Indictments

A Peruvian lawyer says Venezuelan opposition leader Manuel Rosales has requested political asylum in Peru. Rosales is a leading opponent of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and has been charged with corruption in Venezuela. Rosales says his trial there would not be fair. Lawyer Javier Valle-Riestra said the asylum request for Rosales was made Tuesday. He said a group of Rosales' allies contacted him 10 days ago about the case.

Three California men were charged with running a $200-million Ponzi scheme involving thousands of investors, state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said Friday. The men used investors' money to finance their estates, jets and cars before their Ponzi scheme collapsed, causing some retired investors to lose their life savings, Brown said. The defendants are James Stanley Koenig, 57, of Redding; Gary T. Armitage, 59, of Healdsburg; and Jeffrey A. Guidi, 54, of Santa Rosa, according to the statement.

Federal authorities announced indictments Monday against the reputed leaders of Mexico's Gulf cartel and its paramilitary force, the Zetas, accusing them of trafficking tons of cocaine and marijuana from South America through the Texas-Mexico border. Three of the men are identified as the "triumvirate" that manages the far-flung enterprise, dividing its territories among themselves.

A federal grand jury in New York indicted a Denver man on a terrorism charge Thursday after federal authorities alleged that he and possibly three others had gone on a buying spree of bomb-making chemicals and were preparing an attack on U.S. soil. The one-count indictment alleges that Najibullah Zazi, 24, worked for more than a year on a plot to detonate a weapon of mass destruction. Justice Department documents did not name the alleged co-conspirators, but said that three other Denver-area residents had bought unusual amounts of chemicals from beauty-supply stores, including hydrogen peroxide and acetone, which can be used to make explosives.

Authorities announced charges Thursday against a Mexican gang that took Tijuana-style violence to the upscale suburbs of San Diego County, kidnapping, torturing and killing well-to-do residents, even after some families paid large ransoms. The gang, a rogue cell of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel, moved across the border in 2002 and posed as U.S. law enforcement, donning FBI and police uniforms and caps while snatching victims outside homes and public places, said San Diego County prosecutors.

Eric H. Holder Jr. is an attorney general of great integrity and deep experience, but he did neither President Obama nor the country a service Monday when he appointed a longtime federal prosecutor to investigate whether CIA interrogators should be criminally prosecuted for abusive interrogation of Al Qaeda prisoners. The president himself -- with the unqualified support of Leon Panetta, the new director of Central Intelligence -- has already ordered an end to the use of torture against suspected terrorists.

A San Bernardino man was charged Tuesday with five counts of murder for allegedly setting the massive 2003 Old fire that destroyed nearly a 1,000 homes. Rickie Lee Fowler, 28, who has been in state prison since 2003 for burglary, also was charged with arson and aggravated arson, authorities said. If convicted, he could face the death penalty. "The investigators in this case never gave up; there was tremendous follow-up," San Bernardino County Dist. Atty. Mike Ramos said at a news conference Tuesday.

A politically connected Beverly Hills financial firm and three current or former executives were indicted Thursday on charges that they defrauded government agencies across the country by rigging bids to invest the proceeds of municipal bond offerings. The nine-count indictment, issued by a federal grand jury and filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, accuses CDR Financial Products Inc. of steering business to investment firms that paid it kickbacks. Also charged in the indictment are the firm's owner and president, David Rubin; its vice president, Evan Andrew Zarefsky; and its former chief financial officer, Zevi Wolmark.

Three college football players were indicted Monday on charges of raping an unconscious woman during a party at a Tustin hotel in July. Santa Ana College football players Michael A. Clemmons, 19, of Tustin; Luster M. Lewis, 20, of Irvine; and John P. Foster, 22, of Seaside, are accused of sexually assaulting an 18-year-old woman while she was unconscious and intoxicated. Foster is being held on $100,000 bail. Clemmons and Lewis have posted bail in that amount and are free awaiting trial.

Temple City's mayor, former mayor and an aide were indicted Wednesday on charges of perjury and soliciting and receiving bribes from a developer in exchange for supporting his $75-million mall project. Mayor Judy Wong, former Mayor Cathe Wilson and Wilson's campaign treasurer, Scott Carwile, pleaded not guilty to the charges after the 21-count grand jury indictment was unsealed by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg.