Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who authorities say heads the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, is believed to have shipped $6 billion to $19 billion in cocaine to the United States over the past eight years, Forbes says in the listing.
The magazine ranks him No. 41, ahead of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (No. 43), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (46), French President Nicolas Sarkozy (56) and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (67). Guzman also bested U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts (49) and entertainer Oprah Winfrey (45) on the list, released Wednesday.
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Forbes notes that Guzman’s fortune was self-made. His age is given as 52 or 54.
The Sinaloa Cartel, named after the Mexican Pacific Coast state where the gang was formed, is one of the most powerful drug-trafficking groups in the nation.
This takes the cake when it comes to calling in sick!
Blockbuster employee Aaron Siebers stabbed himself rather than go to work at a Sheridan Boulevard Blockbuster. Siebers could be facing false-reporting charges since he called in and claimed that “he’d been stabbed in Edgewater by “three skinheads or Hispanic males dressed in black” who tried to rob him. “Trouble is, a surveillance video from a business where this alleged attack supposedly took place didn’t show anything like what Siebers described…so he had to come clean.
Wow. F’n wow.
Sarah Palin, a liar? No way.
“She’s not telling the truth when she told ABC neither she nor her husband pressured me to fire Trooper Wooten,” said Walt Monegan, the Alaskan official whose dismissal by Sarah Palin is the focus of a state investigation known as “Troopergate”. “And she’s not telling the truth to the media about her reasons for firing me.
Palin is running on a platform of reform. Hmm… sounds like hypocrisy to me:
An Alaska judge warned Gov. Sarah Palin’s family against trying to get her then-brother-in-law fired, according to court records.
That warning came long before the controversy over her dismissal of the brother-in-law’s boss, the state’s public safety commissioner, records show.
Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, is battling allegations she and her advisers pressured Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire her sister’s husband, State Trooper Mike Wooten.
Palin’s sister, Molly McCann, and Wooten were in the process of getting a divorce when the judge hearing the couple’s case said McCann’s family appeared to be putting Wooten’s job at risk at a time when he would be required to pay child support.
“It appears for the world that Ms. McCann and her family have decided to take after the guy’s livelihood, that whatever who did what to whom has overridden good judgment,” Superior Court Judge John Suddock said during an October 2005 hearing. “Aesop told us not to slay the goose that lays the golden egg. For whatever reason, people are trying to slay the goose here, and it tends to diminish his earning capacity.”
At the time, Palin was a private citizen and would not become governor until 2006. In complaints filed with the state police, she and other relatives had accused Wooten of threatening her family during the divorce.
Suddock was in the process of settling the couple’s property and child-support arrangements in the 2005 hearing. The judge said his decision might have been different had Wooten’s continued employment with the state police been more certain.
“The plaintiff’s table has created a situation where that is a very fragile outcome,” he said.
Wooten’s union representative testified that the trooper was the subject of a “constant stream” of complaints from his ex-wife’s family. “If things don’t change, Mike’s career is in jeopardy,” the union rep said.
“My advice to Mike was to find another job,” said John Cyr, now executive director of the Public Safety Employees Association. “I think he needs, career-wise, to look for work elsewhere.”
CNN obtained audio recordings of the hearing from the court clerk’s office in Anchorage, Alaska. Roberta Erwin, the attorney who represented McCann, declined comment on the case Wednesday, and other representatives of the governor did not immediately return phone calls.
Wooten was suspended for five days in March 2006, after state police commanders determined he had used a Taser on his 10-year-old stepson “in a training capacity,” drove his patrol car while drinking beer and illegally shot a moose using his wife’s hunting permit.
In a February 2008 hearing over new custody issues, Wooten briefly complained that “disparagement” by his ex-wife’s family was continuing.
Complaints about Wooten from Palin and her family have been under scrutiny since Gov. Palin’s July firing of Monegan, whose duties included management of the state police force. After his dismissal, Monegan said he was fired because he refused to succumb to pressure from the governor’s office to fire Wooten, and his allegations have led to an investigation by the state Legislature.
Palin has denied any wrongdoing, saying the commissioner was removed because of disagreements over budget issues. Her attorneys have called Wooten a “rogue trooper” and said no one in the governor’s family knew of his suspension until after Monegan’s dismissal.
Spokesmen for Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign have said the legislative probe has become a “political circus” since McCain tapped Palin as his running mate in August.
Palin originally pledged to cooperate with the investigation and disclosed that members of her administration had contacted state police officials nearly two dozen times to discuss Wooten. But last week, she asked the state personnel board to conduct its own probe, and a string of witnesses has failed to show up at scheduled depositions with the investigator hired by the Legislature.
Last week, Cyr’s union filed its own complaint against Palin and top aides, accusing them of improperly attempting to use confidential information from Wooten’s personnel files against him. The McCain campaign says Wooten agreed to release his files during the divorce proceedings, and the information was in the public domain.
As a Canadian, I can say this without sounding non-patriotic, so here goes:
John McCain has used his military experience to advance his career.
John McCain has also used his military experience to blanket himself from any criticism…
You would think, however, that the military would be supporting him, and not Barack Obama, right? Look at the following stat on how military donations for Obama FAR outweigh those for McCain:
Here’s a simple fact: McCain does not represent the military, much the same way he does not represent most Americans (and Sarah Palin sure has hell does not represent women). McCain and Palin represent the most extreme right of Americans, those who want:
- Religion meddling in the State’s affairs
- War after war
Don’t take it from me, see the video here:
A woman who police believe to be Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known as the “D.C. Madam,” was found dead in Florida Thursday, according to Tarpon Springs police.
The body has not been positively identified.
“Detectives are investigating an apparent suicide of a (white female) that appears to be in her early 50s,” Tarpon Springs police said in a news release.
Suicide notes were found near the body in a small storage shed next to a mobile home, police said.
Palfrey, 52, was reportedly staying at the home of her mother, who owns the property where the body was found, police said.
What’s interesting is that the Democrats and Republicans are running over very different stances about GWB’s legacy. Democrats say it was a disaster (it was); Republicans pretend to see it as America’s golden era, or do they believe it?
Who cares. Outsiders see it as a disaster:
Historians will argue over whether George W. Bush is the worst president the United States has ever endured. But that is not the point. Five years after Bush’s ill-starred invasion of Iraq, three years after Hurricane Katrina and seven months into the unravelling of the U.S. financial system, the point is that the 43rd president of the United States – regardless of his ranking in the pantheon – is a unique and unmitigated disaster.
It’s about time. Barbaric, brutal and bad PR, frankly:
Iran’s chief judge has ordered that executions will no longer take place in public, the official IRNA news agency reported Wednesday.
Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, a moderate conservative cleric, also banned publishing pictures and broadcasting video footage of executions, the report said.
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Shahroudi has made other surprising decisions in the past. In 2004, he ordered a ban on the use of torture in obtaining confessions — a decision widely seen as the first public acknowledgment of the practice of torture in Iran.
He also opened the doors to Iran’s infamous Evin prison in 2006. That offered international media their first glimpse inside the compound, where torture, forced confessions and floggings have reportedly taken place.
Read more.
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