KAILUA, Hawaii ( 27 protesters holding signs at " President Obama's Rental house " )

 The serenity of President Barack Obama's Hawaiian vacation was rattled a little on Saturday when demonstrators aired grievances against unmanned aircraft and other issues in a small protest zone near the first family's upscale rented house.

Returning from an early morning gym visit at nearby Marine Corps Base Hawaii, Obama's motorcade passed a few dozen protesters holding signs with slogans including "Drones: Unethical and Illegal," "U.S. Bases Out" and "Close Guantanamo Now." Others expressed their opposition to genetically modified foods.

It marked a second day of peaceful protest surrounding Obama, who is spending a two-week vacation in Kailua with wife Michelle, daughters Malia and Sasha, the first lady's mother, Marian Robinson, and the family's Portuguese Water Dogs, Bo and Sunny.

On Friday evening, as many as 27 protesters turned out to demonstrate against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact being negotiated between the United States and several Asian and South American countries.

Opponents of TPP say the agreement is being written to benefit large multinational corporations.

"Other than a friendly 'shaka sign' from the president as he drove by in his motorcade, we have not received a formal response from the White House," said Mike Hasselle of the MoveOn Honolulu Council, one of the organizers of the action.

Obama has received mostly a warm reception in and around Honolulu, where he was born and spent much of his boyhood.

Egypt ( Al-Azhar University campus - student killed in pro-Mursi protest )

The unrest followed nationwide repression of Islamist protests on Friday after the military-installed government listed the Brotherhood, the movement of deposed president Muhammad Mursi, as a terrorist organization.
A hospital official said a 19-year-old student was shot dead in the clashes at the Al-Azhar University campus, where pro-Mursi students have regularly staged protests since his overthrow by the army in July.

The students entered the commerce faculty during an exam and set it alight, before police burst into the campus and fired tear gas.
A police official said 60 of the students were arrested after the fire on the first two floors of the building was brought under control.
The violence comes a day after five people were killed in clashes across Egypt, according to a health ministry tally on Saturday, as police stamped out Brotherhood demonstrations.
The interior ministry said 265 protesters were arrested.
Police also fired tear gas at students in Zagazig university north of Cairo on Saturday, security officials said.
And elsewhere in Cairo, police said they defused a bomb found on a bus days after four people were wounded when an explosive went off next to another bus.
The military-installed government has banned protests by Brotherhood members demanding Mursi’s reinstatement, after listing the movement as a terrorist organization this week.
The designation carries harsh penalties, with Brotherhood leaders facing possible death sentences and protesters looking at up to five years in prison.
The movement has held near-daily protests since the military ousted Mursi on July 3, despite a crackdown that has killed more than 1,000 people, mainly Islamists, and imprisoned thousands.
It was listed as a terrorist group in a drastic escalation of the months-long crackdown after a suicide bombing killed 15 people in police headquarters north of Cairo on Tuesday.
The attack was claimed by an Al-Qaeda-inspired group that has led attacks on the military and police and in the restive Sinai peninsula, and denounced by the Brotherhood.
Five people were also wounded in a bomb that targeted a bus in Cairo on Thursday.
On Friday, the Brotherhood, which had dominated elections following the overthrow of strongman Hosni Mubarak in early 2011, said it would remain committed to peaceful protests.
“The Muslim Brotherhood declares it is innocent of any violent incident that has or will be committed,” the Islamists said in a statement.
The interim government has decapitated the 85-year-old movement since Mursi’s overthrow, imprisoning him and most of the movement’s leadership and putting them on trial.
It has also sought to quell a surge in attacks in the Sinai that has killed more than 100 soldiers and policemen, as bombings and shootings spill over into mainland Egypt.
Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, the group that claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s police headquarters attack, had tried to assassinate the interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim in a suicide car bombing outside his home in Cairo in September.
The militant group has criticized the Brotherhood for its style of electoral politics, but authorities say the movement has links with militant groups, without offering proof.
Mursi himself and top Brotherhood leaders will face trial with top Brotherhood leaders for allegedly colluding with militants to carry out attacks.
Mursi, Egypt’s democratically elected president, had ruled for one turbulent year before the military overthrew him, following mass protests demanding his resignation

Mexico ( Whale " young calf " Saved from Fishing Net in Mexican Waters )

MEXICO CITY – Personnel from government agencies and a tour company headed the rescue of a humpback whale found snared in a fishing net in the ocean near Baja California Sur, Mexico’s Environment Secretariat said.

The cetacean was sighted by the ship’s crew of The Abyss, who reported they had seen a pair of humpback whales and that one of them was caught in a net off Punta Ballena, Baja California Sur state, the secretariat said in a communique.

“A rescue team was immediately activated in coordination with the Cabo San Lucas harbormaster’s office under the command of Braulio Cota,” it said.

The rescuers set sail for where the whale had been sighted, while keeping in constant contact with The Abyss and other boats sailing through the area to notify them about the operation and ask for further information.

Around 11:45 a.m. Thursday they found the snared whale, “which apparently was a calf accompanied by its mother.”

The rescuers then proceeded to free the sea mammal from the fishing net, an operation that “ended with a successful and coordinated rescue,” the Environment Secretariat said.

Mexico ( Mexico’s Human Rights Panel Blasts Massacre probe of 72 victims )

MEXICO CITY – Authorities at all levels did a poor job of investigating the August 2010 massacre of 72 undocumented migrants in northeastern Mexico, the country’s independent National Human Rights Commission says in a report released Friday.

Police allowed evidence to be lost or compromised, forensic personnel mishandled the bodies of the victims and government agencies were negligent in caring for the two survivors of the bloodbath on a ranch near the U.S. border, the commission said.

The autonomous, publicly funded panel also criticized the Tamaulipas state attorney general’s office and the federal AG’s office, which ultimately asserted jurisdiction over the case.

Authorities have yet even to identify all of the bodies, the commission noted.

The group of 74 migrants was headed toward the U.S. border on Aug. 21, 2010, when armed men intercepted their bus and took them to a ranch outside the town of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, according to the survivors’ account.

Migrants headed for the United States are often targeted by Mexican criminal organizations, which kidnap them or try to forcibly recruit them to join their gangs.

In this case, when the migrants refused to join, their abductors decided to kill them.

One of the two survivors, Ecuadorian teenager Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla, notified Mexican marines of the killings.

Marines found the bodies of the 58 men and 14 women after a shootout with gunmen at the ranch that left a marine and three criminals dead.

Mexican authorities have blamed the San Fernando massacre on Los Zetas, the country’s most violent drug cartel.

The human rights commission urged the federal AG’s office to train its investigators and forensic personnel in the legal and scientific protocols for handling and preserving the bodies of crime victims.

Iran ( The top foreign adviser to Iran's supreme leader called for separate talks directly with the U.S )

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — The top foreign adviser to Iran's supreme leader on Friday called for separate talks directly with the United States amid the multilateral negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.

 

The remarks Friday by Ali Akbar Velayati signaled a high-level endorsement of the policies of President Hassan Rouhani, who has been been sharply criticized by hardliners over the landmark nuclear deal that Iran reached with world powers last month and over other contacts with the U.S.

Velayati said Iran benefits by talking separately with each of the so-called "5+1" powers — the grouping of the United States, Russia, France, Britain, China and Germany, with which it negotiated the interim nuclear deal and with which it is still to work out a permanent accord. Each has separate interests, he said in comments on television that were also carried on the semi-official Mehr news agency.

"We aren't on the right path if we don't have one-on-one talks with the six countries," he said. 'We have to talks with the countries separately. ... It would be wrong if we bring the countries into unity against us, since there are rifts among them over various international issues."

Iraq ( Drones sent to Iraq " Scan Eagle " to Fly the desert SKY ) Iron Eagle

WASHINGTON: The United States is sending Iraq dozens of missiles and surveillance drones to help it combat a recent surge in Al-Qaeda-backed violence, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
The weapons include a shipment of 75 Hellfire missiles purchased by Iraq, which Washington delivered to the country last week, the Times reported.


 The daily wrote that 10 ScanEagle reconnaissance drones — smaller versions of the larger Predator drones that once were frequently flown over Iraq — are expected to be sent by March. Administration sources told the Times that the delivery comes as the Iraqis had virtually run out of Hellfire missiles.
The shipments are being sent as Baghdad confronts the worst wave of Islamic militant violence in half a decade.
Recent attacks, including the bombing Wednesday of a market near a church in Baghdad, have killed at least 44 people across Iraq, in the worst bloodletting since 2008 when the country was just emerging from a brutal period of sectarian killings.
Militants frequently attack places where crowds gather, including markets, cafes and mosques, in an effort to cause maximum casualties.
Experts say widespread discontent among Iraq’s minority Sunni Arab community is a major factor fueling the surge in unrest.
More than 6,700 people have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of 2013, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources

India ( 20 year old woman Gang Raped by ( 7 ) Men on Christmas Eve )

NEW DELHI: A 20-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped on Christmas Eve in south India, media reports said, the latest in a string of sexual attacks reported in the country.
The reports of the latest assault came two days before India was due to mark the first anniversary of the death of a student who was gangraped on a bus in an attack that shocked the nation.
The woman who was assaulted on Christmas Eve told police she was abducted by three men while sightseeing with friends in Karaikal, a port city in Puducherry, the Times of India newspaper and TV networks reported.

 One of the men raped her at a secluded spot before freeing her, the Times said.
She called for help but then another group of seven men attacked her as she was being escorted to a safe place, the paper said.
Six of the men raped her, it added.
"One case has been reported. There are 15 accused (persons) and one victim," senior police officer Monika Bhardwaj told reporters.
Bhardwaj said three of the accused "are absconding" while the rest have been caught.
The Times of India said police had registered preliminary cases of abduction, gang-rape and criminal intimidation against the accused.
The woman has been admitted to hospital where police will record her statement, the CNN-IBN TV network reported.
The issue of sex crimes in India has received widespread attention since last year's gang rape of the 23-year-old student in New Delhi.
The physiotherapy student died on December 29, nearly two weeks after being attacked by a gang of six men on a moving bus as she returned home from the cinema with a male companion.
The brutality of the attack and her subsequent death shook the country and shone a global spotlight on India's widespread mistreatment of women.
The attack also prompted the Indian parliament to pass tougher laws against rapists and other sex-crime offenders.
But a string of other sex attacks, including against foreign tourists and a photojournalist in Mumbai this year, has highlighted the continuing dangers facing women in India.