Interpol

Sean Lopes, 47, was arrested in Chatham, England, on Monday.

A fugitive wanted in New York after vanishing in the wake of a 2004 hostage taking has been arrested in England, where he had been working in a supermarket.

Sean Lopes, 47, had been living in Chatham, about 30 miles southeast of London, when he was arrested Monday, Kent Police said in a statement.

He was "wanted on charges of attempted murder and kidnapping in the United States" involving a 22-year-old woman dating June 2004, according to Kent Police.

Kent Police said Lopes was charged in the U.S. with the offense but went missing after being released on bail. He was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in May 2005.

A 2012 news release from U.S. authorities said Lopes entered the home of an ex-girlfriend -- both were employed by New York City public schools -- and waited for her to come home. When she did, he confronted her with a gun and a knife and held her hostage until police were able to get into the apartment and free her, according to a 2012 statement from the U.S. Embassy in Trinidad and Tobago, where Lopes was mistakenly thought to have been living.

Lopes was believed to have fled to the island nation using his brother's travel documents, the embassy said.

Lopes had been working at a Sainsbury's grocery store in Gravesend, Kent, the company said Thursday. 

“We can confirm that a member of staff from our Pepper Hill store was arrested on Monday," a Sainsbury's spokeswoman said. "We are helping the police with their investigations but are unable to comment further.”

He had been listed as one of the NYPD's 10 most-wanted suspects.

Kent Police said a resident of the area raised concerns about Lopes to police, who launched an investigation that included investigators from New York and London. He was then tracked down and arrested.

Lopes appeared in a London court on Tuesday and was ordered to be detained as extradition proceedings got under way, Kent Police said.

According to Interpol, Lopes is a native of Guyana. The U.S. Embassy said he also had ties to Canada, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic.

This story was originally published on Thu May 9, 2013 7:04 AM EDT

A pit bull saved a woman from a fire in her Long Island, New York home on Friday, barking to alert her as the flames began to spread from the front to the back of the house.

Jackie Bonasera said she was drying her hair in an upstairs bathroom of the home on Gabriele Drive in East Norwich when she heard the dog barking. She ran downstairs and saw the flames on the side of her garage. 

She was able to escape the house.

"I ran out of the house and my neighbors came running over, and then I thought about the dog – I'm like, 'He saved my life, I have to save his,'" Bonasera recounted.

"So I just put my robe over my face and I ran back in and I grabbed the dog and then I stood out here and I watched my house burn," she said.

Bonasera believes she would have been trapped upstairs if the dog, named Cain, hadn't alerted her to the fire.

Bonasera's daughter, Alexus Stallworth, said Cain is "the town hero."

"He's a pit bull, too," said Stallworth. "They have such bad reps, but he's such a good boy."

Stallworth was outside the house when the fire broke out and captured the blaze on her cell phone camera.

More than 70 firefighters were needed to stop the fire. Although the cause of the blaze has not been determined and the arson squad is investigating, police don't believe it's suspicious.

The homeowner is a contractor who is working on several homes that were damaged by Sandy, and he said he now hopes he can get his own home fixed before winter.

NBC New York's Greg Cergol and Jeff Richardson contributed to this story.

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Lalita Kovvuri / NYC Department of Education

Vegetarian lunch is served: A vegetarian meal at P.S. 244 in Flushing, Queens.

Braised black beans and plantains. Tofu roasted in Asian sesame sauce. Falafel and cucumber salad. These aren't menu items from a high-end restaurant; they're lunchtime grub for students at a Flushing, Queens, public school's all-vegetarian cafeteria, the first in New York City to nix meat and believed to be one of the first public school in the nation to serve only vegetarian fare.

P.S. 244 in Flushing, the Active Learning Elementary School, which opened in 2008, gradually started offering vegetarian meals more and more days a week, reducing the days per week they served traditional cafeteria food like chicken nuggets, said P.S. 244 principal and co-founder Robert Groff.

"The founding of our school was based on health and nutrition and teaching kids how to make healthy choices in the belief that they would be more successful academically and in their life," Groff said. "But then we started to watch the kids. One, what they would bring in to school, and two, what they would gravitate towards in the cafeteria."

Administrators noticed a higher number of vegetarian meals in the cafeteria, he said, partially because of the school's population: P.S. 244 is about 70 percent Asian and Indian. The switch to meatless — which the school did in partnership with nonprofit organization New York Coalition for Healthy School Food — was seamless.

"Our head cook is also a vegetarian herself and a parent in the school," Groff said.

P.S. 244, which serves 400 students from pre-kindergarten through grade three, went all-vegetarian in January, but was just publicly recognized by the New York city schools chancellor, Dennis Walcott, during a visit on Tuesday.

“I am proud of the students and staff for trailblazing this extraordinary path,” Walcott said in a news release. 

Lalita Kovvuri / NYC Department of Education

Elementary schoolchildren at P.S. 244 in Flushing, Queens, enjoy a vegetarian lunch on Tuesday during a visit by New York Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott.

Other items on the menu at P.S. 244 include tofu vegetable wraps, vegetarian chili served with brown rice, and black bean and cheddar quesadillas served with salsa and red roasted potatoes. Each meal has the same amount of mandatory USDA protein requirements as their meat counterparts have in other public schools.

Breakfast is also served, and that's vegetarian, too. Students start out their day with bagels and cream cheese, whole-grain banana bread, egg and cheese roll-ups, to name a few of the offerings from this month.

"We know that when students eat a healthy diet, they're able to focus better. Their immune systems are stronger, so they're sick less, and then they're in school more and they're able to focus and concentrate better, and therefore learn better. There's research about that," said Amie Hamlin, the executive director of New York Coalition for Healthy School Food, which has worked with P.S. 244 for several years.

Not all "typical" Department of Education meals have been removed from the cafeteria: Pizza Fridays are still on the menu, just without the pepperoni. Groff said most parents have greeted the changes warmly, and for those who haven't, he encourages them to send their children into school with their own lunches.

"That, alone, providing the options for the kids makes the difference," he said. 

The move to all-vegetarian has been in parallel with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's citywide health efforts.

"We've been watching how the mayor has been responding to something like sugary beverages or the smoking ban, and that was an opportunity for us, because we could see the direction the city is moving," Groff said. "We could move along with it to create the healthiest options for our kids." 

NBC 4 New York

Alleged members of the ring being arrested on Tuesday, April 30.

Federal agents raided four brothels in and around New York City and arrested 13 people in an alleged sex trafficking and prostitution ring dating back to 2008, prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the suspects exploited dozens of women, trafficking some from Mexico to New York, to force them to work as sex slaves. NBC 4 New York cameras captured the raid on one of the brothels in Yonkers. Search warrants were also executed in brothels in Queens, Poughkeepsie and Newburgh.

The criminal complaint alleges the suspects lured women to the U.S. by engaging them in romantic relationships and promising a better life in New York. Once they arrived, the victims were forced to work as prostitutes under "abhorrent conditions," often subject to abuse and threatened with harm to them and their family members.

In a typical day, a Mexican sex trafficking victim in New York had sexual intercourse with 20 to 30 customers, with each customer usually paying about $30 to $35 for 15 minutes of sex, according to authorities.

Of that money, half typically went to either the driver who took the victim to the client or to the residential brothel where the woman worked. The other half went to the victim, who was then typically forced to turn over all the money to the trafficker.

The suspects charged Tuesday had different roles in the sex trafficking ring, operating brothels, driving victims to clients or brothels, dispatching drivers and recruiting and overseeing the women forced to work as prostitutes, according to the complaint.

Two of the 13 suspects were already in federal custody on illegal reentry charges; another was arrested in Delaware. The rest were arrested in New York and appeared in the Manhattan federal court Tuesday afternoon.

Environmental officials are planning to survey a Central Park lake this week to search for an invasive type of toothy predator fish that threatens to disrupt the ecosystem.

The northern snakehead fish, native to China, Russia and Korea, has been spotted in Queens in recent years, and one was quietly observed in Harlem Meer several years ago.

The fish eats frogs and crayfish and has the ability to breathe air and live for days out of water in certain conditions.

It is so disruptive that the state prohibits possession, sale and transport of the live fish and its eggs.

Read more from NBCNewYork.com

Signs have recently gone up around the Harlem Meer warning anyone who catches one not to throw it back.

The signs warn anglers to "secure the fish" and "keep it in a secure container until it is picked up by officials."

If park officials cannot be found at the boathouse, the sign urges anyone with a snakehead fish to call 311 and report the catch.

The sign is "just to let people know that this fish is in there, if you find it please do not return it to the water and it also helps people become aware that there are things in the water that should not be there," said Melissa Cohen, Department of Environmental Conservation fisheries manager.

The man-made lake is located in Central Park's northeast corner between 106th and 110th streets.

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US moves to curb invading species hitching rides on ships

Related links:

• Six months after Sandy many residents are still adrift
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This story was originally published on Mon Apr 29, 2013 5:11 AM EDT

Matthew Lavian / Marist College via AP

A giant foam head floats on the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., on Monday, April 22.

A huge foam and fiberglass head was discovered floating in New York's Hudson River by a college crew team earlier this week, and days later nobody knows where it came from.

The head, which is at least 7 feet tall and 5 feet wide, was found Monday morning by the Marist College men's crew team. 

"The coach, who is in a motorboat, took a quick spin out and investigated it, and was as baffled as anyone by what he saw," said Greg Cannon, spokesman for Marist College. "But because it was a navigation hazard, he felt it was his duty to haul it in. It took about 10 members of his team to haul it in." 

Because it was waterlogged, it weighed "at least a couple hundred pounds," he said. The head -- which has a foam core but is covered in a fiberglass shell and has metal rods in it -- has had a home in front of the Marist boathouse since it was dragged from the water.

Tyler Sawyer / Marist College via AP

Members of the Marist college crew team stand by a giant foam head found floating in the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., on Monday, April 22.

It's attracted lots of visitors and theories as to where it came from, including one suggestion that it came from a Mardi Gras parade and floated to Marist, which is located in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., overlooking the Hudson. But there have been no claims of ownership.

"It's not like someone just built it as a hobby, I don't think. It was definitely for an art installation, or a theater project," Cannon said.

The head, which has a gray shell and fleshy tones underneath, is missing some chunks, including its nose.

"It's kind of like a lost puppy," Cannon said. "If the owner shows up, we'll certainly return it, but I think the people will be sad to see it go."

Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, seen here in 2002, is accused of running a sports-betting ring that catered to Russian oligarchs in the former Soviet Union, and laundered proceeds through Cyprus banks to the United States.

NEW YORK - Federal authorities have charged a prominent New York art dealer and one of Russia's top reputed mobsters with operating high-stakes gambling rings in New York and Los Angeles that catered to billionaires, bank executives, movie stars and professional athletes.

Among 34 people indicted are suspected Russian organized crime figure Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, who was charged in 2002 with plotting to rig sports events at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Tokhtakhounov remains outside of the United States, and that case has not gone to trial.

Also charged was Hillel "Helly" Nahmad, a leading international art dealer and the owner of an exclusive art gallery that bears his name inside Midtown Manhattan's posh Carlyle Hotel.

The gallery was raided on Tuesday as part of the investigation, authorities said.

According to an 83-page indictment unsealed on Tuesday, Tokhtakhounov ran a sports-betting ring that catered to Russian oligarchs in the former Soviet Union, and laundered proceeds through Cyprus banks to the United States.

A second, related operation in New York and Los Angeles allegedly served wealthy U.S. clients including Hollywood celebrities, Wall Street executives and professional athletes, authorities said.

That operation was allegedly run by Nahmad, who was expected to surrender on Tuesday in Los Angeles, a spokeswoman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.

Tokhtakhounov, according to court documents, used his reputation as a mobster to "resolve disputes with clients of high-stakes illegal gambling operation with implicit and sometimes explicit threats of violence and economic harm."

Tokhtakhounov was indicted by federal authorities in New York in 2002 on charges that he plotted to rig the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics pairs figure skating and ice dancing competitions.

He was arrested that year in Italy, whose highest appeals court ruled in 2003 against extraditing him to the United States. He was released by the Italian court.

According to court papers, Tokhtakhounov earned $10 million in 2011 alone as head of the gambling ring.

He is known in Russia as a "vory v zakone," or a "vor," a Russian term that translates to "Thief-in-Law" and refers to the highest echelon of Russian organized crime figures, according to prosecutors.

A number of defendants in the case, of whom 30 were in custody, were expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan later on Tuesday.

Michael Fineman, an attorney for defendant Vadim Trincher, 52, declined to comment after court.

Dana Cole, an attorney for Molly Bloom, who was arrested in Los Angeles and faces bookmaking charges only, said a judge released his client on Tuesday afternoon into the custody of her mother. She is scheduled to appear again in a New York federal courtroom on Friday.

Cole said that while he did not want to "minimize the seriousness" of the charges, "this is not the crime of the century."

Tokhtakhounov and three other indicted suspects - Abraham Mosseri, Donald McCalmont, and William Edler - remain at large and are wanted by federal officials, said Kelly Langmesser, a spokesman for the New York field office of the FBI.

None of the rich and famous clients of the alleged ring were charged or named by authorities on Tuesday. A person who answered the phone at the Nahmad Gallery in New York declined to comment on the indictments.