Police: Teen arrested after housekeeper finds explosive device in room

Joshua Prater (photo via Maricopa County Sheriff's Office)

Joshua Prater, 18, was arrested after a housekeeper found a suspicious device while cleaning Prater's room. The woman brought the device to the Tempe, Arizona Fire Department, which called the city's bomb squad to examine it. The device turned out to be an active improvised explosive device (IED), azfamily.com reports.

"They had it X-rayed, they saw it was a valid IED," Tempe Police Sgt. Mike Pooley said, according to MyFoxPhoenix.com. "It was something that wasn't big, but could cause serious injuries and the death of someone."

Via azfamily.com:

"There was fuse that was coming out from the device which would be how you light it and it would cause the fuse to go in there and explode," Pooley said. "The bomb was ready to go. It was active. All it needed was the trigger."

The bomb squad dismantled the bomb and detectives searched Prater's home, where police said they found more materials used to make explosives.

Prater was charged with misconduct involving weapons and possessing a prohibited weapon.

A police report indicates Prater admitted to building the device, but said he did so around eight years ago and didn't know it was filled explosive powder. Prater's friends told azfamily.com that the senior is a straight "A" student who planned to attended the University of Arizona.

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Bangladeshi engineer arrested in building collapse

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladeshi police arrested the engineer who warned that a building housing garment factories was unsafe a day before it collapsed, killing at least 487 people.

Abdur Razzak Khan worked as the Rana Plaza owner's consultant when the owner illegally added three floors atop his five-story building, police official Ohiduzzaman said Friday. Khan was arrested Thursday on a charge of negligence.

Owner Mohammed Sohel Rana called Khan to inspect the building after it developed cracks on April 23, local media have reported. Khan appeared on a private television station saying after his inspection that he told Rana to evacuate the building because it was not safe.

Khan, a former engineer at Jahangirnagar University near Savar, said he drew attention of the government engineers for the building to be examined further.

Police ordered the building evacuated, but witnesses say Rana told people gathered outside the next morning that the building was safe and that garment factory managers told their workers to go inside. It collapsed hours later.

Police official Ohiduzzaman said Khan was arrested on charge of negligence.

The elected mayor of Savar municipality, Mohammad Refatullah, also has been suspended for alleged negligence in approving the design and layout of the doomed building, said Abu Alam, a top official of the local government ministry.

Alam said an official investigation has found that the mayor ignored rules in approving the design and layout. The mayor is from main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and the opposition BNP has criticized the suspension as politically motivated.

Authorities raised the confirmed death toll to 487 late Friday morning in the deadliest disaster to Bangladesh's $20 billion-a-year garment industry that supplies global retailers.

Workers were carefully using cranes to remove the concrete rubble.

"We are still proceeding cautiously so that we get the bodies intact," said Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hassan Suhwardy, the commander of the area's army garrison supervising the rescue operation.

The official number of missing was still at 149 though unofficial estimates are higher.

Rana was arrested earlier and is expected to be charged with negligence, illegal construction and forcing workers to join work, which are punishable by a maximum of seven years in jail. Authorities have not said if more serious crimes will be added.

The Bangladesh High Court has ordered the government to confiscate Rana's property and freeze the assets of the owners of the factories in Rana Plaza so the money can be used to pay the salaries of their workers.

Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels, Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms.

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Venezuela's Maduro says campaign sabotage suspects arrested

By Daniel Wallis and Marianna Parraga

CARACAS (Reuters) - Acting President Nicolas Maduro said on Friday that Venezuelan authorities have arrested several people suspected of plotting to sabotage one of his campaign rallies before an April 14 election by cutting the power.

Both sides have accused the other of dirty tricks during a bitter run-up to the vote to choose the successor to late socialist leader Hugo Chavez. Opinion polls give Maduro a double-digit lead over his opposition rival, Henrique Capriles.

"We've captured some of the saboteurs. ... One was caught red-handed," Maduro said in a televised meeting with commanders of the armed forces.

His late boss often dramatically unveiled alleged plots against his government, ranging from infrastructure sabotage to assassination plans.

"They were going to cut the electricity to the whole of Merida (state) while I was at the rally," Maduro added.

"Who is directing this war against our country? ... There are two options here: you are either for the fatherland or you're against it."

Maduro, who visited Merida on Wednesday, gave no other details about the arrests. He has ordered the military to tighten security at electricity installations.

Both sides are courting the military, which will play an important role in next Sunday's election by guarding the voting materials and polling centers.

Defense Minister Diego Molero has made statements pledging the loyalty of the armed forces to Maduro - something Capriles complains is unconstitutional.

Campaigning on the Caribbean island of Margarita this week, Capriles said it was the duty of the armed forces to protect the will of the people on April 14.

He frequently says soldiers suffer from many of the same daily problems that trouble all Venezuelans: high crime rates, inflation, and poor public services.

The vote in the South American OPEC member of 29 million people will decide not only the future of "Chavismo" socialism but also control of the world's biggest oil reserves and economic aid to a handful of left-leaning nations round the region.

The government held a ceremony at a military barracks on a Caracas hilltop to mark the exact one-month anniversary of Chavez's death from cancer. Soldiers played bugles and fired cannons in honor of the leader who was seen as a savior by millions but derided as an autocrat by his critics.

Maduro stood with top government officials and members of Chavez's family beside a marble sarcophagus where the former president's remains are encased.

FRAUD CLAIMS?

Capriles has also said that if he wins he will end "Cuban meddling" in the military. During his 14 years in power, Chavez forged close ties with communist-led Havana.

Capriles has demanded an explanation from the electoral authorities after the opposition said an audit of the voting system by both sides revealed the ruling Socialist Party had a confidential code to open 45,000 electronic polling machines.

Government officials say such allegations were laying the ground for the opposition to invent fraud claims after the vote, and that the code was only used for maintenance.

As the election nears, Capriles has gone on the attack against Maduro and his top officials, accusing them of being only "skin-deep" socialists who pay lip service to Chavez's ideology but are more interested in lining their pockets.

The government paints him as the puppet of a rich and venal Venezuelan elite and its "imperialist" friends in Washington.

On Friday, dozens of writers, artists and musicians attended an upbeat Capriles rally at a theater in a well-off Caracas neighborhood, taking the stage to sing, tell stories and read out messages calling for political change.

"I don't want this to end like this: a meeting between friends where we take some photos of each other and that's it," Capriles said, wearing a baseball cap and track suit top in the colors of the Venezuelan flag.

"I need this to go further. We have a historic opportunity."

(Additional reporting by Eyanir Chinea and Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Philip Barbara)

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N.Y. politicians arrested in alleged mayoral race bribe scheme

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Egypt: Christian arrested on molesting charge

ASSIUT, Egypt (AP) — An official says a Coptic Christian has been arrested on charges of molesting a neighbor child, adding to sectarian tensions in Egypt's south. The arrest came after Muslims set fire to the Copt's house.

The incident took place in Assiut province. Over the weekend, there were clashes between Christians and Muslims in another southern province. Christians charge they are targets of more frequent attacks since the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt last year.

In the Assiut incident, Chief Investigator Lt. Col. Mohamed Essami said Monday that the 30-year-old Copt, Karam Attallah, was accused by Muslims of molesting his 9-year old neighbor, Mohammed Abdel-Al. Angry Muslims ransacked and set fire to Attalah's house and threatened other Christian residents. Security and military forces intervened to stop the violence.

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Head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union arrested

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union was arrested at an airport outside Mexico City Tuesday for alleged embezzlement, with federal officials accusing her using union funds to pay for plastic surgery, rent a private plane and even pay her bill at Neiman Marcus.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said that Elba Esther Gordillo, who has led the 1.5 million-member National Union of Education Workers for 23 years, was detained in Toluca on charges that she embezzled about 2 billion pesos (about $160 million) from union funds.

Gordillo's arrest marks the downfall of a colorful woman long seen as a kingmaker and power-behind-the-scenes in Mexican politics. It comes a day after President Enrique Pena Nieto signed Mexico's most sweeping education reform in seven decades into law, seeking to change a system dominated by Gordillo in which teaching positions could be sold or inherited.

"We are looking at a case in which the funds of education workers have been illegally misused, for the benefit of several people, among them Elba Esther Gordillo," Murillo Karam said.

Prosecutors say the funds were drained from union accounts and later channeled through accounts in Switzerland and Lichtenstein. They said they had detected a whopping $2.7 million in purchases at Neiman Marcus using those funds, as well as $17,000 in U.S. plastic surgery bills and the purchase of a million-dollar home in San Diego.

"Between 2008 and 2012, there was systematic embezzlement of union accounts," Murillo Karam said.

Gordillo made little attempt to hide her extravagant, opulent lifestyle with designer clothing and accessories, a habit that drew heated criticism in a country where public

The overhaul of Mexico's education system was Pena Nieto's first major proposal since taking office Dec. 1 and was considered a political blow to Gordillo.

The plan moves much of the control of the education system to the federal government from the teachers' union. Gordillo was elected to another six-year term as union leader in October. She was the only candidate and there was not a single dissenting vote.

For years, she has beaten back attacks from union dissidents, political foes and journalists who have seen her as a symbol of Mexico's corrupt, old-style politics. Rivals have accused her of corruption, misuse of union funds and even a murder, but prosecutors who investigated never brought a charge against her.

She was expelled from Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party in 2006 for supporting other parties' candidates and the formation of her own New Alliance party.

Gordillo's arrest recalled the 1989 arrest of another once-feared union boss, Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, known as "La Quina." The longtime head of Mexico's powerful oil workers union, Hernandez Galicia was arrested during the first months of the new administration of then-President Carlos Salinas.

Like Gordillo, Hernandez Galicia's power was believed to represent a challenge to the president, and his arrest was interpreted as an assertion of the president's authority. He was freed from prison after Salinas de Gortari left office.

In 1988, he criticized Salinas' presidential candidacy and threatened an oil workers' strike if Salinas privatized any part of the government oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. On Jan. 10, 1989, — about a month after Salinas took office — soldiers used a bazooka to blow down the door of Hernandez' home in the Gulf Coast city of Ciudad Madero.

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