MAN CHARGED WITH RAPE HAD BEEN DEPORTED 10 TIMES
wichita » A Mexican man accused of raping a 13-year-old girl on a Greyhound bus that traveled through Kansas had been deported 10 times and voluntarily removed from the U.S. another nine times since 2003, records obtained by The Associated Press show.
Three U.S. Republican senators — including Kansas’ Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts — demanded this month that the Department of Homeland Security provide immigration records for 38-year-old Tomas Martinez-Maldonado, who is charged with a felony in the alleged Sept. 27 attack aboard a bus in Geary County. He is being held in the Geary County jail in Junction City, which is about 120 miles west of Kansas City.
Syria’s cease-fire holding despite minor violations.
A nationwide Syrian ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey that went into effect at midnight held Friday despite minor violations, marking a potential breakthrough in a conflict that has disregarded highlevel peace initiatives for over five years.
Former Okla. sheriff will not face more charges
B tulsa, okla.» Prosecutors said Friday that they won’t file new criminal charges against a former Oklahoma sheriff who has faced scrutiny since a reserve deputy fatally shot an unarmed black man last year.
Former Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz already had been sentenced in July to a one-year suspended term on misdemeanor charges stemming from a separate grand jury investigation. Robert Bates, the former volunteer deputy who shot Eric Harris, has been sentenced to four years in prison for second-degree manslaughter.
Coast Guard suspends search for missing plane with six aboard
B cleveland» The Coast Guard on Friday suspended its search for an airplane that was carrying a beverage distribution company executive and five other people when it vanished over Lake Erie shortly after takeoff from the city’s lakeshore airport.
The Coast Guard said it would step aside to allow Cleveland to begin recovery efforts of the plane and the victims.
John T. Fleming, the chief executive of a Columbus-based beverage distribution company, was piloting the plane, which was carrying his wife, their teenage sons, a neighbor and the neighbor’s daughter. The plane suddenly lost altitude about 2 miles out during a scheduled return trip to Columbus, according to a flight-tracking service.
Official says power won’t be fully back at casino for days B The
las vegas» busy New Year’s holiday weekend is likely to come and go before a Rio casino hotel tower in Las Vegas fully recovers from a power outage that prompted a 900-room evacuation, officials said Friday.
Brazilian police say Greek ambassador killed by wife’s lover B
rio de janeiro» Greece’s ambassador to the country was killed by his wife’s lover under her orders, police said Friday. They have detained three suspects.
Ambassador Kyriakos Amiridis went missing on Monday in Nova Iguacu, a city just north of Rio, where the ambassador had been vacationing. The couple lived most of the time in Brasilia.
On Friday, police investigator Evaristo Pontes Magalhaes said that 29year-old police officer Sergio Gomes Moreira Filho had confessed to killing Amiridis, alleging self-defense.
He said Filho was having an affair with the ambassador’s 40-year-old wife, Francoise Amiridis.
Filho’s cousin, Eduardo de Melo, acknowledged