friday that Guzman's contact with actors and producers for a possible biopic helped give law enforcement a new lead.

In the Rolling Stone's interview, when Penn asks Guzman about whether he is responsible for the high level of drug addiction in the world, he responds: "No, that is false, because the day I don't exist, it's not going to decrease in any way at all. Drug trafficking? That's false."

Rolling Stone says the meeting was brokered by Mexican actress Kate del Castillo.

Asked about who is to blame for drug trafficking, Guzman says: "If there was no consumption, there would be no sales. It is true that consumption, day after day, becomes bigger and bigger. So it sells and sells."

Earlier on Saturday, a federal law-enforcement official said that Mexico was willing to extradite Guzman to the US - a sharp reversal from the official position after his last capture in 2014.

"Mexico is ready. There are plans to cooperate with the US," said the Mexican official, who spoke on condition anonymity because he was not authorised to comment.

Top officials in the party of President Enrique Pena Nieto also floated the idea of extradition.

"He has a lot of outstanding debts to pay in Mexico, but if it's necessary, he can pay them in other places," said Manlio Fabio Beltrones, president of Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party.

DasukiGate: Open Letter to Chief Olu Falae Probing His Intergrity

                                                    Chief Olu Falae

Dear Baba Falae,

Definitely you would not remember me again. But I do remember you. I first met you in the mid-eighties when you were the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the old Nigeria Merchant Bank Limited, then on Broad Street in Lagos. 

That would be anything between 1985 and 1986. Then I visited you in your homes in Lagos and Akure a couple of years down the line in the company of the late Alex Adedipe, formerly the Majority Leader of the old Ondo State House of Assembly. The impression, I got in those years was that you were an upright man.

Doubt began setting in when you became President Babangida's Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). For us young fellows, we knew something was terribly wrong with IBB's regime. We knew it was monumentally corrupt and thought people like you were too refined and principled to be part of it. But there was no way to prove much as the Maradona was quite adept at his thievery and scheming. Then we heard that some of you stabbed Chief Bola Ige in the back and small tales began coming up. That was in the run up to the 1999 elections and the contraption leading to that shift to a democratic dispensation. Many gave you the benefit of the doubt but we knew you did not stand in the same roll of honour as Chief Adekunle Ajasin and Chief Fasoranti. Many of us knew that eight of ten of your so called Afenifere Group were only selling Awoism for personal gains. We knew many of you cannot lace the sage's boots.
Baba Falae, it is sad that when people like you have no moral defence for your putrid acts done in the dark, the next thing you resort to would be legalese. It is unfortunate that a man supposedly as erudite as you can say "you did not know where the money came from" as mitigation for your immorality. Your defence that you were paid for inter-party collaboration did not reflect your famed intellect, sir. Otherwise you would know that when one party pays another to collaborate with it, it amounts to corruption. When independent political parties collaborate and work together, it is based on commonality of principles and ideas, not based on payments. The Conservative Party in the UK did not pay the Liberals to form government or collaborate. They fashioned an agreement based on common areas of their manifestos and they agreed on the offices to make it work.
Baba Falae, you are corrupt. Baba Falae, your hands stinks and smells of the blood of the innocent, sir - the men who gave their lives, lost limbs and died in battle defending you and your nation. Take a look at the mirror. For a mere N100 million, you traded off your reputation. Afefe ti fe, a ti ri furo adiye (The wind has blown the cover off the fowl's anus). You took the money because it has always been in your character to do so. Pure and simple. There are people we can vouch for in Akure who would not touch a billion Naira. The highly revered retired Bishop Bolanle Gbonigi of the Akure Diocese (Anglican) is one and we know him. Thank God you did not win the presidential election in 1999, it would not have been a different story today had you won. Corruption has always been in your blood. I thought the Yoruba's say "agba ki i wa l'oja, k'ori omo tuntun wo" (an elder will not stand aloof in the market while the head of a new born slouches). O mase o! Ki'le fi ya'to si Jimoh Ibrahim (What a pity! How different are you from Jimoh Ibrahim)? Shior!

By Oluseyi Faseyiku

Photos emerge of condo where Mexico's most notorious drug kingpin, Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, was found and arrested

                                          HECTOR GUERRERO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

 The home of 'El Chapo' was searched after his arrest by Mexican authorities.

Photos emerged showing the unglamorous Mexican condo where the world’s most notorious drug kingpin, “El Chapo,” was discovered and arrested after a six-month manhunt.

The drug lord, whose real name is Joaquin Guzman, was found asleep next to his beauty-queen wife inside their makeshift home in the city of Los Mochis in the Mexican state of Sinaloa while their children slept nearby.

The 57-year-old cartel boss was arrested after a bloody shootout with Mexican authorities that claimed the lives of five of his cartel workers.

The photos of the shabby furniture and bare rooms show that Guzman and his family weren’t living in luxury as he hid out from Mexican authorities and they depict the aftermath of the home’s search by authorities following his arrest.

The bed where the serial prison breaker was sleeping was stripped and the drawers of the bedroom’s dresser were flung to the floor.

Colorful children's toys, presumably belonging to the couple’s 4-year-old twin daughters, are scattered throughout the sparse home.

Guzman had been caught Friday night by Mexican marines after he broke out of the Altiplano federal maximum security prison west of Mexico City in July 2015 for the second time during his 20-year sentence.

The second prison break, after his first escape in 2001, drew international ridicule to the country who had let Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpin loose after he had already avoided prison through bribery and intimidation while operating a global drug ring.

El Chapo was swiftly sent back to the same prison where he escaped, with the possibility of extradition to the U.S. on charges for exporting drugs to the country.

                                          HECTOR GUERRERO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The infamous Mexican drug lord was caught because he was contacting actors and producers about making a film about his life.

The U.S. had filed requests for extradition in June 2015, before his escape, for a 21-count indictment in the Eastern District of New York.

Guzman would serve time in a maximum security prison in either Brooklyn or New York.

                                          HECTOR GUERRERO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

 The shabby furniture and bare rooms of the condo show that El Chapo and his family weren't living in luxury as they hid from Mexican authorities.

Detroit man lit apartment on fire trying to kill bedbugs

A Detroit man accidentally lit himself and his apartment on fire while trying to rid his room of bedbugs.

A Detroit man’s skin was falling off after he accidentally lit himself and his apartment on fire in a misguided attempt to rid the unit of bedbugs.

The critter-clearing inferno began around 4:30 a.m. Sunday in St. Antoine Gardens apartments in the city’s Midtown, according to the Detroit Free Press.

 A man, who was not identified by authorities, sprayed himself and his couch with alcohol to kill the unwanted visitors.

Then, he lit a cigarette and tried to light one of the budbugs on fire, igniting his couch and his body in the process, a spokesman for the mayor’s office said.

Johanahn Larsosa, one of the building’s residents, saw the unwitting firebug fleeing through the lobby, skin apparently falling off his arms.

“He was melting,” Larsosa said. “I was scared. He was screaming.”

The unidentified man sustained severe burns and is now recovering in a hospital, but four apartments were destroyed by the flames and more than 20 suffered water damage.

Resident Phyllis Kuhn said that the displaced residents in the 120-unit building — which mostly houses people on Section 8 assistance — haven’t gotten much help because building management told the Red Cross “the situation was under control” when volunteers visited Sunday.

                                                                                              GOOGLE EARTH

Four units were destroyed by the flames and two dozen more were damaged at the St. Antoine Gardens apartment complex when a man tried to burn out the bedbugs.

The charity did find housing for a woman and her baby and provided 25 cots and blankets at the request of management.

Building residents said the complex is riddled with bedbugs and resident Rolando Millender told the Detroit paper that he knows of seven people on his floor who previously filed complaints about the bugs.

This isn’t the first bedbug-related fire in Detroit in the past year.

In November, Sherry Young accidentally lit her apartment complex on fire when she turned on the stove and oven, left for a day and returned to douse herself and her floor with rubbing alcohol.

Five people were hospitalized and the building was declared a total loss, according to The Detroit Free Press. 

Detroit was recently declared the most bedbug-ridden city in the country, according to data compiled by exterminating company Terminix.

Philadelphia came in number two for bedbugginess, followed by Cleveland and Los Angeles.

Overall, bedbug populations have grown since the 1990s, due to increased travel, pesticide bans and ignorance.