GANGLAND GODFATHER

Vivian Blake, 54, a former top leader of the Jamaican Shower Posse, which U.S. prosecutors said was responsible for 1,400 drug-related killings in this country in the 1980s, died last Sunday in Kingston, Jamaica. He had been taken to the University Hospital of the West Indies complaining of breathing problems, said Ruel Rainford, the senior director of administration and operations. Dominique Blake said her father had been suffering from kidney failure and diabetes. Since his release from prison in the United States 14 months ago, he had been living in Jamaica. He grew up in poverty in West Kingston and earned a scholarship to St. George's College, a private high school. He first traveled to New York as part of a cricket team in 1973 and stayed there, establishing the American affiliate of the Shower Posse in Brooklyn. There are differing accounts of how the gang got its name. Some believe it derived from a phrase used by Edward Seaga of the Jamaican Labor Party, wit...

four accused - Nicola Ciconte, 54, of Rowville, Michael Calleja, 51, of Kew, Vincenzo Medici, 45, of Mildura, and Carmelo Loprete, 41, of Adelaide - will be tried in absentia in the town of Vibo Valentia in Calabria after a failed attempt by the Italian government to extradite them from Australia.Anti-mafia prosecutor Salvatore Curcio has told The Age the prosecution will use testimony from a Mafia turncoat, whose name has been suppressed, to corroborate phone taps, photographic and video evidence allegedly linking the four to a multimillion-dollar drug smuggling network that stretched from Colombia through Spain and Italy to Australia.According to court documents, the turncoat has confirmed the alleged link between the Calabrian Mafia and what prosecutors have termed ''leading crime figures operating in Australia''. He has told prosecutors the four Australians made several trips to Italy to arrange the shipment of large quantities of cocaine while members of the elite ...