Mexico ( A man was " Killed " while trying to buy a vehicle )

MORELIA, December 31. - In the Michoacan capital in broad daylight a man was killed  identified as J. Carmen Cortés Rodríguez, father of Jesus Rodriguez Tzitzio Township trustee.


The incident took place on kilometer 4 +800 the Morelia-Salamanca road opposite of the petrol version of Santa Fe. As a family, J. Carmen Rodríguez originating Tzitzio, went to the city of Morelia for the sale of a car, buying would be done right on the spot, he was killed by a group of men and thrown from a moving vehicle.
The suspects are not known at this time , and the investigation is still active.

Read more: http://www.elblogdelnarco.net/ # ixzz2p5I0QSuS
Follow us: @ MundoNarco on Twitter

JERUSALEM ( Israel freed 26 Palestinian prisoners Tuesday as part of US-brokered peace talks )

JERUSALEM: Israel freed 26 Palestinian prisoners Tuesday as part of US-brokered peace talks ahead of Secretary of State John Kerry’s latest visit to the region.
The release prompted elation among Palestinians, who welcomed the prisoners back into the West Bank and Gaza Strip after they had spent two to three decades in Israeli jails.
But as Kerry geared up for his 10th visit since March, an anticipated announcement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of further settlement construction — designed to appease hard-liners — looked set again to undermine the talks.


Kerry, expected to arrive Wednesday, has been pressing the two sides to agree on a framework for a final peace agreement ahead of an agreed late April target date for the talks to conclude.
The prisoners were the third batch of 104 detainees that Netanyahu pledged to release in four stages when the peace talks were revived in July. All were imprisoned before the 1993 Oslo accords, which officially launched the Middle East peace process.
Palestinians hailed the freed prisoners as heroes imprisoned for fighting against the Israeli occupation, with some welcomed back to Ramallah in the West Bank, others to east Jerusalem and the remainder into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
The 18 men taken to Ramallah were warmly embraced by the Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in his presidential compound before laying flowers on the grave of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Abbas pledged to the prisoners and their exuberant families that “there would be no final agreement (with Israel) until all prisoners were in their homes.”
The Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza hailed the prisoner release, but reiterated its rejection of the peace talks and slammed the notion that freeing prisoners justified Israeli settlement expansion.
“The release of any prisoner is a gain for our people,” Gaza’s Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya told a news conference in the besieged Palestinian territory.
“But we reject negotiating with the occupation (Israel) and we do not accept that settlements should be expanded in exchange for that.”
Netanyahu criticized the heroes’ welcome given to the released prisoners, who had served 19 to 28 years for killing Israeli civilians or soldiers.
“While we are prepared to take very painful steps in an effort to try and reach an agreement ... they, along with their highest leadership, are celebrating,” he told a conference in the northern Israeli town of Tiberias.
“Murderers are not heroes,” Netanyahu said.
Tuesday’s release was expected to be accompanied by the announcement of new construction plans for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, including east Jerusalem, as the previous two prisoner releases were.
Such a move is likely to infuriate the Palestinians and the international community, providing a further challenge for Kerry, whose intense shuttle diplomacy managed to revive the talks after a three-year hiatus.
The pressure on Netanyahu to make such an announcement comes both from within his own coalition government — the housing minister lives in a West Bank settlement and hard-liners oppose any peace talks — and from the Israeli public.
Kerry will also have to quell tensions that rose after an Israeli ministerial committee on Sunday gave initial approval to a bill annexing Jordan Valley settlements, a largely symbolic move expected to be shot down by the government.
A poll conducted by Jerusalem’s Hebrew University said Tuesday that 63 percent of Israelis and 53 percent of Palestinians supported a two-state solution.
Around 41 percent of some 600 Israeli respondents said the Jewish state should “yield” to any US pressure to accept a two-state solution, but 43 percent were against.
The prisoner release, shortly after 0000 GMT, came after an Israeli court rejected a last-minute appeal by victims’ families.
The families had especially protested the release of the five east Jerusalem prisoners, which they said contradicted a committment made by Netanyahu.

Iran ( President Rouhani Wished Pope a Merry Christmas - 5 arrested for Christmas celebration ) ???

Sunday, 29 December 2013

Reports from Iran indicate that five Christian converts from a house-church in eastern Tehran were arrested during a Christmas celebration. Iranian Christian converts face constant restrictions and persecution.

 

According to Mohabat News, Iranian security authorities raided a house, owned by Mr. Hosseini, where a group of Christians had gathered to celebrate Christmas on Tuesday, December 24. They arrested Mr. Hosseini , Ahmad Bazyar, Faegheh Nasrollahi, Mastaneh Rastegari, and Amir-Hossein Ne'matollahi.

The report received by Mohabat News stated: "These Christians had gathered to worship and celebrate birth of Jesus."

The Committee of Human Rights Reporters reported that armed plain-clothes security officers raided the house-church, insulted and searched those in attendance, thoroughly searched the house and seized all Christian books, CDs, and laptops they found. They also took the Satellite TV receiver.

The authorities also searched a neighboring house , because those present were observing the raid. They insulted and beat the father of the family and warned them not to speak with anyone about what they had witnessed.

There is still no update about the whereabouts or condition of these arrested Christians.

In recent years the authorities have intensified their pressure and threats against Christians around Christmas, and increased their surveillance of churches.

Many Christian converts have been arrested or faced other persecution around Christmas in recent years. A large number of Christian converts were arrested in Tehran in the past few years as part of pre-organized attacks by government authorities.

Honduras ( 4 women Killed in a " Drive by " shooting - Refused to pay extortion money )

TEGUCIGALPA – A drive-by shooting at a bar in the northern city of San Pedro Sula left four women dead, Honduran police said Monday.

Three of the women were pronounced dead at the scene, while the fourth died later at a hospital, a brief official statement said.

A fifth woman wounded in the attack remains hospitalized, authorities said, but they offered no information on her condition.

The shooting occurred around 12:30 a.m. Monday in the El Benque neighborhood of San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ second city.

The women may have been killed for refusing to pay extortion money to a gang, according to unofficial accounts. Protection rackets are a major source of income for youth gangs in Central America.

Honduras suffered 85.5 homicides for every 100,000 residents in 2012, compared with a global median rate of 8.8 murders per 100,000, the Violence Observatory at the National Autonomous University said in a study released in February.

Syria ( At least 15 Palestinians have died of hunger in besieged refugee camp )

At least 15 Palestinians have died of hunger since September in a besieged refugee camp in the Syrian capital Damascus, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees told AFP on Monday.
“Reports have come in over the weekend that at least five Palestinian refugees in the besieged refugee camp of Yarmuk in Damascus have died because of malnutrition, bringing the total number of reported cases to 15,” UN Relief and Works Agency spokesman Chris Gunness told AFP.
He warned of a deteriorating situation in the camp, where some 20,000 Palestinians are trapped, with limited food and medical supplies.

“Since September 2013 we have been unable to enter the area to deliver desperately needed relief supplies,” Gunness said.
“The continued presence of armed groups that entered the area at the end of 2012 and its closure by government forces have thwarted all our humanitarian efforts.”
Most of the Yarmuk camp in southern Damascus is under the control of the armed opposition, and it has been under a siege by troops loyal to President Bashar Assad for around a year.
The blockade has resulted in a humanitarian crisis, and the exodus of tens of thousands of the camp’s 170,000 residents.
On Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights NGO reported five people in the camp had died of malnutrition, including an elderly man, a disabled man and a woman.
UNRWA chief Filippo Grandi addressed the situation earlier this month, warning that conditions in Yarmuk had “progressively deteriorated.”
“If this situation is not addressed urgently, it may be too late to save the lives of thousands of people including children,” he warned.
Gunness said UNRWA was calling “all parties to immediately heed their legal obligations and facilitate the urgent provision of humanitarian assistance to Yarmuk and other Palestinian refugee camps.”
Syria is officially home to nearly 500,000 Palestinian refugees, around half of whom have been displaced by the deadly conflict that broke out in March 2011, becoming refugees for a second time.
More than 126,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict

China ( Eight Die in Clash with Police in China’s Xinjiang Region )

BEIJING – Eight attackers died Monday in a clash with police in the remote northwestern region of Xinjiang, where tensions between Chinese authorities and the native Uighur people have been on the rise.

The confrontation occurred around 6:30 a.m. in Yarkand, near the traditional Uighur center of Kashgar, government Web site Tianshan News said.

Nine people armed with knives and explosive devices attacked a police contingent, setting at least one vehicle on fire.

The police opened fire and killed eight of the assailants and the ninth attacker was taken into custody, Tianshan said.

Two police and 14 militants died earlier this month in a similar incident on the outskirts of Kashgar.

Authorities blamed that clash on bands who “promote religious extremism in Xinjiang,” an apparent reference to the mainly Muslim Uighurs.

Sixteen people died in a battle between Uighurs and Chinese security forces in Kashgar just four days before the start of the Beijing Olympics in August 2008.

The following year, more than 200 were killed amid fighting between Uighurs and Han Chinese in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital.

The Uighurs, a Turkic people, complain that China is seeking to suppress their culture and religion and that Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang favor Han Chinese settlers.

China, meanwhile, seeks to portray Uighur militancy as a facet of international Islamic terrorism.

Mexico ( Baby Born in Police Car in Mexico )

MEXICO CITY – A baby was born in a patrol car while officers rushed the mother to a hospital in Tlaxcala, a state in central Mexico, the Federal Police said.

Officers spotted an automobile that had broken down on the Tlalpan-Apizaco stretch of the Mexico City-Zacatepec National Highway and stopped to help the motorist.

Officers approached the vehicle and saw a man and a woman inside, the Federal Police said in a statement.

The woman, identified as Maria Blanca Carrillo Sanchez, was in labor and the driver, Alejandro Ramos Ramirez, asked the officers for help.

The officers moved the woman into the patrol car and headed for the nearest hospital.

“During the trip, the woman gave birth in Radio Patrol Car 12826 of the Federal Police, and the officers provided the needed first aid and kept the mother and child stabilized until they reached the Regional Hospital in Apizaco, Tlaxcala,” the law enforcement agency said.

The mother and newborn were taken away by medical personnel at the hospital’s entrance and are being treated by doctors, the Federal Police said.

The Federal Police Academy in San Luis Potosi trains officers in first aid and paramedic skills, the federal law enforcement agency said.