A political cartoonist for the Spanish-language counterpart of the Miami Herald stormed the newspaper building on Friday morning dressed in an FBI shirt and armed with a fake semiautomatic weapon, issued threats against the paper's editor and others and held officers at bay for three hours before surrendering, police said.
The cartoonist, Jose Varela, 50, was charged with three counts of aggravated assault, the police said. No one was hurt.
Varela, a Cuban-born freelancer who until February had worked as a staff cartoonist at the paper, El Nuevo Herald, claimed to be upset about biased coverage of Cuban-Americans in both El Nuevo Herald and its sister paper, the Miami Herald, said Miami Police Chief John Timoney.
truth be told
"One of his demands was he wanted that the truth be told," he said.
The newspapers, which are owned by the McClatchy Co and published in the same building, have been engulfed in Cuban-American politics and intrigue of late.
Last month, the Miami Herald broke the story that some reporters for El Nuevo Herald were also working for and being paid by Radio and TV Marti, the government's anti-Castro propaganda radio station broadcast to Cuba. Relations between the two papers, often tense, became outright hostile, and the publisher of both papers resigned.
According to the Herald's Web site, Varela, a Cuban immigrant, demanded the resignations of its executive editor, Tom Fiedler, and El Nuevo Herald's executive editor, Humberto Castello, accusing him of backing Fiedler.
This week, Fiedler accused an op-ed contributor for El Nuevo Herald of "blood libel" for suggesting that a Herald reporter who broke the Marti story had ties to Cuba's spy agency. In an editor's note, Castello called the spy claim unfounded.
But Varela was also apparently having personal problems. El Nuevo Herald's Web site said he had recently divorced and told colleagues last week that he had gotten a submachine gun and a sawed-off shotgun because he felt unsafe in his new home in Jupiter, a wealthy enclave near West Palm Beach.
not the first time
It was not the first time that a gunman had caused havoc at the Herald's boxy tan headquarters on Biscayne Bay. Last year, a former city commissioner facing corruption charges killed himself in the building's lobby after an anguished phone call to a Herald columnist.
The columnist was later fired after it was revealed he had taped the conversation.
Around 11am on Friday, the police said, Varela came to the building, was allowed in by the security desk since he was a frequent visitor, and, once at El Nuevo Herald's offices on the sixth floor, demanded to speak to Castello.
"He threw a bunch of papers in the air," said Alejandra Chaparro, a reporter for El Nuevo Herald. "He was demanding that the editor has to take responsibility."
Told that Castello was not in the building, Varela declared, "I am the publisher until Humberto Castello gets here," the Herald reported on its Web site.
A building security manager, Arturo Le Fleur, told the Herald that Varela pointed the gun facsimile at him.
Police officers quickly evacuated the building and isolated Varela on the sixth floor. Two hours of negotiations ensued. Detective Serafin Ordonez, a police negotiator, said he talked with Varela about his art, his family and a shoulder injury to try to calm him down.
Varela also gave a rambling interview to a Nuevo Herald reporter during the standoff. "Somebody has to pay," Varela said.
"Somebody has to do it because this is going be like cleaning excrement. So somebody has to pay and that will be Castello," he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia