One Dead in Shootout Outside U.S. National Security Agency

WASHINGTON – At least one person died and two others were injured in a shootout at one of the entrances to the U.S. Army base in Maryland that houses the National Security Agency.

The dead man is one of the two attackers who early Monday morning, for reasons that are not yet clear, tried to get through one of the NSA entrances in an SUV.

Although the investigation into the incident is continuing and the secrecy that shrouds the NSA makes getting details about it difficult, terrorism has been ruled out as a motive.

According to a spokesman at Fort Meade, where 11,000 soldiers and 29,000 civilians live and/or work, police guarding the entrances to the NSA facilities opened fire on the vehicle that was trying to get past the control posts.

One of the people in the vehicle was killed on the spot while another was taken to a hospital in Baltimore. In addition, a police officer suffered an injury to an arm, possibly in a collision with the attackers’ vehicle.

According to NBC 4 television, the attackers were dressed as women and inside the vehicle were found a firearm and cocaine.

Images taken by TV helicopters flying over the area showed two vehicles that has collided, one of them clearly a police unit, as well as a body covered with a sheet lying on the asphalt a few yards from the gate to the NSA installation, which sits alongside the busy Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

The incident began when the two people in the vehicle refused to follow the directions of the guards at the Fort Meade gate to leave the high-security zone, where at that hour many workers with entry passes were being admitted.

The guards immediately responded to the situation by setting up barricades, but the driver of the vehicle did not stop until it had crashed into one of the police vehicles blocking access to the facility.

Police opened fire on the vehicle, killing one of the occupants.

The FBI said that there are no indications of any terrorist intent, but the investigation is continuing to determine, among other things, why the attackers were dressed as women.

Federal Police Rescues 18 Women Being Sexually Exploited in Central Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Federal Police officers rescued 18 women who were being sexually exploited in Ecatepec, a city in Mexico State, and arrested two suspects, the National Security Commission said.

Federal law enforcement agents following up on an anonymous tip confirmed that illegal activities were taking place at the Flamingo taco shop in the Ejidos de San Cristobal district of the city, the commission said in a statement.

Customers were invited into an area in the rear of the shop that had been outfitted as a bar and “where acts of sexual exploitation were presumably carried out,” the commission said.

A special Federal Police unit raided the store, where they found 18 women who appeared to have been victimized, the commission said.

Alberto Silva Vazquez, suspected of running the establishment, was arrested on people trafficking and sexual exploitation charges, the commission said.

Officers also arrested Erick Sebastian Vazquez Nuñez, who was in possession of a 9-mm pistol, ammunition and cash.

The suspects and the property seized were turned over to prosecutors in Mexico State, which surrounds the Federal District and forms part of the Mexico City metropolitan area. 

Iran news in brief, 29 March 2015

HUGE MILITARY EXERCISE IN FORT LAUDERDALE FLORIDA Pre JADE HELM (video)

U.S. Congress to impose sanction ‘very’ quickly on Iranian regime if no agreement reached

The Iranian regime has “no intention” of keeping its word on an agreement being negotiated in Switzerland over its nuclear programme, U.s House speaker John Boehner said on Sunday.

Speaking on CNN, Boehner said: “We’ve got a regime that’s never quite kept their word about anything”.

“I just don’t understand why we would sign an agreement with a group of people who have no intention of keeping their word.”

The Ohio Republican said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he’s skeptical the Obama administration will reach a deal with Iran to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program.

“Frankly, we should have kept the sanctions in place so that we could have gotten to a real agreement,” he said.

The tense international negotiations aimed at preventing the Iranian regime from developing nuclear weapons are headed down to the wire with prospects darkening after Tehran rejected what Western negotiators consider a critical part of any deal.

For months, the Iranian regime tentatively agreed that it would send a large portion of its stockpile of uranium to Russia, where it would not be accessible for use in any future weapons program. But on Sunday deputy foreign minister of the clerical regime made a surprise comment to Iranian reporters, ruling out an agreement that involved giving up a stockpile that has cost the country billions of dollars to amass.

Meanwhile, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Sunday the U.S. Congress must review any agreement the U.S. and other world powers may reach with the Iranian regime on curbing its nuclear program.

Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey said he has “real concerns” over the talks and that he wouldn’t support any deal that leaves Iran a “threshold nuclear” state, according to Bloomberg.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker has said the panel will consider legislation on April 14 that he is co-sponsoring with Menendez, which would allow Congress to review and approve a final agreement.

“This bill is a good bill and I’d hoped the administration would have supported it,” Menendez said Sunday at a synagogue in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. “We are going to have to see what the agreement is and what are the mechanisms for verification. There needs to be a very robust inspection.”

City Councilman Gunned Down in Western Mexico

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – A councilman in Tlaquepaque, a city in the western Mexican state of Jalisco, was gunned down this weekend, a police spokesman told Efe.

Feliciano Garcia Fierros was killed as he left a meeting with bus operators around noon Saturday in the San Martin de las Flores district of Tlaquepaque.

The 49-year-old politician was attacked by three heavily armed men and investigators do not yet have any suspects in the case.

The councilman was shot in the left side of the head and died instantly, police said.

Garcia Fierros’s 25-year-old son, Alejandro Garcia, was wounded and is listed in serious condition at a hospital.

Investigators found shell casings from automatic rifles at the crime scene.

There are no indications that the councilman received death threats or had any problems with people that could have led to his murder, Tlaquepaque Mayor Ernesto Meza Tejeda told Efe.

Garcia Fierros belonged to the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and chaired the municipal regulations commission in Tlaquepaque, which is in the Guadalajara metropolitan area.

The city government is awaiting the results of the investigation being conducted by the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office before deciding whether to increase security for top municipal officials, Meza Tejeda said.

Mexican Police Clash with Student Protesters, Arrest 200

Mexican Police Clash with Student Protesters, Arrest 200

MORELIA, Mexico – Police in the western Mexican state of Michoacan arrested early Saturday nearly 200 college students after they clashed in the historic downtown of the state capital of Morelia, leaving dozens of students, officials, paramedics and firefighters injured.

At about 4:10 a.m., 200 state police officers burst into the Nicolaita hostel for needy students, located in Avenida Francisco I. Madera, where hours before the inhabitants had set fire to a patrol car.

A similar operation to remove protesters was carried out simultaneously at the Dos de Octubre hostel, where a state government vehicle had been burned the previous evening.

Police made a surprise raid on both hostels, which sparked a clash with tear gas, clubs and rocks, which ended two hours later with the arrest of 198 students, most of them from other states around the country.

Also taking part in the operation were federal police officers, who surrounded other student hostels to stop their inhabitants from coming to the aid of their classmates, since all of them belong to the Committee of Embattled University Students, or CUL, and the Movement of the Hopeful and the Rejected, or MAR.

CUL and MAR are still holding eight other state vehicles that they commandeered on Thursday during a series of street blockades demanding that Gov. Fausto Vallejo provide them with 18 vans, supposedly to inform would-be students in rural communities about the Michoacan University of San Nicolas de Hidalgo, or UMSNH, application process.

Before the police operation, the state government announced that it would not negotiate with the dissenters until they returned the vehicles and freed the streets in Morelia’s historic downtown, describing the pressure they were applying as “blackmail.”

On his Twitter account, Gov. Vallejo justified the police action by tweeting that “without violating university sovereignty, today we have acted according to the law.”

Those under arrest were driven in trucks to the installations of the state Attorney General’s Office, where dozens of them were attended by paramedics before they were booked.

Thousands of Morelia inhabitants have shown their support for the state government on various social networks, since the students living in the hostels are continuously blockading streets, seizing cars and paralyzing the UMSNH to demand funds and passing grades for those who have failed the entrance exam.

Michoacan has 35 student hostels that receive government subsidies and where some 5,000 UMSNH students live, most of them from other states.

At the beginning of every school year, CUL and MAR influence more than 50,000 UMSNH students to paralyze the different faculties as a way of negotiating the acceptance of would-be students who were denied admission to the university.