List of All Articles with Tag 'world'

Boeing Co. is at risk of missing delivery targets for its best-selling 737 Max model after discovering that

It was a Sunday night and a young couple were sitting together in a car at a park near Los Angeles. What happened next was something straight out of a horror movie – except this was real life. A gunman suddenly opened fire on the couple before pulling 19-year-old Andrea Vazquez from the car. Vazquez’s boyfriend escaped the gunfire but returned to the vehicle to find she had been kidnapped. After an intensive one-day search, the harrowing incident culminated in despair as Vazquez’s body was found in a field and a suspect – who has no known connection to the couple – was arrested for her murder. Heartbroken relatives described Vazquez as a “beautiful person” as they have been left struggling to understand what happened and why. Here’s everything we know so far about her abduction and death: A chilling abduction The horror unfolded just after midnight on Sunday 20 August when Vazquez and her boyfriend were sitting in a car at Penn Park in Whittier, police said. Her boyfriend told police that an armed suspect then approached their vehicle and “fired a weapon in their direction,” police said. Vazquez’s boyfriend fled the scene and when he returned he discovered blood near his car and his girlfriend missing. Vazquez has been kidnapped from the scene. Officers were alerted to a shooting and kidnapping incident located at the “parking stalls area” at 13950 Penn Street in Whittier. In a statement following her kidnapping, police said that Vazquez was last seen wearing a black long-sleeve crop top, khaki pants, and black low-top Converse shoes. “She has a tattoo of ‘Edlyn’ on the back of the neck, Aries constellation on the top of her right hand and a belly button piercing,” the statement read. Vasquez’s sister, Edlyn, with whom she lives in Los Angeles, put out a plea on Facebook for the public’s help in finding her. “My sister was shot and kidnapped at Penn Park,” she wrote. “Her last location shows Moreno Valley. We don’t know her condition. Please I am begging, if anyone has information, or the heart to share this, please please contact me and repost.” Another relative Emily Martinez told Fox News Digital that Vasquez’s phone last pinged in the Moreno Valley area. “We’re scared for her, but I’m hopeful, very hopeful that we’ll find her,” she said. “We just want to know she’s OK.” Tragic discovery Following the horror kidnapping, a huge search was launched to try to find the missing 19-year-old. That search ended in tragedy on Monday 21 August when, at around 11.50pm local time, authorities combing the area of Moreno Valley made a gruesome discovery. Police said that the teen’s body had been found in a vegetation field off Alessandro Boulevard and Merwin Street in Moreno Valley. It is currently unclear how she died or the nature of the scene where her body was found. The investigation remains ongoing but police said that it appears that the attack on Vazquez and her boyfriend was “randomly targeted”. The ‘random’ suspect On Tuesday 22 August, police announced an update on the case as a suspect was taken into custody. Detectives from the Whittier Police Department and the LADA Community Violence Reduction Team arrested Gabriel Esparza, a 20-year-old man and Whittier resident, in connection with the kidnapping and shooting of Vazquez. Mr Esparza was taken into custody at his workplace in the city of Lakewood and booked into the Whittier Police Department jail on charges of murder and kidnapping. He is being held without bail. During his arrest, officers recovered a weapon and Esparza’s White Toyota Tacoma truck – which are believed to have been used at the time of the shooting. “This relentless investigation and yesterday’s arrest were made possible by the dedication and commitment of our investigations division, with the assistance of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Downey Police Department, La Habra Police Department and the LADA Investigations Bureau Community Violence Reduction Team,” police said in a statement. The case will be presented to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office on Wednesday 23 August. Suspect pleads not guilty in first court appearance Gabriel Sean Esparza, the 20-year-old son of a Los Angeles County fire captain, has been charged with multiple felonies including murder, kidnapping and attempted rape of 19-year-old Andrea Vazquez. Mr Esparza entered a not-guilty plea when he made his first court appearance for the brutal slaying on Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutors have formally filed seven charges against the suspect, according to a criminal complaint submitted in Los Angeles Superior Court. These also include attempted murder, kidnapping to commit another crime, assault with intent to commit a felony, and two counts of attempted forcible rape. Tributes pour in Vasquez attended Fullerton College and was a fashion design student as well as an employee at a shopping mall in Cerritos. Ms Martinez told Fox News Digital before her body was found that the 19-year-old had also been working with her sister Edlyn, who is a lash artist. She described Vazquez as the “funniest person ever” and a “beautiful person” who was liked by everyone who met her. Read More Andrea Vazquez – latest: Gabriel Esparza arrested for murder after kidnapping teen on date with boyfriend Andrea Vazquez: California woman shot and kidnapped from boyfriend’s car found dead

A missing California teen has been found dead following a violent kidnapping, officials in the Whittier Police Department said. The remains of 19-year-old Andrea Vazquez were found in a vegetation field in Moreno Valley. Vazquez was randomly kidnapped over the weekend while she was in a car with her boyfriend in a Los Angeles park. While Vazquez and her boyfriend were sitting in the parked car at Penn Park, an armed man approached them and began shooting. Vazquez’s boyfriend fled the scene and when he returned, he “discovered blood” near it and Vazquez was gone. “At this time, it appears that Andrea Vazquez and male companion were randomly targeted by the suspect at Penn Park,” police said in a statement. Detectives combed the area of Moreno Valley and made the gruesome discovery on Monday evening. Gabriel Sean Esparza, 20, has been arrested in connection with the crime. Mr Esparza is facing charges of murder and kidnapping and is currently being held without bail. Read More Andrea Vasquez: California woman shot and kidnapped from boyfriend’s car found dead

A woman who fatally shoved an 87-year-old Broadway singing coach onto a Manhattan sidewalk avoided a long prison sentence by pleading guilty to manslaughter on Wednesday. Lauren Pazienza, 28, cried in court as she admitted randomly attacking Barbara Maier Gustern on March 10, 2022. The singing coach died five days later.

It is a terminally violent twist – perhaps to have been expected, but staggering nevertheless – to one of the most astonishing episodes in recent history. Yevgeny Prigozhin, who attempted a coup against Vladimir Putin, is reported to have been killed in a plane crash in Russia. If the chief of the mercenary group, Wagner, was indeed among the ten passengers said to have died when the private jet went down in the Tver oblast near Moscow, then the immediate suspicion would be that this was assassination by the Kremlin. In the course of 24 hours of armed mutiny, two months to the day ago, Putin had accused Prigozhin of treachery and then pardoned him. The two men even had tea together soon afterwards. Now, it seems, retribution may have come in the form of a dish served cold. According to Rosavista, the Russian aviation authority, Prigozhin was one of the names on passenger manifest of the Embraer jet RA-02795. According to some reports, Dmitry Utkin, one of the founder members of the group whose call sign, Wagner, became its name, is also among the dead. Officials in Moscow say that all the passengers, as well as the crew of three, have perished. A number of Wagner-linked social media channels claimed the jet had been shot down by the national air defence system. Others claimed there was a bomb on board. The destruction of the plane took place 24 hours after the news came that General Sergei Surovoki, who had previously been in charge of the Ukraine mission, had been fired from his post as the head of country’s aerospace forces. Surovokin, who earned the sobriquet "General Armageddon" for his brutal methods in the Syria conflict, was known to have good relations with Prigozhin and shared his antipathy towards some senior figures in the security hierarchy, including defence minister Sergei Shoigu, over the conduct of the Ukraine war. There were claims following the Wagner mutiny that Surovikin had been detained for questioning about his possible complicity. The Kremlin denied this, maintaining the general was merely “ resting”. A video had been posted of Prigozhin earlier in the week purporting to be of him in Africa declaring that Wagner was hard at work there and that made “Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa more free.” Africa, where Wagner has long acted as the Kremlin’s private army and established extensive lucrative networks, seemed to have been one place where the group and the Russian government could work together. Prigozhin had also appeared on the sidelines of a summit hosted for African leaders by Putin in St Petersburg. It was the first sighting of the Wagner boss since the mutiny. It had been assumed that Prigozhin would be exiled to Belarus in the deal brokered by the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, to end Wagner’s march on Moscow, and his presence at the meeting was seen by some Kremlin watchers to indicate that he was too powerful to be sidelined. If Prigozhin has been killed, then it would appear that was an image his enemies were prepared to publicise while plotting to remove him from the scene permanently. Wagner had been heavily engaged in Ukraine, capturing the city of Bakhmut, more a symbolic than a strategic prize, after bloody siege and assaults lasting months, Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior advisor Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted regarding Prigozhin’s possible demise “…we have to wait for the fog of war to clear. However, it is clear that Putin does not forgive anyone for his own beastly fear - the very one that nullified him in June 2023 – and was waiting for the moment.” Ukrainian forces are taking part in a prolonged counteroffensive to reclaim territory, including Bakhmut, in the Donbas. An infantry captain – talking about Prigozhin’s fate and a spate of recent Ukrainian drone attacks inside Russia – during a break in the town of Druzhkivka, mused: “Perhaps Russian air defence mistook his private plane for a large enemy drone. That would be a wonderful end for such a man, wouldn’t it?” Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary Wigs, gold bars and pictures of severed heads: Inside Wagner boss’s lavish mansion UK Government closely monitoring reports of Wagner chief’s death in plane crash Joe Biden reacts to Wagner boss Prigozhin’s reported death in plane crash

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The first video message Yevgeny Prigozhin shared since the end of his failed mutiny against Vladimir Putin, may have ended up being his last – with reports that he was on the passenger list of a jet that crashed about 60 miles from Moscow, apparently killing all on board. In the video, Mr Prigozhin was seen toting an assault rifle and wearing military fatigues, with his comments suggesting the clip was shot in an unnamed African country. The Wagner boss said during the clip that he is recruiting “strongmen” and said the group will “fulfil the tasks that were set” by the Russian government. The video was shared on Telegram channels affiliated with the Wagner group, as Mr Prigozhin said the mercenary group was “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free”. “The temperature is +50 (122 degrees Fahrenheit) – everything as we like. The Wagner PMC [private military company] makes Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa – more free. Justice and happiness – for the African people, we’re making life a nightmare for Isis and al-Qaeda and other bandits,” he said in the video. In the background of the video, pickup trucks and other people dressed in fatigues could be seen. A telephone number was displayed as well for those who wanted to join the group. The Independent could not verify the date and exact location of the video. According to the Russian social media channels affiliated with the mercenary leader, the Wagner leader is recruiting fighters to work in the continent. He is inviting investors from Russia to put money in the Central African Republic through Russian House, a cultural centre in the African nation’s capital, they suggested. Mr Prigozhin was last seen in a video in July shot in Belarus shortly after his attempt to stir mutiny against the Kremlin failed, sparking speculation that he was taking refuge in the Russian ally nation as part of a deal to broker peace. He was later photographed on the sidelines of a Russia-Africa summit in the Russian city of St Petersburg. There is no official announcement of his current whereabouts. But one of the most prominent sites is the Central African Republic, where Wagner’s troops for hire have been active and accused of committing gross human rights abuses. Until June this year, the Wagner leader and his mercenary fighters, comprising mostly prison convicts, spent months fiercely fighting Ukrainian soldiers in the eastern region, mostly Bakhmut. Mr Prigozhin staunchly criticised Russia’s military performance and the top brass of the Russian defence ministry before he called for an armed uprising on 23 June to oust the defence minister and marched from Ukraine toward Moscow with his mercenaries. The hours-long mutiny ended after a deal was brokered by Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, following which Mr Prigozhin agreed to end his rebellion in exchange for amnesty for him and his fighters and permission to relocate to Belarus. Before moving to Belarus, Wagner handed over its weapons to the Russian military, part of efforts by Russian authorities to defuse the threat posed by the mercenaries. Read More ‘Wagner is victim of its own brand name’: How much of a threat does mercenary group pose in Belarus? Wagner mercenaries issue a chilling message on Poland’s doorstep: ‘We are here’ Belarus begins military drills near its border with Poland and Lithuania as tensions heighten Wagner tracker: Charting Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary group through the Ukraine war Drones, military confusion and cracks in Putin’s authority: Ukraine’s push to sow discord in Russia’s ranks

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Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed among passengers on a private jet that crashed as it

Getty Images helps us remember Megan Rapinoe's USWNt career with some of the most iconic photos of this soccer legend.

Authorities in Kansas say they have found “items of interest” in several cold case investigations during a search of “BTK killer” Dennis Rader’s former home. Osage County Sheriff Eddie Virden told Fox News that investigators had dug up Rader’s former property in Park City over two days this week after linking him to unsolved missing person cases. “Through the investigation, we developed information of some possible trophies of Dennis Rader’s, and we followed up on those leads and worked with Park City,” Mr Virden told the news site. He said officers “did a dig in the area, and we did recover some items of interest”. Rader is serving 10 consecutive life terms after his 2005 confession to the brutal murders of 10 women in the Wichita area between 1974 and 1991. Investigators have reportedly linked Rader to the unsolved disappearance of Cythia “Cyndi” Dawn Kinney, a 16-year-old cheerleader who disappeared from a laundromat in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, in 1976. Rader’s daughter Kerri Rawson said in a press release that she had been assisting law enforcement with an investigation into Kinney’s disappearance and several other unsolved murders. Ms Rawson said she had recently learned of Kinney’s cold case, and the separate unsolved murder of Shawna Garber, whose remains were found near Pineville, Missouri, in 1990. She said she contacted the law enforcement in Missouri and after being put in touch with the Osage County Sheriff’s Office she was flown to Kansas to work as a volunteer in both cases. As part of that work, she said she visited her father twice at the El Dorado Correctional Facility where he is incarcerated. “Beyond these two cases that have been released publicly, I’m not at liberty to discuss other possible missing persons and unsolved murder cases that are being actively investigated as possibly committed by my father, nor can I comment on my direct assistance in the investigations,” Ms Rawson said. “Multiple law enforcement agencies are seeking long-sought answers in decades-old missing persons and unsolved murder cases in the tri-state area of Kansa, Missouri and Oklahoma. And possibly locations that extend beyond the tri-state area,” she added. Ms Rawson also revealed that Rader had this year been offered immunity to confess to any violent crimes he may have committed between the early 1960s and his arrest in 2005. She called on local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to form a BTK killer special task force “to fund and power these vital ongoing tasks”. Read More BTK killer makes chilling comparisons between himself and Gilgo Beach murders suspect Rex Heuermann Bryan Kohberger defence hints at alibi in Idaho murders - but won’t reveal what it is as deadline passes Four students stabbed to death, a weeks-long manhunt but no motive: What we know about the Idaho murders