Iran Human Rights, January 28: One prisoner was hanged in the prison of Mianeh (northwestern Iran) reported the official Iranian news agency IRNA today. The prisoner who was not identified by name was convicted of selling 890 grams of crack. He was also sentenced to pay 3 million rials for being a drug addict, said the report.
NEW YORK (AP) — Relatives of a missing New York City woman who disappeared during a vacation to Turkey, her first trip outside the U.S., are heading to Istanbul to look for her, her brother said Sunday.
Sarai Sierra's family was last in touch with her on Monday, the day she was supposed to start her journey home. The 33-year-old mother of two had been in Turkey on her own since Jan. 7.
Her brother David Jimenez told The Associated Press that he and Sierra's husband, Steven, were planning to leave for Turkey on Sunday night. He said he had no return date planned.
"I don't want to come home without my sister," he said.
Sierra planned to head to the Galata Bridge, a well-known tourist destination that spans the Golden Horn waterway, to take some photographs, said her mother, Betzaida Jimenez. Her daughter then supposed to begin traveling home and was scheduled to arrive in New York City on Tuesday afternoon.
Sierra's father went to pick her up at the airport and "waited there for hours" with no sign of his daughter, Jimenez said.
Sierra had planned to go on the trip with a friend but ended up going by herself when the friend couldn't make it. She was looking forward to exploring her hobby of photography, her family said.
"I was nervous. I didn't want my daughter to go," Jimenez said, but the trip had passed smoothly with Sierra in regular contact with her family and friends through text messaging and phone calls.
"She would always call and let us know, 'This is what I did today,'" Jimenez said.
When she didn't show up in New York City, her husband called the place where she had been staying, David Jimenez said. The owner of the hostel checked her room and saw that her passport, equipment chargers and other items were still there.
"It looked like she was just stepping out," he said.
The family has been in touch with authorities in their efforts to find her. No one was available to comment after hours Sunday at Istanbul police headquarters. Crime in Turkey is generally low and Istanbul is a relatively safe city for travelers, though there are areas where women would be advised to avoid going alone at night. The Galata and the nearby Galata Bridge areas have been gentrified and are home to fish restaurants, cafes and boutiques.
Sierra's children, ages 11 and 9, do not know their mother is missing, her brother said. Betzaida Jimenez said the situation has "been a nightmare."
"I'm forcing myself to get up because I have to get up," she said.
But she said the tight-knit family was holding onto their faith.
"We're praying and trusting God that she's safe somewhere and we're going to find her," she said.
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Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report. Follow Deepti Hajela at www.twitter.com/dhajela
Police in Tokyo on Sunday conducted simultaneous raids on 17 establishments in Tokyo for using high school girls to perform “relaxation services.” Police said 115 girls aged between 16 and 22 were taken out of the establishments. Of those, 76 were younger than 18 and were taken into custody, according to a TBS report on Monday.
The establishments, known as “JK rifure,” which is a contraction of the Japanese for “high school girl massage,” allow customers to receive massages from high school girls and to sleep next to them in private rooms. Police say such establishments, with names like “sweet jewel,” have been appearing at a rapid rate across the country, with around 80 having now opened in the center of Tokyo, most of them in Akihabara.
TBS said that police raids revealed that some establishments had been knowingly breaking the law by employing girls under the age of 18. Police say that dozens of young girls were taken into care in the raids.
According to police, many of the girls said they were introduced to the job by their friends who said they could earn up to 20,000 yen a day, TBS reported
T he new postmaster for the Farmington Post Office is 37-year-old Steve Begay.Last Friday, Begay was appointed Farmington's new postmaster, a Level 22 position with the U.S. Postal Service system.
It's a feat for Begay who is the youngest and first Native American to be the postmaster at the 134-year-old post office.
"I'm not the only one," Begay said about being the first Native American postmaster. "In Farmington alone, I am the first Native American and the youngest ever. Gallup and Window Rock have their own Navajo postmasters."
Though he welcomes the congratulatory remarks, the Shiprock, N.M. native says it requires responsibility. After all, he will oversee the function of the post office, which employees about 50 people and the delivery of about 18 million pieces of mail and 150,000 packages to 21,000 addresses in the area.
"Farmington alone generates $3 million," Begay said about his office's impact in the U.S.P.S and on the economy. "In the private sector, we would be a Fortune 500 company. It's a lot money but there's a lot of expenses."
Prior to becoming the postmaster in Farmington, Begay worked with the U.S. Postal Service as a city mail carrier in Tempe, Ariz., in 1999, after serving in the U.S. Marine Corp. from 1993 to 1997.
Between 1997 and 1999, Begay held various jobs and because of aspirations of being a firefighter or police officer, he applied to both jobs with the Tempe city government and, ironically, a third job with the local post office.
"They're the first one who came calling," Begay said about U.S.P.S. "That's how I started."
Since then, he worked at various post offices, primarily in the Phoenix area, as a city mail carrier for six years, before returning back to the Four Corners region in 2005.
From 2005 to 2008, Begay worked periodically as a city mail carrier and then later as an official supervisor.
"The more I worked and the more I saw the structure of the company, I realized the postmaster was the end goal," he said.
In a renewed crackdown on the news media in the capital, plain-clothes intelligence ministry officials yesterday searched the headquarters of four daily newspapers – Etemad, Arman, Shargh and Bahar – and the weekly Aseman and, without giving any explanation, arrested at least 10 journalists.
Two other journalists were arrested the day before. Arrest warrants have been issued for other journalists.
“The constant persecution of journalists keeps on intensifying by the day,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “Iran has not yet emerged from the era of terror launched after the disputed June 2009 presidential election and now, five months before the next election in June 2013, a clear warning is being given – journalists and news media will be gagged.”
Reporters Without Borders calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all journalists currently detained in Iran. The authorities must put an end to these repeated waves of arrests, which have the sole aim of ensuring the regime’s stability and survival. Such intimidation attempts are doomed to fail.
According to the information obtained by Reporters Without Borders, at least 12 journalists were arrested during the weekend. The ten arrested yesterday were Sasan Aghai, Nasrin Takhayori, Javad Daliri and Emily Amrai of Etemad; Motahreh Shafie, Nargus Jodaki and Saba Azarpik of Arman; Porya Alami and Pejman Mousavi of Shargh; and Akbar Montajabi of Aseman.
The two journalists arrested the day before were Milad Fadai Asl of the news agency ILNA and Soliman Mohammadi of Bahar. Both were arrested at their place of work. All 12 were transferred to unknown detention centres after searches of their homes and confiscation of personal effects.
Other journalists have been sent summonses to present themselves to revolutionary courts during the days to come.
Since the start of January, a number of journalists have been summoned for questioning by Revolutionary Guards or intelligence ministry officials. During these interrogations, they have been questioned above all about the next presidential election and the candidate or candidates they intend to support.
They were also asked for their opinion on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s latest speech, on 28 December, in which he berated government opponents. “Stop saying we must organize free elections,” he said. “Since the start of the Islamic Republic, the elections have always been free.”
Prosecutor-general Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi said threateningly during a news conference on 21 January: “Reliable information has reached me that certain journalists in Iran are collaborating with westerners and counter-revolutionaries based abroad.”
Hackers angry over the suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz took over the website of the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) twice over the weekend, finally infecting the homepage with a playable version of the classic arcade game "Asteroids."
The hackers, claiming affiliation with the online movement Anonymous, also claimed to release a list of people in the federal Witness Security Program, also known as the Witness Protection Program, but that was quickly discovered to be a hoax.
Blood of the martyr
The attack began late Friday (Jan. 25), when the homepage of the USSC, which sets sentencing guidelines for federal courts, was defaced with a video regarding the prosecution of Swartz.
"We have seen the erosion of due process, the dilution of constitutional rights, the usurpation of the rightful authority of courts by the discretion of prosecutors," said a voiceover on the video. "We have seen how the law is wielded less and less to uphold justice, and more and more to exercise control."
Swartz, who hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment earlier this month at the age of 26, was facing decades in federal prison for allegedly downloading millions of academic documents from an online archive to a laptop hidden on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
According to a report released last week, local authorities in Boston had not intended to seek any jail time for Swartz.
Federal prosecutors then took over the case, first indicting Swartz on four charges that carried a maximum penalty of 35 years in prison, then adding nine more charges in a second indictment that increased the possible prison time to 50 years.
Two weeks ago, Anonymous defaced the websites of MIT and the U.S. Department of Justice in Swartz's memory.
It was Feb. 24, girls’ night out. Best friends Vilet Torrez and Clarissa Garcia went out to the Cheesecake Factory, where they ordered drinks and split a slice of cheesecake. They laughed and chatted and caught up on the things best friends talk about over drinks and desserts: their families, their children, their marriages.
And, yet again, Garcia advised her friend she had to leave her husband.
She was tired of hearing the stories of how Cid Torrez beat her and then swore every time afterward he would never do it again. She was sick of seeing Vilet with bruises.
“What’s it gonna take? Your death? A casket?” Garcia asked.
“Oh, my good friend, he wouldn’t do that,” Torrez said.
Torrez went missing five weeks later.
Friends, family and former co-workers of Torrez all believe her husband, Cid, is behind her disappearance. Miramar police and prosecutors agreed and — despite the lack of a body, or an eyewitness, or a weapon — charged the 39-year-old with murder. Such murder charges don’t always stick, as evidenced by the just-completed murder trial of Geralyn Wilson, foster mother of Rilya Wilson. It was another case of no body, no witnesses, no murder weapon. Geralyn Wilson was convicted of lesser charges.
Cid’s family expressed disbelief that he would harm, much less kill and dispose of, the mother of his three children, although they acknowledged the marriage had turned toxic.
Cid Torrez has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial in a Broward jail.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/26/3202276/the-missing-miramar-mom-a-tale.html#storylink=cpy
