HOUSTON –
A surveillance video caught a UPS driver stealing a package from a northwest Harris County front porch shortly after it was delivered by Fed Ex.

Al Alverson’s home security camera system recorded the incident on Wednesday.

Alverson said the video shows the Fed Ex deliveryman leave a new iPad mini on his doorstop — a Christmas present for Alverson’s daughter.

Later that same day, a UPS deliveryman showed up at Alverson’s house with a package. He got no answer when he rang the doorbell so he left the package and walked away.

But the security video showed the UPS driver did not leave. A couple of minutes later, he came back, picked up the iPad and walked off.

Alverson posted the video on YouTube Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, a deputy and an investigator from UPS were at his house. By the afternoon, he had his daughter’s iPad back.

UPS tracked down the driver. They said he was a seasonal employee who has been fired.

Officials said the driver gave back the package he swiped off Alverson’s doorstep. In return, Alverson said he would not press charges.

Buju Banton Drug Charges: Reggae Singer Awaits Ruling In Mistrial Request
12/22/12 05:35 PM ET EST

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TAMPA, Fla. — A Florida juror who voted to convict Jamaican reggae singer Buju Banton on drug charges has denied improperly researching the case during trial, despite a weekly newspaper’s report that quoted her as saying that she did.

Banton is serving a 10-year prison sentence for his convictions on cocaine conspiracy and trafficking charges stemming from a 2009 arrest. The Grammy winner faces an additional five years for his conviction on a related gun possession charge, but his resentencing hearing was postponed to investigate the report of juror misconduct.

Banton’s attorneys have filed a motion in Tampa federal court seeking a new trial. If granted, it would be the second mistrial for Banton, whose first trial in 2010 ended with jurors deadlocked. He was convicted in 2011 in his second trial.

U.S. District Judge James Moody reserved judgment Thursday on the defense motion.

Jurors were told during the trial not to do any independent research into the case. Terri Wright, a juror from Banton’s 2011 trial, was quoted in a Miami New Times report as saying that she researched parts of the case even though the judge had ordered jurors not to.

“I would get in the car, just write my notes down so I could remember, and I would come home and do the research,” Wright was quoted as saying.

New Times reporter Chris Sweeney testified Thursday that he interviewed several jurors. Sweeney also provided the court with a recording of his interview with Wright.

Wright testified that she sent Sweeney a text message after seeing his story, saying there had been “a huge misunderstanding with (Sweeney’s) questions.” Wright’s text message also read, “I did not violate the judge’s instructions with this case. I did my research AFTER the case was over and the verdict was given, NOT during the case. . I trusted you and now feel totally betrayed.”

Wright testified that she only researched Banton’s music and the federal Pinkerton rule, which involves liability among conspirators for the actions of other conspirators.

There was no proof that Banton possessed a gun or was aware that a co-defendant did, but because of the Pinkerton rule, Banton was convicted of a weapons offense. Moody tossed the gun charge, but an appeals court reversed that decision.

Wright said she told Sweeney that she had been a juror seven times before serving on Banton’s case, but she did not volunteer that information to prosecutors or Banton’s attorneys “because that wasn’t a question” during jury selection.

Moody called a sampling of three other jurors to ask if they remembered hearing other jury members talk about doing outside research. Two testified that had not heard anything, but one said she recalled a white female juror saying she had researched the Pinkerton law. Wright is black.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Preston said Banton’s defense had not met the legal requirement for a mistrial by showing that the jury was exposed to outside evidence that posed a reasonable possibility of prejudice to the defendant.

Defense lawyer Chokwe Lumumba said jurors were ready to acquit Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie, before Wright shared her research.

Banton is popular in his native Jamaica and won a Grammy for his last album before his drug conviction.

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Mankind at stake if GAY MARRIAGES continue – Pope Benedict

Pope Benedict XVI on Friday weighed in on a heated debate over gay marriage, saying same-s*x unions called into question what it means to be “true men”.

“In the fight for the family, the very notion of being – of what being human really means – is being called into question,” Benedict said in Italian during an end-of-year speech.

While he did not specifically refer to gay marriage, it was a clear bid by the pontiff to block the spread of the legalisation of gay marriage which is gaining ground in the West. France, Britain and the United States are expected soon to join a dozen countries where homosexual couples can legally wed.

“The question of the family is the question of what it means to be a man, and what it is necessary to do to be true men,” Benedict said.

The pope spoke of the “falseness” of gender theories and cited at length France’s chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, who has spoken out against gay marriage.

“Bernheim has shown in a very detailed and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper,” he said.

He cited feminist gender theorist Simone de Beauvoir’s view to the effect that one is not born a woman, but one becomes so — that s*x was no longer an element of nature but a social role people chose for themselves.

“The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious,” he said.

The defence of the family, Benedict said, “is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears.”

In an article for Britain’s Financial Times newspaper on Thursday, the pontiff reminded the country’s increasingly secular population the Church was not just concerned with morals, but also social issues.

“It is in the Gospel that Christians find inspiration for their daily lives and their involvement in worldly affairs — be it in the Houses of Parliament or the Stock Exchange,” the pope said in the article.

He also stressed the need for the Church to dialogue with atheists and agnostics who agree with the church’s social codes.

He spoke of the possibility of forming an “alliance” based on a common respect for the “law of nature,” in reference to the traditional marriage between a man and a woman.

On Monday, the Vatican’s newspaper described laws on gay marriage as an attempt at a communist-like “utopia”, a day after tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out in France to support legalising both marriages and adoption for gay couples.

France’s parliament is to debate the government-backed “marriage for all” bill early next year.

With President Francois Hollande’s Socialists enjoying a strong majority, the bill is expected to pass despite vehement opposition from the right and religious groups.