Mexico ( Mexico to Charge Driver in Deadly Accident at Monster Truck Show - 86 hurt )

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican judiciary will charge the driver of a “monster truck” that plowed into the stands at an air show, killing eight people and leaving 86 others injured, with reckless manslaughter.

The accident occurred Saturday during the three-day Festival Extremo AeroShow in the northern city of Chihuahua.

The driver, identified as Francisco Velazquez Samaniego, was to be informed of the charges during a special hearing at the hospital where he is being treated, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state Attorney General’s Office, Carlos Gonzalez, said.

Although at the time of the incident, the driver’s breath smelled of alcohol, when breathalyzer tests were performed on him at the hospital they came back negative, Gonzalez told Radio Formula.

The driver of the vehicle, which has tires 1.5 meters (almost five feet) tall, was going over a pile of junked automobiles when he lost control and hit the stands.

Velazquez said that when he was driving over the junked cars he bounced around inside the vehicle and hit his head, which momentarily caused him to become disoriented, Gonzalez said.

“There was no fence, and if there had been he would have hit it,” added Gonzalez, who said that the investigation to assign responsibility in the tragedy will extend to the company that organized the event and “all the people who had anything to do” with the incident.

Of the 86 people injured, 21 remain hospitalized.

The Festival Extremo AeroShow features planes, balloons, motorcycle races and monster trucks

Mexico ( Mexico Arrests 13 Federal Cops for Kidnapping, Murder ) Hmm

 

MEXICO CITY – Thirteen of 18 people arrested in an operation targeting a criminal gang in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco are active-duty federal police, government security spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said Tuesday.

The 18 suspects, thought to be involved in seven homicides and four kidnappings, were arrested during the period Oct. 2-4 thanks to a tip from the public, the spokesman told a press conference in Mexico City.

Sanchez said that the band, apparently headed by Luis Miguel Gonzalez, “operated exclusively in Acapulco,” but he refused to give additional details so as not to compromise the ongoing investigation.

He emphasized that currently an “exhaustive investigation” is under way on all the members of the band to determine if more people are involved, and he urged the public to continue reporting the whereabouts of any alleged criminals.

“Under no circumstances are we going to tolerate impunity” or acts of corruption “on the part of any public servant,” Sanchez said.

He added that so far during the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office on Dec. 1, 2012, “81 federal police who were surprised committing some illicit act” have been arrested.

The National Statistics and Geography Institute calculates, on the basis of a public survey, that in 2012 there were 105,682 kidnappings in Mexico.

When asked about that figure, Sanchez admitted that with crimes like kidnapping and extortion there is an “enormous dark number” because citizens who are subjected to them frequently do not report them to the authorities out of fear of reprisals

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Mexico City ( 45 Mayors Killed in 6 years by the Cartel - See story )

                                          45 Mayors Killed in 6 years by the Cartel
Upon being attacked , the then mayor of Tiquicheo , Michoacán . MEXICO CITY - The National Conference of Municipalities of Mexico ( NCTM ) revealed that 40 % of the 457 mayors of the country are threatened by organized crime .

He also stressed that in the last six years they have killed 45 mayors and 30 more were raised in the same period. In an assessment released on the eve of the meeting held Monday with Interior Minister, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong .


the president of the National Conference , Leticia Quezada , chief borough PRD in Magdalena Contreras , said that the most dangerous cities in the states of Michoacan , Guerrero , Sinaloa , Chihuahua , Tamaulipas and Durango.
Quezada , who on Monday expressed solidarity with the hunger strike that began last Friday in April the mayor of Santa Ana Maya , Michoacan, Ygnacio Lopez Mendoza said that many of the threats from organized crime against mayors have been detected in municipalities bordering the U.S. border , where the mayors sleep in foreign territory and shipped from their municipal day .
On Friday 4, the PT mayor of Santa Ana Maya , Michoacan, Ygnacio Lopez Mendoza , began a hunger strike " indefinitely " in this city , to protest government 's disdain for meeting the urgent needs of the municipalities.
In a statement released that day , the Association of Local Authorities of Mexico AC noted that the three-time PRD municipal leader resorted to such a measure " to the serious situation faced by most Mexican municipalities that have same paralysis and bankruptcy financial situation makes it impossible to efficiently services , public works and security that citizens demand . "
The hunger strike of the physician and surgeon midwife -founder of the Mexican Communist Party in Santa Ana Maya and former Municipal Party Committee Mexican Workers ( PMT ) - is due to the lack of concrete answers to the demands that municipal governments have raised the federal government and the Congress of the Union , explained the newsletter.
He stressed:" This extreme measure is taken with full responsibility, but with the firm conviction that they turn to look to municipal governments , whose governance model is exhausted and can not cope with the obligations it has to the population."
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CARACAS ( 3 people die trying to Kill Venezuelan Official - See Story )

CARACAS – Three assailants died Thursday in an attack on the head of Venezuela’s Indepabis consumer protection agency, who escaped unscathed, police said.

“We know that an irregular situation arose. Three people died in the event,” deputy policy chief Douglas Rico told reporters.

“Two live grenades are found, one of which went off and caused the death of one (person), and we are in that process of determining what it was that really happened there,” he said.

The deputy chief did not say how the other two assailants died.

Indepabis director Eduardo Saman was not hurt, Rico said.

“Thank God he was able to make it in time to the (building) of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service, where he ended up sheltering,” the deputy police chief said.

Rico declined to offer further details pending completion of the investigation at the scene.

Saman’s bodyguards repelled the assailants when they tried to rob the official as he left his office in downtown Caracas, according to unconfirmed media accounts.

Crime is a major problem in Venezuela, where the homicide rate is 54 for every 100,000 residents, compared with a global median rate of 8.8 murders per 100,000.

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Colombia ( Four Die in Crash of Drug Enforcement Plane in Colombia )

BOGOTA – Four people were killed and two others injured when a small U.S.-registered plane involved in anti-drug operations crashed in a rural area in Choco, a province in northwestern Colombia, officials said.

The two injured people, both U.S. citizens, were taken to hospitals in Bogota following Saturday’s accident.

Rescue teams recovered two bodies and may continue the search for the other two bodies on Sunday, army 4th Brigade commander Gen. Nicasio Martinez told Caracol Radio.

“Police are working to find the other two bodies, but it’s rough terrain and it’s making their job even more difficult,” Martinez said.

The small plane, which took off from an airport in neighboring Panama, was carrying five American crewmen and a Panamanian officer assigned to anti-drug patrols under the Salas-Becker Agreement.

Panama’s naval air service confirmed that a Panamanian was among those killed in the crash.

“The plane was carrying five American crewmen and a Panamanian officer as shiprider. Four (people) were killed, including the Panamanian officer (Lt. Lloyd Nuñez), and two American crewmen survived,” the naval air service said.

Maldives ( Arson Attack caught on Video - TV news Station - Security Guard stabbed )

TV station attacked in Maldives

New York, October 7, 2013--Authorities in the Maldives should conduct a thorough and efficient investigation into an arson attack on the offices of a TV news station in Male, the capital, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

At least six masked men broke in to the offices of pro-opposition news channel Raajje TV early today and used gasoline to set the studio on fire, according to CCTV footage released by Raajje TV and news reports. All broadcast equipment, transmission equipment, and computer systems were completely destroyed in the fire, according to Raajje TV. The station borrowed equipment and was able to restore limited service, according to a tweet by Raajje TV and news reports.

The assailants also stabbed a security guard, who was hospitalized and is in critical condition, according to news reports. No arrests have been made in connection with the attack, according to local reports.