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'Canadian Psycho' in court for pre-trial hearing

Monday, 11 March 2013 17:22

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The most high-profile Canadian criminal case in years lands in a Montreal court on Monday as a former porn actor appears to face charges of slaying and dismembering a Chinese student, AFP reports.

Mexico Jalisco tourism official shot dead

Sunday, 10 March 2013 12:38

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A senior state official has been shot dead in central Mexico.

Jose de Jesus Gallegos was named as tourism minister in Jalisco's state government only 10 days ago. The Jalisco authorities said the attack had nothing to do with Mr Gallegos' current job.

Unconfirmed reports say four people have been detained.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has joined state governor Aristoteles Sandoval in condemning the attack.

Police said Mr Gallegos was attacked by gunmen as he drove through Zapopan, which is part of Guadalajara's metropolitan area.

Initial reports said two vehicles had blocked Mr Gallegos as he was driving on the border area between Zapopan and the state capital, Guadalajara.

Several gunmen opened fire when his car stopped.

"It was probably related to his business activities before he took the job as secretary of tourism," said Jalisco's government secretary, Arturo Zamora.

Federal authorities had been instructed to help local police solve the crime, which Mr Zamora said must not go unpunished.

Mr Gallegos had spent most of his life working in Mexico's tourism industry, but not in the public sector.

Jalisco, known for tequila and mariachi music, was recaptured by the president's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 2012 and the new state government took office on 1 March.

The killing happened a day before the president marks his first one 100 days in office.

Since his inauguration, on December 1st, there have been more than 3,150 violent deaths in Mexico.

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13-year-old assassin murdered in Mexico

Sunday, 10 March 2013 12:25

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A 13-year-old boy who had confessed to being an assassin for a Mexican drug cartel was among six people found murdered execution-style, authorities in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas have confirmed.

The boy, identified as Jose Armando Moreno Leos by officials, was arrested only three weeks ago by the Mexican Federal Police, according to Arturo Nahle Garcia, state's attorney in Zacatecas.

"After being detained, he confessed to authorities that he had participated in at least 10 homicides and that he was somebody who was good at shooting with a high-caliber weapon,"

Nahle Garcia said.

After his February arrest, the Federal Police released the boy into the custody of the Mexican Attorney General's Office, which later set him free in compliance with the law. The Mexican constitution prohibits the incarceration of anybody under the age of 14. The constitutional ban also applies to correctional facilities.

Mexico reports more than 26,000 missing

According to Nahle Garcia, Moreno Leos missed a court appearance on February 20. "Only his mother appeared before the judge to say that she had lost control of her son after he left the house at about age 11," the prosecutor, said.

The court appearance was to determine custody and measures to help the teenager leave behind a life of crime.

The boy's body was found Thursday alongside a highway in the municipality of Morelos.

The bodies of five other people, four females and one male, were also found at the same location. Officials say they had all been shot execution-style with high-caliber weapons.

Blogger vows to fight despite threats

"They all appeared to be young people, but we're still in the process of positively identifying the bodies," Nahle Garcia said.

This is not the first time a teenager has admitted being a hit man for organized crime in Mexico. In 2011, authorities arrested a 14-year-old boy, identified only as "El Ponchis" -- "The Cloak" -- who admitted on camera that he had brutally killed people. In a video obtained by CNN, he told a military interrogator that he had beheaded four people.

El Ponchis was found guilty and sentenced to three years in a correctional facility, the maximum allowed under Mexican law.

Speaking about the most recent incident, Nahle Garcia said he's not surprised. "It's really unfortunate, but we're seeing more and more young men who drop out of school and end up selling drugs on the streets," he said. "They all end up the same. They either end up in jail or the

cemetery."

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Venezuela Nicolas Maduro sworn in as acting president

Saturday, 09 March 2013 12:44

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Venezuela's former vice-president Nicolas Maduro has been sworn in as acting president hours after the state funeral of Hugo Chavez.

The ceremony was led by National Assembly Speaker Diosdado Cabello in the capital, Caracas.

Mr Chavez, who died on 5 March after a long battle with cancer, had named Mr Maduro as his chosen successor.

However, the main opposition coalition boycotted Mr Maduro's swearing-in, saying that it was unconstitutional.

It argues that - under the constitution - the speaker of the National Assembly should be the one to take over as acting president.

The opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, called the move fraudulent.

After swearing in Mr Maduro, Mr Cabello said: "Venezuela will follow the route to socialism."

As acting president, Mr Maduro is expected to call elections within 30 days.

Holding a copy of the Venezuelan constitution in his hand, Mr Maduro announced at the National Assembly: "I swear in the name of absolute loyalty to Comandante [commander] Hugo Chavez that we will obey and defend this Bolivarian Constitution with the hard hand of the free people."

Fireworks exploded above Caracas as Maduro was sworn in.

Earlier on Friday, Venezuelans paid an emotional farewell to Hugo Chavez.

Mr Maduro told mourners that Mr Chavez, who led Venezuela for 14 years, remained "undefeated, pure, living for all time".

The former vice-president began the funeral ceremony by presenting Mr Chavez's coffin with the sword of Simon Bolivar - the 19th-Century independence leader he claimed as his inspiration.

More than 30 world leaders attended the ceremony, including Cuban President Raul Castro, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.

A message was read out from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Mr Chavez, 58, was re-elected for a fourth term as president last October after saying he had recovered from his illness.

He named Mr Maduro as his preferred successor following the recurrence of his cancer.

Nicolas Maduro

Born in Caracas in 1962
Former bus driver who began political career as a trade unionist
Campaigned for Hugo Chavez's release from prison in 1994
Speaker of the National Assembly from 2005-2006
2006 becomes foreign minister
2012 appointed vice-president
Has long-standing ties with Cuba where he trained as a union organiser
Described as a wily operator and a skilled negotiator

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Hotel with corpse in water tank has notorious past

Thursday, 07 March 2013 18:20

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The Cecil Hotel's dark past earned it a spot on Los Angeles tours long before a woman's body was found inside its rooftop water tank.

"It's the place where serial killers stay," said tour guide Richard Schave.

Schave and his wife, Kim Cooper, conduct a "true crime and oddities" tour they call "Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice."

The new mystery surrounding Elisa Lam's death will be added to Cooper's spiel during the tour stops at the Cecil Hotel, she said.

Cooper and Schave have made it their job to compile details on those who have killed or been killed while staying at the Cecil.

The killers

The most famous on their list are serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.

Hotel guests: Discovery 'sickening'

Ramirez, known as the "Nightstalker," now resides on California's death row, but in 1985 he was living on the Cecil's top floor in a $14 a night room, Cooper said.

The Cecil, filled then with hundreds of transients living in the cheap rooms, was a good place for Ramirez to go unnoticed as he killed 13 women, Schave said. He was "just dumping his bloody clothes in the Dumpster at the end of his evening and going in the back entrance."

Jack Unterweger worked as a journalist covering Los Angeles crime for an Austrian magazine in 1991 when he moved into the Cecil.

"We believe he was living at the Cecil in homage to Ramirez," Schave said.

He is blamed with killing three prostitutes in Los Angeles while a guest at the Cecil.

The killed

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Cecil had a reputation as a place where people would kill themselves by jumping out upper-floor windows, Cooper said. "It's just what people do when they are at the end of their rope," she said.

Helen Gurnee, in her 50s, leaped from a seventh floor window, landing on the Cecil Hotel marquee on October 22, 1954, Cooper said.

Julia Moore jumped from her eighth floor room window on February 11, 1962, she said. Moore left behind a bus ticket from St Louis, 59 cents and an Illinois bank account book showing a balance of $1,800.

Pauline Otton, 27, jumped from a ninth floor window after an argument with her estranged husband on October 12, 1962, Cooper said. Otton landed on George Gianinni, 65, who was walking on the sidewalk 90 feet below. Both were killed instantly.

Not everyone on Cooper's list committed suicide.

"Pigeon Goldie" Osgood, a retired telephone operator, was found dead in her ransacked room on June 4, 1964, Cooper said. Osgood, known for protecting and feeding the pigeons at nearby Pershing Square, was stabbed, strangled and raped. The crime has not been solved.

Not an ordinary hotel

Schave and Cooper have theories about why the Cecil's past has been so sordid.

It was built in the 1920s as a hotel "for businessmen to come into town and spend a night or two," Cooper said.

But it was soon upstaged by nicer hotels in a better part of town, she said. When the Great

Depression hit in the 1930s, it became more of a transient hotel. Eventually, it transitioned into a single room occupancy business, known as an SRO. Long-term tenants rented individual rooms and shared bathrooms with neighboring residents.

"This was just a place where people who were really down on their luck were going," Schave said. "These hotels are filled with people who are at the edge of being integrated in society."

During the 1970s, '80s and '90s, hundreds of people who were "down on their luck" called the

Cecil home, he said. "They were all hustling to make ends meet."

"It's not like that any more, of course," Cooper said.

New owners converted three of the floors back to hotel rooms around 2007, but most of the building remains SRO, Schave said.

Another section serves as a hostel that is marketed toward European tourists, he said

It was not clear if Lam was staying in one of the hotel rooms, which offer more privacy, or the hostel.

Repeated calls by CNN to the Cecil Hotel management were not returned Wednesday and Thursday.

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Doctor accused of severing babies' spines with scissors in 'house of horrors'

Thursday, 07 March 2013 17:11

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The Hippocratic Oath, when properly translated, doesn't actually say, "First, do no harm." But since the time of the ancient Greeks, that's become the mantra for every medical professional.

Not so with Dr. Kermit Gosnell, prosecutors contend.

The 72-year-old Philadephia physician is accused of running a "house of horrors" where he performed illegal abortions past the 24-week limit prescribed by law. He used scissors, authorities say, to sever the spinal cords of newborns who emerged from their mothers still alive.

On Monday, jury selection begins in Gosnell's trial. If he's convicted, prosecutors want him put to death.

"A doctor who cuts into the necks severing the spinal cords of living, breathing babies, who would survive with proper medical attention, is committing murder under the law," Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said.

The charges

Gosnell faces eight counts of murder: for the deaths of seven babies, and in the case of a 41-year-old woman who died of an anesthetic overdose during a second-trimester abortion.

The babies were born alive in the sixth, seventh and eighth months of pregnancy -- but their spinal cords were severed with scissors, Williams said.

"It was a house of horrors beyond any type of definition or explanation I can humbly try to give," Williams told CNN in January 2011, shortly after Gosnell was charged.

"And it's very sad for the women that were there, that were subjected to such horrific and barbaric -- I would say medical treatment, but it wasn't medical -- treatment."

Several other people who worked in the west Philadelphia medical office have already pleaded guilty to related charges.

A judge involved in the case said in 2011 that one of those employees was expected to testify against Gosnell.

Gosnell's attorney said last year he hoped there wasn't a "rush to judgment" in the case.

"Dr. Gosnell should enjoy the same presumption of innocence anyone in this country, you or me, should get if we were charged with a crime," said attorney William J. Brennan.

The practice

The practice, called the Women's Medical Society, served mostly low-income minority women for years. Gosnell is not a board-certified obstetrician or gynecologist, Williams said.

Originally, he said, the clinic used another doctor as a consultant so it could receive a license to perform abortions in 1979.

"The doctor gained a reputation. People far and wide knew that he performed abortions at any time," Williams said.

In a 2010 interview with the Philadelphia Daily News, Gosnell said he was "a positive force in the community."

The reporter who interviewed him, David Gambacorta, told CNN that Gosnell believed he was helping an under-served population in his West Philadelphia neighborhood.

The scene

When authorities searched Gosnell's office, they found bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses scattered throughout the building.

Jars containing the severed feet of babies lined a shelf. Furniture and equipment was blood-stained, dusty and broken.

"My grasp of the English language doesn't really allow me to fully describe how horrific this clinic was -- rotting bodies, fetal remains, the smell of urine throughout, blood-stained."

Williams described one of the alleged infant deaths.

"The baby had been born and was on a cold steel table and murdered by using -- there's no medical basis for snipping or taking scissors and putting them into the neck and cutting, severing the spinal cord. It's just homicide. It's just murder," Williams told CNN.

A grand jury investigation determined that health and licensing officials had received repeated reports about Gosnell's practices for two decades, but had taken no action, Williams said.

According to Philly.Com, a joint website of the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Gosnell was back in court last Thursday, to mull a possible plea bargain.

It's unclear what the outcome of the meeting was, because of a gag order imposed on attorneys and people involved in the case.

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The Legend gone and his Legacy remains - Death of Hugo Chavez

Tuesday, 05 March 2013 23:41

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Caracas: From life, Hugo Chavez has moved into history. A living legend for millions of poor in his country and a divisive figure in global politics, the Venezuelan president died on Tuesday. He was 58.

Newborn Dies After Parents Killed in Hit-Run Accident

Monday, 04 March 2013 14:49

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The premature baby who initially survived after its parents were struck by a car and killed while they were on their way to a New York hospital has died, a family neighbor said.

Isaac Abraham, a community leader in Brooklyn and a neighbor of the dead couple, confirmed the death of the baby this morning. The baby died from injuries overnight at New York's Bellevue Hospital. The baby, who was about 3 pounds, sustained brain and other internal injuries, Abraham said.

Nachman and Raizy Glauber, both 21, were killed early Sunday morning in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a tight-knit neighborhood made up of primarily Orthodox Jews. Emergency workers at the scene of the accident managed to rush Raizy Glauber to a nearby hospital where doctors performed a cesarean section to deliver the baby, according to ABC News station WABC.

Police are searching for the driver of the BMW and a female passenger, who fled on foot after the accident. Police say they believe they know the identity of the driver, but have not been able to locate the person. Detectives are showing his photo to possible witnesses, WABC reported.

Police have charged a woman who had co-signed the vehicle's lease with insurance fraud.

The woman has been charged with allowing a third party to use the vehicle without notifying the insurance company.

Glauber, who was six months pregnant with the couple's first child, was not feeling well Saturday night. Her husband called a car service and they were en route to the hospital when the accident occurred after midnight Sunday morning.

The engine of the livery car ended up in the backseat, where the pregnant woman was sitting before she was ejected, Isaac Abraham told WABC. Abraham is a neighbor of Raizy Glauber's parents who lives two blocks from where the crash happened.

Glauber's body was found under a tractor trailer. Nachman Glauber was pinned in the car, and emergency workers had to cut off the roof to get him out, witnesses told The Associated Press. Both were pronounced dead at the hospital.

The driver of the livery cab, Pedro Nunez Delacruz, was also taken to the hospital and was released after being treated for minor injuries.

"I feel very sorry for that beautiful family," Delacruz told WABC.

Jewish law calls for burial of the dead as soon as possible, and hours after their deaths, the Glaubers were mourned by at least 1,000 people, many with anger toward the two people in the BMW.

"Give yourself up. Make the pain a little easier, and at least we'll know you're not a coward," Abraham said.

A succession of men and women delivered eulogies in Yiddish, sobbing as they spoke into a microphone about the young couple.

"I will never forget you, my daughter," said Yitzchok Silberstein, Raizy Glauber's father, according to WABC.

The Glaubers were married about a year ago, according to friends and family.

"Just two amazing people, two lovely people," Nachman Glauber's cousin Sarah Gluck told WABC. "We lost two lovely people."

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Workers to finish destroying Florida home where sinkhole devoured man

Monday, 04 March 2013 13:43

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As a giant red crane plunged into the Florida home where a massive sinkhole swallowed a man whole, pieces of the family's lives were pushed into public view.

Walls with picture frames on them came crashing down. Baby toys and clothes on hangers were raked across the ground.

A woman wept as an official handed her a framed portrait. Others lovingly salvaged military awards, a pink teddy bear and an American flag that hung near the house's front door. The family

Bible bore claw marks from the boom crane's bucket.

Workers started demolishing the blue, one-story home as carefully as they could Sunday to try to salvage belongings for the family of the victim, Jeff Bush.

The delicate process will continue Monday, and crews will clear the debris so engineers can get a better look at the sinkhole and figure out the best way to fill it.

But Bush, 36, probably won't be recovered. His body remains buried somewhere in the massive sinkhole that stretches 20 feet wide and more than 50 feet deep.

Authorities made the heartbreaking decision to stop the search for Bush after his odds of survival became abundantly clear.

"We just have not been able to locate Mr. Bush, and so for that reason, the rescue effort is being discontinued," Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill told reporters Saturday. "At this point, it's really not possible to recover the body."

A deafening noise

The family's nightmare began Thursday night, just as everyone was about to go to sleep.

A deafening noise shattered the peace in the house in the Tampa suburb of Seffner.

Jeremy Bush heard his brother scream and ran toward Jeff's bedroom.

"Everything was gone. My brother's bed, my brother's dresser, my brother's TV. My brother was gone," he told CNN's AC360.

Jeremy Bush jumped in the hole and frantically shoveled away rubble. But as the house's floor further collapsed, a sheriff's deputy pulled him to safety as his brother remained trapped below.

"I couldn't get him out," Jeremy Bush said, weeping. "I tried so hard. I tried everything I could."

Jeremy Bush and four others, including a 2-year-old child, were uninjured.

'One step at a time'

After the search for Jeff Bush ended, attention turned to razing the house, which officials warned could collapse at any time.

The demolition crew worked for only a few hours Sunday to give the family time to sift through their belongings, Merrill said.

Once officials get a better view of the sinkhole, "they can get a sense of what the next step is," Merrill, the county administrator, said Sunday.

"This is one step at a time, because we really don't know what we're dealing with here," he said.

A major problem in Florida

Sinkholes are a common problem in the state, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Florida lies on bedrock made of limestone or other carbonate rock that can be eaten away by acidic groundwater, forming voids that collapse when the rock can no longer support the weight of what's above it.

Hillsborough County, on Florida's west coast, is part of an area known as "sinkhole alley" that accounts for two thirds of the sinkhole-related insurance claims in the state, according to a

Florida state Senate Insurance and Banking Committee report.

'So many memories'

The crater that suddenly caved under the Bush house devastated the family that had lived there for generations.

After officials called off the search for his brother's body, Jeremy Bush told Bay News 9 the family was despondent.

"It's not just I lost my brother. There are so many memories in this house," he told the CNN affiliate. "My wife and her brother and the whole family.

"Every holiday, we gathered at this house. Her grandmother passed away. All the stuff to remember her by is in this house, and we're losing it all. You can't replace that. You can't replace a life being gone."

(CNN)

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Venezuela slams media 'lies' about Chavez

Saturday, 02 March 2013 10:48

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The Venezuelan government lashed out Friday at a wave of rumors about the fate of ailing President Hugo Chavez, branding it "psychological warfare" aimed at destabilizing the nation, AFP reports.

Three years after ordeal Aesha Mohammadzai has a new face and life

Wednesday, 27 February 2013 21:12

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A young Afghan woman whose nose and ears were cut off after she fled an abusive marriage has revealed the results of the reconstructive surgery to rebuild her face.

Aesha Mohammadzai became famous across the world after her picture appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

The 19-year-old girl became a symbol of the oppression of women in Afghanistan after fleeing the war-torn country. Three years later and she has a new face and life.

As part of the life-changing treatment, her forehead has ballooned and dark, drooping flesh now covers where her nose once was - before her husband sliced it off.

Doctors placed an inflatable silicone shell under the skin of her forehead and gradually filled it with fluid in order to expand her skin and provide them with extra tissue for her new nose.

They have also taken tissue from her forearm and transplanted it to her face to form the inner lining and lower part of the nose.

Aesha's wounds are healing, but she lives with the scars of an ordeal few could imagine. Speaking for the first time on television to ITV's Daybreak, she told the story behind that photograph.

She said: 'Every day I was abused by my husband and his family. Mentally and physically. Then one day it became unbearable so I ran away.

'They caught me and put me in jail for five months. When I came out the judge sent me back to my husband. That night they took me to the mountains.

'They tied my hands and my feet. They said my punishment was to cut my nose and ears. And then they started to do it.'

Aesha, who has never attended school or celebrated her birthday, now lives in America. Helped out of Afghanistan by a charity, she now has a new family who care for her as one of their own.

Aesha said she is 'happy' with her new nose and wants her experience to tell a new story, this time one of hope.

She said: 'I want to tell all women who are suffering abuse to be strong. Never give up and don’t lose hope.'

Aesha’s story was first told in August 2010 by Time magazine, who published a harrowing cover photo of her - horrifying people around the world and symbolising the oppression of Afghan women.

When she was 12, her father promised her in marriage to a Taliban fighter to pay a debt.

She was handed over to his family who abused her and forced her to sleep in the stable with the animals.

When Aesha was 12, her father promised her in marriage to a Taliban fighter to pay a debt. She was handed over to his family who abused her and forced her to sleep in the stable with the animals.

The UN estimates that nearly 90 per cent of Afghanistan's women suffer from some sort of domestic abuse.

But when Aesha attempted to flee, she was caught and her nose and ears were hacked off by her husband as punishment. Left for dead in the mountains, she crawled to her grandfather's house.

'When they cut off my nose and ears, I passed out. In the middle of the night it felt like there was cold water in my nose.

'I opened my eyes and I couldn't even see because of all the blood,' she told CNN reporter Atia Abawi.

Left for dead in the mountains, she crawled to her grandfather's house and her father managed to get her to an American medical facility, where medics cared for her for ten weeks.

They then transported Aesha to a secret shelter in Kabul and in August 2010, she was flown to the U.S. by the Grossman Burn Foundation to stay with a host family.

She was taken in by a charity in New York called Women for Afghan Women who supported her and helped pay for her eduction.

But Aesha soon became unhappy and her behaviour gave rise to concern. During one outburst during, she threw herself to the floor and slammed her head against the ground, grabbing at her hair and biting her fingers.

Her primary guardian figure at the centre Esther Hyneman, who witnessed the tantrum said no one was able to prevent her from inflicting the injuries and they had to call 911 for help, Ms Hyneman said during the CNN interview.

Nowadays Aesha still prefers watching Bollywood films rather than American TV.

She arrived in Maryland 16 months after she came to the U.S. and had spent time in California and New York.

Aesha was treated at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in Bethesda, which was arranged for her by the office of outgoing U.S. Representative Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland.

Couple Mati and Jamila Arsala have been caring for Aesha in Maryland, and they have a 15-year-old daughter in Mina Ahmadzai, who has become good friends with her adopted older sister.

Photo: Bibi Aisha (pictured with a prosthetic nose in Beverly Hills, California, in October 2010) moved to the U.S. after fleeing Afghanistan

AESHA'S NOSE RECONSTRUCTION

Photo: Doctors put a silicone shell under skin in her forehead to expand tissue that was then used to build her new nose

In December, Aesha underwent a fourth operation, lasting eight hours, at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland.

Surgeons said the procedure marks the halfway stage in their work and they can complete the reconstruction this year.

During the operation, doctors placed an inflatable silicone shell under the skin of her forehead and gradually filled it with fluid in order to expand her skin and provide them with extra tissue for her new nose.

They have also taken tissue from her forearm and transplanted it to her face to form the inner lining and lower part of the nose.

Previous patients who have had this type of reconstructive surgery have also had tissue transplanted tissue from the forehead - because it is the same tone, unlike other areas of the body.

Louisa James, the Daybreak reporter who interviewed Aesha, said she had now completed the major surgery she required, and she would now undergo a series of minor nose operations to modify it and make it look as normal as possible.

She is then expected to undergo surgery on her ears.

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Mexico union leader Elba Esther Gordillo arreste

Wednesday, 27 February 2013 15:31

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Union head Elba Esther Gordillo, known as Mexico's most powerful woman, has been arrested on corruption charges.

Ms Gordillo, who runs the 1.5 million-member Mexican teachers' union, is alleged to have embezzled more than $156m from union funds.

No-one from her legal team has responded to the allegations, but in the past she has denied any wrongdoing.

Her arrest came a day after the government enacted major reforms to the education system.

President Enrique Pena Nieto signed the sweeping reforms, which seek to change a system dominated by Ms Gordillo's union in which teaching positions could be sold or inherited.

"We are looking at a case in which the funds of education workers have been illegally misused, for the benefit of several people, among them Elba Esther Gordillo," Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said.

His office alleges Ms Gordillo, 68, used the money on property, including in the US, private planes and plastic surgery.

The BBC's Will Grant in Mexico City says that Ms Gordillo is one of the highest profile figures in Mexican political life, known simply as "la maestra" or "the teacher".

For more than 20 years she has led the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE).

Political player

With an estimated 1.5 million members, the SNTE is considered Latin America's most powerful union.

Ms Gordillo has held real influence over governments and individual presidents by persuading her union members to vote as a single bloc, our correspondent says.

The teachers were also responsible for manning polling stations on election day.

Her union is very wealthy, and can count on an annual budget of tens of millions of dollars.

It is on claims that she mishandled those funds, allegedly diverting money intended for the union's coffers to her personal accounts, that she has now been arrested.

The education reforms appeared set to weaken the SNTE, which has largely controlled access to the profession.

The union has argued that reforms could lead to massive lay-offs.

Critics also say the changes could signal the start of the privatisation of education in Mexico.

Mexico's education system currently ranks bottom in a list of members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The reforms will require teachers to undergo regular assessments, something that has previously never taken place inside Mexico's primary and secondary schools.

Many teachers in Mexico are said to have a very low standard of education themselves.

Another change is intended to tackle the problem of absent or even deceased teachers receiving wages.

Ms Gordillo has been an outspoken critic of the current education minister and his approach to the reforms.

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Zumba Prostitution Trial: Explicit Photos From Computer Would 'Horrify' Jury, Defense Claims

Tuesday, 26 February 2013 20:24

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The judge in the trial of an insurance agent accused of helping a fitness instructor use her Zumba studio as a front for prostitution is giving jurors a respite from testimony to address several motions, including a request to toss the remaining 13 counts.

Justice Nancy Mills must decide whether the defendant's rights trump a state law that bars release of investigators' personnel files, and she must decide how much porn jurors will see.

There's also a motion to dismiss remaining counts against Mark Strong Sr., whose lawyer have accused prosecutors of missing deadlines for turning over discovery documents in the high-profile case.

Those issues were to be discussed Tuesday morning.

Testimony on Monday focused largely on 86 items seized from Strong's Thomaston home and business in July, about five months after police raided Wright's home, studio and office in Kennebunk on Valentine's Day last year.

Saco Police Detective Frederick Williams, who reviewed seized hard drives, said Strong deleted all the email from his office computer on Feb. 15, 2012, a day after investigators raided Wrights studio, office and home.

He also said he found spreadsheets, tax documents and snapshots from Skype video chats on Strong's computer and on computer equipment belonging to fitness instructor Alex Wright, who's accused of using her Zumba studio as a front for prostitution.

Jurors weren't told of sexually explicit images on Strong's computer that prosecutors contend show he knew about the prostitution. The defense said showing the panel the more than 500 photos would be prejudicial.

"It's going to horrify some of these people to the point (Strong) is not going to be able to get a fair verdict," defense lawyer Daniel Lilley told the judge while the jury was out of earshot.

The prostitution scandal attracted international attention after it was reported that Wright had ledgers indicating she made $150,000 over 18 months and had more than 150 clients, some of them prominent.

Both Strong and Wright have pleaded not guilty. Wright will be tried later for dozens of charges that include prostitution and tax violations.

(Huffington)

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