■ Israel
Gun ring busted
Israeli and Egyptian police have smashed a major gunrunning ring in which Egyptians and Israeli Bedouin Arabs smuggled weapons through the desert to Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank, Israeli police said Tuesday. The two-month police operation climaxed over the weekend with the arrest of the Egyptian ringleader, Mahmoud Sarawka, as he was digging up a cached shipment of guns on the Israeli side of the border, police told reporters. "He is the one who coordinated communications with the Israelis," Yoram Levy, head of the detective squad covering the southern Israel Negev desert, told Israel TV.
■ United States
Chef decapitated wife
A New York chef was sentenced on Tuesday to 15 years to life in prison for strangling his wife, sawing off her head and stuffing her body in a suitcase. Police say Oscar Pilamunga, 25, a chef at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan, became enraged in May last year when his wife, Beatrice Yually, 22, said she was leaving him for another man. He choked her, cut off her head with a handsaw, put her body in a suitcase and dumped it on a street, police said. Pilamunga said he tossed the head in a trash bin, though it has not been found. The victim sold ices on the street. The couple, who came from Ecuador, married when she was 13.
■ United States
Sept. 11 cars stolen
Hundreds of cars were destroyed when the World Trade Center collapsed. But several US Secret Service cars listed as "crushed," prosecutors said Tuesday, were actually stolen by the head of the agency's motor pool at 7 World Trade Center. The man, William Bennette, 52, confessed to giving cars to his mother and daughter after creating false paperwork for them, according to a complaint by the Secret Service unsealed Tuesday. Bennette pleaded not guilty Tuesday to theft of government property -- five cars worth a total of US$35,000.
■ United States
Jackson investigated again
Detectives are investigating a new allegation of child abuse against Michael Jackson involving a person who claims to have been victimized in the late 1980s, a police spokeswoman said. Jackson has pleaded innocent to child molestation charges involving another alleged victim in Santa Barbara County. Jackson attorney Benjamin Brafman said Tuesday he was unaware of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) investigation. "We have never been informed by the LAPD of any investigation that they are conducting of Michael Jackson," he said.
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