Jailbreak

A county jail inmate strangled a guard early Saturday and fled in the slain man's car, which was found abandoned about 30 miles away, authorities said.

It seemed a run-of-the-mill prison riot, though one that left 44 inmates beaten or knifed to death. In fact, the violence on Sunday in northern Mexico served as cover for a massive jailbreak by members of the country's deadliest criminal gang, the Zetas. Authorities on Monday revealed that 30 Zetas henchmen escaped from the maximum-security prison in Apodaca during the brawl - with the apparent complicity of guards and possibly other top officials. The deadly violence underscored the abysmal condition of Mexican prisons, which are woefully overcrowded, rife with corruption and prone to high-profile escapes.

Sikh prisoners strangled a guard with an unwound turban today during a foiled jailbreak in which one inmate was killed, Punjab state police said. The guard, Gurcharan Singh, was choked to death as eight prisoners attempted to escape from Nabha jail, about 50 miles southwest of Chandigarh, police said. The prisoners, all awaiting trial on charges of terrorism, used their turbans as ropes to get over the walls, but the escape was foiled when security forces posted outside opened fire.

Billboards for the new Russell Crowe action thriller "The Next Three Days" pose a provocative question: What if you had 72 hours to save everything you live for? Because Crowe presumably still cares about his acting career, might I suggest, "Run, Russell, run! Save yourself. " Forget Lara ( Elizabeth Banks), the wife and convicted murderer that you're hoping to break out of jail. I know you think she's innocent, but she has a really bad temper. She's a bottle blond, as prison reveals (the only thing about her that prison reveals)

Chihuahua state Atty. Gen. Jose Miller said authorities have located six more escaped convicts, and their arrest is expected soon, the Excelsior newspaper reported Friday. A total of 34 convicts escaped, four people were killed and eight others were injured during a jailbreak and riot Tuesday in Chihuahua, 225 miles south of El Paso, Tex. Twenty-six of the escapees were rounded up Tuesday and Wednesday, according to Gabriel Nahas, director of Chihuahua state's 14 prisons.

Amid sharply heightened security in advance of a major international conference, a suicide bomber Sunday killed at least three people and injured dozens on Kabul's eastern edge, Afghan officials said. The bombing came two days before a donor countries' gathering, expected to be the largest of its kind to take place in Afghanistan since the 1970s. The conference was to bring together senior diplomats and officials from at least 60 nations, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

A "commando unit" of 10 men broke into a prison in southern France early today, seized the warden and his daughter, and freed two Basque separatist prisoners before releasing the captives and fleeing, police said. Three members of the group, dressed in police uniforms, drove into the prison in Pau in two cars and a small truck at about 1 a.m. Seven others later entered the prison and joined the jailbreak operation, police said.

Heavily armed white commandos stormed a prison in the black tribal homeland of Ciskei early Friday and freed the former head of its security services, who had been jailed by the Ciskei president--his half-brother--after an attempted coup three years ago. Half an hour later, other commandos abducted the president's son, who commands an elite brigade of palace guard troops and who is seen as his father's preferred successor, outside a casino near King William's Town. The freed man--Gen.

Miss Gizzi gets that look on her face and says be quiet, everyone please be quiet, but how can you be quiet when there's just one day left, one tiny day, a few fidgety hours before the magic and freedom and endless twirling days of summer? Summer. The word is like the sweetest candy in your mouth.

It seemed a run-of-the-mill prison riot, though one that left 44 inmates beaten or knifed to death. In fact, the violence on Sunday in northern Mexico served as cover for a massive jailbreak by members of the country's deadliest criminal gang, the Zetas. Authorities on Monday revealed that 30 Zetas henchmen escaped from the maximum-security prison in Apodaca during the brawl - with the apparent complicity of guards and possibly other top officials. The deadly violence underscored the abysmal condition of Mexican prisons, which are woefully overcrowded, rife with corruption and prone to high-profile escapes.

Jailbreaking an Apple iPhone to add unauthorized apps or use an alternative cell provider is officially no longer a government offense. The Library of Congress, as part of a regular review of copyright rules, has revised a 1998 position that banned phone owners from bypassing technical locks on the devices. The process, nicknamed jailbreaking, has been used by iPhone owners to buck AT&T Inc.'s exclusivity as the cell carrier for the device. Apple Inc., which makes the iPhone, had urged that the rules be kept intact.

Amid sharply heightened security in advance of a major international conference, a suicide bomber Sunday killed at least three people and injured dozens on Kabul's eastern edge, Afghan officials said. The bombing came two days before a donor countries' gathering, expected to be the largest of its kind to take place in Afghanistan since the 1970s. The conference was to bring together senior diplomats and officials from at least 60 nations, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters have invaded villages just outside Afghanistan's second-largest city, forcing NATO and Afghan troops to rush in and frightened residents to flee. The Taliban assault Monday into the Arghandab district on the outskirts of Kandahar came three days after a Taliban attack on Kandahar's prison that freed 400 insurgent fighters. Those fighters, NATO acknowledged Monday, appear to be massing outside the city, the Taliban's former power base. The U.S.

More than 30 prisoners escaped from a jail in Nzerekore by using spoons to scoop a hole in the baked earth wall of their prison building, which had been softened by rain, prison authorities in the African nation said. "They used their sheets and shirts to make a rope to climb down the right wall of the jail," an official said.

Belgian police arrested 14 suspected extremists Friday on suspicion of plotting the prison break of a charismatic Al Qaeda operative serving a 10-year sentence for planning a suicide bombing of a NATO base. Amid the most urgent terrorism alert in Belgium in years, police rounded up a group that they suspect had intended to use guns and explosives to aid the escape of Nizar Trabelsi, one of the first extremists imprisoned in Europe after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ten prisoners shot their way out of a Honduran jail, killing an unarmed guard and carjacking at least two visitors in the parking lot, officials said. One of the escapees, a 24-year-old awaiting trial on homicide charges, was shot and killed near the prison. Another, a 26-year-old robbery suspect, was recaptured late Sunday, said a spokesman for Honduras' Public Safety Department. Officials were still searching for the other eight escapees from the Yoro penitentiary on Honduras' Caribbean

Re Pitchess Honor Rancho jailbreak, April 30: We would alleviate the danger of violent criminals escaping if we would not incarcerate nonviolent criminals, but rather, depending on the crime, either have them in halfway houses, rehabilitation programs and/or work programs that compensate the victims. We keep pouring money into the criminal justice system in ways that do not make sense. How can the truly dangerous criminals be guarded properly when they are not isolated from the criminals who are not dangerous, nor from each other?

Police continued an intense manhunt for more than 300 inmates who fled into scrubland and residential neighborhoods after the biggest jailbreak in Brazilian history, officials said. Nearly 200 police officers using sniffer dogs and helicopters searched the countryside in Sao Jose dos Campos near the Putim public detention center, whose inmates have not been convicted and are being held awaiting trial.

A Yemeni member of Al Qaeda who was among 23 convicts who escaped from a prison here this year has surrendered to authorities, security officials said Sunday. Khaled Mohammed Abdullah Batati turned himself in during the last two days, a security source said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

A Cook County Jail guard who said inmates had overpowered him during a weekend jailbreak has told investigators that he aided the plot in an attempt to influence the upcoming election for sheriff, according to sources close to the investigation. Hours after the last three of the six escaped inmates had been captured early Monday, investigators were questioning several more guards to determine if the account of the plot held up.