News Roundup

J’can boyfriend of slain woman changes plea to guilty

BURLINGTON, Vermont (AP):

A Jamaican man charged with killing his girlfriend in the United States in 2018 then fleeing to Jamaica, where he evaded authorities for nearly two years, pleaded guilty last Friday to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.

Leroy Headley, 41, had originally pleaded not guilty in connection with the shooting death of Anako ‘Annette’ Lumumba in the Vermont home they shared with their two children.

Headley apologised in court, saying he was “deeply and truly sorry” for killing Lumumba and described her as his “best friend and soulmate”.

Many members of Lumumba’s family as well as her friends were in court.

“For us, we just have to, I guess carry on her legacy and be a family,” Adolphe Lumumba, the victim’s brother, told the media.

On May 3, 2018, authorities received a 911 call from a man who stated, “I shot her, I shot her,” and gave the address of the South Burlington home, according to a police affidavit. The phone was registered to Headley, police said.

Headley’s car was found May 18, 2018, in Albany, New York. The US Marshals Service said he had ties to Jamaica, where he was originally from, and across the US and Canada.

He was arrested by Jamaican authorities in February 2020 in Negril and brought back to Vermont.

Two guns found, two arrested

A police-military operation in Maroon Town, St James, on Saturday has resulted in the seizure of two firearms.

Two men were taken into custody.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s Corporate Communications Unit said the team, supported by the Caribbean Search Centre, conducted targeted operations at two separate premises.

It says two Browning pistols were found concealed in motor vehicles.

The identities of the men in custody are being withheld pending further investigations.

Meanwhile, a third firearm was seized in the ongoing operation in St James.

Up to press time, the police had not yet released the details surrounding that seizure.

FBI finds more documents marked classified at Biden’s home

WASHINGTON (AP):

The FBI searched United States President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday and located six additional documents containing classified markings and also took possession of some of his notes, the president’s lawyer said Saturday.

The president voluntarily allowed the FBI into his home, but the lack of a search warrant did not dim the extraordinary nature of the search. It compounded the embarrassment to Biden that started with the disclosure January 12 that the president’s attorneys had found a “small number” of classified records at a former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington shortly before the midterm elections. Since then, attorneys found six classified documents in Biden’s Wilmington home library from his time as vice-president.

Though Biden has maintained “there’s no there there”, the discoveries have become a political liability as he prepares to launch a re-election bid, and they undercut his efforts to portray an image of propriety to the American public after the tumultuous presidency of his predecessor, Donald Trump.

The documents taken by the FBI spanned Biden’s time in the Senate and the vice-presidency, while the notes dated to his time as vice-president, said Bob Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer. He added that the search of the entire premises lasted nearly 13 hours.

The level of classification, and whether the documents removed by the FBI remained classified, was not immediately clear as the Justice Department reviews the records.

Biden added that he was “fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.”

The president and first lady Jill Biden were not at the home when it was searched. They were spending the weekend at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

It remains to be seen whether additional searches by federal officials of other locations might be conducted. Biden’s personal attorneys previously conducted a search of the Rehoboth Beach residence and said they did not find any official documents or classified records.

The Biden investigation has also complicated the Justice Department’s probe into Trump’s retention of classified documents and official records after he left office. The Justice Department says Trump took hundreds of records marked classified with him upon leaving the White House in early 2021 and resisted months of requests to return them to the government, and that it had to obtain a search warrant to retrieve them.

Haitian national in US sentenced for shipping weapons to homeland

DENVER, Colorado (CMC):

A Haitian national living in Denver, the capital of the state of Colorado, was sentenced earlier this month for having hidden firearms in cars that were being shipped to Haiti.

According to police reports, Peniel Olibris, 32, was indicted in July 2022 and later signed a plea agreement in September 2022, admitting guilt to one of the two contraband counts in the indictment.

Federal investigators said that Olibris purchased 77 firearms from gun retailers over a period of 16 months, packaged and concealed them in cars that he then drove to Florida.

From there, he shipped the cars to family members in Haiti. On arrival, some of the weapons were then sold.

According to the plea agreement in the case, a store manager at a Denver-based company, Westminister Firearms, in October 2019, reported that a suspicious customer entered the store.

Officers from the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives began investigating Olibris and found that he purchased 77 firearms from stores in the towns of Lakewood and Aurora between February 2019 and June 2020.

Further investigations revealed that Olibris shipped 13 cars to the French speaking CARICOM member state.

Documents from a shipping company revealed that Olibris did not apply for, or obtain the necessary license to export defence articles.

Investigators determined that he knowingly exported firearms, while also being aware that the exportation was contrary to the laws and regulations of the United States.

Cuba speeds up connection process for international fibre optic cable

HAVANA (CMC):

Cuba’s Ministry of Communications says work is now under way to establish a new international fibre optic cable, Arimao, which will bring with it an increase and diversification of the island’s international connectivity.

According to the ministry, the linking process and future tests are currently under way, after having concluded the physical laying of the cable across the sea, between Martinique and the province of Cienfuegos in central Cuba.

Telecommunications Director Alejandro Ruiz Douglas has stated that the terrestrial part remains to be completed, as well as the integration of the equipment and systems of the interconnected points.

In December 2022, Cuban Telecommunications Company SA and the French company Orange SA agreed to lay a submarine cable that would help cover Cuba’s needs in terms of Internet and broadband connection.

The 2,500-kilometre Arimao reached land on January 10 in Martinique, after starting its installation in the Tricontinental Port of Cienguegos in Cuba.

Brazil’s army chief fired in aftermath of capital uprising

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP):

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva fired the country’s army chief Saturday just days after the leftist leader openly said that some military members allowed the January 8 uprising in the capital by far-right protesters.

The official website of the Brazilian armed forces said General Julio Cesar de Arruda had been removed as head of the army. He was replaced by General Tomás Miguel Ribeiro Paiva, who was head of the Southeast Military Command.

Lula, who did not comment publicly on the firing, met with Defence Minister Jose Mucio, chief of staff Rui Costa and the new army commander in Brasilia at the end of the day.

Speaking to journalists afterward, Mucio said the January 8 riots had caused “a fracture in the level of trust” in the army’s top levels and the government decided a change was needed.

In recent weeks, Lula targeted the military with criticism after supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed through government buildings and destroyed public property in an attempt to keep Bolsonaro in office.

The uprising underlined the polarisation in Brazil between the left and the right.

Lula said several times in public that there were definitely people in the army who allowed the rioting to occur, though he never cited Arruda.

More than a thousand people were arrested on the day of the riot and the morning after the disturbance, which bore strong similarities to the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Congress by mobs who wanted to overturn former President Donald Trump’s election loss.