'Cannibal cop' pal indicted on kidnapping-conspiracy charge

An alleged co-conspirator in the notorious "cannibal cop" case has been indicted on a kidnapping-conspiracy charge, the feds announced today.

Michael Van Hise, an auto mechanic from New Jersey, is accused of using email to scheme with NYPD cop Gilberto Valle on Feb. 28 of last year "about kidnapping an identified woman (the 'Victim') in exchange for United States currency," according to his Manhattan federal court indictment.

Two days later, on March 1, Valle "was present on the block in Manhattan on which the Victim's apartment building is located," the indictment says.

'Cannibal Cop' Gilberto Valle

The feds have alleged that Valle, 28, was conducting surveillance of the woman, who lives on the Upper East Side and last week was referred to in court papers as "Ms. F."

Van Hise, 22, is one of three people with whom Valle allegedly plotted over the Internet to kidnap, rape, torture, cook and eat women.

Neither of the other two -- including someone who used the online nickname "Moody Blues" and claimed to be a butcher in India -- have been charged.

Valle contends that his all of his online writings were merely expressions of "dark" sexual fantasies, and lawyers for both him and Van Hise have accused the feds of arresting Van Hise to try and keep him from testifying on Valle's behalf.

Jury selection for Valle's trial is scheduled to begin Friday, with opening statements set for Feb. 25.

Both he and Van Hise face up to life in prison if convicted.

Van Hise's lawyers didn't immediately return a request for comment.

bruce.golding@nypost.com

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Bright spots in Latin America despite global economic uncertainty

There are bright spots as Latin American and Caribbean economies begin the year but the uncertain health of the U.S. economy, the lingering financial crisis in Europe and more sluggish growth in China are casting shadows over the region.

A decade ago, dim prospects in those major markets would have delivered a knock-out punch in the region, but this year Latin American and Caribbean economies are expected to grow by 3.5 percent and average 3.9 percent growth in 2014 and 2015, according to a World Bank forecast. The United Nations’ Economic Commission has a slightly more sanguine forecast of 3.8 percent growth in 2013.

Both are better than the 2.4 percent growth the World Bank is forecasting for the global economy and the mere 1.3 percent increase it is predicting for high-income countries.

The U.S. economy grew by 2.2 percent in 2012. But the economy shrank 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter and the first quarter of 2013 also could be sluggish..

“That creates a soggy start for 2013 in Latin America,’’ said David Malpass, president of Encima Global, a New York economic consulting and research firm.

With a recession in Japan, even slower growth expected in Europe than in the United States, and questions about whether the dip in the Chinese economy has bottomed out and whether the United States will be making sharp cuts in defense spending and other federal programs come March 1, Latin American and Caribbean nations can’t really depend on the industrialized world to spur growth.

The region must look inward and undertake structural reforms that will allow growth from domestic factors, said Malpass, who was in Miami in January for an event organized by the University of Miami’s Center for Hemispheric Policy.

Panama’s $5.25 billion investment in expansion of the Panama Canal is an example of the inward focus that will pay off down the road, said Malpass. By 2015, Panama plans to have completed two new sets of locks on the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the canal and the deepening and widening of existing channels to accommodate the so-called Post-Panamax ships too big to traverse the current locks.

“It’s a difficult period but a period where developing countries are growing solidly but not as quickly as they might otherwise want to,’’ said Andrew Burns, the lead author of the World Bank’s annual Global Economic Trends report.

That means they should focus on investment in infrastructure and healthcare, structural policies, regulatory reforms and improvements in governance that will pay future dividends down the road, Burns said.

Such economic reforms, plus high commodity prices enjoyed by countries with fertile fields and mineral wealth, helped the region move beyond the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 far more quickly than it did when it was so dependent on economic cycles in the rest of the world.

Economic growth slowed in Latin America and the Caribbean from 4.3 percent in 2011 to an estimated 3 percent but that was still better than the 1.3 percent growth high-income countries managed in 2012, according to The World Bank.

China will continue to play a major role in Latin America and the Caribbean this year but whether the slowdown in China has reached its low point is subject to debate. But it’s relative. Slow growth in China would be brisk growth elsewhere. China says its gross domestic product grew 7.8 percent in 2012, the most tepid growth in 13 years and a comedown from 9.3 percent growth in 2011.

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Details emerge about Boynton Beach man who killed two sons

BOYNTON BEACH (AP) The Boynton Beach man who killed two of his sons before killing himself had declined an invitation to a party hours earlier, saying he had to do “something important,” his roommate said on Sunday.

Police say Isidro Zavala killed his younger sons, 12-year-old Eduardo and 11-year-old Mario, early Saturday at his estranged wife's home.

According to police, Victoria Zavala was watching television when she heard a commotion just before 2 a.m. She found Isidro Zavala choking one of his sons, and she begged him to kill her and spare the boys.

Isidro Zavala told her that he would leave her alive to suffer their loss. She was not injured. Officers found both boys dead at the scene, and they found Zavala, dressed all in black, dead with self-inflicted gunshot wounds in the chest and head.

“This is an unusually brutal type of murder,” said Boynton Beach Police Chief Matthew Immler.

The Palm Beach Post reports the couple had filed for divorce in October after nearly 20 years of marriage. They were scheduled to go to court Tuesday for a mediation hearing.

Zavala's roommate said he last saw Zavala Friday evening at their house, less than a mile away from the crime scene. Mariano Batalla told the newspaper that Zavala said he couldn't attend a friend's birthday party because “he had to do something important.”

Batalla said he returned from the party around midnight and repeatedly tried to call Zavala, who never answered his phone. Zavala's truck remained parked in their driveway. Police woke Batalla around 5 a.m. and told him what happened.

“I feel so, so, so sad because he's my best friend,” Batalla said. “It's a big surprise for me. He don't tell me nothing about this.”

The Zavalas also have a 19-year-old son who does not live at his mother's house. Investigators found a note from Zavala to his oldest son in a bag at the crime scene.

In the note, Zavala told the 19-year-old that he was a good son and to take care of himself, Immler said. The bag also contained a second gun, extra ammunition, duct tape and cutting shears.

A second note was found at Isidro Zavala's home, but police did not release its contents.

Victoria Zavala had been licensed as a cosmetologist, and Isidro Zavala owned a landscaping company.

Children who live across the street say they last saw Mario several days ago when they were flying kites with another friend. They remembered him playing in their backyard or playing video games, and they could not understand why Mario's father would kill him.

Police said they had never visited the Zavalas' home. A spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Families said the agency also had no previous history with the family.

Batalla said he knew Zavala as a gentle friend who made pork and rice dishes for special occasions and who walked to church every weekend. Batalla had recently been baptized, and he had encouraged Zavala to do the same.

“But he kept telling me, `No, not yet,“’ Batalla said. “He said he wanted to learn more before he got baptized.”

–––

Information from: The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, http://www.pbpost.com

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Kuwaiti gets five years for insulting ruler

KUWAIT (Reuters) – A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to five years in prison on Sunday for insulting the emir on Twitter, a rights lawyer and news websites said, in the latest prosecution for criticism of authorities via social media in the Gulf Arab state.

The court gave Kuwaiti Mohammad Eid al-Ajmi the maximum sentence for the comments, news websites al-Rai and alaan.cc reported.

In recent months Kuwait has penalized several Twitter users for criticizing the emir, who is described as “immune and inviolable” in the constitution.

“We call on the government to expand freedoms and adhere to the international (human rights) conventions it has signed,” said lawyer Mohammad al-Humaidi, director of the Kuwait Society for Human Rights, commenting on the case.

Courts in Kuwait generally do not comment to the media.

Amnesty International said in November Kuwait had increased restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly.

It urged Kuwait to ensure protection for users of social media, whether they supported or opposed the government, as long as they did not incite racial hatred or violence.

Kuwait, a U.S. ally and major oil producer, has been taking a firmer line on politically sensitive comments aired on the internet. Twitter is extremely popular in the country of 3.7 million.

In January, a court sentenced two men in separate cases to jail time for insulting the emir on Twitter.

In June 2012, a man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.

Two months later, authorities detained Sheikh Meshaal al-Malik Al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family, over remarks on Twitter in which he accused authorities of corruption and called for political reform.

The recent Twitter cases have been carried out under the state security law and penal code. Last year Kuwait passed new legislation aimed at regulating social media.

Public demonstrations and debates about local issues are common in a state that allows the most dissent in the Gulf, but Kuwait has avoided the kind of mass unrest that unseated four heads of Arab states in 2011.

But tensions intensified between authorities and opposition groups last year ahead of a parliamentary election deemed unfair by opposition politicians and activists.

The opposition movement said new voting rules introduced by Sheikh Sabah by emergency decree in October would skew the December 1 election in favor of pro-government candidates. The emir said the old voting system was flawed and that his changes were constitutional and necessary for Kuwait’s “security and stability”.

(Reporting by Ahmed Hagagy, Writing by Sylvia Westall; editing by Sami Aboudi and Andrew Roche)

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Justin Timberlake Performs New Music 20 20 Experience

Justin Timberlake hit the stage to perform new music for the first time in ages on February 2 and much to the crowd's delight, JT proved the long wait was well worth it.

RELATED - Justin & Jessica's Long Road to The Altar 

At DIRECTV's Super Saturday Night party in New Orleans, La, Timberlake not only performed his latest single, Suit & Tie (complete with Jay-Z cameo), but he debuted two new songs: Little Pusher Love Girl and Bad Girl.

VIDEO - Watch Justin's Suit & Tie Lyric Video

Both tracks are slated to be on Timberlake's forthcoming third solo album, The 20/20 Experience, hitting stores on March 19.

Watch all JT's performances below!

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Deadly deserts

Ralph Peters

Violence in Allah’s name in northern Africa won’t end in my lifetime — and probably not in yours. The core question is: To what extent can the savagery be contained?

From the Atlantic coastline to the Suez Canal, struggling governments, impoverished populations and frankly backward societies struggle to find paths to modernization and to compete in a ruthless global economy. Religious fanatics for whom progress is a betrayal of faith hope to block development.

Still, if the only conflict was between Islamist terrorists and those who want civilized lives, the situation could be managed over time. But that struggle forms only one level in a layer cake of clashing visions and outright civil wars bedeviling a vast region. Much larger than Europe, the zone of contention encompasses the Maghreb, the countries touching the Mediterranean, and the Sahel, the bitterly poor states stretching down across desert wastes to the African savannah.

AFP/Getty Images

Figthers of the Islamic group Ansar Dine

The Sahel is the front line not only between the world of Islam and Christian-animist cultures in Africa’s heart, but between Arabs and light-skinned tribes in the north, and blacks to the south. No area in the world so explicitly illustrates the late, great Samuel Huntington’s concept of “the clash of civilizations.”

If racial and religious differences were not challenge enough, in the Maghreb the factions and interest groups are still more complicated. We view Egypt as locked in a contest between Islamists and “our guys,” Egyptians seeking new freedoms. But Egypt’s identity struggle is far more complex, involving social liberals, moderate Muslims, stern conservative Muslims (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) and outright fanatics. The military forms another constituency, while the business community defends its selfish interests. Then there are the supporters of the old Mubarak regime, the masses of educated-but-unemployed youth and the bitterly poor peasants.

Atop all that there’s the question of whether the values cherished by Arab societies can adapt to a globalized world.

The path to Egypt’s future will not be smooth — yet Egypt’s chances are better than those of many of its neighbors. Consider a few key countries in the region:

Mali

Viva la France! (Never thought I’d write that in The Post.) Contrary to a lot of media nonsense, the effective French intervention in Mali demonstrates that not every military response to Islamist terror has to become another Afghanistan: The French are welcome.

As extremists invariably do, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its allies rapidly alienated their fellow Muslims — after hijacking a local uprising. The local version of Islam is far more humane and tolerant than the Wahhabi cult imposed by Islamist fanatics. To the foreign extremists, the Malian love of Sufi mysticism, ancient shrines and their own centuries of religious scholarship are all hateful — as is the Malian genius for music that’s pleased listeners around the world.

Have a comment on this PostOpinion column? Send it in to LETTERS@NYPOST.COM!

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Hollywood cardiologist’s ties with St. Jude sales rep raises red flags

Mark Sabbota, a Hollywood cardiologist, regularly implants $5,000 pacemakers in patients at Memorial hospitals in South Broward — generating, last year alone, more than a half-million dollars in sales for a manufacturer called St. Jude Medical.

Sabbota, public records show, also happens to be partners with a St. Jude sales rep in two corporations that run frozen yogurt shops.

What’s yogurt got to do with healthcare?

Perhaps nothing. Perhaps a lot. The question is connected to an on-going lobbying battle in Washington over a pending disclosure policy intended to more clearly reveal financial ties between physicians and the healthcare industry — often-murky relationships that have produced a long history of whistle-blower lawsuits, federal investigations and fines.

Sabbota, in a brief interview, adamantly denied any conflict of interest. “There has been no wrongdoing at all,” he said.

Memorial spokeswoman Kerting Baldwin also said the hospital saw no problem with the yogurt arrangement. As a “community” doctor, not a staff employee, Baldwin said Sabbota can select from a list of pacemakers approved by the hospital but has no say over what companies made the list.

“As for why he prefers to use St. Jude, I won’t speak for him,’’ she said. “You’d have to ask him that.”

But several medical ethics experts said such relationships fall in a gray area. They raise what Kenneth Goodman, bioethics director at the University of Miami, called “red flags” about whether the doctor’s motivation in choosing a device “is something other than the best interests of the patient.”

“Maybe it’s just a good business arrangement that has nothing to do with the devices he chooses,” said Charles D. Rosen, a California physician who is co-founder of the Association for Medical Ethics. “But the issue is public disclosure and transparency. You as a patient should have the right to know about a doctor’s financial relationships with companies.”

Concerns about the relationship between doctors and healthcare companies have been simmering for years. Americans are so suspicious of doctors’ connections that, in a 2008 Pew Charitable Trusts survey, 86 percent of patients said doctors should not be allowed to get free dinners from drug makers and 70 percent said doctors shouldn’t even be allowed to get free notepads and pens.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act includes a provision intended to address some aspects of these often-cozy relationships. Starting Jan. 1, healthcare companies were supposed to publicly post how much they were paying doctors. But that provision has been held up in the White House by intense lobbying.

“I don’t know why the hold-up, except the intense opposition of the industry,” Rosen said. His group, including members of the Harvard Medical School and Cleveland Clinic, wrote a letter to the Obama administration last month protesting the delay.

The group complains that the healthcare industry is trying to soften the rules so that foreign subsidiaries and doctors engaged in clinical trials wouldn’t have to reveal payments. But even if the disclosure rules are implemented, a side deal like Sabbota’s yogurt company would not have to be revealed under the new law, Rosen said.

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Police investigating ‘suspicious’ death of elderly woman in Miami home

Police are investigating details surrounding the death of an elderly woman found inside her home near midtown Miami.

Shortly after 4 p.m. Friday, Miami Police officers went to the home of Carmen Diaz, 78, whose adult son decided to visit her after not hearing from her in a few days, according to a news release. When he arrived, he found Diaz dead inside her home of 50 years at 120 NW 34 St.

Miami Police spokeswoman Kenia Reyes said although the death appeared “somewhat suspicious,” the department isn’t releasing details until the county medical examiner determines the cause of death.

WSVN-Channel 7 reported that the adult son found Diaz’s house ransacked and her body wrapped in a blanket in her bathroom.

Police confirmed the house was in disarray, but wouldn’t say if there had been a burglary.

The Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner is currently investigating the scene.

This article will be updated as more information becomes available.

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Twitter, Washington Post targeted by hackers

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Social media giant Twitter is among the latest U.S. companies to acknowledge that it is among a growing list of victims of Internet security attacks, saying that hackers may have gained access to information on 250,000 of its more than 200 million active users. And now, The Washington Post is joining the chorus, saying that it discovered that it was the target of a sophisticated cyberattack in 2011.

Twitter said a blog post on Friday it detected attempts to gain access to its user data earlier in the week. It shut down one attack moments after it was detected.

But Twitter discovered that the attackers may have stolen user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords belonging to 250,000 users they describe as ‘a very small percentage of our users.”

Nonetheless, the company reset the pilfered passwords and sent emails advising the affected users.

The online attack comes on the heels of recent hacks into the computer systems of U.S. media and technology companies, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Both American newspapers reported this week that their computer systems had been infiltrated by China-based hackers, likely to monitor media coverage the Chinese government deems important.

On Friday, The Washington Post disclosed in an article published on its website that it was the target of a sophisticated cyberattack, which was discovered in 2011. The company’s spokeswoman, Kris Coratti, didn’t offer any details including the duration of the attack or the origins. But according to sources that the paper quoted, who it said spoke on condition of anonymity, the intruders gained access as early as 2008 or 2009.

The cyberattack was first reported by an independent cybersecurity blog on Friday.

“Like other companies in the news recently, we face cybersecurity threats,” Coratti was quoted as saying. “We have a number of security measures in place to guard against cyberattacks on an ongoing basis.”

According to Coratti’s comments made to the newspaper, the company worked with security company Mandiant to “detect, investigate and remediate the situation promptly at the end of 2011.”

Coratti couldn’t be reached immediately for comment by The Associated Press.

China has been accused of mounting a widespread, aggressive cyber-spying campaign for several years, trying to steal classified information and corporate secrets and to intimidate critics. The Chinese foreign ministry could not be reached for comment Saturday, but the Chinese government has said those accusations are baseless and that China itself is a victim of cyber-attacks.

“Chinese law forbids hacking and any other actions that damage Internet security,” the Chinese Defense Ministry recently said. “The Chinese military has never supported any hacking activities.”

Twitter’s director of information security, Bob Lord, said in the blog that the attack “was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident.”

“The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked,” Lord said. “For that reason we felt that it was important to publicize this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users.”

One expert said that the Twitter hack probably happened after an employee’s home or work computer was compromised through vulnerabilities in Java, a commonly used computing language whose weaknesses have been well publicized.

Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy and security researcher, said such a move would give attackers “a toehold” in Twitter’s internal network, potentially allowing them either to sniff out user information as it traveled across the company’s system or break into specific areas, such as the authentication servers that process users’ passwords.

The relatively small number of users affected suggested either that attackers weren’t on the network long or that they were only able to compromise a subset of the company’s servers, Soltani said.

Twitter is generally used to broadcast messages to the public, so the hacking might not immediately have yielded any important secrets. But the stolen credentials could be used to eavesdrop on private messages or track which Internet address a user is posting from.

That might be useful, for example, for an authoritarian regime trying to keep tabs on a journalist’s movements.

“More realistically, someone could use that as an entry point into another service,” Soltani said, noting that since few people bother using different passwords for different services, a password stolen from Twitter might be just as handy for reading a journalist’s emails.

___

AP reporters Anne D’Innocenzio in New York, Raphael Satter in London and Didi Tang in Beijing contributed to this report.

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Buzzmakers: SAG Winners Pics and Nicole Kidman Explains Jimmy Kimmel Lap Dance

What had ET readers buzzing this week?

1. PICS: SAG Winners with their Statues!

Some of Hollywood's biggest stars gathered Sunday night to honor acting achievements at the 2013 Screen Actors Guild Awards. Anne Hathaway -- winner of the award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for Les Misérables -- kicks off our gallery of the stars accepting their handsome statuettes!

Click here for all the pics!

2. Nicole Kidman on Her Lap Dance for Jimmy Kimmel

Nicole Kidman raised eyebrows during Matt Damon's Jimmy Kimmel Live! takeover when she greeted Kimmel -- who was strapped to a chair -- with a lap dance. On the SAG Awards red carpet, the Oscar winner explained the move to Nancy O'Dell.

Kidman described the dance as "impromptu," saying that she was just following the lead of another one of the night's guests.

"Robin Williams had done it before, so I thought, 'Well, why not?'" Kidman explained.

For years Kimmel has had a running joke where he ends every episode by apologizing to Matt Damon for running out of time for him. On last week's special episode of the late-night show -- nine years in the making -- Damon recruited some friends (which included Andy Garcia, Sheryl Crow, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Lopez, Robert DeNiro, Sarah Silverman, Demi Moore and Oprah Winfrey.

3. Top-Earning 'American Idol' Alums

American Idol is in the business of making music stars, and in turn, has made lots of money for some of their contestants. Forbes released their list of the top-earning Idol alums of 2012 a few names on this list are sure to surprise you.

Click here for the entire list!

4. Jennifer Lawrence Suffers Wardrobe Malfunction

It seemed like disaster for Jennifer Lawrence when her dress came apart just as she was called up to accept the award for Best Actress during the 2013 SAG Awards.

The Silver Linings Playbook star's apparent wardrobe malfunction caught the eye of both Marion Cotillard and Nicole Kidman, whose reaction to the getup coming apart at the seams was caught on camera. No disaster, here, though -- it turns out the dress was designed that way! A source close to designer Dior told ET that the dress did not rip -- that it was made with different layers of tulle and satin.

This minor outfit hitch comes after it was announced that Lawrence, 22, has walking pneumonia, making this one of the best and worst weeks for the award-winning actress.

5. Kris Jenner Lands Talk Show

Are you ready for a daily dose of Kris Jenner?

The TV personality will test the talk show waters this summer when Fox premieres a preview episode of Kris, a one-hour entertainment talk show. "This is something I have wanted to do all my life so it's definitely a dream come true," Jenner said in a statement! "I can't wait for this new adventure to begin and look forward to working alongside Twentieth Television and the Fox Television Stations."

Kris will be rolled out in a similar fashion to how Bethenny Frankel's talk show was last summer, with the network testing the waters to see if there's an audience appetite for more of this famous family. According to a press release, the show will "offer daytime viewers a daily jolt of celebrity guests, fashion & beauty trends; plus a mix of lifestyle topics -- all through the distinctive and unpredictable perspective of Kris Jenner. Filmed in Los Angeles, CA, the pop culture driven talk show will bring a cool blast of fun and high energy to summer television."

The trial run of Kris will launch this summer, with the program available on select Fox-owned stations in markets, including New York and Los Angeles.

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