P4Z-0hy22ZRyqh5IUeLwjcY3L_M
MEAN STREETS MEDIA
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Mexico ( Mexico Rescues 16 Migrants Abandoned by Smugglers )
MEXICO CITY – Agents of Mexico’s INM immigration agency rescued 16 Salvadoran migrants who were abandoned by traffickers in the southern border state of Chiapas.The group included six women and a minor, the INM said.
Traffickers left the undocumented immigrants inside a van parked at one end of a soccer field in the municipality of Comitan.
“According to the testimony of some of the Central Americans ... they were abandoned on the sports field by the people who were taking them to the U.S.,” the INM said in a statement.
The agency provided the migrants with food, water and medical attention and put them in contact with the Salvadoran Consulate in Chiapas to “expedite the process of repatriation,” the statement said.
Tens of thousands of Central Americans undertake the hazardous journey across Mexico each year on their way to the United States. The trek is a dangerous one, with criminals and corrupt Mexican officials preying on the migrants.
Gangs kidnap, exploit and murder
Mexico ( Two Gunned Down Outside Bar in Western Mexico )
CULIACAN, Mexico – Two people were killed and another wounded when gunmen opened fire on a group of youths outside a bar in the western Mexican city of Culiacan, sources in the Sinaloa state Attorney General’s Office told Efe.Cousins Diego Antonio Espinoza Leyva and Jose Salazar Leyva died in the parking lot of the Mala Noche bar.
The assailants were carrying AK-47 assault rifles – Mexican mobsters’ weapon of choice – and investigators found 32 shell casings at the scene in Culiacan, the state capital, the sources said.
Elsewhere in Sinaloa, a woman was stabbed to death in the coastal city of Mazatlan, a popular stop for cruise ships.
The victim was identified as Alejandra Valle Lizarraga, 24. Her husband, 22-year-old Eliseo Martinez Padilla, suffered injuries in the attack.
The western state is the bastion of the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficking organization.
California ( The real " locness monster " See photo's and story )
Diver’s sea creature find is ‘discovery of a lifetime’
Jasmine Santana finds 18-foot oarfish carcass at Catalina Island; bizarre-looking denizens are rarely seen and once spawned tales of sea serpents
Oarfish photos are courtesy of CIMI
The 18-foot-long oarfish was discovered Sunday afternoon by Jasmine Santana, a marine science instructor at the Catalina Island Marine Institute. The oarfish was dead but its slender, snake-like body was intact.
The find was described by CIMI as a “discovery of a lifetime.”
ABC 7 stated Monday on its Facebook page that the carcass required 15 people to carry it up the beach.
The discovery was made in Toyon Bay, not far from Avalon, where CIMI runs a camp for kids. Instructors were unloading gear after a tall ship voyage to nearby Santa Barbara Island when they spotted Santana hauling the oarfish ashore, according to KTLA.
“The craziest thing we saw during our two-day journey at sea happened when we got home; these islands never cease to amaze,” Connor Gallagher said in a news release.
Oarfish, which can reach lengths of 50-plus feet, inhabit depths of 1,500 to 3,000 feet. They feed largely on krill and other tiny organisms and possess large, saucer-shaped eyes.
They’re believed responsible, in the times of ancient mariners, for spawning tales of sea serpents and dragons that would rise like demons to steal crewmen and sink tall ships.
They’re rarely encountered but sometimes when they die or are near-death, they surface and wash ashore.
Only a handful of live specimens have been found. Interestingly, Catalina was the site of at least one such discovery.
In 2006, a 15-foot oarfish was spotted in the island’s Big Fisherman’s Cove. Harbormaster Doug Oudin snorkeled alongside the docile creature before it eventually perished. It was collected for study.
Last year at the Baja California resort city of Cabo San Lucas, a 15-foot barely-live oarfish washed ashore on a popular beach. It also died soon after its discovery.
The modern discovery of oarfish may date to 1808, when a 56-foot serpent-like creature washed ashore in Scotland.
In 1901, a 22-foot oarfish drifted onto the sand in Newport Beach, California, becoming, according to one reference book, “the basis for many sea-serpent stories told by local bar patrons for more than a decade after its discovery.”
Monday, October 14, 2013
Colombia ( Governor arrested on murder charges - La Guajira )
BOGOTA – The governor of the northern province of La Guajira was arrested by Colombian Attorney General’s Office agents on murder and criminal conspiracy charges, officials said.Jose Francisco Gomez Cerchar was arrested Saturday on a warrant issued by prosecutor Martha Lucia Zamora.
Gomez, known as “Kiko,” is being investigated for allegedly having links to paramilitary groups.
The governor has been linked to the 1997 murder of Barrancas city councilman Luis Lopez Peralta and the killings in 2000 of Luis Alejandro Rodriguez Frias and Rosa Mercedes Cabrera Alfaro, Deputy Attorney General Jorge Perdomo said.
Investigators have also linked Gomez to militia chief Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, known as “Jorge 40,” and other paramilitary groups.
Tovar Pupo was one of the top leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.
Gomez was arrested in his hometown of Barrancas, where he was attending a festival.
The governor took refuge in his house, which was surrounded by his supporters as AG’s office agents arrived to arrest him.
Gomez, who served as mayor of Barrancas from 1995 to 1997 and again from 2001 to 2003, was elected governor of La Guajira in 2011.
The AUC, accused of committing numerous human rights violations, demobilized more than 31,000 of its fighters between the end of 2003 and mid-2006 as part of the peace process with former President Alvaro Uribe’s administration.
The group was made up of numerous rural defense cooperatives formed more than 25 years ago to battle leftist rebels.
Many of the militias, however, degenerated into death squads and carried out massacres of peasants suspected of having rebel sympathies, along with slayings of journalists and union members accused of favoring the leftist insurgents.
On May 13, 2008, the Colombian government extradited 14 former AUC chiefs, including Tovar Pupo, to the United States.
The former AUC commanders were wanted in the United States on drug, money laundering and other charges
Washington D.C ( Federal Judge tell's Congress to " Go to Hell " on his Blog ) Richard Kopf
October 14, 2013|10:36 am
With the government shutdown now coming close to affecting the judiciary, which has already lost staff and part of its budget due to the sequester, a senior federal judge has expressed his frustration telling Congress to "go to hell" on his blog."It is time to tell Congress to go to hell. It's the right thing to do," writes senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf on his blog.
An appointee of President George H.W. Bush in 1992, Kopf let his disappointment out at a time when all district and circuit chief judges will soon have to decide which employees are essential and which will be furloughed as non-essential.
"Given the loss of employees already suffered by the judiciary on account of the sequester and otherwise, why shouldn't every remaining employee of every federal district court (including FPD employees) be declared "essential?" the judge asks.
If the chief judge and all the district judges were to issue such an order, most staff would be protected from prosecution under the Anti-Deficiency Act, Kopf adds. "Such an order would set up an inter-branch dispute worth having… Congress would have two choices. It could do nothing in which event Congress loses its ability to destroy the judiciary by failing to pass a budget. Or, Congress could go batsh*t, and the judiciary and Congress could have it out."
The courts have not been affected much thus far thanks to fee income and prior-year appropriations. But this is expected to change within a week. Even otherwise, the courts have had to cut hundreds of support staff positions over the last two years. The judiciary also saw a 5 percent reduction in its budget in the last fiscal year.
The partial government shutdown was in its 13th day Sunday, but little progress was visible in Congress in striking a budget deal. Even more worrisome is the fact that the negotiations are also tied to avoiding a default if the government's borrowing limit is not raised by Thursday.
Judges are highly frustrated, says the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. "Court budgets have essentially been slashed to the bone, with us losing nationwide thousands of judicial employees performing very important tasks…We're being told to furlough where we're already cut to the bone," Judge Richard Roberts, a Clinton appointee, tells Politico.
"We don't exert the kind of control to keep up resources to match the need," adds Roberts. "We don't have ultimately any authority to set appropriations Congress decides on. We do not necessarily get to decide what the White House sends to [the Office of Management and Budget] and to Congress. We can't go out and stir up constituents to do talking for us. Structurally, there's a bit of an imbalance."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)