NCRI - The European Union imposed sanctions on Tuesday on an Iranian regime’s cyberpolice that crackdowns on Internet users, as well on several judges and media bosses for human rights violations in Iran.
The move brings to nearly 90 the number of people targeted by EU asset freezes and visa bans over concerns about human rights in Iran. List of the persons and the entity targeted: Persons RASHIDI AGHDAM, Ali Ashraf Head of Evin Prison, appointed around June/July 2012. KIASATI Morteza Judge of the Ahwaz Revolutionary Court, Branch 4. MOUSSAVI, Seyed Mohammad Bagher Ahwaz Revolutionary Court judge, Branch 2. SARAFRAZ, Mohammad (Dr.) (aka: Haj-agha Sarafraz) Head of IRIB World Service and Press TV, responsible for all programming decisions. Closely associated with the state security apparatus. JAFARI, Asadollah Prosecutor of Mazandaran Province EMADI, Hamid Reza (aka: Hamidreza Emadi) Press TV Newsroom Director. Responsible for producing and broadcasting the forced confessions of detainees, HAMLBAR, Rahim Judge of Branch 1 of Tabriz Revolutionary Court. MUSAVI-TABAR, Seyyed Reza Head of the Revolutionary Prosecution of Shiraz. KHORAMABADI, Abdolsamad Head of “Commission to Determine the Instances of Criminal Content”. Entities Center to Investigate Organized Crime (aka: Cyber Crime Office or Cyber Police) The Iranian Cyber Police is a unit of the Islamic Republic of Iran Police, founded in January 2011, which is headed by Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam (listed).
Three inmates escaped a Missouri jail late last night.
According to ABC, Rodney Joe Green, Matthew Brandon Cook and Kade Reaves Stringfellow all escaped the Butler County Justice Center at about 11:30 pm last night. Cook was facing first degree murder charges, Stringfellow was being charged with second degree murder, and Green was in jail for multiple charges relating to a home invasion. All three men were awaiting trial.
The three were being held in the same area and worked as a team to escape, according to the sheriff’s department. KCTV5reports that the three inmates worked together to escape through the ceiling tiles of the Missouri jail. The three men reportedly climbed through the duct work in order to break out of the prison.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Recent Korean history reveals a sobering possibility: It may only be a matter of time before North Korea launches a sudden, deadly attack on the South. And perhaps more unsettling, Seoul has vowed that this time, it will respond with an even stronger blow.
Humiliated by past attacks, South Korea has promised — as recently as Tuesday — to hit back hard at the next assault from the North, opening up the prospect that a skirmish could turn into a wider war.
Lost in the headline-making North Korean bluster about nuclear strikes on Washington in response to U.N. sanctions is a single sentence in a North Korean army Supreme Command statement of March 5. It said North Korea "will make a strike of justice at any target anytime as it pleases without limit."
Those words have a chilling link to the recent past, when Pyongyang, angry over perceived slights, took its time before exacting revenge on rival South Korea. Vows of retaliation after naval clashes with South Korea in 1999 and 2009, for example, were followed by more bloodshed, including attacks blamed on North Korea that killed 50 South Koreans in 2010.
Those attacks three years ago "are vivid reminders of the regime's capabilities and intentions," Bruce Klingner, a former U.S. intelligence official now at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, wrote in a recent think tank posting.
Almost a mirror image of the current tensions happened in 2009, when the U.N. approved sanctions over North Korean missile and nuclear tests, and Pyongyang responded with fury. In November of that year, Seoul claimed victory in a sea battle with the North, and Pyongyang vowed revenge.
In March 2010, the Cheonan, a 1,200-ton South Korean warship, exploded and sank in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors. A South Korean-led international investigation found that North Korea torpedoed the ship, a claim Pyongyang denies.
The Cheonan sinking may have been retaliation for the naval defeat four months earlier, said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea specialist at Seoul's Dongguk University.
In November 2010, North Korea sent a warning to South Korea to cancel a routine live-fire artillery drill planned on Yeonpyeong Island, which is only seven miles from North Korea and lies in Yellow Sea waters that North Korea claims as its own.
South Korea went ahead with the drills, firing, Seoul says, into waters away from North Korean territory. North Korea sent artillery shells raining down on the island, killing two civilians and two marines.
South Korea responded with artillery fire of its own, but the government of then-President Lee Myung-bak was severely criticized for what was seen as a slow, weak response. Lee, a conservative who infuriated North Korea by ending the previous liberal government's "sunshine policy" of huge aid shipments with few strings attached, vowed massive retaliation if hit again by the North.
The government of newly inaugurated President Park Geun-hye, also a conservative, has made similar comments, though she has also said she will try to build trust with North Korea and explore renewed dialogue and aid shipments.
South Korea's Defense Ministry on Tuesday repeated that it would respond harshly to any future attack from the North. Spokesman Kim Min-seok said there were no signs that North Korea would attack anytime soon, but warned that if it did, it would suffer "much more powerful damage" than whatever it inflicted on South Korea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Monday visited artillery troops near disputed waters with South Korea and urged them to be on "maximum alert" because war could break out anytime, according to Pyongyang's official media.
If war broke out, the United States would assume control of South Korea's military because of the countries' decades-old alliance that began with the U.S.-led military response to North Korean invaders in 1950. But South Korea has made clear that it has a sovereign right, and a political necessity, to respond strongly to future North Korean attacks.
PHOENIX (CBS5) -
Protesters from Puente Arizona marched from Indian Steele Park in Phoenix to ICE headquarters and the office of Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery demanding that all charges be dropped against the victims of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's workplace raids.
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The protesters said they hoped to highlight the link between family separation and Montgomery's decision to maximize charges against Arpaio's victims, following ICE's roadmap for securing deportations.
"We march with the families to ask Bill Montgomery to recognize the illegality of local police immigration raids and drop the criminal charges of workers simply trying to feed their families," said protester Carlos Garcia of Puente Arizona.
Montgomery issued the following statement in response to the march:
"I support people exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances and to speak freely, rights which, among others, more than one million Americans have died defending. Today's demonstrations highlight the consequences of our federal government's failure to address a broken immigration system and to properly secure our borders.
"While I continue to support reasonable and necessary federal immigration reforms, I remain equally committed to enforcing the laws I have sworn to uphold as County Attorney. My Office will continue to make charging decisions based on an individual's conduct -- not his or her race, ethnicity or residency status. We do not initiate prosecutions to achieve a particular immigration outcome, nor do we control the federal consequences of state-level convictions. I reject any call to treat one particular group more or less harshly than any other, or to mix politics with criminal justice."
Upon reaching ICE headquarters, several family members of raid victims were scheduled to give statements.
More than 2,800 decomposing pigs have reportedly been pulled from the upper
reaches of Shanghai’s Huangpu river – a source of drinking water for some of the
mega-city’s 23 million inhabitants.
How so many pigs got there and why they died remains a mystery, although
local media reports have suggested the animals may have been dumped in the river
by an unscrupulous farmer from the neighbouring province of Zhejiang.
On Monday, authorities announced they had detected traces of porcine
circovirus, a disease that affects pigs but which is not believed to infect
humans, in the river.
However, authorities insisted there was no risk drinking water supplies would
be contaminated and said tests of the Huangpu's waters had found no trace of
foot and mouth disease, blue-ear pig disease or swine fever.
11 Mar 2013
The pigs were first discovered on Thursday, five days ago. Graphic
photographs of the bloated, floating carcasses circulating online did little to
calm residents' nerves.
"We have to act quickly to remove them all for fear of causing water
pollution," Xu Rong, the environmental chief in Shanghai's Songjiang district
told the state-run Global Times newspaper. "So far, water quality has not been
affected but we have to remove the pigs as quickly as possible and can't let
their bodies rot in the water."
On Monday lunchtime environmental protection workers were continuing their
rescue operation, hauling pig after pig from the murky waters around
Hengliaojing Creek, around 40 miles from central Shanghai.
'Human Chain' Saves Boy, 12, From Drowning (ABC News)
A 12-year-old New Zealand boy, who was swept out to sea by rough waters, was rescued by beachgoers after they formed a human chain to pull the boy back to the shore.
Josh McQuiod had been playing with a friend along the water's edge on Marine Parade in Napier, New Zealand, Sunday when he was whisked out to sea, and close to drowning, according to One News in New Zealand.
McQuiod was dragged nearly 500 feet along the beach and fought eight long minutes for air against the pounding surf.
"The waves smashed me so much, there were five really big ones, they flipped me around quite a few times," McQuiod told One News. "I think the longest for about 20 seconds."
Constable Paul Bailey of the Napier Police was the first one into the water to attempt to rescue McQuiod, but he had a difficult time holding on to him.
"A few times under the waves I was thinking, 'Have I done the right thing charging in here? Is it going to be two bodies they're looking for," Bailey told One News.
Another police officer instructed others to form a human chain from the shoreline into the water to bring McQuiod and Bailey to safety.
McQuiod was unresponsive when his lifeless body was brought back to shore. Once again, his rescuers stepped up and helped revive him before he was taken to a local hospital.
The dramatic video captured during the rescue shows more than a dozen people holding hands from the beach into the whitecap waves to bring the two to safety.
"I'd love to thank them so much for what they did. They saved my life. If it wasn't for them I'd be dead," McQuiod told One News.
NCRI - The Iranian regime authorities have blocked the use of software tools that people use to evade Iranian regime's Internet filtering.
Iranian regime has adopted one of the world's most substantial Internet censorship regimes. Iran under mullahs' rule is among a small group of states with the most sophisticated filtering systems purchased from Western countries.
Many Iranians citizens evade the filter through use of "Virtual Private Network". Using the technology, surfers in Iran could sign in to a server in the United States for example and pretend that they are actually located in the US and not Iran. This way they circumvent the Iranian government’s installed filters and Iran’s information agents will not easily know which websites they visited.
But authorities have now blocked "illegal" VPN access, a member of Iranian regime's parliament said on Sunday.
The head of parliament's information and communications technology committee, Ramezanali Sobhani-Fard quoted by state-run Mehr news agency as saying: "Within the last few days illegal VPN ports in the country have been blocked."
"Only legal and registered VPNs can from now on be used," he added.
NCRI - The European Union imposed sanctions on Tuesday on an Iranian regime’s cyberpolice that crackdowns on Internet users, as well on several judges and media bosses for human rights violations in Iran.
NCRI - The Iranian regime authorities have blocked the use of software tools that people use to evade Iranian regime's Internet filtering.