Mexico City ( Photojournalist killed and dismembered - One month after hire date )

Photojournalist’s Mutilated Body Found in Northern Mexico

MEXICO CITY – The mutilated body of Daniel Alejandro Martinez, a photographer for Mexico’s La Vanguardia newspaper, was found along with that of another young man in the northern city of Saltillo, the daily reported Thursday.

The dismembered bodies of the 22-year-old Martinez and 23-year-old Julian Alejandro Zamora Gracia were found Wednesday in Los Arcos, a neighborhood in the southern section of Saltillo, the Coahuila state Attorney General’s Office said.

The victims’ identification was missing when the bodies were discovered in Saltillo, the capital of Coahuila, the AG’s office said.

Martinez worked for the society pages of La Vanguardia and had been hired just a month ago, last reporting on Tuesday to get his assignments, the newspaper said.

The photojournalist failed to show up on Tuesday afternoon to cover a story he had been assigned, prompting “company personnel to try, unsuccessfully, to locate him with the assistance of relatives and friends,” La Vanguardia said in a front-page story.

The AG’s office identified the two young men “as members of an organized group” because it “irresponsibly” interpreted some messages left by the presumed killers with the bodies, La Vanguardia said.

An International Press Institute, or IPI, and World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, or WAN-IFRA, delegation visited Mexico in February and called for more protection for journalists.

Both the IPI and Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, ranked Mexico as the fourth most dangerous country in the world for journalists in 2012, trailing only Syria, Somalia and Pakistan.

More than 80 journalists have been murdered and 18 others have been reported missing since 2005 in Mexico, the Mexican National Human Rights Commission, or CNDH, said in a report released in December.

Some 658 complaints were received from members of the news media from Jan. 1, 2005, to Nov. 30, 2012, the rights body said.

The war on drugs launched by former President Felipe Calderon, who was in office from 2006 to 2012, left about 70,000 people dead, or an average of 32 per day, in Mexico, officials say. EFE

Texas ( Death Row inmate Richard Cobb Executed - Cobb was given lethal injection )

(Reuters) - Texas on Thursday executed a convicted murderer who, along with an accomplice, had robbed a convenience store in 2002, kidnapping two women who worked there and a male customer who was later shot dead.

Richard Cobb, 29, was given a lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:27 p.m. CDT (7:27 p.m. EDT) at a state prison in Huntsville, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a statement.

In his final statement, Cobb said: "Life is too short to harbor feelings of hatred and anger. That's it."

Cobb and his accomplice, Beunka Adams, who was executed in 2012, entered BDJ's convenience store in Rusk, Texas, armed with a shotgun and wearing masks, and demanded money, according to the state attorney general's office.

They took store clerks Candace Driver and Nikki Ansley Dement hostage along with customer Kenneth Vandever and forced them into Driver's Cadillac, the account said.

Adams drove to an open pasture and forced Driver and Vandever into the trunk while Cobb held the gun. Adams then took Dement to a wooded area and raped her. Later, according to the account, Cobb fatally shot Vandever and either Cobb or Adams shot the two women, both of whom survived.
Cobb was the fourth person executed in Texas this year and the ninth in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
(Reporting By Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

Dubai ( Off Duty U.S Navy female fights off rapist- Bus driver arrested )

UK Daily Mail (h/t Hill) An off-duty US Navy female sailor, 28, wrestled a Muslim bus driver to the ground and beat him into submission after he attempted to rape her at knife point, a court heard yesterday. Prosecutors said that she knocked the knife from his hand, broke it in two, bit him in the hand, forced him to the ground and locked him between her thighs.

The woman, 28, was on 24-hour shore leave in Dubai and was attacked as she returned to the port where she was based after a day shopping. She had been attempting to hail a taxi after visiting shopping centre, Mall of the Emirates and a supermarket when a bus pulled up next to her.

After climbing aboard she became suspicious of the drivers route. She said: ‘I noticed he did not take the main road and when I asked him he told me not to worry.’ He then drove for a further 10 minutes before stopping in an area where other buses were parked and attempting to kiss her. When she refused him he pulled the knife and threatened to rape her but she was able to subdue him.

Following the attack, which occurred on January 19 of this year, she left the bus and reported it to her commander at Port Khalid.

The driver, named as K S, from Pakistan, was arrested the next day at his home and the attending police officer said that he was intoxicated at the time.b He has been charged with attempted rape, threatening to kill, assault and consuming alcohol illegally. Having confessed to the alcohol charge, the driver claims to have been too drunk to remember what happened.

SEATTLE ( Wanted - Woman acting like nurse stealing meds from rooms )

By Elaine Porterfield

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Seattle police call it one of the boldest attempted drug thefts they have seen: A woman impersonating a nurse, apparently addicted to painkillers, crept through the hospital rooms of patients and tried to steal medication from their IV machines.

"It's pretty unusual, pretty brazen," Seattle police spokeswoman Renee Witt said on Wednesday. "It really shows how desperate this woman is and how powerful addiction can be."
Police are looking for the woman who, dressed in a shirt that resembled scrubs and wearing clogs on her feet, entered a man's room at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle on April 13 and began fiddling with his pain medication IV machine.

The patient did not recognize the woman and when he asked what she was doing, she promptly left, police said.
When the man's real nurse came into the room, she noticed his IV line had been cut and pain medication was dripping on the floor. The machine had pry marks, where the intruder apparently had tried to access pain medication, police said.
Shortly afterward, the same woman was spotted on another floor of the hospital peering into patient rooms, Witt said. She told a staff member she was there to check the IV machines.
The woman went into a room and again tinkered with a patient's IV machine, police said. As she left, a relative of the occupant noticed blood dripping on the floor and saw that lines to the patient's IV machine had been cut.
Witt said neither patient suffered any injuries, and the only thing stolen was about 2 feet of tubing from the patient-controlled medication machines and possibly some pain medication from the tubes.
Police said the woman appeared confident both in talking to hospital staff and in walking into patients' rooms. They released images of the woman on Wednesday and asked for the public's help in identifying her

TUCSON Az ( Pilot convicted of sexual assault- Moved to Tucson Air force base ) Where victim's family lives-protest

TUCSON - There's a push to stop the relocation of a fighter pilot to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
The officer was convicted in 2012 of sexual assault but an Air Force General later overturned the verdict claiming the evidence did not qualify as "beyond a reasonable doubt."
The victim is a longtime Tucsonan who still has family here.
On Thursday, a protest outside DM is scheduled.

Kim Hanks' family is upset both because her attacker's conviction was overturned and that he's been re-assigned to Tucson and Davis Monthan.
Lt. Col. James Wilkerson began his new post this week, as the Chief of Flight Safety on base.
Hanks' family says the air force failed to notify them where Wilkerson was being transferred until after the decision had been made.
Thursday at 4:30 the Hanks family and sexual assault survivor groups will gather outside DM in protest.
They'll also be collecting signatures.

FOX News Ann Coulter ( Trash talks immigrants "push cart people" and the FBI ) OMG

Ann Coulter: “Boston Muslim Bomber’s wife should be jailed for wearing a 

 .

h/t Susan K

Bangladesh ( 8 story building collapsed killing more than 70 workers )

 An eight-story building that housed four garment factories in the capital city of Bangladesh collapsed overnight, killing more than 70 workers, and adding to a rising death toll in a country where well-known American retailers pay dirt-poor wages to make clothing in factories with few of the basic safeguards that are standard in most of the developed world.

"It's a total disaster," said Charles Kernaghan, director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, who has a team on the ground in Dhaka interviewing survivors.

Kernaghan he has been told that some 2,500 workers who work at the four factories in the building refused to enter the building on Monday when they saw large cracks forming along the structure's exterior.
At 8 a.m. on Tuesday, factory owners allegedly told workers they would not be paid if they did not return to the factories and begin working, according to Kernaghan. The building collapsed about an hour later.

The death toll is still unclear. Kernaghan said he is aware that about 600 workers escaped the rubble unharmed.

The building collapse comes on the heels of a string of deadly factory fires in Bangladesh, including one that killed 112 garment workers five months ago. In December 2010, more than two dozen workers died in a Bangladesh factory that was making clothes for a range of U.S. brands, including Tommy Hilfiger.

In an ABC News investigative report on the fire that aired on World News and Nightline, Hilfiger and the CEO of parent company PVH, Emanuel Chirico, pledged to lead an effort to improve factory working conditions in Bangladesh.
Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, said his organization is now using shipping records and documents found at the scene to start identifying the Western retail brands that were customers of Ether Tex, the largest factory located in the building that collapsed on Tuesday.
"The death toll in today's factory building collapse in Bangladesh stands near 100, the latest in the endless parade of senseless deaths in garment factories producing for Western brands and retailers," Nova said.

Nova said he has reviewed production documents, which he provided to ABC News, that appear to show the retailer Benetton sourced clothing at the factory. The retailer has disputed this in a statement sent to ABC News.

"While we are working to verify the authenticity of the document you sent us, I am to confirm that these factories are not currently suppliers of Benetton Group or of any of his brands," the statement said.

Luca Biondolillo, head of Benetton Group Media and Communication Department, told ABC News he was "absolutely certain that none of these companies are currently suppliers of ours."
He said he has search through records of the last 10 years and so far they indicate no work with the factories since at least 2009.

Nova also said the Ether Tex web site listed Wal-Mart as a customer, though the web site was down Wednesday and that could not be confirmed.

Wal-Mart told ABC News it is still unsure if clothing made for its stores were made in the Bangladesh factory.
"We are sorry to learn of this tragic event," said Kevin Gardner, a Wal-Mart spokesman. "We are investigating across our global supply chain to see if a factory in this building was currently producing for Wal-Mart. We remain committed and are actively engaged in promoting stronger safety measures and that work continues."