Egypt ( A bomb wounded five people when it exploded near a Cairo bus )

CAIRO: A bomb wounded five people when it exploded near a Cairo bus Thursday, officials said, as authorities began rounding up members of the Muslim Brotherhood after declaring it a terrorist group.
Army chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who overthrew Islamist president Muhammad Mursi in July, vowed to eliminate terrorism as he urged Egyptians to trust the military.
The explosion shattered the windows of the red and black bus as it passed near a busy intersection in the capital’s northern neighborhood of Nasr City.

 Police defused a second bomb at the site and cordoned off the area as sniffer dogs searched for more explosive devices, an AFP correspondent said.
The bombing came a day after the military-installed government declared Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization and a suicide car bomber killed 15 people at a police headquarters north of Cairo on Tuesday.
The Interior Ministry said that attack was meant to intimidate voters ahead of a referendum next month on a new constitution, billed as the first step in a democratic transition ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections.
On Thursday, Egyptian prosecutors ordered at least 18 Muslim Brotherhood members, including an ex-lawmaker, held on accusations of belonging to a terrorist group, state media reported.
Police also arrested 16 suspected Muslim Brotherhood members for passing out leaflets in support of the group and “inciting the violence,” the official MENA news agency said.
The Brotherhood’s designation as a terrorist group means anyone joining their rallies could be jailed for five years, while those possessing their literature or supporting them “verbally or in writing” could face up to five years, a ministry statement said.
The Brotherhood still organizes almost daily protests demanding Mursi’s return almost six months after the military overthrew him.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in street clashes and thousands imprisoned in a police crackdown on the movement since Mursi was ousted on July 3.
Sisi, who led the ouster of Mursi, vowed to fight terrorism in the deeply polarized country.
“Do not allow these terrorist actions to affect you,” the army quoted him as saying at a military ceremony.
“If you want freedom and stability, which is not achieved easily, then you have to trust God and your army and your police.”
Following Thursday’s blast in Nasr City, police General Mohamed Gamal showed reporters a defused pipe bomb he said had been placed inside a nearby advertising display and primed to explode when police arrived at the scene.
“It was set to go off remotely,” interior ministry spokesman Hany Abdel Latif told AFP, adding the bombs were “meant to terrorize people before the referendum.”
A witness described scenes of panic after the attack .
“I was 100 meters (yards) away when I heard the explosion. I came running to help the wounded,” said Mahmud Abd Al-Al, a construction worker.
“They were covered in blood. One man lost a leg,” he said.
Dozens of angry men and women chanted slogans against the Muslim Brotherhood as police tried to keep them away from the site of the blast while forensic experts searched for clues inside the bus.
“The Muslim Brotherhood people are dogs,” chanted 40-year-old Fadiya as police pushed her away.
“My country is bleeding. Everybody is scared now in Egypt, even the police are scared,” she said as some took pictures of the targeted bus with their mobile phones.
Residents of Cairo expressed fear on Thursday.
“This is not the city I used to know,” said taxi driver Ihab Abdelmoneim commenting on the attack.
“Today, I am scared of the passenger who sits in my taxi and he is scared of me.”
The Brotherhood, which won all elections since the 2011 ouster of Hosni Mubarak, insists it is peaceful and has condemned militant attacks.
The authorities also shut down the newspaper run by the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Islamist group, and seized several presses belonging to the movement, the interior ministry said.
The deadliest attacks, including Tuesday’s bombing, have been claimed by the Al-Qaeda-inspired Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis group based in the restive Sinai.
The group, composed mostly of Egyptian Bedouin, has criticized the Brotherhood’s style of political Islam and advocates armed attacks.
Authorities say there are links between the Sinai jihadists and the more moderate Brotherhood, but have offered no proof.

Brazil ( Brazil Lottery Winner Rescued from Kidnappers )

 

RIO DE JANEIRO – A lottery winner and his brother were rescued Tuesday from kidnappers, police in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo said.

The brothers were found unharmed inside a residence in Guarulhos, a suburb of Sao Paulo city.

Police identified the abductors as Saulo Moraes de Araujo, a 25-year-old vendor with previous arrests for robbery and homicide; and Felipe Torres, 23.

The pair grabbed the brothers on Monday from their home in Guarulhos and demanded 500,000 reais ($217,390) for their release.

One of the siblings, a construction worker, won Brazil’s Mega Sena lottery in September, netting 7.8 million reais ($3.4 million).

De Araujo and Torres were part of a gang that specializes in what are known as express kidnappings, which involves grabbing a person and forcing him or her to fork over cash before releasing the captive after a few hours.

Police were already tapping the gang members’ phones as part of an ongoing investigation and agents were able to track down the kidnapped brothers within hours of their abduction.

The captors opened fire when they saw police closing in and De Araujo was killed in the ensuing gunfight.

Officers took Torres into custody and confiscated two handguns and a kilo of cocaine.

Mexico City ( Police Chief, Deputy Chief Murdered in Western Mexico )

MEXICO CITY – The police chief and deputy police chief of Tarimbaro, a city in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, were murdered, police spokesmen said Wednesday.

The bodies of chief Luis Manuel Gonzalez Magaña and deputy chief Osvaldo Rendon Salcedo were found Tuesday afternoon after police received a report that two bodies were lying by an SUV parked behind the Las Chalupas bar in the community of Uruetaro.

Officers found the bodies of the two chiefs, who were holding their pistols and had been shot several times, by the vehicle.

Gonzalez Magaña and Rendon Salcedo had been reported missing on Monday, police said.

Investigators are trying to determine the motive for the killings and find those responsible, the Michoacan Attorney General’s Office said.

Salvador Gonzalez Magaña, the former police chief in Tarimbaro and brother of Luis Manuel Gonzalez Magaña, was murdered in March, media reports said.

Michoacan has been rocked by a wave of drug-related violence in recent months.

Michoacan’s forests and mountains are used by drug traffickers to grow marijuana and produce synthetic drugs.

Political cartoons ( Those bags are going to cost you )

Texas ( Political cartoons - Tea party ) Lol

China ( smugglers dig tunnel into Hong Kong )

HONG KONG: The underground path had “one end in a rented garage in Shenzhen and another in a thicket of reeds in Hong Kong, totally concealed,” said a report posted on its official website.
“It was dug in a totally professional way,” it said.
Semi-autonomous Hong Kong, along with Shenzhen in mainland China, are both important trade hubs for the fast-growing and massive market.
But the two have very different tariff systems.

 The as-yet unidentified smugglers sought to exploit their proximity by building a 40-meter-long underground passage and installing a rail track and wagon with a block-and-tackle system to ferry goods such as cell phones and tablet computers.
The tunnel stood about 0.8 meters wide and 1 meter high, just big enough for an adult to crawl through.
It started from a remote area of Shenzhen, in a garage full of bags packed with sludge dug up from the tunnel, and ended in a cluster of tall reeds a few meters past a river dividing mainland China and Hong Kong, with the nearest village 20 meters away.
The project was estimated to have cost three million yuan ($490,000) and taken four months to build.
Border officers discovered the tunnel a week ago, and a nearby resident said she heard drilling noises for one or two nights but assumed they were for renovations.
The man who rented the garage had used a fake ID, authorities were quoted as saying

Saudi Arabia ( Rescue operation to save a " 6 year old Girl " who fell 100 ft into a Well )

Rescue operations to free a six-year-old girl, Lama, who had fallen into a 100-meter-deep well in Tabuk, have been hampered by adverse weather conditions and loose soil at the site.
An official said she might be freed in the next 24 hours as reports suggested that the rescuers were close to reaching her.

 The Saudi Red Crescent, and municipal and health officials are involved in the operation.
Civil Defense teams are digging a parallel borehole to reach the child.
Police are also looking for the landowner who dug the well and left it uncovered.
It has now been six days since Lama fell into the well in Haql area near Tabuk.
She was on a weekend picnic at the spot with her parents when she fell into the well that was partly covered and had no warning signs.
Lama’s father called the Civil Defense and police after hearing Lama’s screams.
There has since been a full-scale rescue operation under way monitored by Tabuk Gov. Prince Fahd bin Sultan.
Brig. Mastour Al-Harithy, director of Tabuk’s Civil Defense, has been camping at the site with dozens of personnel, including specialist geologists from Saudi Aramco.
Col. Mamdouh Al-Anzi, media spokesperson for the Civil Defense in Tabuk, said officials lowered a camera into the well, which found that Lama was at a depth of 30 meters in the 100-meter-deep and half-meter-wide well.
He said Civil Defense teams are working around the clock with their machinery.
Al-Anzi said the rescue operation was halted for some time due to strong winds and falling sand and rocks. However, the rescuers had almost reached the child on Wednesday, and it was likely she would be freed in the next 24 hours, he said.
The relatives of the girl wanted to join the rescue operations but officials stopped them because they might endanger the child in the sandy area.