Pension thieves

CALLOUS crooks that stole from elderly people who made cash withdrawals have been arrested.

Operation Mugger was launched after a victim was robbed outside a bank in Betera.

Police say two gang members ramped up bank surveillance on pension collection days to identify possible targets. The elderly bank user would be distracted by somebody seeking information while a colleague then snatched the cash.

It has not been disclosed how the 38-year-old man obtained the tortoises or whether he was breeding them illegally.

railway station. She found out where the youngsters were staying, and passed on the details to the Guardia Civil who raided the property and rescued the girls. But their abusers had disappeared.

Operation Alike was launched in June after a report was received that two children had disappeared from a juvenile centre where they were living. The girls stayed for a week in Gandia in a property where the men were squatting. They were given psychotropic substances with a string of men visiting the house to sexually abuse them.

Abusers

Two of the abusers - aged 37 and 50 - of undisclosed nationalities, were finally tracked down and arrested in late October.

A 20-year-old man was detained in Murcia the following month, but details of the operation were kept secret until now. A 43-year-old inmate at Picassent prison is also being investigated.

The criminals operated in Valencia Province in Buñol, Betera, Riola, and Valencia City, plus Burriana in Castellon Province, and further south in the Murcia region.

Two Colombian nationals have been detained and arrest warrants issued against two others.

Bad habit

A DRUNK Franciscan monk knocked over a young boy in Torrent.

A breath test showed the monk - aged in his seventies - was over double the permitted alcohol limit for driving. The boy, said to be aged under five, was treated for a head injury at Valencia’s La Fe Hospital and went home after a period of observation. He was crossing the road, with his mother carrying her fourmonth-old, when the monk hit him in his Fiat Panda.

SHE has lived through two world wars, a bloody civil war, the Spanish Flu pandemic that killed millions and even pulled through unscathed when she caught Covid. Now Maria Branyas Morera has taken the title of the oldest living person at the ripe age of 115.

Maria, who lives in Catalunya, has inherited the accolade

Revenge is a dish best served hot for Shakira...but beware of your supercool ex

WHEN the Spanish tabloids’ golden couple Gerard Pique and Shakira split up, it seemed that everything was being settled amicably.

The Colombian songstress released a song, Monoto ny, whose lyrics and video conveyed heartbreak. But barely two months later, the dominant emotion in new track Session 53 is undiluted vengeance.

She takes aim at the ex Bar celona and Spain footballer and his new girlfriend Clara Chia and lets fly with both barrels.

The devastating lyrics include lines such as: ‘I was out of your league, that’s why you’re with someone just like you.’

And she follows up with ‘You left me with your mum as a neighbour, the press at my door and a debt with Hacienda’.

The latter is a reference to Shakira’s ongoing