Zorro
Zorro's JournalCartel leader who faked own death is arrested in California, officials say
Source: Washington Post
Authorities have arrested a high-ranking member of a drug cartel who allegedly faked his own death to evade the Mexican authorities and spent the past few years living “a life of luxury” in California, the justice department said Thursday.
Cristian Fernando Gutierrez-Ochoa, who was arrested this week on international drug trafficking and money laundering charges in Riverside, California, was a leader of Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), “one of the world’s most violent and prolific drug trafficking organizations,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.
According to the justice department, Gutierrez-Ochoa is the son-in-law of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the alleged founder and head of CJNG. The state department is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest of Oseguera Cervantes, who is also known as El Mencho. CJNG “is responsible for unprecedented violence in Mexico and helping to fuel the deadly drug crisis in the United States,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a statement.
Gutierrez-Ochoa, 37, who allegedly began working for the cartel in 2014, is believed to have personally coordinated the transportation and distribution of an estimated 40,000 kilograms of methamphetamine and an estimated 2,000 kilograms of cocaine in Mexico destined for the United States, the justice department said. In 2021, Gutierrez-Ochoa allegedly kidnapped two members of the Mexican Navy in an attempt to secure the release of El Mencho’s wife, who had been arrested by Mexican law enforcement, authorities said.
Read more: https://wapo.st/4i1l3hJ
Florida regulators issue subpoenas to insurance industry critic
Florida regulators issued subpoenas to a Palm Beach Gardens-based ratings agency last month to force it to justify its “dire predictions” for the state’s insurance market.
Weiss Ratings founder Martin Weiss wrote in October that homeowners insurers are “on the brink of a collapse” and that homeowners are at a “high risk” of not being paid for their claims related to hurricanes Helene and Milton.
The Office of Insurance Regulation demanded that Weiss and his company turn over any emails, text messages and other records that back up those statements by Nov. 30.
“We take our responsibility to protect consumers very seriously, and we will not ignore any potential warning signs,” the cover letter from Deputy Commissioner Sheryl Parker states.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2024/11/22/florida-insurance-weiss-ratings-citizens-subpoena-state-farm/
State bullying tactics against a vocal critic. If Weiss testifies I wonder if it will be public or behind closed doors.
Putin says Ukraine war is going global
Source: Reuters via Yahoo News
President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the Ukraine war was escalating towards a global conflict after the United States and Britain allowed Ukraine to hit Russia with their weapons, and warned the West that Moscow could strike back.
Russia, Putin said, had responded to the use of U.S. and British missiles by firing a new kind of hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian military facility. More could follow, Putin warned. He said civilians would be warned ahead of further strikes with such weapons.
After approval from the administration of President Joe Biden, Ukraine struck Russia with six U.S.-made ATACMS on Nov. 19 and with British Storm Shadow missiles and U.S.-made HIMARS on Nov. 21, Putin said.
"From that moment, as we have repeatedly underscored, a regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character," Putin said in an address to the nation carried by state television after 8 pm Moscow time (1700 GMT).
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-says-russia-fired-hypersonic-174448527.html
Top senator calls Salt Typhoon 'worst telecom hack in our nation's history'
Source: Washington Post
The Chinese government espionage campaign that has deeply penetrated more than a dozen U.S. telecommunications companies is the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far,” a senior U.S. senator told The Washington Post in an interview this week.
The hackers, part of a group dubbed Salt Typhoon, have been able to listen in on audio calls in real time and have in some cases moved from one telecom network to another, exploiting relationships of “trust,” said Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a former telecom venture capitalist. Warner added that intruders are still in the networks.
Though fewer than 150 victims have been identified and notified by the FBI — most of them in the Washington, D.C., region, the records of people those individuals have called or sent text messages to run into the “millions,” he said, “and that number could go up dramatically.”
Those records could provide further information to help the Chinese identify other people whose devices they want to target, he said. “My hair’s on fire,” Warner said.
Read more: https://wapo.st/494t3uj
'Doomsday fish' washed ashore in California, but what does that mean?
If one oarfish landing on a beach is a sign of a disaster to come, how bad will it be if three wash up in quick succession?
A silvery 10-foot-long creature, the oarfish has fueled fisherman’s tales of sea serpents — and in some cultures has been a portent of natural disasters.
It’s rare to see an oarfish up close in California; only 22 have washed ashore since 1901, according to UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. But in the last three months, three of them have surfaced on Southern California beaches.
The latest was on Nov. 6, when an oarfish was discovered at Grandview Beach by Alison Laferriere, a doctoral candidate at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The other two beached in La Jolla and Huntington Beach.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-11-21/doomsday-fish-washed-ashore-in-california-but-what-does-that-mean
Musk, Ramaswamy Want Federal Workers in the Office Full Time. There's a Hitch.
The nation’s largest workforce could soon be ordered back to the office full-time.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to slash government bureaucracy and appointed uber-wealthy entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the efficiency effort. The two men have already targeted remote workers, saying that requiring federal employees back to the office five days a week would result in a welcome wave of voluntary terminations.
“If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published Wednesday.
Ending remote work is being considered a potential early action item for the new administration shortly after the Jan. 20 inauguration, said a person working closely with the effort.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/musk-ramaswamy-want-federal-workers-in-the-office-full-time-theres-a-hitch-2a0c4050?st=9pQTfo&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Graphic details revealed in Monterey sexual assault claim against Pete Hegseth, Trump Cabinet pick
Source: Los Angeles Times
A woman told Monterey police that Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Defense secretary, took her phone, blocked her from leaving his hotel room and sexually assaulted her, according to a newly released police report.
On Wednesday evening, the Monterey Police Department released a 22-page report revealing graphic details in the 2017 assault claim filed against Hegseth, which did not result in any charges. The report reveals two starkly different narratives about what unfolded during a sexual encounter in his hotel room while the two were attending a Republican women’s conference in the city in October 2017.
The woman, who is referred to as Jane Doe in the report, claimed that she repeatedly told Hegseth “no” during the alleged assault, and that he ejaculated on her stomach and told her to “clean it up” — an incident she said left her with nightmares, according to the report.
Hegseth told police that the pair had consensual intercourse and that he made multiple attempts to ensure she was comfortable during the encounter, according to the report.
Read more: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-11-20/new-graphic-details-revealed-in-sexually-assault-claim-against-trumps-defense-secretary-pick
Spain to grant residency, work permits to hundreds of thousands of migrants in the country illegally
Spain will grant residency and work permits to about 300,000 migrants living in the country illegally each year for the next three years, the country’s migration minister said Wednesday.
The policy will take effect next May and aims to expand the country’s aging workforce. Spain has remained largely open to receiving migrants even as other European nations seek to tighten their borders to illegal crossings and asylum seekers.
Spain needs around 250,000 registered foreign workers a year to maintain its welfare state, Migration Minister Elma Saiz said in an interview on Wednesday. She contended that the legalization policy is not aimed solely at “cultural wealth and respect for human rights, it’s also prosperity.”
“Today, we can say Spain is a better country,” Saiz told national broadcaster Radio Nacional de España.
https://apnews.com/article/spain-migrants-foreign-workers-europe-ce2ac68649bc1cb0603f1e810885e0cf
Mexican Mafia settled scores with killing at Long Beach homeless camp, records reveal
Prison was Samuel Villalba’s domain.
On the inside, he was Negro from Artesia, a Mexican Mafia member whose word was the law to the thousands of Latino gang members who fall under the syndicate’s influence.
Outside prison, he was an ex-con with a failing liver and a dark past. His once muscular body, tattooed with the black hand of the Mexican Mafia, had grown thin. Home was a tent on the side of a freeway.
Sometime during his 16 years in federal prison, according to law enforcement, Villalba was cast out of the Mexican Mafia for assaulting a fellow member. The sentence was death. Prosecutors allege it was carried out by two men who crept through the homeless camp where Villalba lived the evening of Jan. 10, 2021, carrying guns in gloved hands.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-11-18/man-charged-with-killing-mexican-mafia-member-in-long-beach-homeless-camp
Advance Auto Parts closing all California stores, including 14 in San Diego County
Advance Auto Parts is rolling out of California.
The auto supply company, with more than 150 stores in this state, is closing all California locations and hundreds of others across the Western U.S., including 14 in San Diego County.
In all, it is closing more than 700 stores and distribution centers in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Arizona, a move that comes as the company aims to “improve the productivity of all our assets and to create shareholder value,” Shane O’Kelly, the company’s president and chief executive, said in a news release.
In last week’s third-quarter earnings call, O’Kelly said the company will focus on top-performing stores and ditch stores that are struggling.
“We made the decision to close certain non-performing, nonstrategic stores in the U.S. to better position our assets based for long-term sustainable growth,” he said. Instead, Advance Auto Parts will work to “improve store concentration in our strongest markets.”
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/11/19/advance-auto-parts-closing-all-california-stores-including-14-in-san-diego-county/
I wonder if this is an effect of the increase in EVs in California.
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