Security | GlobalPost

Brazil charges 60 cops with corruption

Agencia EFEApril 30, 2013 15:30

Rio de Janeiro, Apr 30 (EFE).- Authorities in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday launched an operation to arrest 78 people, including 60 police officers, accused of making up a corruption network that extorted bribes from street vendors and drivers of gypsy cabs. The arrest warrants were requested during the course of an investigation begun six months ago by the intelligence division of the state public safety department.

British police make appeal in Alps murder case

Agence France-PresseApril 29, 2013 17:45

British police assisting the investigation into last year's murder of a British-Iraqi family in the French Alps on Monday released footage of a 4x4 vehicle seen close to the crime scene. Detectives told BBC's Crimewatch programme that they wanted to trace the owner of a right-hand drive 4x4 vehicle which was spotted in the French commune of Chevaline at around 3:20 pm on September 5 last year.

Three charged over 1,000 prank calls to Paris firefighters

Agence France-PresseApril 29, 2013 08:45

Three young French women are facing possible jail time and heavy fines for making nearly 1,000 prank calls to Paris firefighters over more than a year, police said. The calls, made between February 2011 and September 2012, included insults to firefighters, incoherent babbling and false reports of emergencies, the Paris police prefecture said. Four of the calls resulted in firefighters wasting time by responding to false alarms.

Body found in French Alps is missing British soldier

Agence France-PresseApril 27, 2013 14:31

A body found close to a French Alps ski resort was that of a British soldier who went missing in February after a night out, police confirmed Saturday. Simon Daw, a 27-year-old with 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh, disappeared from the Les Deux Alpes resort on February 12 after a night out in a bar. A body was found Thursday a few hundred metres from the resort by an off-duty policeman collecting mushrooms, local police said. An autopsy on Saturday identified the corpse as that of the soldier and found that Daw had died of hypothermia following a fall.

Experts say US terror watchlists are bloated, unhelpful

Agence France-PresseApril 26, 2013 11:00

US efforts to track potential terrorists are falling short, experts say, pointing to a jumble of overlapping watch lists and miscues that let one of the Boston bombing suspects slip through the cracks despite warnings about him. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of two brothers suspected of planting bombs near the marathon finish line, had drawn the attention of authorities more than once. Russian officials warned their US counterparts of their concern, and the CIA asked the top US counterterrorism agency to add Tsarnaev to a terror watchlist.

US banking sector too vulnerable to hackers

Agence France-PresseApril 26, 2013 03:15

US authorities charged with overseeing the financial sector are worried about its vulnerability to cyberattacks, they said in a report published Thursday. "Security threats in cyberspace are not bound by national borders and can range widely from low to high security risks," wrote the Financial Stability Oversight Council in its 2013 annual report. The council is worried, in particular, about the increasing skill of hackers attacking the US financial system.

Fire at Russia psychiatric hospital kills 38

Agence France-PresseApril 26, 2013 01:30

Thirty-eight people, mostly psychiatric patients, were killed in a fire that raged Friday at a psychiatric hospital in the Moscow region, trapping the inmates inside behind barred windows. The deadly blaze raised new questions about security standards at Russia's medical institutions, in particular psychiatric hospitals, after a string of fires in the last years. The fire broke out on the roof and spread rapidly throughout the hospital in the small town of Ramensky around 40 kilometres (25 miles) outside Moscow, the health ministry said.

CIA, FBI flagged Boston suspect

Agence France-PresseApril 24, 2013 22:45

Both the CIA and the FBI flagged the deceased Boston bombing suspect over possible terror ties, but he slipped through the fingers of investigators, officials said Wednesday. The revelations raised fresh questions over why US authorities did not further investigate Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed during a shootout with police last week, and in doing so possibly prevent the attacks. The CIA asked the top US counterterrorism agency to add Tsarnaev to a terror watchlist more than a year before the bombings, a US intelligence official said.

CIA asked to add Boston suspect to terror list

Agence France-PresseApril 24, 2013 19:30

The CIA asked the top US counterterrorism agency to add the deceased Boston bombing suspect to a terror watchlist more than a year before the attacks, officials said Wednesday. The spy agency made the move after Russian officials contacted their CIA counterparts in September 2011 about concerns they had over the possible terror ties of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed during a shootout with police last week.

Police pulled from Dutch schools as shooting threat wanes

Agence France-PresseApril 24, 2013 12:45

Dutch officials pulled armed police from secondary schools in the western city of Leiden on Wednesday as they lowered the level of an alert over an online threat to carry out a school shooting. The threat to "shoot my Dutch teacher and as many students as I can" made on a US-based website over the weekend led to all secondary schools in the university city being closed on Monday and police being deployed. "The concrete threat has diminished," the city said in a statement, adding that "the suspect has been living abroad for some time".