US professor killed in Athens: Suspect claims he 'did it all for' victim's ex-wife
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Perth Now
34 minutes ago
- Perth Now
Neo-Nazi leader jailed for plot to sabotage power grid
The founder of a neo-Nazi group has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, for plotting to sabotage Baltimore's power grid, the US Attorney's Office for Maryland says. Brandon Russell, 30, of Orlando, Florida, was found guilty at trial earlier in 2025 of conspiring to damage or destroy an energy facility. Senior US District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore handed Russell the maximum sentence for that offence. His convicted co-conspirator in the plot, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, 37, of Catonsville, Maryland, pleaded guilty and received an 18-year prison term in September 2024. Prosecutors said the conspiracy targeting several electrical substations around Baltimore, which is predominantly Black and ranks as Maryland's largest city, was aimed at furthering a white supremacist ideology that sought the collapse of American society. "Russell allowed hatred to drive him and his co-conspirator to plot a dangerous scheme that could have harmed thousands of people," US Attorney Kelly Hayes said in a statement announcing Thursday's sentencing. Evidence presented at trial showed that between November 2022 and his arrest in February 2023, Russell hatched a plan to simultaneously attack five substation transformers with gunfire in an attempt to cause a cascading city-wide power failure. Prosecutors said such an attack, had they been carried out, would have caused more than $US75 million ($A115 million) in damage. Russell's lawyer Ian J Goldstein had argued that Clendaniel was "the more culpable of the two defendants" and was seeking a lesser sentence than she received. "We will be filing an immediate appeal," Goldstein said in an email to the New York Times on Thursday. "There are significant appellate issues relating to what we believe to be the unlawful warrantless surveillance of Brandon Russell, a United States citizen protected by the Constitution." Reached by text message on a plane, Goldstein told Reuters he was accurately quoted by the Times. Russell founded a neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organisation that tracks US hate groups. He was previously sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to possession of an unregistered destruction device and the improper storage of explosive materials in connection with an alleged plot to attack power lines in Florida. A confidential informant helped lead the FBI back to Russell while he was still under supervised release from the Florida case, linking him to encrypted internet messages from a user known as "Homunculus" urging attacks on electrical substations, according to federal authorities.
Sky News AU
an hour ago
- Sky News AU
Criminal kingpin hunted: AG Pam Bondi offers $76 million for arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday announced a $50 million ($76 million AUD) reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The Justice Department and State Department announced the reward, up from $25 million. The United States has accused Maduro of aiding drug cartels and street gangs, as well as operating a corrupt and repressive regime. "Maduro uses foreign terrorist organizations like TdA (Tren de Aragua), Sinaloa and Cartel of the Suns (Cartel de Soles) to bring deadly violence to our country," Bondi said in a video message. "He is one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world and a threat to our national security." Cartel of the Suns is a Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of high-ranking Venezuelan officials. In March 2020, Maduro was charged in a federal indictment with narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. To date, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and his associates, Bondi said. The drugs are a primary source of income for Mexican and Venezuelan-based cartels, she said. Bondi noted that cocaine is often laced with fentanyl, resulting in thousands of American lives lost. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has frequently criticized Maduro, whom he said is not the South American nation's legitimate leader following a disputed 2024 election victory. "One year since dictator Nicolás Maduro defied the will of the Venezuelan people by baselessly declaring himself the winner, the United States remains firm in its unwavering support to Venezuela's restoration of democratic order and justice," Rubio said last month. "Maduro is not the President of Venezuela and his regime is not the legitimate government." "Maduro is the leader of the designated narco-terrorist organization Cartel de Los Soles, and he is responsible for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe," Rubio continued. "Maduro, currently indicted by our nation, has corrupted Venezuela's institutions to assist the cartel's criminal narco-trafficking scheme into the United States." In January, the State Department announced a $25 million reward for Muduro's arrest. The agency said Muduro has participated in a violent narco-terrorism conspiracy with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a designated foreign terrorist organization. In addition, Maduro negotiated multi-ton shipments of FARC-produced cocaine; directed the Cartel of the Suns to provide military-grade weapons to the FARC; coordinated with drug traffickers in Honduras and other countries to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking; and solicited assistance from FARC leadership in training an unsanctioned militia group that functioned, in essence, as an armed forces unit for the Cartel of the Suns. In addition to the charges against him, the Justice Department has seized more than $700 million of assets linked to Maduro, including two private jets and nine vehicles, Bondi said. Originally published as Criminal kingpin hunted: AG Pam Bondi offers $76 million for arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The bitter dispute that threatens to derail one of the year's best films
In a stunning decision, a Federal Court judge has ruled that Never Get Busted, a documentary screening this weekend at the Melbourne International Film Festival, must have its directorial credits changed or be prevented from screening at all. Justice Yaseen Shariff handed down his decision on Wednesday afternoon, just days after an interlocutory hearing in Sydney on Monday in which lawyers for Stephen McCallum and David Ngo (pronounced Go) each claimed their client was the rightful director of the film. Shariff had been urged by McCallum's team to order that the film be screened with him credited as principal director, or alternatively with no director attributed at all but only a note indicating 'the directing credits are the subject of court proceedings'. Ngo's team had insisted that to flag the legal proceedings would amount to commercial death for the film, as the screenings at MIFF represented its best chance of being sold. The gavel came down squarely in McCallum's favour. Shariff ruled that the documentary about American drug cop-turned-drug activist Barry Cooper could not 'be seen and heard in public or communicated to the public unless [it] both contains the credit 'Directed by Stephen McCallum' and does not contain the credit 'Directed by' [David Ngo].' His orders also prevent Ngo or anyone else associated with the feature from promoting it unless it is credited principally to McCallum and not to Ngo. Although Ngo can still be listed as a director of the film, and as its writer and one of its producers, the result is a devastating blow for him and his colleagues at Adelaide-based Projector Films. It also poses an almighty headache for MIFF, where the film is slated to screen on Friday night and Sunday, where Ngo had been scheduled to introduce the movie and appear in post-screening Q&A sessions. McCallum is not slated to appear at all. 'I am very pleased with the decision of the Federal Court today about the credits for the film,' McCallum said. 'The orders require that I get the 'Directed by' credit on the film and all promotions, and David Ngo should not. Those were the orders I asked for. But I acknowledge that the final hearing as to who is the principal director of the film will not be heard until mid-September.' Who is Barry Cooper? The battle over who made Never Get Busted began in December, ramped up at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and reached its zenith in the Federal Court in Sydney this week. It has been ugly, expensive and, to outsiders, arcane. But none of that should detract from the movie itself, which is utterly fascinating. It tells the story of one-time Texas policeman Barry Cooper, who discovered in the early 1990s that he had a flair for busting people for narcotics possession, marijuana in particular. He trained his own dog, became an absolute gun, and went on to join the state drug enforcement agency. But by the end of the decade, something had switched for Cooper. He realised he wasn't making society safer – he was an agent of terror, whose arrests often broke up families over small, recreational amounts of dope. He realised the police with whom he worked were frequently corrupt. He didn't spare himself from that judgment either. He quit the force, became a pastor in an 'X-rated church' that preached sex and free love, and met and fell in love with a stripper called Candi, whose appetite for marijuana was prodigious. And that was when Cooper had a full-scale Damascene conversion. He grew his hair, got a bunch of tattoos, took to the reefer … and in 2007 released a mail-order DVD, Never Get Busted Again, in which he shared his insider knowledge to help people evade arrest, and if arrested, escape conviction. It's a rollicking ride, and one that's already resonating with audiences; Never Get Busted won the grand jury prize for documentary feature at the Dances With Films festival in Los Angeles last month, where it had its world premiere ahead of its hometown debut this weekend. Credit where credit's due … or not It's obvious that something strange is afoot with this movie from the moment the opening credits start to roll. On the version I saw in late July, it begins with a title card saying 'director Stephen McCallum', followed by another that says 'written and directed by David Anthony Ngo'. A third credit describes it as 'a documentary by David Anthony Ngo & Erin Williams-Weir'. This is a highly unusual way of denoting authorship. To the outside world, it is merely confusing. But to those in the industry it suggests a hierarchy, at the apex of which sits David Ngo. And that, says Stephen McCallum, is fundamentally wrong. In a statement of claim lodged in the Federal Court last December, McCallum alleged that he had been denied his moral right to be credited as sole director of Never Get Busted, for which he had been hired in January 2020 by producers David Ngo and Daniel Joyce, of Adelaide-based Projector Films. McCallum claims he was effectively locked out of the editing process in late 2023, which is roughly when he became aware that the credits listed on had been changed from 'directed by Stephen McCallum' to 'directed by Stephen McCallum and David Ngo'. About that time, he also noticed that a sizzle reel on Vimeo had changed from 'directed by Stephen McCallum' to 'directed by David Ngo and Stephen McCallum'. Invited to Sundance, the 'rarest of air' McCallum was prompted to act in late 2024 when a version of Never Get Busted, which had originally been conceived as a four-part series, was invited to screen in the TV strand at Sundance in January 2025. Advance material listed the director as David Ngo. The show's landing page on the festival website listed no director at all among the credits, instead identifying Ngo and Williams-Weir as 'showrunners'. But body copy under the heading 'meet the artist' referred to the work as 'the directorial debut' of David Anthony Ngo. Nowhere did Stephen McCallum's name appear. For a rising Australian filmmaker, appearing at Sundance is the kind of leg-up that can launch a career from Struggletown to the big leagues. 'Sundance is the rarest air that there is in some ways for a filmmaker,' Ngo told me this week. 'It was certainly something I've dreamt about since I was a kid, watching Tarantino and Soderbergh and Robert Rodriguez and those sorts of films get launched there.' McCallum – who made his feature debut in 2017 with the bikie movie Outlaws (aka 1%) – no doubt dreamt about it too. And he wasn't prepared to let the opportunity of being there slip through his fingers. So when he realised he was being cut – or at the very least demoted – from the Never Get Busted story, he wrote to Sundance to object. He didn't get much joy, with the festival saying it didn't get involved in credit disputes, so he flew to Utah, bought himself a ticket to the screening and Q&A session, and stood in line in the snow with a friend waiting to get into the theatre. And that, the Federal Court heard on Monday, was when insult was added to injury. 'Security was called when he sought entry into Sundance Film Festival,' Justice Shariff noted in an 18th-floor courtroom in Sydney. 'He tried to resolve this, and when he sought entry into Sundance, he was told by the organisers, 'we're calling security, you have no right of entry'.' What does a doc director do anyway? Speaking to this masthead, Ngo conceded that McCallum had helmed some important elements of the film. 'Stephen was involved with the interview part of the process,' he said, referring to the five days in March 2020 when Cooper – who fled the US in fear for his life 13 years ago and now lives in the Philippines – sat down for a series of filmed sessions in St Kilda, just as Victoria went into lockdown. 'Stephen was there conducting all of the interviews with Barry.' Barry Cooper, though, has a slightly different take. 'I'll tell you what I know,' he told me over Zoom. 'David and Erin made that film. David directed it, produced it, wrote it, and Erin right there by his side, doing the research. They did the film. I don't see how anybody else could take credit, unless it's just for holding a camera.' McCallum, who is now directing a TV series, was unavailable to speak for this story. To the lay observer, this might appear to be a ridiculously petty squabble. But to the parties involved, it's both a matter of principle and of vital career importance. Both sides claim there is a risk of reputational damage in not being credited properly. For McCallum, the perception that he was hired to do a job but then deemed unworthy of a credit is enormously harmful. Ngo's side, meanwhile, claims that selling the film is now at risk (though the court was told on Monday that the film has not yet been sold anywhere, Pinnacle Films has already acquired the distribution rights in Australia). 'People have put in an enormous amount of money and support along the way to make this film come to fruition, and for someone to now be trying to rip that down for their own personal reasons, I think it's disgraceful,' Ngo said. The battle isn't yet over The list of documents produced in this case is incredibly long, on both sides. So long that Shariff was moved to comment upon it on Monday. 'It seems there's no love lost between the parties given the wealth of material that's been filed,' he said. Shariff urged both sides to consider a second stab at mediation (the first failed) rather than proceed to trial in September, where it is set down for three days (the judge was dubious it could actually be finished within that time frame). 'I shudder to think of the costs that have been incurred,' he noted. 'What did it [the movie] cost to finance, $950,000 or something?' Shariff indicated in his ruling on Wednesday that he was 'satisfied that Mr McCallum has established that there is a serious question to be tried as to whether he has an entitlement to relief, which I do not regard as weak but equally I cannot presently assess it to be strong'. If the case does go to trial next month, what will be at stake is not just who made the film, but the question of what directing a documentary actually entails. Is it writing and asking the questions of a subject while filming them, as even Ngo concedes McCallum did? Is it developing the idea, writing the treatment and script, lining up interviews and overseeing the edit, as Ngo insists he did? Or is the person who turns hundreds of hours of archival and interview material into a coherent narrative the one who deserves greatest credit – and if so, is that an editor (in this case Julian Hart, who also assembled The Tinder Swindler) or executive producers John Battsek (an Oscar winner for Searching For Sugarman) and Chris Smith (Tiger King), who gave extensive notes and fundamentally helped shape the final story? 'I personally believe that the fundamental role of a director is to be the lead storyteller,' Ngo said. 'That comes down to overseeing, particularly in documentary, the research, the writing, the creative decisions of who to interview, how to interview, gaining trust, access. 'I wrote every outline,' he continues. 'I wrote every paper card. I spent two years-plus working with the editors back and forth on calls … Stephen did zero of that.' There's a lot more at stake than just this film, too. The four-part series that was originally envisaged also exists, with a wealth of material and stories beyond what's in the feature. And Ngo and Williams-Weir have the rights to tell Cooper's story in a narrative feature form too, which is what they originally had in mind.
