Raid

"DIE HARD" goes condo in "The Raid: Redemption," a frenzied Indonesian action movie whose action credentials are through the roof. Here's the brutally simple premise: A team of heavily armored cops enters the ground floor of an apartment high-rise owned and occupied by a crime kingpin protected by several floors of armed thugs. It's an action movie in three acts - automatic weapons, blades, then fists. The higher the cops go, the more elemental the combat. In truth, though, most of the officers don't go very high.

Five women face INS charges after police last night raided and closed the Callowhill Relaxation Center at 15th and Callowhill. Cops said the center promoted prostitution and had no business license.

They called themselves "The Ugly Squad. " They kept alligators in a basement pond and fed them chicken and pigs' ears. And they allegedly sold several million dollars' worth of illegal drugs a month from a working-class block in the Wissinoming section of lower Northeast Philadelphia. Late Thursday afternoon, Philadelphia police executed seven search warrants, including five at houses in the 5000 block of Homestead Street, and seized $1.3 million in cocaine, heroin, marijuana, prescription pills and codeine syrup.

The Bush administration would have used the same strategy to kill terrorist Osama bin Laden had those circumstances arisen years ago, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Associated Press in an interview yesterday. Rumsfeld said President Obama made the right decision in sending Navy SEALs to raid the al Qaeda leader's compound in Pakistan earlier this month. But he declined to say how much credit the Obama administration deserves. "The capabilities to do it were developed over time by previous administrations, and they benefit the country, and the intelligence had been gathered over a long period of time," Rumsfeld said.

Pennsylvania state police caused the death of nurse Carol Kepner at Norristown State Hospital by breaking the glass window where she and nurse Maria Jordan were being held captive by a gunman. The police said they were not raiding the room, but only breaking the window so they could see what was going on inside. They should have known that the gunman would interpret the act as a raid and act accordingly. An actual raid would have been better than breaking the window because there would have been a chance of saving the captives.

A South Philadelphia woman who was being sought for allegedly shooting at police officers during a raid at her home surrendered to detectives yesterday. Deborah Dacenzo, 33, of the 1100 block of South 11th Street, who was charged with nine counts of aggravated assault, fired at least two shots at officers who were breaking into her apartment Friday, police said. No one was injured. Using search and seizure warrants, police raided Dacenzo's apartment and a second-floor apartment in the same rowhouse at 6:15 a.m., looking for stolen goods believed to be part of a fencing operation.

A cockfighting ring was busted Wednesday afternoon in the city's Fairhill section and more than 20 birds were seized, an animal welfare spokeswoman said. Officers from the Pennsylvania SPCA executed a search warrant on a house in the 2900 block of North Seventh Street about 1:45 p.m., said PSPCA spokeswoman Liz Williamson. One man was arrested at the scene. Fighting roosters, hens, and chicks were taken from the house, which had a large ring for cockfighting, Williamson said.

OAKLAND, Calif. - Police decked in riot gear and armed with tear gas cleared out Oakland's anti-Wall Street encampment early Monday, the latest crackdown amid complaints around the country of health and safety hazards at protest camps. The raid at the Occupy Oakland camp, one of the largest and most active sites in the movement, came a day after police in Portland, Ore., arrested more than 50 people while shutting down its camp after complaints of drug use and sanitation issues. Police in Burlington, Vt., also evicted protesters after a man fatally shot himself last week inside a tent.

A standoff between township police and a Garfield East resident that lasted more than six hours ended early yesterday without injury after a special unit stormed the man's home. Police received a report about 9:15 p.m. Wednesday that the man, Willie Grace, 57, of Executive Lane, had a loaded revolver and intended to "harm himself. " An unidentified female friend of Grace's reported the matter. After several unsuccessful attempts to contact Grace by phone, members of the Burlington County Special Response team were called to the scene.

Four people were arrested yesterday and about $100,000 in counterfeit bills was seized as state and local law enforcement authorities raided four homes in Upper Darby. The suspects, three men and one woman, were taken into custody between midnight and 8 a.m. from their homes by U.S. Secret Service agents and detectives with the Delaware County District Attorney's Office, investigators said. Investigators identified the suspects as Joseph Ermilio, 32, of the 300 block of Copley Road; Leslie Cocco, 35, of the 200 block of Long Lane; Stephen Picciotti, of the first block of Powell Lane, and William Wall, 23, of the 100 block of Wellington Road.

SAN'A, Yemen - Government troops backed by warplanes and heavy artillery pounded al-Qaeda positions in southern Yemen on Sunday, killing at least 30 militants, officials said. The army launched its assault on the al-Hurur region of Abyan province at dawn Sunday, pushing out al-Qaeda-linked fighters who have controlled the area since taking it over last year. Abdullah Ahmed, who lives in the area, said the militants fled by foot after government soldiers destroyed nearly a dozen tanks and vehicles mounted with rocket launchers seized by the militants last year and kept in al-Hurur.

WASHINGTON - Letters from Osama bin Laden's last hideaway, released by U.S. officials intent on discrediting his terror organization, portray a network weak, inept, and under siege - and its leader seemingly near wit's end about the passing of his global jihad's glory days. The documents, published online Thursday, are a small sample of those seized during the U.S. raid on bin Laden's Pakistan compound in which he was killed a year ago. By no accident, they show al-Qaeda at its worst.

NEW YORK - Republican Mitt Romney on Tuesday accused President Obama of politicizing the death of Osama bin Laden a year ago but said it was "totally appropriate" for Obama to claim credit for ordering the U.S. military raid that ended with the terrorist leader's death in Pakistan. Obama's reelection campaign has used his decision to suggest that Romney would not have made the same call. Romney, the president's all-but-certain Republican challenger in the fall election, says he would have.

MIAMI - Federal authorities charged 107 doctors, nurses, and social workers in seven cities with Medicare fraud Wednesday in a nationwide crackdown on unrelated scams that allegedly billed the taxpayer-funded program $452 million - the highest dollar amount in a single Medicare bust in U.S. history. It was the latest in a string of major arrests in the last two years as authorities have targeted fraud that is believed to cost the government $60 billion to $90 billion a year. Stopping Medicare's budget from hemorrhaging that money will be key to paying for President Obama's health-care overhaul.

WASHINGTON - A year after the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda is hobbled and hunted, too busy surviving for the moment to carry out another Sept. 11-style attack on U.S. soil. But the terrorist network dreams still of payback, and U.S. counterterrorist officials warn that, in time, its offshoots may deliver. A decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have cost the United States about $1.28 trillion and 6,300 U.S. troops' lives has forced al-Qaeda's affiliates to regroup, from Yemen to Iraq.

Written and directed by Gareth Evans. With Iko Uwais and Joe Taslim. Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. Running time: 1 hour, 41 mins. Parent's guide: R (brutal violence) Playing at: selected theaters

"DIE HARD" goes condo in "The Raid: Redemption," a frenzied Indonesian action movie whose action credentials are through the roof. Here's the brutally simple premise: A team of heavily armored cops enters the ground floor of an apartment high-rise owned and occupied by a crime kingpin protected by several floors of armed thugs. It's an action movie in three acts - automatic weapons, blades, then fists. The higher the cops go, the more elemental the combat. In truth, though, most of the officers don't go very high.

HEBRON, West Bank - Israeli security forces swiftly evicted dozens of Jewish settlers from an illegally occupied building in this volatile West Bank city on Wednesday, ending a weeklong standoff that had threatened to spill over into broader violence. The raid caught the settlers off guard. Only a day earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had moved to block the eviction order. Settler supporters in Netanyahu's hard-line government condemned the surprise raid, a key political ally threatened to quit the coalition, and settler leaders vowed retaliation.

PARIS - Police led predawn raids across France on Friday in a crackdown against suspected Islamist extremists, arresting 19 people and carting off automatic rifles and other guns in authorities' latest response to a wave of terrorism that has shaken the country. President Nicolas Sarkozy, intent on showing an all-out fight against terrorism as his reelection contest nears, promised more such raids as his conservative government responds to a spate of shootings in southern France by a radical Islamist that left seven people dead and two wounded.

Authorities raided a North Philadelphia house believed to be involved in dogfighting and found 11 dogs Friday afternoon - and nearly 60 possibly stolen bicycles in the basement. Officers from the Pennsylvania SPCA rescued 11 pit bulls, including one puppy, from a house in the 2200 block of West Lehigh Avenue, said PSPCA spokeswoman Wendy A. Marano. One man was arrested and another person was being sought, Marano said. The agency received a tip from an informant and then conducted surveillance on the property before the raid.