Maine bandit cut into store to steal cigarettes

PORTLAND, Maine — Police in Portland, Maine, say someone cut a hole in the wall of a pharmacy to get inside and steal at least 10 cartons of cigarettes.
Police say the bandit went into an adjacent store that was under renovation, cut a hole in the wall and then absconded with $625 in cigarettes.
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The good news for a Northwest Knoxville convenience store operator? He has convinced the FBI he’s not a terrorist.The bad news? He’s going to prison anyway.What started four years ago as a probe into Hazam Ali Ahmed’s boast of ties to al-Qaida and talk of blowing up a mall in an act of holy war ended Thursday with Ahmed’s guilty plea to an unholy pursuit – hawking tens of thousands of untaxed cigarettes to convenience store operators in East Knoxville and Detroit.Ahmed, 38, admitted at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan to a slew of charges, including heading up two separate cigarette smuggling operations that robbed tax coffers in Tennessee and Michigan of nearly $500,000 in tobacco taxes.
Five people sleeping inside a Lenox Avenue house are lucky to be alive this Saturday morning after fire ripped through the house, investigators said.The official cause is: “Careless disposal of smoking material,” according to Deputy Chief Keith Phillips of Pittsfield Fire Dept.Around 2:30AM, the homeowner flicked a cigarette out the front door of 154 Lenox Avenue onto the porch just before going to bed, authorities said. The fire smoldered for a few hours and the winds fanned the flames, Phillips said.