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UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson killed in shooting outside of New York City hotel
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Legendary Colombia cartel drug lord released from U.S. prison after 25 years: “He won’t be retiring a poor man”
One of Colombia’s legendary drug lords and a key operator of the Medellin cocaine cartel has been released from a U.S. prison and is expected to be deported back home.
Records from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons show Fabio Ochoa Vásquez was released Tuesday after completing 25 years of a 30-year prison sentence.
Ochoa, 67, and his older brothers amassed a fortune when cocaine started flooding the U.S. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to U.S. authorities, to the point that in 1987 they were included in the Forbes Magazine’s list of billionaires. Living in Miami, Ochoa ran a distribution center for the cocaine cartel once headed by Pablo Escobar.
Although somewhat faded from memory as the center of the drug trade shifted from Colombia to Mexico, he resurfaced in the hit Netflix series “Narcos” true to form as the youngest son of an elite Medellin family into ranching and horse breeding that cut a sharp contrast with Escobar, who came from more humble roots.
Ochoa — who also went by the nicknames “Julio” and “Pepe,” according to the U.S. Justice Department — was first indicted in the U.S. for his alleged role in the 1986 killing of Drug Enforcement Administration informant Barry Seal – whose life was popularized in the 2017 film “American Made” starring Tom Cruise.
He was initially arrested in 1990 in Colombia under a government program promising drug kingpins would not be extradited to the U.S. At the time, he was on the U.S. list of the “Dozen Most Wanted” Colombia drug lords.
Ochoa was arrested again and extradited to the U.S. in 2001 in response to an indictment in Miami naming him and more than 40 people as part of a drug smuggling conspiracy. Of those, Ochoa was the only one who opted to go to trial, resulting in his conviction and the 30-year sentence.
At the trial, the jurors were driven back and forth to court in vans with tinted windows to protect their anonymity, the BBC reported, and their identities were even kept from prosecutors and defense lawyers.
The other defendants got much lighter prison terms because most of them cooperated with the government.
The BBC reported that after Ochoa was arrested in 1999, he erected billboards in Medellin and Bogota declaring: “Yesterday I made a mistake. Today I am innocent.”
Richard Gregorie, a retired assistant U.S. attorney who was on the prosecution team that convicted Ochoa, said authorities were never able to seize all of the Ochoa family’s illicit drug proceeds and he expects that Ochoa will have a welcome return home.
“He won’t be retiring a poor man, that’s for sure,” Gregorie told The Associated Press.
Richard Klugh, a Miami-based attorney for Ochoa, declined to comment.
But in years of litigation, he argued unsuccessfully that his client deserved to be released early because his sentence far exceeded what was appropriate for the amount of seized cocaine that authorities could attribute to Ochoa.
Colombia remains the world’s biggest cocaine producer and exporter, mainly to the United States and Europe. Last year, the South American country set a new record for cocaine production and cultivation of the coca leaf it is made from.
Just last week, the Colombian Navy said authorities from dozens of countries seized over 225 metric tons of cocaine in a six-week mega-operation where they unearthed a new Pacific trafficking route.
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House task force to hold final hearing on Trump assassination attempts
Washington — Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe is set to testify Thursday before the bipartisan House task force investigating the assassination attempts against President-elect Donald Trump as the panel prepares to wrap its investigation into the incidents that sent shockwaves through the country in the lead up to the presidential election.
The panel, which the House voted to establish earlier this year, is tasked with looking into the security failures during the July 13 assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the foiled attempt in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sept. 15. The lawmakers will also make recommendations to prevent future attacks. Thursday’s hearing will begin at 9:30 a.m. on Capitol Hill.
The Secret Service came under intense scrutiny in the wake of the initial attack, and its director at the time, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned in July after a bruising day of testimony before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. Rowe’s testimony on Thursday marks his first public appearance before the task force, which heard testimony from local law enforcement and a former Secret Service agent at a hearing earlier this year. Rowe appeared before other congressional committees after he took control of the agency.
Made up of seven Republicans and six Democrats, the panel is expected to submit a report of its findings in the coming weeks. Following Thursday’s hearing, the panel will hold a business meeting to consider the final report, the task force said.
The committee released a 53-page interim report in October focused on the July 13 incident, deeming it “preventable,” while outlining communication and planning shortcomings. The investigation “clearly shows a lack of planning and coordination between the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners,” the task force said at the time, noting that the findings were preliminary.
Trump was speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13 when a gunman opened fire, with a bullet grazing the former president’s ear. Secret Service snipers shot and killed the gunman, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks.
The panel outlined in the interim report that “fragmented lines of communication” allowed the gunman to “evade law enforcement,” climb onto the roof of a nearby building and fire eight shots. The report claims that “federal, state, and local law enforcement officers could have engaged Thomas Matthew Crooks at several pivotal moments.”
The task force also alleged in the report that responsibilities were not “effectively” confirmed by the Secret Service with local partners ahead of the shooting. Witnesses who participated in a walkthrough of the area days before the assassination attempt called it disorganized.
When the interim report was released, the panel said it had received relevant information from other House committees, conducted 23 transcribed interviews with witnesses from state and local agencies, and obtained evidence in response to three subpoenas to federal, state and local agencies. Last month, the panel also issued subpoenas to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for testimony from two ATF employees.
The panel has also sought information from federal agencies regarding the Sept. 15 incident. On that day, Trump was golfing at his course in West Palm Beach when the Secret Service arrested a man with an AK-47-style weapon who was within a few hundred yards of the president-elect. The man, Ryan Wesley Routh, has been charged with attempted assassination of a political figure in addition to firearms charges.
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French Prime Minister Michel Barnier resigning after parliament’s no-confidence vote
Paris — French Prime Minister Michel Barnier on Thursday was meeting Emmanuel Macron to submit his resignation after losing a vote of no confidence in parliament, with the president urgently seeking ways to halt growing political and financial chaos. Poised to be contemporary France’s shortest-serving premier, Barnier arrived at the Elysee Palace just after 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. Eastern) for the resignation formality, with the outgoing premier and government constitutionally obliged to step down after the defeat in parliament.
A majority of lawmakers supported the no-confidence vote Wednesday that was proposed by the hard-left and backed by the far-right, headed by Marine Le Pen.
Barnier’s record-quick ejection comes after snap parliamentary elections this summer that resulted in a hung parliament, with no political force able to form an overall majority and the far-right holding the key to the government’s survival.
The trigger for Barnier’s ouster was his 2025 budget plan including austerity measures that were unacceptable to a majority in parliament, but that he argued were necessary to stabilize France’s finances. On Monday he had forced through a social security financing bill without a vote.
The successful no-confidence motion cancelled the government’s entire financing plan, leading to an automatic renewal of the current budget into next year, unless any new government can somehow rush through approval of a new budget by Christmas — an unlikely scenario.
“France probably won’t have a 2025 budget,” said ING Economics in a note, predicting that the country “is entering a new era of political instability.”
Moody’s, a ratings agency, warned that Barnier’s fall “deepens the country’s political stalemate” and “reduces the probability of a consolidation of public finances.”
The Paris stock exchange fell at the opening on Thursday before recovering to show small gains, while the yields on French government bonds were again under upward pressure in debt markets.
Macron now has the unenviable task of picking a viable successor. The president was to address the nation Thursday evening, his office said. Macron has more than two years of his presidential term left, but some opponents are calling on him to resign, too.
National Assembly Speaker Yael Braun-Pivet on Thursday urged Macron to waste no time in choosing a new premier, saying France could not be allowed to “drift” for any length of time.
There was no indication early Thursday of how quickly Macron would appoint Barnier’s successor, nor what their political leanings might be.
Loyalist Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu and Macron’s centrist ally Francois Bayrou have been touted as possible contenders, as has former Socialist premier and interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve.
With the support of the far-right, a majority of 331 MPs in the 577-member chamber voted to oust the government on Wednesday night. It was the first successful no-confidence vote since a defeat for Georges Pompidou’s government in 1962, when Charles de Gaulle was president.
Macron flew back into Paris just ahead of the vote after wrapping up a three-day state visit to Saudi Arabia, an apparent world away from the domestic crisis.
“We are now calling on Macron to go,” Mathilde Panot, head of the parliamentary faction of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, told reporters. She urged “early presidential elections” to solve the deepening political crisis.
But taking care not to crow over the government’s fall, Le Pen said in a television interview that her party — once a new premier is appointed — “would let them work” and help create a “budget that is acceptable for everyone.”
Laurent Wauquiez, the head of right-wing deputies in parliament, said the far-right and hard-left bore the responsibility for a no-confidence vote.
Barnier is the fifth prime minister to serve under Macron since he came to power in 2017, with every premier serving a successively shorter period.
Given the composition of the National Assembly, there is no guarantee that Barnier’s successor will last any longer.
Strike calls across transport, education and other public sector services were kept in place Thursday despite the disappearance of the austerity budget that has prompted so much anger.
The plunge into more uncertainty comes ahead of the reopening of the Notre-Dame cathedral on Saturday after a 2019 fire, a major international event hosted by Macron.
Guests include Donald Trump, who will make it his first foreign trip since being re-elected to serve as the U.S. president for a second term.