Last month, a Queens man was grabbed off the street, thrown into an SUV, and then taken to a warehouse where he was burned with acid and beaten, while his kidnappers tried to get $3 million from the man's relatives in Ecuador in exchange for a safe release.

After being held for 32 days, Pedro Portugal was finally rescued on Monday after NYPD officers posing as building inspectors raided the Long Island City warehouse, saving the 52-year-old businessman.

"This is a terrifying story of a businessman allegedly being forcibly abducted off the streets of Queens County in broad daylight and being beaten and held against his will for more than a month while his alleged kidnappers demanded $3 million from relatives in Ecuador for his safe return,” said Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney.

Portugal, a Queens resident who runs an accounting business in Jackson Heights, is not incredibly wealthy. Authorities are mystified as to why he was the target of the kidnapping, because while his family owns property in Ecuador, they were never in a position to pay $3 million.

The NYPD worked in close coordination with the State Department and Ecuadorean police to find Portugal, who was almost constantly abused by his captors. One exception to the abuse was during his birthday, when the kidnappers brought him a cake.

The captors fled the building when the NYPD arrived, and one man who jumped out a back window onto a roof was later captured.

[Photo: CBS]

Check out Obama in that cheesy suit!

TIME is running the never-before-seen photos of Barack Obama's prom as part of their coverage of prom season.

That champagne behind them is most definitely going to be popped because a prom in Hawaii in the seventies was probably an amazingly drunken and fun time and maybe where we peaked as a society.

[Photos courtesy of TIME]

In a speech today, President Obama will announce that he is moving control of drone strikes away from the CIA and to the military, and discuss a possible ending to the global and costly "War on Terror" that has defined United States foreign policy since 2001.

In the first major speech on foreign policy of his second term, Obama will announce an intention to limit drone strikes in countries that are not "overt war zones" like Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. These are countries where the United States has a strong military presence, and has been engaged in covert wars fought by elite forces with virtually no public scrutiny or government oversight.

A new "classified" policy (because no matter the policy, we're just never going to see the thing) will only allow drone strikes on individuals who are posing “a continuing, imminent threat to Americans” and cannot be captured. This will stop instances of the CIA agreeing to use drone strikes to kill enemies of other countries in exchange for the opportunity to fly drones with impunity.

Still, the shift does not mean Obama is backing away from the use of drone strikes during the War on Terror. In the speech, he will outline "why the use of drone strikes is necessary, legal and just, while addressing the various issues raised by our use of targeted action.”

And while Obama will discuss a point at which Al-Qaeda will be decimated to the point of no longer presenting a threat to Americans or American interests, he does not see this global conflict ending for another ten to twenty years.

Obama will also renew his efforts to close Guantanamo Bay, and will appoint a high-level State Department official to oversee that effort, which will include the possibility of sending some prisoners back to Yemen (a country that had previously not been considered a possible recipient of prisoners).

Ibragim Todashev, the first player in Wednesday's strange day of terrorism and then racism (ahead of Obama's big talk on terrorism today) was apparently about to sign a confession to the 2011 triple murder in Massachusetts when he "just went crazy."

One FBI agent received minor abrasions from the knife attack, which was stopped when Todashev was shot in the head. The FBI is saying this was only moments before Todashev was going to sign a confession that would have implicated both him and suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the 2011 triple homicide.

Reniya Manukyan, the estranged wife of Todashev, said her husband "had nothing to hide" and was cooperating fully with the FBI over the course of several weeks as they repeatedly interviewed him.

A roommate of Todashev, Khusen Taramov, told reporters that Todashev had even canceled a flight home to his native Chechnya so he could speak with investigators.

"He didn't flip out," said Taramov. "I think something went wrong there. I think they just shot him. He didn't do anything. I know him. He just wanted everything to be over."

Manukyan's wife stressed Todashev's distance from Tsarnaev. "They weren't close to each other. They weren't friends or anything," she said.

Todashev has a history of violence, however. He had been recently arrested for aggravated battery.

“The agent, two Mass­achusetts State Police troopers, and other law enforcement personnel were interviewing (Todashev) ... when a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual,” the FBI said after the attack. “... The individual was killed and the agent sustained non-life threatening 
injuries.”

The FBI has sent a team of investigators to look into the fatal shooting. The investigators will look into just how a man who was being interviewed for several hours came to possess a knife, and why, even with several officers (and other unidentified law enforcement personnel) in the room with a suspected murderer with terrorist connections, lethal force was used to stop a knife attack.

Nor does the Democratic party have much coherence anymore. Of course, since the eighties, being a centrist-democrat has evolved into something that resembles a 1950s republican (closing down poor black schools for "budget reasons" is not that far a cry from separate but equal).

I think these men are conservatives through and through (Garcetti less so, but let's see how he governs), and don't adhere to a traditional big city Democratic framework that was the status quo for fifty years (union support and belief in the welfare state).

I was just pointing out a trend, not making an argument for these people being bad Democrats (Bloomberg's an independent, but that's just a primary tactic). In fact, I think they exemplify just where the Democratic party is right now, and how far right it's gone, even on the municipal level.

God, that felt so good to get off my chest. Because for years (years!) I was ashamed of this horrible habit from my infancy, but now I know it really all goes back to then. My terrible narrow-mindedness when it comes to conspiracy theories, my disbelief in a storm-creating machine operated by the government, my hatred of freedom from the powers that be.

It all came from me repressing my shit-play when I was a child. Thank you. Thank you LucyTheLooter for setting me free. I feel like a great weight has been lifted. More precisely, I feel like a great weight has now been evacuated. But I cannot play. I will not play with it, because I am free. I AM FREE. I am "MAX RIVLIN-NADSLER"!

Also, my money's on Bill Thompson, but Quinn's currently leading (although she is fading, fast).

City Councilman Eric Garcetti won the race for mayor of Los Angeles last night, defeating his opponent, city controller Wendy Greuel, by a margin of eight percent.

The non-partisan election, which pitted the moderate Garcetti (who polled well with Republicans and distanced himself from organized labor) against the also moderate Greuel (who was supported by unions and women), was a long slog that lasted two years, finally ending last night in a decisive win for Garcetti.

“Los Angeles is ready to put the recession in the rearview mirror and become the city of opportunity that I grew up in once again,” Garcetti said. “It’s time for Los Angeles not just to be a big city, but a great city once again. Whether you’re down and out, or whether you’re at the top, we all believe one thing, that L.A. is worth fighting for.”

Garcetti is another moderate Democrat looking to govern along the lines of Bloomberg in New York and Emanuel in Chicago, meaning for a moment, a trifecta of large, traditionally liberal American cities being run by pro-business technocrats without any connection to the conventional Democratic machine (this all changes when NYC shifts hard to the Left in November).

Garcetti becomes the first Jewish mayor of Los Angeles, and is also the son of Gil Garcetti, the district attorney who prosecuted O.J. Simpson. He is of Mexican-descent and speaks Spanish fluently.

He is not to be confused with former Baltimore Mayor Tommy Carcetti, who was an ambitious, centrist-Democrat and former city councilman with eyes on the governor's mansion (also, he's fictional but he had my vote).

Yesterday, we explored the wild reality of Tornado Truthers, who believe that massive storms are created by the HAARP antenna farm in Alaska (HAARP is actually a research station to communicate with aliens living underground — only fools think otherwise). Still, the whole affair was missing the input of King Nut himself, Alex Jones. Well, guess what? He's down.

"Of course there's weather weapon stuff going on — we had floods in Texas like fifteen years ago, killed thirty-something people in one night. Turned out it was the Air Force," Jones said on The Alex Jones Show yesterday.

Jones elaborated that while he's not sure that this week's tornado outbreak was caused by the government, he's absolutely sure that the government "can create and steer groups of tornadoes" (powers usually reserved not for any branch of the government, but for the X-Men).

Jones said that the smoking gun of government involvement would be if a helicopter or aircraft was spotted "in and around the clouds, spraying and doing things." He continued, "if you saw that, you better bet your bottom dollar they did this, but who knows if they did. You know, that's the thing, we don't know."

We just don't know if the tornadoes were caused by small, sentient black helicopters or a variety of atmospheric conditions. We don't know. WE'LL JUST NEVER KNOW.

[via Salon]

A man in Orlando was shot and killed last night after being questioned by an FBI agent about his connection to Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Ibragim Todashev was being interviewed by the FBI because he had been in contact with suspected bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev before the Boston Marathon. He had recently traveled to Boston to meet with Tamerlan, and had also planned a trip to Chechnya.The FBI agents were interviewing Todashev in his apartment near Universal Studios.

Apparently the questioning, which began without incident, turned deadly when Todashev attacked the FBI agent. The agent then shot and killed Todashev just after midnight.

Khusn Taramiv, a friend of the suspect, tells NBC News in Orlando that the 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev knew Tsarnaev because both were MMA fighters.

“We are currently responding to a shooting incident involving an FBI special agent,” FBI Special Agent Dave Couvertier told NBC News. "“The incident occurred in Orlando, Florida. The agent encountered the suspect while conducting official duties. We do not have any further details at this time. We expect to have more information later this morning.”

Taramiv says that he and Todashev were interviewed for almost three hours last night.

"(The FBI) took me and my friend, the suspect that got killed. They were talking to us, both of us, right? And they said they need him for a little more, for a couple more hours, and I left, and they told me they’re going to bring him back. They never brought him back," Taramiv told NBC.

"He felt inside he was going to get shot," Taramiv said. "I told him, 'Everything is going to be fine, don't worry about it.' He said, 'I have a really bad feeling.'"

Updates:

12:05 PM EST: Law officials are reporting that Todashev attacked the FBI agent (who was accompanied by two Massachusetts state troopers) with a knife before being shot.

9:55 AM EST: NBC News is reporting that investigators "were also looking at whether Todashev might have had any role in a triple murder in 2011, in which three men were murdered in an apartment in Waltham, Mass." This was the same triple murder that claimed the life of a man who was described by Tamerlan as his "best friend." The grisly murder involved the throats of the victims being cut, and their bodies were being covered with marijuana. No suspects were ever arrested for the murders.

Senate investigators have found that Apple avoided paying taxes on "tens of billions" of dollars over the past four years by taking advantage of U.S. and Irish tax loopholes.

The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (which will outlive the Union) presents its full findings today. Apple CEO Tim Cooke will testify and supposedly make recommendations to the Senate as to how the U.S. can stop losing tax revenue from massive corporations looking to skip out on paying taxes (Cook's advice will probably be along the lines of, tax us less, or even better, don't tax us at all).

Apple didn't pay taxes (to any country) on a whopping $74 billion over the past four years, after setting up a subsidiary in Ireland that controls its entire international operation.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "Irish tax law only considers companies residents of the small European country if they are managed and controlled there, and Apple manages them from the U.S."

Effectively, Apple paid no taxes on its international profits to anyone. And they didn't break any laws while doing it.

In a statement Monday, Apple said that it "welcomes an objective examination of the U.S. corporate tax system, which has not kept pace with the advent of the digital age and the rapidly changing global economy."

Apple welcomes your feeble attempts to try to get them to pay taxes.

At least 24 people are reported dead after Monday afternoon's huge tornado, which destroyed whole neighborhoods of an Oklahoma City suburb. Authorities have released conflicting information about the death toll as survivors emerge from the rubble, moving away from earlier accounts of between 50 to more than 90 fatalities.

The search for survivors continues on Tuesday morning around the suburb of Moore, and rescuers are desperately digging through the rubble of Plaza Towers Elementary School, where several children are still missing, believed to be trapped under the wrecked building. At least seven students have been confirmed to be killed by the storm.

Oklahoma Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb told CNN Tuesday morning that, "My understanding, this school ... Plaza Towers, they had a basement. Quite frankly, don't mean to be graphic, but that's why some of the children drowned, because they were in the basement area," he said.

Entire neighborhoods were completely leveled as the tornado registered as a category 4 on the Fujita scale, the second most powerful classification of tornado. Only sixteen minutes passed between the first tornado warning and when the tornado touched ground. During the forty minuted it was on the ground, it traveled over ten miles to Moore.

On Tuesday morning, residents still in shock wandered near their wrecked former homes, looking through the flattened structures for missing neighbors. After emerging from her home on Monday, Kelcy Trowbridge described to the Times her husband coming across the body of a young girl.

“He knew she was already gone,” Ms. Trowbridge told the Times. “When the police got there, he just bawled.” She continued, “My neighborhood is gone. It’s flattened. Demolished. The street is gone. The next block over, it’s in pieces.”

"People are wandering around like zombies," KFOR reporter Scott Hines told CNN. "It's like they're not realizing how to process what had just happened."

The president has declared Oklahoma a major disaster area and is set to address the nation at 10 AM.

More updates to come.

Updates:

10:50 AM EST: "Our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma." President Obama addressed the disaster in Oklahoma from the White House:

10:20 AM EST: More storms are moving towards Moore.

911am-occasional cloud to ground lightning heading into disaster relief areas of Newcastle/Moore. Additional storms next 2hrs. #okwx

— NWS Norman (@NWSNorman) May 21, 2013

10:10 AM EST: The Associated Press has posted some outstanding graphics that show the path of the tornado.

9:25 AM EST: Twenty-four seems to be the number of deaths confirmed so far.

BREAKING: Medical examiner's office revises death toll from Oklahoma tornado to at least 24.

— The Associated Press (@AP) May 21, 2013

9:20 AM EST: Reuters writes that the original 51 deaths reported is actually 24.

"We have got good news. The number right now is 24," said Amy Elliott, chief administrative officer at the Oklahoma City Medical Examiner's Office. The prior figure of 51 dead may have included some double-reported casualties, Elliott said.

"There was a lot of chaos," Elliott said.

It's unclear whether this number includes the 40 more bodies expected to be delivered to the medical examiner's office. No other news source has reported on this new number.

9:05 AM EST: This aerial photo shows the path of the tornado through a development. Houses only two blocks away from the tornado were spared, while those in the path were completely destroyed.

8:45 AM EST: Today is reporting that rescuers were able to help more than 100 people escape from debris.

"We heard overnight, they rescued 101 people...alive." -@kfor reporter @lancewest

— TODAY(@todayshow) May 21, 2013

8:30 AM EST: A remarkable find amid the destruction — while being interviewed by CBS, tornado survivor Barbara Garcia finds her dog buried alive under the rubble.

8:05 AM EST: Severe weather in the area continues to hamper rescue efforts and threaten already devastated areas with further destruction. It's been raining in Moore this morning, but forecasters believe it will be spared a second tornado.

[New York Times | CNN | AP | The Oklahoman]

Three more bodies were recovered today bringing the official death toll to 17 for a mine collapse in Papua, Indonesia. The mine, which extracted both gold and copper, is owned by a Phoenix-based company.

This continues a bad month for foreign corporations getting cheap labor in poor countries, coming a few weeks after a collapse at a Bangladesh garment factory killed hundreds.

The collapse occurred last week inside of The Big Gossan underground training facility, where 38 workers were undergoing safety training. Ten workers were rescued, while eleven remain still buried underneath the collapse.

The giant mine is owned by the American company, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, which has suspended mining operations at the incredibly lucrative mine. The mine, the second-largest copper mine in the world, has been the focus of several demonstrations by workers over the past few years, who feel the working conditions are both dangerous and inhumane. Eleven workers have died in accidents in the mine since 2003.

Rescue efforts have been hampered by rock slides, and the instability of the tunnel have made it impossible for larger machinery to assist in the rescue efforts.

While being interviewed on CNN on Sunday, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said he believes that the Internal Revenue Service had a written policy that was specifically "targeting people who were opposed to the president."

And if it was written, he elaborated, we, the American public, who give many, many shits about whether the IRS was targeting political groups, should be able to see it. That is, if the thing he believes exists (which he has no idea whether it does or not) actually exists.

"Well, we keep hearing the reports and we have several specifically worded items saying who was being targeted. In fact, one of the bullet points says those who are critical of the president," Rand told CNN's Candy Crawley. Bullet points on a memo that's real?

He continued, "So I don't know if that comes from a policy, but that's what's being reported in the press and reported orally. I haven't seen a policy statement, but I think we need to see that." Ah, I would like to see this thing whose existence I just made up.

One of those things politicians make up like a list of 205 Communist members of the State Department, or a secret plan to merge with Canada and Mexico. One of those documents only bullshitters can see. Ah.

[Via TPM]