Mexico’s Bloody Week In August –Death Toll At least 35 In 2 Days
In the latest report of killings it is amass murder with a death count of 14.That totals 35 in a little over 2 days. These include multiple murders, such as five family members killed in Acapulco, 6 patrons in a bar in Mexico state and 4 women in Torreon.
At the "Pachangon Bar", gunmen entered the facility in the early hours of Wednesday and began indiscriminately shooting patrons and employees. There were injured victims in addition to the 6 killed.
The bodies of four family members were found outside the home and that of a pregnant woman inside
A group of armed men executed five people of the same family. Among the deceased are threewomen including one that was pregnant.The other victims were an adult male and a 3 year old toddler.
Gunmen burst into the home on Loma Bonita Street,in the Colonia “Cinco de Mayo” of Acapulco. Neighbors informed Police that at midnight on Tuesday, gunmen stormed the home of those killed, immediately the sounds of rapid gunfire could be heard. However, out of fear, no one contacted the police until day break.
The bodies of three women were identified as Anabel Rincon Hernandez, Nava Navil Elena Hernandez and Nayeli Nava Hernandez, who reportedly was pregnant and was murdered boy's mother, the child was identified as Alexis Nava, the man is identified as Joel Macario age 30.
Arriving at the scene was the public prosecutor, who inspected the crime scene.Upon arrival, he found the bodies of man, the toddler and two women out of the home and the pregnant woman, indoors.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico handed Sandra Avila, Mexico's highest-profile woman drug smuggler known as the "Queen of the Pacific," over to United States authorities on Thursday to face trafficking charges north of the border.
Avila, who was arrested in Mexico in 2007, allegedly helped build up the Sinaloa cartel in the 1990s with the gang's leader Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman. She won her nickname for pioneering smuggling routes up Mexico's Pacific Coast into California.
The Mexican federal attorney-general's office said she would face cocaine possession and distribution charges in Florida.
Avila, who was given into the custody of U.S. officials in Toluca, was nabbed on organized crime and money-laundering charges in Mexico and had fought extradition by claiming she would be tried for the same crimes twice.
Avila is the niece of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, known as the godfather of the Mexican drug trade.
A Delaware pediatrician who writes about near-death experiences of children and has appeared on "Oprah" is accused of waterboarding his 11-year-old daughter for two years, according to Delaware State Police.
Dr. Melvin Morse, 58, and his wife Pauline, 40, were arrested Tuesday, a day after their daughter told a child advocate that her father had "waterboarded" her four times between May 2009 and May 2011 while her mother watched and did nothing to stop the abuse, Cpl. Gary Fournier told ABC News.
Delaware's Child Advocacy Center first became aware of the girl, whose name has not been disclosed, following a July 12 incident in which Morse was charged with third-degree assault for allegedly pulling his daughter out of a car, dragging her across a gravel driveway and spanking her in their Sussex County home, Fournier said.
The girl reported that incident to a neighbor who called police, Fournier said. Morse was later released from custody after he posted $750 in bail.
She later told the child advocate about the alleged waterboarding, police said, triggering the parents' arrest on Tuesday.
A 1-year-old girl who was the subject of a statewide Amber Alert is safe after being found at a relative's home in Alameda County.
Investigators say they are now looking for the suspect in the girl's abduction, her father, 30-year-old Johnathon Martinez, who remains at large. Martinez allegedly abducted the girl late Sunday night from her home in the San Joaquin County city of Lathrop. The Amber Alert went out a day later, but was canceled in the evening when the girl was found.
Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2012/08/06/2175282/chp-issues-amber-alert-after-young.html#storylink=cpy
DALLAS (AP) — Randy Travis was charged with driving while intoxicated and threatening law officers after the country singer crashed his car and was found naked and combative at the scene, officials said.
A mug shot released by the Grayson County Sheriff's Office shows a battered-looking Travis in a gray T-shirt, with a black eye and dried blood on his face. He later walked out of the county jail wearing scrubs, a University of Texas ball cap and no shoes.
It was the second Texas arrest this year for Travis, who was cited in February for public intoxication.
The sheriff's office in Grayson County, located in far North Texas along the border with Oklahoma, received a 911 call at 11:18 p.m. Tuesday about a man seen lying in a road west of Tioga, where the entertainer lives.
Texas Department of Public Safety troopers responding to the scene said a Pontiac Trans Am registered to Travis, 53, had been driven off the road and struck several barricades in a construction road.
Travis was not wearing clothes at the time of his arrest and made threats against the Texas troopers, said Tom Vinger, a DPS spokesman. He said the singer refused sobriety tests, so a blood specimen was taken.
Travis was released on $21,500 bond Wednesday morning from the jail in Sherman, about 60 miles north of Dallas. Blood test results are pending.
GARDEN GROVE, Calif. – A woman disguised in scrubs was caught trying to steal a newborn girl from a Southern California hospital in a tote bag after sensors attached to the baby alerted employees, Garden Grove police said.
Grisel Ramirez, 48, was arrested Monday at Garden Grove Medical Center after a hospital staffer stopped her from leaving with the baby, Lt. Jeff Nightengale said during a news conference.
"At this point we don't have a solid reason why she stole the baby," Nightengale said.
Ramirez is accused of posing as a nurse who came into the room of the baby's mother and told her to take a shower before a doctor came to examine her, Nightengale said.
Once the baby's mother was out of the room, Ramirez allegedly put the newborn in a purple tie-dyed tote bag and tried to carry her out of the ward.
"An alarm went off when the baby crossed an imaginary line" in the hospital that set off a sensor, Nightengale said.
Many hospital wards have security systems where patients, such as newborns or those with Alzheimer's disease, are tagged with an electronic sensor -- usually in a bracelet or anklet -- that sets off an alarm when the patient leaves a certain perimeter.
Authorities would not say what kind of system the Garden Grove hospital uses.
CORONADO - The Coronado Police Department is reviewing a recently completed independent report that questions its conclusion that the death of a boy at his father's mansion in the upscale peninsula city last summer was an accident, a representative of the department confirmed Monday.
The new analysis of the fatal injuries suffered by 6-year-old Max Shacknai in a fall down a stairwell at the Ocean Boulevard manor on July 11, 2011, seeks to refute the official ruling about the way in which he died.
"It would be more accurate to certify (the) manner as a homicide, where homicide is defined as death at the hands of another," the document states.
Max's mother, Dina Shacknai, and several attorneys representing her met with Coronado police Thursday and gave them the new analyses, the department's Lea Corbin said. It was unclear how long it would take department investigators to study the materials and reach conclusions about them, according to Corbin.
The report, compiled by forensic pathologist Judy Melinek and Robert Bove Jr., an expert in the biomechanics of injury, contends that the nature of the child's wounds was inconsistent the accepted accident scenario and instead point to an assault by an unknown party.
When Max suffered the fatal trauma, he was under the care of his father's girlfriend, 32-year-old Rebecca Zahau of Arizona.
Two days later, Zahau's nude body was found was found hanging by the neck from a balcony railing at the 103-year-old ocean-front estate owned by pharmaceutical tycoon Jonah Shacknai. Though her hands and feet were bound, investigators ultimately ruled that she had killed herself, possibly out of guilt over what had happened to the boy.
Zahau's family has consistently disputed the suicide determination, arguing that she was slain by an unknown killer or killers.
In a prepared statement, Dina Shacknai explained that the law enforcement determination about the manner of her son's death "just didn't add up" to her.
"When I started this process, all I knew is that I wanted the truth, wherever that led, like any parent would," she stated. "Even though nothing will bring my only child Maxie back, I owe it to him, as his mother, to make sure the true facts of his death are known."
A surgeon plunged into Lake Michigan's waters roiled by rip tides and rough waves to save two young boys, but died despite his wife's frantic efforts to revive him with mouth to mouth resuscitation, police and his wife said today.
Dr. Donald Liu, chief of pediatric surgery at the University of Chicago Medicine's Comer Children's Hospital, saw the two boys, who were friends of the family, swept up in the water. Despite protests from his own children, who were scared about the dangerous conditions, Liu went in to save them.
"You couldn't stop him," Liu's wife, Dr. Dana Suskind, told ABCNews.com today. "He always did the right thing."
The two boys made it back to the shore near Cherry Beach in Chikaming, but Liu, 50, did not survive the 6-foot swells and treacherous currents.
"After he saved those boys and I couldn't see him, they finally found him and they pulled him from the water. I tried to do mouth-to-mouth, but I knew. And it was so painful," Suskind said between sobs.
El Diario. 8-4-2012. Despite the fact that for months there has been talk of 60,000 homicides during the current federal administration, the truth is that just from the day the Felipe Calderon Hinojosa took office, until December 31, 2011, there were 83,541 murders reported, according to exhaustive research carried out by El Diario. These official facts were provided by the Public Ministries (PM) (local investigating and prosecuting authorities) of 28 states through the Sistema de Transparencia (literally, Transparency System; legislation similar to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act or public records access laws), which is why they are reliable numbers. In addition, the statistic of 83,541 murders is lower than the actual total numbers because authorities from four federal entities (states) refused to provide information on their homicides.
borderland beat
Of the number of victims (reported) up to last December, 7,017, or 8.4%, were females; state authorities could not determine the sex of 184 bodies due to the conditions under which they were found. Persons in the 21 to 30 year age group have been the most affected by violent deaths. Based on the reports obtained by El Diario, it was established that the states with the most homicides to date have been: Chihuahua, with 16,592; State of Mexico, 8,602; Sinaloa, with 7,443; Guerrero, 7,257; and Michoacan, with 5,045 (homicides). As recently as November, 2011, the United Nations Office against Drugs and Crime (UNODC) revealed in its report that in Mexico homicides are concentrated in a small number of states: Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Guerrero, and Baja California." It also established a clear link "between crime and development," when it pointed out that countries with wide income disparities are four times more likely to be affected by violent crime than more equitable societies.
The 83,541 crimes reported to the end of this previous year in this six year term are equivalent to the combined population of the municipalities of Valle de Zaragoza, Uruachi, Urique, El Tule, Satevo, Santa Barbara, Ojinaga, Riva Palacio and Guadalupe in the state of Chihuahua, according to the 2010 census from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI).
A University of California, Riverside philosophy professor, John Martin Fischer, has been awarded a three-year, $5 million grant by the John Templeton Foundation to study just this topic—and yes, students can take his class.
Fischer noted in an email to Yahoo News, "Both I and my post-doc, Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, will teach related classes over the next three years. I have frequently taught classes on death, immortality, and the meaning of life both at Yale University and UC Riverside."
So what's the meaning of life? More on that in a moment.
Fischer noted, "We'll be open both to studying religious and non-religious views about immortality. One thing that we'll study is whether human beings would want to live forever: would it be boring? Would it lose its meaning and beauty and urgency? Does death give meaning to life?"
Show caption Advocate staff file photo by Travis SpradlingThe wolf-dog hybrid named Chief is scheduled to be moved Wednesday from Pointe Coupee Parish to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola for service as a guard dog.
NEW ROADS — A state judge granted a reprieve Tuesday to a wolf dog hybrid he ordered destroyed for aggressive behavior, instead “sentencing” the animal to serve a life term as a guard dog in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
Judge James Best of 18th Judicial District Court signed an order releasing custody of Chief to the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections at the request of prison officials who want to use the animal as a guard dog at Angola.
Area residents testified in Best’s courtroom last month that Chief would frequently escape from his owners’ property and terrorize them. After hearing from the witnesses, Best ordered Chief — of British Colombia wolf and German shepherd ancestry — to be euthanized.
A Pointe Coupee Parish animal control ordinance states that all dogs must be confined to an owner’s property, or secured on a leash when they are not.
Best said shortly after his ruling that he was contacted by Angola Warden Burl Cain, who wanted to take Chief into custody for guard dog service at the state’s 18,000-acre maximum security prison.
El Ponchis-The notorious American born teen assassin
By Eng. Raul Ponce de Leon
In Mexico, 30 to 50 thousand children are involved with organized crime, according to organizations that protect children. (Borderland Beat)
The creation of a justice system for adolescents is paralyzed, it operates at federal level until 2014 and progress in this matter is inexistent in the states of Mexico.
Roberto Salgado Garcia, a professor at National School of Social Work at the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), presented a document on Children and Armed Conflict in Mexico, according to it, 10,000 children were orphaned as a result of the violence experienced in the country, the UN Agency for Refugees (UNHCR) has estimated 23,000 youth have been recruited by organized crime. The report conducted in 2010 entitled “Alternative Report on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and their Involvement in Armed Conflict”, stated that about 30 thousand children of both genders, between ages 9 and 17, are exploited by criminal groups in various ways, ranging from drug trafficking to kidnapping and human trafficking, extortion, smuggling and piracy, as well as 22 different types of crime.
“For 9 to 17 year old, boys and girls who are involved in crime, are mainly involved in human trafficking, while the younger ones are used to monitor or act as informants. They are also used to board the trains and monitor the amount of migrants arriving every day from South America,” explains the report.
Moreover, according to documents filed to the Committee on the Children Rights of the UN, youth starting from the age of 12 years are used as watchman for small houses where kidnapped victims are kept, so they cannot escape, the older ones, age 16, work in violent exercises, such as kidnappings, murders, and all of them carry guns.
The figures are alarming; about 24,000 children are incorporated in the Sinaloa cartel, over 17,000 with Los Zetas and about 7,500 with “La Familia Michoacana”, for a total of nearly 50,000 children and adolescents.
“They thought that they were going to find information that will demolish my moral authority, but they will not find anything else than the word of Jesus. Hope it is useful”….Stated by Fr. Solalinde after Zetas stole his laptop
borderland beat
oZetas prefer that the shelter of Ixtepec stay open
oPRI Government spread negative images of Central Americans, he points out.
oHe insists that he will not accept a bureaucratic position in the Church
Ixtepec, Oaxaca “Two members of the Zeta Cartel told me here, inside the shelter: “Do you think that we cannot kill you? We don’t do it because if we do, the shelter will close and then the migrants will go to other places, we will have to look for them everywhere! We prefer that they stay here” the catholic priest Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, stated in an interview. Solalinde is responsible for the shelter Hermanos Del Camino.
“It is different here than in Lecheria (passing point of immigrants in the state of Mexico). One of those responsible for causing us many problems is drug traffickers. We are not perusing them, because we are not police. I am not a policeman; I wasn’t placed here to chase drug traffickers. But, they are the ones that harm the immigrants and I have had to intervene,” he adds.
The criminalization against the migrants has been very high. However, one positive change is the PRD town city council has changed their attitude.
He notes that the PRI government, spread in the media a very bad image of the immigrants.Central Americans that are passing by the shelter, are targeted by the government and organized crime groups.
The security chief of the prison in Culiacan, the capital of the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, was gunned down, police said. Alejandro Osuna Rios was murdered on Friday in front of his house, police said. The 36-year-old Osuna Rios had been in charge of security at the prison for four months. Osuna Rios was attacked by several gunmen riding in two SUVs as he stood in front of his house with his wife and son in the Villas del Manantial district.
Sinaloa state Attorney General’s Office investigators found 44 bullet casings and an ammunition clip for an AK-47 at the crime scene, as well as the officer’s service weapon. Osuna Rios, who had just started his vacation, did not have time to draw his 9 mm pistol and return fire, police said. Sinaloa is currently the scene of a bloody turf war among several cartels. The state is home to the drug cartel led by Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman, who was arrested in Guatemala in 1993 and pulled off a Hollywood-style jailbreak when he escaped from the Puente Grande maximum-security prison in the western state of Jalisco on Jan. 19, 2001. The Sinaloa organization, sometimes referred to by officials as the Pacific cartel, is the oldest and most powerful drug cartel in Mexico. The Sinaloa cartel, according to intelligence agencies, is a transnational business empire that operates in the United States, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Americas and Asia. About 50,000 people have died in Mexico’s drug war since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon declared war on the country’s powerful cartels, sending soldiers into the streets to fight criminals.
The current legal fight involves a decision by Thorpe’s late third wife, Patricia, to sell his remains just after his death to two towns in eastern Pennsylvania called Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk.
Patricia Thorpe claimed the body the night before a traditional Sac and Fox burial ceremony could take place in Oklahoma.
Thorpe’s remains were sold on the condition that the towns combine, call themselves “Jim Thorpe,” and erect a monument to Thorpe.
Currently, part of Thorpe’s lineal family and the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma are suing the town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, asking that his body be returned to Oklahoma under terms of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.
The plaintiffs claim the Thorpe memorial falls under the definition of a museum receiving federal funds and his remains are, in fact, artifacts that should be returned to his lineal descendants in Oklahoma.
The town disputes the claim, and there are other Thorpe family members who want the body to remain in Pennsylvania.
The issue is now in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, where Judge A. Richard Caputo ruled late last year that parts of the lawsuit may continue.
William Schaub, the attorney for Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, told a local newspaper that a Supreme Court precedent was on the town’s side, since Jim Thorpe died in California.
“Burial has traditionally been governed by the states. Jim Thorpe was a resident of California,” Schwab said. “He died in California. This case should be governed by the California probate code which gave Jim Thorpe’s third wife the right to bury him as she saw fit. They are trying to trump state law.”
LONDON — Questions ranging from doping to genetic manipulation are emerging in the wake of Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen’s record-breaking performances.
When asked if the attention and suspicion are affecting her, Shiwen insisted she was focused on her lane and her times.
“There’s absolutely no problem with doping,” she said through a translator. “The Chinese team has always had a firm policy about antidoping.”
Shiwen, 16, won the gold medal and smashed the world record in the 400-meter Individual Medley and set an Olympic record in the women’s 200-meter Individual Medley on Monday. She left the Aquatic Centre abuzz with her increasingly impressive times
Leonard added that Shiwen looked like “superwoman,” and she has posted times tantamount to going stroke for stroke with American stars Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps. For 50 meters, she swam faster than Lochte earlier in the meet and set the Olympic record by touching the wall in 2 minutes, 08.39 seconds.
(CBS/AP) CHICAGO, Ill. - Over 30 law enforcement agencies have joined federal
agents hunting Arnoldo Jimenez, who is suspected of stabbed his new wife to
death and leaving her body in the bathtub.
Jimenez, 30, secretly married Estrella Carrera last Friday at Chicago City
Hall, and allegedly killed her just hours later.
Carrera's family asked police to check on her well-being after she failed to
pick up her two children Saturday. Authorities found Carrera's body in the
bathtub of her Burbank apartment, still clothed in the dress she wore to
celebrate her wedding.
Jimenez called his sister that same day and tearfully said he had left his
bride bleeding after a "bad fight," reported The Associated Press. He then hung
up and wouldn't pick up when she called him back.
Mexican marines detained five suspected members of the Zetas drug cartel this week and seized more than $1.6 million in cash, the Navy Secretariat said in a statement. The arrests in Mexico City and in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz were the result of intelligence gathering and several operations conducted in recent days, the statement said.
Rafael Antonio Medina Rea and Ricardo Fuyivara Romero were detained Tuesday in this capital in possession of a suitcase with $880,000 in cash, as well as a handgun and a grenade. The military personnel also detained suspected Zeta Jesus Rosas Ibarra on Wednesday in Mexico City and confiscated a box inside his vehicle with $730,890 in cash, as well as a handgun and another grenade.
According to the statement, authorities suspect Rosas Ibarra of serving since 2008 as a money manager for Los Zetas, a criminal gang notorious for its brutality. Rosas Ibarra told authorities the two men detained Tuesday in the capital worked with him and were involved in transporting ill-gotten cash in hidden vehicle compartments. The secretariat also said two men suspected of transporting money for the Zetas – Feliciano Ruiz Atilano and Rafael Vazquez Solis – were arrested Wednesday in Xalapa, capital of the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. Los Zetas, a group founded by deserters from a U.S.-trained Mexican special forces unit, started out as the armed wing of the Gulf cartel, but the two criminal organizations had a falling out in 2010 and the Zetas went into the drug business on their own account, gaining control of several lucrative territories. Even in the violent world of Mexican organized crime, the Zetas stand out for their propensity to dismember the bodies of their victims. President Felipe Calderon, who will step down in December, gave marines, army soldiers and federal police the lead role in the battle against drug cartels shortly after taking office in 2006.
A total of 62 Policia Federal (PF) agents have been kidnapped in Uruapan municipality in Michaocan state, according to a several Mexican news accounts. Twelve PF agents apparently happened upon a roadblock maintained by local indigenous Angahuan and Carapan Indians when they were taken prisoner Indigenous Indians are protesting illegal logging in the Meseta Purepecha area, according to a report posted on the website of El Sol de Zacatecas news daily. According to a late article posted on thw website of El Sol de Mexico news daily, a total of 50 additional PF agents were kidnapped. The article failed to elaborate when and where the additional police were kidnapped. The roads between Uruapan and Paracho, and Los Reyes and Zamora are being blocked as well as roads near Angahuan Capacuaro, Santa Cruz Tanaco and Tlazazalca. Those stretches of roads are less than seven kilometers from Cheran municipality, where continual protests against activity residents have claimed as illegal logging has taken place the past two years. Wednesday a Michoacan government news release said that at least three mixed operating bases would be established in the areas around Cheran, Paracho and Santa Cruz Tanaco. BOM or Base de Operaciones Mixtas, is a mixture of federal and state security forces. The mixing of security forces from all levels of gvoernment is a practice in routine use in Nuevo Leon state to counter drug gangs operating in the area, and to provide patrols. According to the El Sol de Mexico article the kidnappings are a response to the Michoacan state government plan to beef up security forces in the area. PF have also been asked to leave the area by indigent Indians. The news release, which names Michoacan governor Fausto Vallejo Figueroa said a number of repeated meetings would take place to assess the security situation in the area. The uptick in activity takes place in the wake of the murder of two Cheran residents two weeks ago near Cheran. The victims, Urbano Macias Rafael, 48, and Guadalupe Geronimo Velazquez, 28 were kidnapped as they attempted to bring in cattle from the fields. A protest by Cheran residents not only locked local officials in the town hall, but also took place in the capital of Morelia at the legislative palace. The two men were later found dead. Issues for local indigenous Indians in Michoacan boil down to illegal use of lands they consider tribal and sacred. Residents of Cheran have been protesting illegal logging and organized crime activity in the area for years. Even so, indigenous Indians such as the residents of Cheran have allegedly themselves been involved in a number of illegal acts such as auto theft carjacking, illegal roadblocks and imposition of illegal duties, as well a number of other petty crimes.
Four people were killed and six others were injured this morning in Cerro de Ortega , part of Tecoman , Colima , when heavily armed stormed a food establishment in the town bordering Coahuayana, in the State of Michoacan .
The Attorney General of the State of Colima reported that the incident occurred on Saturday morning when a group of people were having breakfast at a barbecue stand located at Calle Miguel Galindo, in the center of Cerro de Ortega, in Tecoman, when a group of armed men came and fired at will against the diners, resulting in four deaths and six injuries, which are reported as serious.
According to preliminary investigations by the Attorney General of the State said the attack was directed against Leopoldo Gonzalez Aviles "N", aka 'Pole", 33 years old, who was identified as one of the leaders of the Colima Cartel also called New Generation Jalisco (CJNG).
The law enforcement agency reported that the incident occurred when several armed men came to the place of reference and without saying a word opened fire with heavy weapons, depriving several persons of life and injuring six more.
The alleged leader of the so-called New Generation Jalisco Cartel arrived at the restaurant in a Mitsubishi van, Endevor line, pearl colored, overlapping plates of the State of Jalisco, which had been reported as stolen in that state since last January.
Similarly were deprived of life on the scene, Paul "N" Major, 52 years old; Elsa "N" 50, and a male person between 35 and 40 years old so far not yet been identified.
After the attack the likely responsible fled to an unknown destination, presumably in the state of Michoacan.
Martinez for Borderland Beat
