■ UNITED STATES
Child traffickers arrested
Police arrested 389 people on child sex trafficking charges in a major sweep across several states, the New York Times reported yesterday. The five-day operation spanned 16 cities and involved hundreds of local, state and federal agencies dealing with missing children, many of them runaways, and identifying networks behind child trafficking for the sex trade, the report said. Twenty-one sexually exploited children were rescued from the street, it said. So far 433 exploited children have been rescued as a result of the initiative, the report quoted federal officials as saying.
■ UNITED STATES
Alleged terrorists arraigned
Three men accused of plotting to blow up New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport pleaded not guilty in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday after they were extradited from Trinidad. They were extradited overnight from Trinidad amid great secrecy and security in an operation that involved 15 FBI agents in addition to local law enforcement officers, the Trinidad Guardian said. Trinidadian Kareem Ibrahim, 62, and Guyanese citizens Abdul Kadir, 59, and Abdel Nur, 57, were flown by private jet from Trinidad. A fourth suspect, Russell de Freitas, was arrested in New York and is in jail pending trial.
■ UNITED STATES
Parents giving kids booze
More than 40 percent of the country’s 10.8 million underage drinkers get their alcohol free from adults — and many get it from their own parents, US health officials said yesterday. Up to 650,000 youths and underage adults were given alcoholic beverages by their parents or guardians in the past month, they said. The report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that 3.5 million underage drinkers each year abuse or are addicted to alcohol. The report is based on a nationwide survey of 158,000 people aged 12 to 20 who answered questions about behavior and social situations involved in underage drinking.
■ UNITED STATES
Virginia executes man
Virginia executed a 30-year-old man late on Wednesday for murdering a shopkeeper during a robbery 11 years ago, the 100th execution since it resumed the death penalty in 1976. Robert Yarbrough, 30, was executed by lethal injection at 9:28pm at Greensville prison in Jarratt, said Larry Traylor, director of communications at the Virginia Department of Corrections. “He did make a last statement. He said: ‘Tell my kids I love them and let’s get it over with. Make people happy, help celebrate the murder,’” Traylor said.
■ UNITED STATES
Stolen art case in court
A tale of betrayal, theft and a family feud has led to the arrest of a 61-year-old French woman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in art work from a storage facility in Chicago. But Michele Taburno-Vasarely was expected to argue in court today that the paintings by her father-in-law belonged to her. That is a question a French court has spent months trying to figure out. The story began when painter and op-art pioneer Viktor Vasarely donated his work to a foundation in France in 1971. The museum Vasarely designed flourished, but Vasarely’s family began to bicker over the management of the foundation. Over the course of the wrangling, nearly all of the 1,300 original works and 18,000 silkscreen prints disappeared. The feud has jumped to Chicago, where Taburno-Vasarely lives.
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