Chile: Man angry over suitcase behind wave of bomb threats
SANTIAGO, Chile — A Chilean man angry over an airline not returning his suitcase made false bomb threats that caused up to 11 commercial flights to take emergency measures in Chile, Argentina and Peru, authorities charged Friday.
Police said they arrested Franco Sepulveda Robles, 29, in the northern Chilean city of Antofagasta after investigators linked his cellphone to the wave of threats that disrupted flights Thursday. He was brought to the capital of Santiago to begin legal proceedings and was banned from getting close to any airport.
Interior Minister Andres Chadwick said Sepulveda could be charged with security law infringement, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.
Attorney Ignacio Moya, who is representing the suspect, said his client denies making the threatening calls.
Police chief Diego Rojas said preliminary investigations indicated “that this person had planned a flight that left behind his suitcase. They did not return it to him, and since he was annoyed with the (airline) companies and with the entire air traffic control system, it seems like he made these calls.”
Trump warns he’ll revoke clearance of Justice Dept official
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that he suspects he’ll “very quickly” revoke the security clearance for a Justice Department official whose wife worked for the firm involved in producing a dossier on Trump’s ties to Russia.
Signaling that his efforts to target clearances over his frustration with the Russia investigation were not over, Trump tweeted that it was a “disgrace” for Bruce Ohr to be in the Justice Department.
His comments came two days after he yanked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, saying he had to do “something” about the “rigged” federal probe of Russian election interference. Critics have cast it as an act of political vengeance.
Ohr has come under Republican scrutiny for his contacts to Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS. The opposition research firm hired former British spy Christopher Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign to compile the dossier on Trump and his Russia ties.
Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS during the campaign — something Trump has tweeted about to highlight his assertions of political bias behind the Russia investigation.
Arrest made in more than 100 synthetic pot overdoses in park
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A 53-year-old man has been arrested in connection with more than 100 synthetic-marijuana overdoses, many of them in the same New Haven park, after authorities say they caught him with 32 bags of the drug, police said Friday.
Some of the victims identified John Parker, of New Haven, as one of the people who was dealing K2 on the New Haven Green, where most of the overdoses occurred Wednesday and Thursday, Police Chief Anthony Campbell said. No deaths were reported, and officials said most people recovered quickly.
No overdoses were reported Friday.
Parker, who was arrested Wednesday, was charged with drug crimes after being found in possession of the K2 bags, Campbell said. He was also charged in connection with drug sales in the city earlier this year, the chief said.
Campbell also said two other people were arrested — one by New Haven police and one by federal authorities — but investigators were trying to determine whether they were connected to the overdoses.
From wire sources
Sales director for Backpage.com pleads guilty to conspiracy
PHOENIX — The sales and marketing director of Backpage.com pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring to facilitate prostitution, acknowledging that he participated in a scheme to give free ads to prostitutes in a bid to draw them away from competitors and win over their future business.
Dan Hyer is the second Backpage.com employee to plead guilty in cases in Arizona in which the site has been accused of ignoring warnings to stop running prostitution ads, some of which involved children. Authorities say the site has brought in $500 million in prostitution-related revenue since its inception in 2004.
Some of the site’s operators also are accused of laundering money earned from ad sales after banks raised concerns that they were being used for illegal purposes. In all, six others affiliated with Backpage.com, including founders Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, still face charges in the case.
Hyer, 49, faces a maximum fine of $250,000 and up to five years in prison for his conviction. As part of the plea, prosecutors will dismiss 50 charges of facilitating prostitution and 17 money laundering charges against Hyer. It’s unclear whether the plea deal calls for Hyer to testify against others in the case.
Hyer said about 10 or 11 years ago his company would copy ads from the adult section of Craigslist and other sites, repost them on Backpage.com and then offer client a free ad, which prosecutors say was offered for a trial period. Hyer also said the ads were sometimes illegal because they contained links to another site that lets customers post reviews of their experiences with prostitutes.
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In a comeback season for Hollywood, a summer without bombs
NEW YORK — Have you noticed something oddly tranquil about this summer movie season? For the first time in recent memory, there hasn’t been one major bomb.
Usually by now, there would be blockbuster-sized craters left on the charred summer-movie battlefield, the inevitable toll of Hollywood’s most high-stakes season. But this year, summer-movie bomb-watching, long one of the most dependable spectator sports of the season, has gone entirely without the sight of a “Lone Ranger”-sized mushroom cloud.
After the cataclysmic, the-sky-is-falling summer of 2017, when overall grosses slid 14.6 percent from the year before, Hollywood has rebounded. Ticket sales in North America this summer are up 11.3 percent, according to comScore. The comeback is even more pronounced when you factor in that the annual Marvel movie kickoff to summer slid just ahead of the official first weekend of May start, shifting the $678.5 million domestic for Disney’s “Avenger: Infinity War” to the spring.
Amid a remarkably turbulent time for the movie business, this summer has been surprisingly, almost weirdly, steady.
“The studios did what they were supposed to,” said Kyle Davies, domestic distribution chief for Paramount Pictures. “This notion that people are tired of going to the theaters, I don’t believe it for a second. I think people are ready every weekend: ‘Give me a reason to come.’”