Russia ( A woman suicide bomber blew herself up " killing 13 people " in train station )

MOSCOW: A woman suicide bomber blew herself up in the entrance hall of a Russian train station on Sunday, killing at least 13 people in the second deadly attack in the space of three days as the country prepares to host the Winter Olympics.
The state Investigative Committee said the bomber detonated her explosives in front of a metal detector just inside the main entrance of Volgograd station. Footage shown on TV showed a massive orange fireball filling the hall and smoke billowing out through shattered windows.

 Volgograd is a city of around 1 million people, about 430 miles (690 km) northeast of Sochi, where the Winter Olympics — a major prestige project for President Vladimir Putin — will open on Feb. 7.
It lies close to Russia’s North Caucasus, a strip of mostly Muslim provinces plagued by near-daily violence in a long-running Islamist insurgency. Insurgent leader Doku Umarov, a Chechen warlord, urged militants in a video posted online in July to use “maximum force” to prevent Putin staging the Olympics.
An attack by another woman suicide bomber killed seven people in Volgograd on Oct. 21. On Friday, a car bomb killed three people in the southern Russian city of Pyatigorsk, 270 km (170 miles) east of Sochi.
A spokesman for Russian investigators said in a statement that at least 13 people died in Sunday’s blast while a health ministry spokesman told Rossiya-24 television that as many as 50 people were wounded.
The station was busier than usual, with people traveling home for the New Year holidays. TV footage showed emergency services carrying out victims, with at least one body lying motionless on the ground.
“I heard the blast and ran toward it,” a witness, Vladimir, told Rossiya-24. “I saw melted, twisted bits of metal, broken glass and bodies lying on the street.”
Sunday’s attack was the deadliest to strike Russia’s heartland since January 2011, when insurgents killed 37 people at a Moscow airport

Honduras ( Great-granddaughter of General Mills stabbed to death in spa )

The great-granddaughter of General Mills heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post was found stabbed to death in her luxury Honduras spa, law enforcement officials told the Associated Press.

Nedenia Post Dye, 46, was found stabbed in her spa on the resort island of Roatan, Honduras on Dec. 22.

Lenin Roberto Arana, 25, was arrested and charged with Dye's murder, police officials told The Associated Press.

Arana allegedly said he and Dye were romantically involved, but police said Dye was trying to help Arana quit drugs, according to the AP.

"She was a good woman who worked with young people at risk, drug addicts and alcoholics," Roatan police chief Alex Madrid told the AP.

Homeless twitter friend ( My friend is looking for alittle help - see story )

@LeeChrisleeminn  Twitter Account      

Homeless right now, Facing Living in my car. Lupus. I love Sports, Books--classic literature, Music, my cats, Buddy and Freddie ...

I LOVE my Twitter FRIENDS! 

 

       

 

Homeless twitter friend ( Chris Lee ) who has Lupus and just lost her mother is looking for a home and a little help. She has two cats and will move to any other city if anyone could help her. You can contact her at the above twitter account .  

 

Thanks  Joe    

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.