ROME ( Monsignor Busted " Trying to sneak 26 million into Rome " )

Vatican Monsignor Arrested in Cash-Smuggling Probe

ROME – A cleric formerly assigned to the Vatican finance office is among three people arrested Friday for allegedly attempting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) in cash into Italy.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano was recently relieved of his duties as a senior Vatican accountant after the Holy See learned that he was under investigation for money laundering.

The others taken into custody are financial intermediary Giovanni Carinzo and Giovanni Maria Zito, an erstwhile member of the intelligence division of Italy’s militarized national police.

The investigation leading to their arrests was part of a wider probe into the operations of the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, the Vatican’s bank.

The smuggling case, however, does not appear to involve the IOR.

The Vatican said Wednesday that Pope Francis has named a five-person commission that in the coming months will investigate all that goes on in the IOR, involved for years in a series of financial scandals, with a view to its possible reform. EFE

Russia News ( Russia asks Edward Snowden to " Work with them " be a SPY ? ) see article

© REUTERS/ Bobby Yip

Edward Snowden: hot potato

by Anna Arutunyan at 28/06/2013 18:36

As NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden remains holed up somewhere in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, at least three governments are involved in high-stakes backdoor negotiations over his fate.
Politicians in the United States vowed to step up pressure on Russia and Ecuador. The latter has suggested it might give asylum to Snowden, a former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency wanted by the United States for leaking reports about a top-secret surveillance program. But for Ecuador and Russia, the key question was whether the whistleblower was a gift of fate or a hot potato.
By the end of this week, a number of Russian politicians were increasingly seeing him as an opportunity to exploit.
Russia’s Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, wants Snowden to help investigate whether American Internet companies provided information about Russian citizens to the U.S. government.
“We invite Edward Snowden to work with us and hope that as soon as he settles his legal status, he will collaborate with our working group and provide us with proof of U.S. intelligence agencies’ access to the servers of Internet companies,” Senator Ruslan Gattarov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying on Thursday, a day after Russia’s upper house of parliament decided to set up a special working group to investigate Snowden’s claims.
Earlier, Kirill Kabanov, a member of President Vladimir Putin’s Human Rights Council, called on colleagues to appeal to the Kremlin to grant asylum for Snowden.
Given that Putin himself suggested that giving Snowden asylum was as useless as “shearing a pig – a lot of squealing and no fleece,” why has Snowden suddenly become so appealing for Russia’s political elite?
“It’s very good to demonstrate to the world that the United States isn’t such a big defender of human rights as it makes itself out to be,” Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst and the prorector of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, told The Moscow News. “And it’s good to show that Russia can act independently of the United States. Plus, if he stays, there’s a possibility that our security services will have access to his information.”
Putin was notoriously lukewarm on Snowden, saying on Tuesday that the sooner he left the country, the better. But that, Markov said, was part personal, and part political ploy.
“[Putin] is a former intelligence officer, and for him [what Snowden did] is betrayal,” Markov said. “Also, Putin doesn’t want to think that Russia organized [Snowden’s arrival to Moscow].”
But other analysts reflected Putin’s skepticism, and said that keeping Snowden in Russia would be a mistake.
“It should not be done,” Alexander Konovalov, President of the Institute of Strategic Assessment, told The Moscow News, suggesting that Snowden posed a liability by being too unpredictable.
“No one really knows what he was motivated by. It wasn’t money. It wasn’t Communist ideals, which don’t matter anymore,” he said. “So what were they? He’s part of a new information society, and for many of these people, there is a conflict between the responsibilities they’ve undertaken before the state, and the responsibilities which they themselves feel they have before humanity. We will increasingly be seeing people like this here in Russia.”
That, Konovalov said, is not something the Kremlin would be looking forward to.
A similar indecisiveness on whether Snowden was worth the trouble was reflected in the United States, where President Barack Obama was lukewarm on pressing for Snowden’s extradition.
"I have not called [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] personally or President Putin personally and the reason is … number one, I shouldn't have to," Obama said this week, adding that given the business America does with Russia, Snowden just wasn’t worth “wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues.”
For some lawmakers, on the other hand, extraditing Snowden was a matter of political principle.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told The Daily Beast that the extradition was a “defining moment” in America’s relationship with Russia.
“We are exploring what are the leverage points. I’m trying to put together a package to let the Russians know how serious we are,” he was quoted as saying.
But even in the States, other lawmakers, like Carl Levin of the Senates Armed Services Committee, recognize they have little leverage over Russia.
Pressure by the United States on Ecuador – which too distanced itself from Snowden when it denied it had given him refugee documents of passage – has already backfired, for example.
After Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, threatened Ecuador’s trade arrangements with the United States if it grants asylum to Snowden, Ecuador thumbed its nose and renounced the preferential tariffs anyway, “in the face of threats, insolence and arrogance of certain U.S. sectors,” President Rafael Correa said on Thursday.
Indeed, both Ecuador and fellow leftist ally Venezuela seem to be in the middle – exploiting the political rhetoric, but not committing to Snowden himself. Both have made strong statements against the United States, but have largely remained careful in offering Snowden asylum.

CAIRO ( U.S Citizen killed while photographing clashes in Alexandria - shot and stabbed )

CAIRO – A 21-year-old U.S. man was killed Friday while photographing clashes in Alexandria between supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.

The man was stabbed in the chest, Egypt’s official Mena news agency said, though security sources told Efe that the American may have been killed by birdshot.

An Egyptian man killed earlier Friday in Alexandria was a Morsi supporter, the sources said.

Anti-government militants burned the Alexandria offices of the president’s Peace and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Dozens of people were injured in clashes around the PJP offices, including 11 police.

Andrew Driscoll Pochter Died

 

Medics working at a makeshift hospital set up inside a nearby mosque said they treated 143 people, most of them suffering from birdshot wounds.

The opposing sides pelted each other with stones and traded accusations of snipers posted on rooftops.

Foes of Morsi also set fire to three PJP offices in the Nile delta province of Dakahliya.

Cairo witnessed continuing mass demonstration by both partisans and opponents of the government.

Critics accuse Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood of doing little to address poverty and the declining economy, of failing to advance the goals of the 2011 revolution that forced out strongman Hosni Mubarak and of seeking to monopolize power.

The opposition is gearing up for nationwide marches this weekend aimed at driving Morsi from office. EFE

Brazil ( Robbers Kill Little Boy “Because He Wouldn’t Stop Crying” )

SAO PAULO – Robbers who assaulted the home of a Bolivian couple before dawn Friday in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo killed their only child “because he wouldn’t stop crying,” police officials said.

The mother identified the boy as 5-year-old Bryan Yanarico Capcha and told police that six armed men had broken into their home.

The married couple, who came to the city at the beginning of the year to work in a clothing factory, gave the assailants the 4,500 reais ($2,000) they had in the house, but the criminals wanted more money, the woman told police.

Police officials cited in the media said the boy, who was in his mother’s arms, “would not stop crying,” which irritated one of the assailants who shot him in the head.

The criminals fled immediately and the child was rushed to a nearby hospital, but died on the way.

In recent years Sao Paulo has become the destination of thousands of Bolivians looking for a better future, often in the textile industry.

Human rights organizations estimate the number of Bolivians living in Sao Paulo at some 100,000, most of them illegally and many the victims of slave-labor practices in the textile industry. EFE

CUBA ( Two Havana high school teachers arrested for selling students copies of a mathematics exam prior to the test )

HAVANA – Two Havana high school teachers and a worker at a printing company were arrested for selling students copies of a mathematics exam prior to the test, Cuba’s official media said Thursday.

The math test was for 11th grade students in the capital and was given several days ago, Communist Party daily Granma said.

When the illicit activity was detected, however, authorities decided to throw out the results and hold a new exam on July 1.

“Unscrupulous people, violating their principles, decided to steal an exam with an eye toward profits,” Granma said in an article entitled “The terrible damage of fraud.”

Police arrested the trio in the Cerro neighborhood and the daily said that the situation “cannot be seen as a minor incident.”

“Once again the concept of vigilance and thoroughness is lacking and the conditions are facilitated whereby a worker who has been entrusted with participating in the printing of a test takes a copy and uses it for an illicit business,” Granma said.

The daily said it was worrisome that some parents of students “fell into the trap” and paid for the exam, which was then resold by students, spreading the fraud into other Havana neighborhoods.

Many parents reacted with indignation to the report of the fraud and are demanding that “exemplary measures be taken against those responsible,” Granma said. EFE

Mexico ( Across from McAllen Texas border - Shoot -out that lasted for more than an hour ) Cartel Wars

MEXICO CITY – At least 11 people were killed and seven others wounded in a shootout between army troops and gunmen in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, state officials said.

The shootout occurred Wednesday in Reynosa, located across the border from McAllen, Texas, the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office and the Public Safety Secretariat said in a statement.

The shootout lasted more than an hour and ended close to a Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, facility and in front of a school.

Three dead civilians were found inside a pick-up truck with homemade armor, the AG’s office said, adding that the men were armed.

One of the dead men was identified as 30-year-old Javier Antonio Cardenas Lopez, who was from the northwestern state of Sinaloa.

Three men wounded in the shootout – two soldiers and a Pemex employee – were transported to a clinic operated by Pemex, officials said.

One of the wounded soldiers died while being treated by doctors and the other underwent surgery for a gunshot wound in the back and is listed in stable condition.

The Pemex employee was treated for a slight wound and later released.

Five bystanders were wounded and hospitalized, but they are all expected to survive, the AG’s office said.

The Gulf, Sinaloa and Los Zetas drug cartels have been fighting for control of Tamaulipas and smuggling routes into the United States.

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.

Calderon, of the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, deployed thousands of soldiers and Federal Police officers across the country to fight drug cartels.

President Enrique Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, has continued the strategy implemented by Calderon of taking on the cartels, but he has also called for bolstering intelligence capabilities and attacking criminal organizations’ entire structures, not just kingpins. EFE

Mexico ( Citizens block road - Demand release of Mr. Torres - King of the Mango producers )

Protesters Block Road Near Mexican Tourist Zone

TECPAN, Mexico – Residents of several communities in a coastal area in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero blocked a highway to demand the release of a peasant who was arrested by marines.

The protest started Wednesday on the highway that links the Pacific resort city of Acapulco to the tourist town of Zihuatanejo.

Demonstrators blocked the road in Los Laureles, a community outside the city of Tecpan.

The protest continued into the night, with vehicles, including buses and trucks, backed up for miles on the highway, affecting both residents and tourists.

The highway was blocked to pressure officials into releasing Pablo Valle Torres, who was detained by marines on Wednesday, the peasants said.

Valle Torres, who is the biggest mango producer in the area, was not told the charges against him, protesters said.

Five people were arrested by the marines, but four of them were later released under pressure from residents, protesters said.

Protesters blocked the same highway in Tecpan for 30 hours last week to demand more security in the area.

Vigilante groups have appeared in recent months in several communities in Guerrero to fight gangs that stage kidnappings and run extortion rackets targeting residents.

Acapulco, one of Mexico’s most famous tourist destinations, has been plagued by drug-related violence in recent years.

The Guerrero state government launched an operation in 2011 with the support of the federal government to step up security in areas frequented by foreign and domestic tourists.

“Operation Safe Guerrero” was launched on Oct. 6, 2011, in an effort to reduce the soaring crime rate in the state. EFE