List of All Articles with Tag 'l'

The son of a Los Angeles County fire captain has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and murdering a California woman who was shot and abducted from a park. Gabriel Sean Esparza, 20, has been charged with multiple felonies including murder, kidnapping and attempted rape of 19-year-old Andrea Vazquez. Mr Esparza entered a not-guilty plea when he made his first court appearance for the brutal slaying on Wednesday. Prosecutors have formally filed seven charges against the suspect, according to a criminal complaint submitted in Los Angeles Superior Court. These also include attempted murder, kidnapping to commit another crime, assault with intent to commit a felony, and two counts of attempted forcible rape. Vazquez was randomly kidnapped on Sunday while in a car with her boyfriend in a Whittier park. While Vazquez and her boyfriend were sitting in the parked car at Penn Park, an armed man approached them and began shooting. Vazquez’s boyfriend fled the scene and when he returned, he “discovered blood” near it and Vazquez was gone. Vazquez’s body was found the following day in Moreno Valley. Read More Andrea Vasquez: California woman shot and kidnapped from boyfriend’s car found dead Ambushed at an LA park, kidnapped and her body dumped in a field: What happened to Andrea Vazquez?

Ukraine said on Thursday its forces had flown the country's flag in Russian-annexed Crimea during a "special operation" to mark its second wartime Independence Day, as...

Prosecutors said new DNA results are expected in just a matter of weeks in their case against a Massachusetts man accused of murdering his wife, Ana Walshe. Ms Walshe, 39, was last seen at her home just after midnight on New Year’s Day. Her body has not been found, but prosecutors are trying to prove that her husband, Brian Walshe, murdered and dismembered the mother-of-three. In a court appearance on Tuesday, prosecutors said they are awaiting the results of DNA testing as they continue to build their case against Mr Walshe, WHDH reported. The convicted art fraudster was arrested on 8 January on charges for hindering the police investigation after prosecutors said that traces of blood and a knife were found in the basement of her family home. On 17 January, he was charged with his wife’s murder. While court proceedings continued on Tuesday, another search for Ms Walshe was conducted in a wooded area of Peabody, Massachusetts. The search location was less than a mile from the Peabody Transfer Station where investigators said they found evidence in this case back in January. But the search yielded nothing, according to Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrisey’s office. “Two persons in the Peabody community unconnected to the prosecution of Brian Walshe contacted State Police investigators with their belief that an area of that community may be of investigative interest in that matter,” spokesman David Traub said in a statement. “A search of that area by the Massachusetts State Police SERT team yielded nothing.” Police in Cohasset first announced that Ms Walshe was missing in a statement on 5 January and asked for the public’s help in finding her. Authorities said that she was last seen at her home shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, and described her as being 5 feet 2 inches tall, 115 pounds, with brown hair, brown eyes and an olive complexion. They state that she speaks with an Eastern European accent. She had been due to take a ride-share car from her home to Boston’s Logan Airport to take a flight to Washington DC, where she works in real estate, police said. Tishman Speyer reported her missing on 4 January, and police in Cohasset performed a welfare check at the family home. A criminal affidavit in the case states that Mr Walshe told police that he last saw his wife at their home early on 1 January when she took an Uber or Lyft to the airport. He also told authorities that he went to a Whole Foods and a CVS in Swampscott, Massachusetts, 40 miles away, on 1 January and took his child to get ice cream the following day. The affidavit states that police did not find that any Uber or Lyft ride had taken place on New Year’s Day, and Ms Walshe never took a flight to DC or arrived in the city by any other means of transport. Prosecutors also say they reviewed video footage of Whole Foods and CVS and did not see Mr Walshe at either location. The search for Ms Walshe initially focused on wooded areas near the family’s home. Officials said that 20 troopers from a specialised search and rescue were joined by three police K9 teams and a police helicopter in the search. State police divers also searched a small stream and drained the home’s swimming pool. Ms Walshe lived with her family in Cohasset, Massachusetts, but worked in real estate in Washington DC during the week. Ms Walshe was born in Belgrade, Serbia, and was working at the Wheatleigh Hotel in Lenox when she met Mr Walshe in 2008. After their 2015 marriage, they had three sons between two and six years old. The couple’s three young boys were placed in the care of the Department of Children and Families following Mr Walshe’s first arrest. Read More Ana Walshe: Timeline of missing Massachusetts mother’s disappearance Desperate searches for two missing women who vanished days apart in Colorado resort town

Eleven million people watched the U.S. Republican presidential candidates' prime-time debate Wednesday on Fox News, according to Nielsen,

By Gram Slattery WASHINGTON Florida Governor Ron DeSantis emerged from the first Republican presidential debate having retained his

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday said there was currently no

By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) -Whirlpool agreed to pay an $11.5 million civil fine to resolve U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday vetoed an election overhaul bill passed by the Republican-controlled legislature last week.

Heavy rain has flooded an Ohio highway where people were rescued from their cars, covered the Las Vegas strip with water and closed a busy airport terminal outside Detroit

Danny Trejo ended up serving time in San Quentin State Prison in California by the time he was 24 years old

Katharine McPhee and David Foster's tour is presently set to resume on November 1 at the Andiamo Celebrity Showroom in Warren, Michigan

Vladimir Putin has said that the Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin had a “complicated fate” in his first remarks about the plane crash said to have killed him. In a televised speech, the Russian president offered his condolences to the families of the 10 people who died in the crash on Wednesday evening, while appearing to eulogise Prigozhin, 62, as a “talented businessman”. Putin said that the Wagner chief had made “serious mistakes in his life” – seemingly a reference to the attempted mutiny led by Prigozhin in June that was the most significant challenge to the Russian leader's authority during his 20 years in power. It was that armed uprising, ended after 24 hours by a deal between the Kremlin and Prigozhin with Wagner fighters 125 miles from Moscow, that led many to believe that Prigozhin would face retribution from Putin. The episode was an embarrassment for the Russian leader of the kind he has repeatedly – and severely – punished over the years. “I have known Prigozhin for a long time, since the 1990s. He made some serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved the necessary results for himself but also for the greater good when I asked him. He was a talented man, a talented businessman,” Putin said from the Kremlin, speaking about Prigozhin in the past tense. Speculation over the fate of the Wagner chief has been swirling for more than 24 hours, after the Russian civil aviation authority said that Prigozhin was on the plane that went down between Moscow to St Petersburg, leaving no survivors of the seven passengers and three crew on board. The passenger manifest included Prigozhin and his second-in-command, Dmitry Utkin, who baptised the group with his nom de guerre, as well as Wagner's logistics chief, a fighter wounded by US airstrikes in Syria, and at least one possible bodyguard. US officials, speaking to The New York Times, have suggested that an explosion on the plane was the likely cause for the crash, but cautioned that no definitive conclusions had been drawn. One official also told the Associated Press that an explosion fell in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics”. In Russia, the Baza news outlet, which has sources among law enforcement agencies, suggested that Russian investigators looking into the crash were considering a theory that a bomb had been planted on board. While the Kremlin would see the benefit of such a line of inquiry, leaders of a number of nations have already suggested that nothing this big could occur in Russia without Putin being aware. Ukraine's President Zelensky, whose nation Putin's forces invaded in February last year, suggested as much in announcing that his nation had nothing to do with the plane coming down. "We have nothing to do with this. Everyone understands who does," he said. Prigozhin's Wagner forces have been involved in some of the bloodiest fighting in eastern Ukraine, particularly around the city of Bakhmut, and have faced accusations of war crimes. “I can’t say anything good about these subhumans,” Mr Zelensky added, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency. “It’s either a judgment at the Hague, or God’s judgement.” Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, said: “It is no coincidence that the whole world immediately looks at the Kremlin when a disgraced ex-confidant of Putin suddenly falls from the sky, two months after he attempted an uprising.” Putin said that those on the plane had “made a significant contribution” to the fighting in Ukraine. “We remember this, we know, and we will not forget,” the president said, with Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader of Ukraine's partially occupied Donetsk region, also present. The Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region north of Moscow. On Thursday, men were carrying away black body bags on stretchers. Part of the plane's tail and other fragments lay on the ground near a wooded area where forensic investigators had erected a tent. Kuzhenkino resident Anastasia Bukharova, 27, told the Associated Press that she was walking with her children Wednesday when she saw the jet, “and then – boom! – it exploded in the sky and began to fall down”. She said she was scared it would hit houses in the village and ran with the children, but it ended up crashing into a field. Russian authorities said on Thursday that the investigation into the crash would be led by Ivan Sibul, a veteran investigator who has previously examined other high-profile plane crashes. Prigozhin long railed against how Russian generals were waging the war in Ukraine. For a long time, Putin appeared content to allow such infighting – and Prigozhin seemed to have the unusual latitude to speak his mind. In the deal that ended his revolt, Prigozhin was due to head to Belarus with some of his fighters to settle. Thousands of fighters have set up in Belarus, including training Belarusian troops near the Polish border, but Prigozhin has been photographed back in Russia. Poland is sending up to 10,000 of its troops to its border with Belarus, with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki believing that their threat will only grow. “The Wagner Group comes under Putin's leadership. Let everyone answer the question for themselves – will the threat be bigger or smaller? For me, that's a rhetorical question,” he said on Thursday. Putin said he was told that Prigozhin had returned from Africa – where Wagner has an extensive presence – earlier on Wednesday, shortly before his apparent death, and had held meetings with officials in Moscow. Seemingly referring to Wagner's extensive – and lucrative – deployment in Africa, which is essentially an extension of Russian power in the region, Putin said that Prigozhin had “worked not only in our country, and achieved results, but also abroad, particularly in Africa. He was involved there with oil, gas, precious metals and stones”. An informal memorial to Progozhin in St Petersburg attracted plenty of flowers on Thursday, and Putin’s remarks on Wagner's service may be aimed at calming some of the vitriol that has come Moscow's way in the wake of the crash. “Prigozhin died as the result of the actions of Russia’s traitors,” wrote the Grey Zone, a social media outlet close to Wagner. “But even in hell, he’ll be the best! Glory to Russia!” Other Wagner-affiliated sources suggested they would seek to avenge Prigozhin’s death, with one video purportedly showing Wagner fighters carrying the message that Moscow should “expect us”. Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report Read More Ukraine war - live: Putin breaks silence on Prigozhin’s death as Wagner fighters warn Moscow ‘expect us’ Wagner Group: Timeline of Yevgeny Progozhin’s private army as leader ‘killed in plane crash’ Prigozhin's purported demise seems intended to send a clear message to potential Kremlin foes The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary