Nigeria ( 17 killed in an explosion near a busy market )

MAIDUGURI: At least 17 people were killed when an explosion ripped through a busy market in the north Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the state police chief said on Tuesday. “From our preliminary reports, we have 17 dead and at least five injured from the blast in the post office area” of the city, Lawan Tanko told AFP, warning that the toll could rise.

China ( Chinese doctor who abducted and sold newborn babies was given a suspended death sentence )

BEIJING: A Chinese doctor who abducted and sold newborn babies was given a suspended death sentence Tuesday in a case that drew widespread outrage with child trafficking a chronic problem in the country.
Zhang Shuxia, an obstetrician, admitted in court that she stole babies from the hospital where she worked and sold them. She told parents their newborns had congenital problems and persuaded them to give them up, according to the Weinan Intermediate People’s Court in Shaanxi.
In China, suspended death sentences are usually commuted to life imprisonment after two years.
Her actions were only discovered last year, when she told the parents of a newborn boy that the mother “had syphilis and hepatitis which could infect the infant” and persuaded them to give him up, the court said.


“She took the baby home, and contacted a trafficker,” it added.
The case exposed a baby trafficking ring that operated across several provinces centering on Zhang. According to online postings by the court, she sold the babies to human traffickers, who then resold them at higher prices. In a July case, Zhang pocketed 21,600 yuan ($3,600) when she passed a baby boy to a human trafficker, who resold the child for 59,800 yuan ($9,900) to a couple in central China’s Henan province.
Altogether, Zhang sold seven babies to middlemen who resold the babies in central and eastern China between November 2011 and July 2013, the court said.
Six of the babies were either returned or rescued by police, but one that was voluntarily abandoned by its parents and sold for 1,000 yuan ($165) in April later died.
Zhang worked in Fuping county in the northwestern province of Shaanxi.
Child trafficking is a big problem in China, despite severe legal punishments including the death penalty. Families who buy trafficked children are driven partly by the traditional preference for male heirs, a strict one-child policy and ignorance of the law.
The case has added to public frustration with China’s medical profession over rampant bribery and other abuses.
Chinese parents are sometimes willing to give up disabled children because of the limits imposed by the country’s one-child policy, as well as widespread social stigma about disability.
The two girls were also recovered, but another baby Zhang sold was later found dead in a ditch, dumped by a trafficker, said the intermediate court in Weinan, in the northern province of Shaanxi, judging her to be partly responsible.
Zhang received around 20,000 yuan each for several female babies, it added, while a male baby fetched a price of 47,000 yuan in 2011.
It sentenced Zhang to death with a two-year reprieve, adding that her actions “had a negative impact on society.” The penalty is likely to be commuted to life imprisonment.
A photograph posted by the court showed Zhang, 55, in a blue jacket and trousers, flanked by police officers.
Her repeated deceptions caused shock across China and highlighted its flourishing underground child trafficking industry, for which tens of thousands of children are believed to be stolen each year.
Most are sold within the country to meet demand fuelled by a one-child limit and traditional preference for sons, while parents accuse apathetic police of failing to investigate.
China does not publish figures on how many children are seized every year but said it rescued 24,000 in the first 10 months of 2013, probably a fraction of total cases.
Police have sometimes refused to open inquiries because the low chance of success might hurt their performance record, and have resisted pursuing families who buy the babies.
The country’s strict population control policies mean that most couples are allowed to only have one child, although its top legislature this month endorsed a resolution allowing couples to have two offspring if either parent is an only child.
So far five officials have been sacked in Fuping county, where Zhang’s hospital was located, including the head of the facility and the director of the local health department, the official Xinhua news agency said.
But the father of one of the children stolen by Zhang, surnamed Lai, told state-run media: “When hospital leaders came to see me and brought presents I threw them out of the window. I don’t accept late apologies, its too late.”
Prosecutors told the court that the trafficking ring extended across several Chinese provinces, and while the cases Zhang was convicted of go back only to 2011, reports said that she may have sold many more children

Chile ( Gangs of Dogs vs Riot Police Water Canon! ) Lol

Mexico ( Vigilantes Take Control of 2 More Towns in Western Mexico )

MORELIA, Mexico – Community self-defense groups have occupied two more towns in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, where shootouts, roadblocks and the torchings of vehicles have been taking place for the past week, officials said.

Vigilantes entered El Ceñidor, a town outside the city of Paracuaro, and occupied it on Saturday, a Federal Police spokesman said.

Paracuaro is one of the more than one dozen cities and towns where self-defense groups have been formed to fight the Caballeros Templarios drug cartel.

Vigilantes also took control of Zapotan, a coastal community outside the city Coahuayana.

Twelve trucks, buses and automobiles were burned in the wave of violence that hit Paracuaro and the city of Apatzingan earlier this weekend, the Michoacan Attorney General’s Office said.

Several businesses were torched by gunmen opposed to the community self-defense groups, the AG’s office said.

The plan is to also occupy the cities of Uruapan, Los Reyes and Apatzingan, community self-defense group leader Hipolito Mora told Efe.

Apatzingan is the main bastion of Los Caballeros Templarios.

Los Caballeros Templarios, which was founded in December 2010 by former members of the La Familia Michoacana cartel, deals in both synthetic drugs and natural drugs.

The gang commits murders, stages kidnappings and runs extortion rackets that target business owners and transport companies, affecting everyday life.

The cartel uses Michoacan’s 270 kilometers (168 miles) of coastline to smuggle chemical drug precursors for the production of synthetic drugs into Mexico.

The community self-defense groups emerged in Michoacan in February 2013 to fight the cartel.

Community self-defense groups and community police forces have been formed in 15 of Michoacan’s 113 cities.

Self-defense groups have been formed in the cities of Buenavista Tomatlan, Coalcoman, Aguililla, Tepalcatepec, Los Reyes, Chinicuila, Aquila, Paracho, Cheran, La Huacana, Tancitaro, Churumuco, Paracuaro and Coahuayana, as well as in a community outside Apatzingan, to fight drug traffickers.

The Federal Police, marine corps and army launched a series of operations last week along the coast and in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacan to fight drug-related violence

Libya ( Deputy Minister killed by hard -line militants )

TRIPOLI: Gunmen killed Libya’s Deputy Industry Minister as he drove home from shopping in the coastal city of Sirte late on Saturday in an attack security officials blamed on hard-line militants.
Libya is still plagued by widespread violence and targeted killings more than two years after the civil war ousted Muammar Qaddafi, with militants, militia gunmen and former rebels often resorting to force to impose demands on the fragile government.
The minister, Hassan Al-Drowi, was shot several times, a senior security official said, asking not to be identified.


“They opened fire from another car while he was driving, he was shot multiple times,” the official said. “Later, they found explosives attached to his car. The theory is, the bomb failed, so they shot him instead.”
The official blamed militants who have been trying to extend their influence in Sirte, which has been more stable recently than the coastal capital of Tripoli, about 460 km to the west, or the eastern city of Benghazi.
Sirte was the last bastion of Qaddafi loyalists in the war, and the strongman ruler was killed there on Oct. 20, 2011.
Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s central government, weakened by political infighting and with only nascent armed forces, is struggling to wrest control back from areas where militias are still dominant.
Libya’s General National Congress and its members have still to finish key parts of the country’s transition to democracy since Qaddafi’s fall, with secular parties and hard-liners deadlocked over the way ahead.
The country’s new constitution is still unfinished, and militias who once helped fight Qaddafi have refused to disarm, claiming the central government is too weak to provide security and stability

India ( Man arrested for the torture of his " 11-year-old maid " )

MUMBAI: Indian police have arrested a trader for allegedly torturing a 11-year-old maid who was forced to eat chillies which were also rubbed on her body, an official said, in the latest abuse of domestic servants.
Sarjil Ansari, a 38-year-old napkin seller, was arrested at the weekend and his wife Farhat was being questioned, said an investigating police officer in Thane district neighboring Mumbai.
The couple bought the girl in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh for 15,000 rupees ($240) from her parents about a year ago on the pretext that she would be well looked after and given a better education, the officer said, declining to be named.


“They used to regularly torture and beat up the girl. The girl complained that she was forced to eat chillies, which were also applied on her body,” he said. This would happen when she urinated out of stress or fear, he added.
“Often the family would turn up the volume on their home music system to muffle her cries for help.”
Local media reported that the couple rubbed chillies on the girl’s genitals as punishment, but the officer said he was not aware of the claim.
He said police were alerted when neighbors notified them about possible mistreatment of the girl, whose tasks included cleaning and looking after the couple’s baby, despite her own young age.
The girl is now in the care of a local non-governmental organization, and a case will be registered against the couple once the investigations are completed, the officer said.
The case is the latest of alleged abuse of domestic servants in in India, where thousands of workers, often children trafficked from remote and poverty-stricken states, toil for long hours in homes with almost no legal protection.
In October last year, a teenage girl working as a maid in New Delhi was hospitalized after being rescued from a home where campaigners said she was slashed with knives and mauled by dogs.
In 2006 India passed legislation banning employment of children under 14 in households, roadside eateries and hotels, but the law is widely flouted in the country of 1.2 billion people

Saudi Arabia ( Sabria S. Jawhar reporter - Stop blaming Western Media for Gender Crimes )

There is a war on Saudi women these days that was impossible to conceive just a generation ago. Increasing sexual assaults, harassment in public places, blaming women for the ills of Saudi society, and now, according to a report published Friday, verbal abuse directed at wives.
It is all pretty disconcerting.


In my mother’s day, such abuse hardly existed. Although statistics are not            available that addressed Saudi social demographics in the 1960s and 1970s, anecdotal evidence of the period suggest that fathers and husbands generally took their faith seriously and put an emphasis on harmonious family relationships.
Today, the family dynamics are radically different. The Internet, satellite television, the ease of traveling abroad and educational opportunities for women have changed the Saudi landscape. The intellectual growth of women in education and at the workplace has had a profound impact on Saudis. And the consequences are, well, many people do not like it. These changes have pushed both men and women out of their comfort zones. Many women are embracing it. Many men are not.
And as a result many people are acting out, betraying our Islamic faith and our obligations to Saudi society. And the abuse is heaped on women, who are benefiting the most from the changes in society. We see with sickening regularity video clips of men chasing women from malls into the parking lot. A man just the other day was videotaped reportedly molesting a young girl. So-called religious men advocate abusing women in the workplace so they will quit and return home.
Then we have a new poll from the King Abdul Aziz Center for National Dialogue, which found that a majority of the 992 men polled said that women wearing eyeliner and mascara are responsible for men sexually assaulting women. Typical victim blaming.
Part of the problem is that Saudi law enforcement remains mired in the 19th century and is far from catching up with 21st century technology and the 21st century lifestyle of Saudi youths. The Saudi Ministry of Justice has been talking about codifying its legal system for years now, but we have seen little evidence of any intent to a standardize legal system that will make sexual assault, harassment and abuse illegal with real-world consequences.
Now, we have a new study that reports that 73 percent of all Saudi women suffer some form of verbal abuse. Verbal abuse is defined by the study as humiliating a wife in public, demanding that a woman be silent in public, threats of physical abuse, denigrating a woman’s personal appearances, using sexually explicit profanities against her, and not speaking her name. Sadly, 31 percent of the 285 women polled said they consider themselves responsible for their husband’s verbal abuse, while 17 percent apologize for their actions that purportedly caused the abuse.
There have been suggestions that Hollywood movies are to be blamed for the increase in verbal abuse of women. That is all pretty much hogwash since it allows men — like the guys who sexually assault women who wear too much eye makeup — off the hook for their behavior.
We have a neighbor next door to use who screams at his wife and children every single day, sometimes from morning until night. The daughters, whom all seem to be under 14, wear no makeup and are as quiet as mosque mice when they step out of the apartment on those rare occasions. The mother is never seen. The girls do not wear makeup, and given their age, I see no evidence that they deserve his reign of terror.
But what I do hear is the kids behaving in the same manner as their father. What I fear is the cycle of verbal abuse will be handed down from one generation to another. Those fathers who verbally abuse their wives and the brothers who harass women at malls and claim they were provoked into raping a woman are setting an example for the younger generation of men to wage war on women.
Answers can be found in Islam, but blaming western media and educated women who happen to wear makeup is the coward’s way out of solving the problem.

Email: sabria_j@hotmail.com