Manitoba-based ephedrine smuggling ring

Manitoba-based ephedrine smuggling ring were ordered yesterday to stand trial May 28 in Buffalo, N.Y. Hugh Stevens and Sandra Jacobi were caught up with dozens of others by RCMP and the Drug Enforcement Agency in the alleged smuggling scheme which was based in Winnipeg and Lac Du Bonnet.Stevens, 61, and Jacobi, 50, had originally agreed to plea bargains, but those deals fell apart over the last six months. Both will stand trial by jury. Stevens has been in custody since his arrest in September 2004.In Winnipeg, a preliminary hearing for two suspects continues at the Law Courts Building.The case centres on how bulk amounts of ephedrine ended up in a California meth lab controlled by the Mexican Mafia. The ephedrine was legally imported into Canada through a Thunder Bay, Ont., company, but allegedly diverted onto the black market. Ephedrine is banned in the U.S. Its sale is regulated in Canada by Health Canada. Two of the eight Canadian defendants are no longer alive to be prosecuted. Lac du Bonnet resident Rodger Bruneau Sr. was charged as being the ring's kingpin, but he died in his sleep of an accidental drug overdose about three years ago. A tenth defendant, Emmanuel (Manny) Barbagianis, was shot to death in Winnipeg two years ago. His slaying remains unsolved. DEA agents, RCMP and Winnipeg police arrested about 90 people in the smuggling scheme, called Operation Brain Drain in the U.S. All suspects arrested in the U.S. except Stevens and Jacobi have agreed to plea deals -- reduced sentences in exchange for their testimony against Stevens and Jacobi.It's alleged Bruneau and Stevens recruited other people to use cars, trucks and horse trailers to move hundreds of pounds of ephedrine from Canada into the U.S. through the Niagara-Buffalo region. In July 2004, police found 195 kilograms of ephedrine hidden with a horse in a trailer that they had followed from a racetrack outside Hamilton, Ont., across the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge.

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Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expressi

Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Timms, a resident of the San Diego community of South Park, refused to take off a black leather vest with the motorcycle club's “death's head” insignia when he reported for jury duty. He's a big burly man, 5 feet 8 inches, 250 pounds, with a full beard and auburn-colored, shoulder-length hair. At 7:45 a.m., Timms' stance got him booted from the San Diego Superior Court's Hall of Justice by sheriff's deputies, along with another Hells Angel who also refused to remove his insignia vest. Nine hours later, representatives of both the Superior Court and the sheriff's department apologized to Timms and club member Mick Rush for “misunderstanding” an order issued April 24 by Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser. Rush also had been reporting for jury duty. “It all boils down to a misunderstanding of Judge Fraser'

Rashawn and Deon Beneby Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip

''They may have been into drugs but they didn't do anything to harm anybody,'' said their aunt, Cheryl Watkins. ``It was cold-blooded murder to lay them out like that.''Miami-Dade County's 80th and 81st homicides of 2008: Rashawn and Deon Beneby, brothers and suspects in a string of violent robberies, shot dead Thursday afternoon next to the Liberty City middle school they once attended. ''It's cold-blooded, outright killing out there -- and we're not even in the summer yet,'' said the Rev. Richard Dunn, a community activist who lives three blocks away. Witnesses said a group of men were gathered outside an apartment at the Annie Coleman Gardens housing project when the shooting started.Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip next to the chain-link fence that separates the community from the baseball field at Charles R. Drew Middle School, 1801 NW 60th St. Rashawn was executed -- shot in the head an

Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow

Rivi was, for a time, the hit-man of choice for Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow. Griselda was the grande dame of the Miami cocaine business, a Colombian mother of three, of impoverished origins, who slaughtered and intimidated her way to the top of a billion-dollar industry. She is a central character in this movie, the most deadly figure in a story in which the bodies are stacked like dominos. Conspicuous by her absence as an interviewee, she is one of the few key survivors of the era whom the film-makers were unable to coax before the lens. “Her release was imminent at that point, as was her deportation. I think she has changed her mind since, because we have been reapproached,” Corben says. contract killer Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, the director of Cocaine Cowboys Billy Corben says: “He told me where there is a body buried in Miami, by the Florida turnpike. It’s all developed now, malls and condominiums. He knows where all the bodies are buried. We told the police. I think he told the

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