West Bank ( Israeli police say they pulled over the Palestinian prime minister’s convoy )

JERUSALEM: Israeli police say they briefly pulled over the Palestinian prime minister’s convoy for reckless driving in the West Bank, sparking a diplomatic spat.
While police say they quickly allowed the convoy to pass, the Palestinians say the incident was a violation of their rights.




Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says Rami Hamdallah’s car and another vehicle were stopped Tuesday for speeding and “overtaking every vehicle in a dangerous way.”
Rosenfeld says after identifying Hamdallah, police immediately allowed the cars to continue on. However, the two drivers face police questioning.
Ehab Bseiso, a spokesman for Hamdallah, says the incident “shines a light on the many violations committed against Palestinians every day.”
In a separate development, the Czech Foreign Ministry said Palestinian authorities have apologized for illegal weapons that were discovered at the Palestinian Embassy complex in Prague where a possibly booby-trapped safe killed the ambassador.
In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry says the Palestinians have promised to take measures to prevent such incidents in the future.
Police found 12 unregistered weapons in a search following the explosion. The Czechs said the arms were in breach of international obligations.
Ambassador Jamal Al-Jamal died Jan. 1 after an embassy safe exploded. The career diplomat had only started his posting in October.

Mexico ( Battle " Good vs. Evil " self defense group gets larger ) Mexican Militia

NUEVA ITALIA, Mexico (Reuters) - Vigilante groups battling a powerful drug cartel in a troubled region of Mexico on Tuesday rejected a government call to lay down their arms, raising the risk of an increased security headache for President Enrique Pena Nieto.

On Monday, Mexico's Interior Ministry ordered the heavily armed vigilantes to cease fighting the Knights Templar gang in the western state of Michoacan, where violent confrontations have converged on the city of Apatzingan in the last few days.

Apatzingan is considered a stronghold of the Knights Templar, and over the past week, so-called self-defense groups have pushed to take control of surrounding towns and villages.
The violence in Michoacan has raised serious questions about the government's efforts to restore order in Mexico, where more than 80,000 people have been killed in turf wars between gangs and in their clashes with security forces over the past seven years.
Jose Mireles, the most visible leader of the vigilantes, said there could be no talk of putting down guns in Michoacan while the leaders of the Knights Templar remain at large.
"I am not in favor of disarmament, quite the contrary," he said on a video posted on the Internet.
Estanislao Beltran, another leader of the vigilantes, told Mexican radio that to disarm would be to put themselves at risk.
"It's not right for the federal government to come and disarm our soldiers ... who are defending the people," he said, adding that federal troops had strafed a local village with bullets, killing four people, including a girl of 11.
The deaths could not be confirmed immediately.
Already battling the Knights Templar, the government risks opening up another front if the vigilantes refuse to disarm, complicating efforts to restore order in Michoacan.
"There's no question that this is the first in-depth test to see if (Pena Nieto) has a strategy to tackle organized crime," said Javier Oliva, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Pena Nieto has tried to shift attention away from the violence after his predecessor Felipe Calderon staked considerable political capital on rooting out the cartels.
His government killed and captured dozens of senior gang members, but killings intensified and helped condemn Calderon's conservatives to defeat in the 2012 presidential elections.

The mounting violence in Michoacan has made it harder for Pena Nieto's government to maintain a low profile on security.

On Tuesday, convoys of federal police in reinforced pick-up trucks headed along the highway towards Tierra Caliente, or Hot Land - an arid part of Michoacan where the fighting has been most intense.

In the back of each truck, police manned mounted machine guns, their faces obscured with balaclavas and goggles. Some had heavy bandoliers slung around their torsos.

The government had appeared to tolerate the vigilantes, apparently in the hope they could oust the Knights Templar. Militia leader Mireles himself received protection from federal troops after surviving an airplane accident earlier this month.

However, some Michoacan locals say the vigilantes have been infiltrated by drug cartels from neighboring states, so that the government risks replacing one criminal gang with another.

(Additional reporting by Anahi Rama, Lizbeth Diaz and Alexandra Alper; Writing by Dave Graham; editing by Gunna Dickson)

Mexico ( The city cemetery " Full of victims " endless drug war )

ANTUNEZ, Mich. .. - The municipal cemetery was filled as if the Day of the Dead. The notes of a musical group could be heard singing corridos of life and death. But the piercing screams of Joan broke the syncopated songs. "Why did you kill me?" Wondered aloud, his face soaked in tears, while the body of Mario Perez Torres was buried.



"Do you think this will calm down?" Asked the reporter Maria Elena, Mario's niece, in the mood to find a hint of hope.

Fear is the special guest at the funerals of Mario and Rodrigo Benitez, who were buried accompanied by hundreds of residents of this town, which has been controlled by the criminal group "The Knights Templar" for years

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Somalia ( Robbery " On the high Sea " is Down )

KUALA LUMPUR: World sea piracy fell for a third straight year in 2013, as Somali pirates were curbed by international naval patrols and improved ship vigilance, an international maritime watchdog said Wednesday.
The International Maritime Bureau said global pirate attacks fell to a six-year low of 264, down from 297 in 2012 and 439 in 2011. Pirate attacks have declined since hitting a peak in 2010 with 445 attacks.


 A total of 12 vessels were hijacked, with more than 300 crew members taken hostage and one killed during 2013, according to data compiled by the London-based bureau’s piracy reporting center in Malaysia.
“The single biggest reason for the drop in worldwide piracy is the decrease in Somali piracy off the coast of East Africa,” said IMB director, Capt. Pottengal Mukundan.
The bureau said only 15 attacks were reported off Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden, the lowest since 2006. It was also down sharply from 75 cases in 2012 and 237 in 2011. It said the 15 incidents included two hijacked vessels, both which were released within a day as a result of naval actions.
Somali pirates have been deterred by international navies, stronger vessels, the use of private armed security teams and the stabilizing influence of Somalia’s central government, it said.
“It is imperative to continue combined international efforts to tackle Somali piracy. Any complacency at this stage could rekindle pirate activity,” Mukundan said.
The IMB said West African piracy however, took a turn for the worse and accounted for 19 percent of global attacks last year.
Nigerian pirates accounted for 31 of the region’s 51 attacks, more than in any year since 2008, it said. Nigerian pirates ventured far into waters off Gabon, Ivory Coast and Togo, where they were linked with at least five of the region’s seven reported vessel hijackings, it said.

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