CARACAS ( Venezuela Arrests More Agents for killing " Two Protesters " )

CARACAS – The Venezuelan Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday announced the arrests of five members of the Sebin intelligence service in connection with the Feb. 12 shooting deaths of two people following a protest, bringing to eight the total number of Sebin personnel in custody.

Seven of the eight agents may face homicide charges, the AG’s office said in a statement.

On Feb. 12, a demonstration by students and other opposition elements was held in Caracas to protest the policies of the leftist government of President Nicolas Maduro.

At the end of the march, some people broke off from the group to stage attacks on public buildings and vehicles while others ran through nearby streets, where several of them were shot.

Bassil Da Costa, a student participating in the protest, and Juan Montoya, a member of a pro-government organization, died.

A few hours later, another young man, Robert Redman, who had participated in the march that morning, was shot to death.

Attorney General Luisa Ortega announced on Monday the arrests of three Sebin agents linked to two of the three deaths and said that the cases “are very clear.”

In the same remarks, she said that 13 people had died in the protests besetting the country over the past two weeks.

Eight days ago, Maduro fired Sebin director Gen. Manuel Bernal after admitting that members of the service failed to abide by the order to stay off the streets on Feb. 12

Mexico ( Indian Women Demand Compensation from Mexican Government for False Imprisonment )

 
MEXICO CITY – Two Otomi Indian women are demanding that the Mexican federal Attorney General’s Office compensate them for the four years they spent in prison on kidnapping convictions that were later thrown out by the courts.

Alberta Alcantara and Teresa Gonzalez, who are from the central state of Queretaro, said in a press conference Tuesday that the AG’s office was trying to get out of its responsibility in the case.

The AG’s office filed a review motion on Feb. 7 in an effort to get out of paying compensation and making a public apology in the case, the women said.

“I cannot believe that the AG’s office does not accept the errors it made and I cannot believe that they keep saying it was us, even when we have shown that we are innocent, they keep insisting that there was a crime,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez, Alcantara and fellow Otomi Jacinta Francisco Marcial, who operated market stalls in Queretaro, were arrested in August 2006.

The three women were later sentenced to 21 years in prison on charges they kidnapped six federal agents who claimed that the vendors took them hostage in March 2006 during an operation targeting sellers of pirated DVDs.

The Supreme Court ordered the women released from prison in 2010.

Marcial was released from prison in September 2009, followed by Alcantara and Gonzalez on April 28, 2010.

“I just want all of this to end and for the president (Enrique Peña Nieto) to acknowledge that we are innocent. For the AG’s office to obey the Supreme Court ruling. I don’t want to continue doing this, it’s really tiring. Make good the harm done and let this end,” Alcantara said.

The Attorney General’s Office will not respond because it has taken the position that “we committed the crime and we are guilty even though we’ve shown that we are innocent,” Alcantara said.

A court ordered the federal AG’s office last November to compensate the two women for damages due to irregularities linked to prosecutors in the case.

Alcantara demanded that federal prosecutors admit that the women were innocent in the same media outlets used to accuse them of committing crimes.

The two women were accompanied at the press conference by Amnesty International and Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center representatives.

Syria ( More than " 100 died of starvation" in 2013 )

DAMASCUS, Syria: The chief of the United Nations relief agency supporting Palestinian refugees said Tuesday he is “deeply disturbed and shaken” by the despair and destruction he’d seen in a besieged camp in the Syrian capital.
The Yarmouk refugee camp, located in southern Damascus, is an opposition enclave under the tight blockade of forces loyal to President Bashar Assad. More than 100 people have died in Yarmouk since mid-2013 as a result of starvation and illnesses exacerbated by hunger or lack of medical aid, according to UN figures.



                                        (  Baby who died of hunger )

Filippo Grandi, the Commissioner General of UNRWA, was visiting Yarmouk as the relief agency resumed food distribution there. UNRWA shipments to the camp have been disrupted for months, sometimes cut off for weeks at a time, and Yarmouk has suffered from crippling shortages of food and medicine.
“I am deeply disturbed and shaken by what I observed,” Grandi said in a statement. Palestinian refugees to whom he spoke in Yarmouk Monday were “traumatized by what they have lived through.”
The extent of damage to the refugees’ homes was shocking, he also said, adding that many Palestinians in Yarmouk need immediate support, particularly food and medical treatment.
Yarmouk is the largest of nine Palestinian camps in Syria. Since the camp’s creation in 1957, it has evolved into a densely populated residential district just five miles (eight kilometers) from the center of Damascus. Several generations of Palestinian refugees have lived there.
About half of the camp’s 150,000 residents have fled since fighting erupted in mid-December 2012, according to estimates of UNRWA, which administers Palestinian camps in the Middle East. Some sought refuge in neighboring Lebanon, and others found shelter in UNRWA schools in Damascus and other Syrian cities.
When the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011, most Palestinians stayed on the sidelines. As the revolt turned into a civil war that reached Yarmouk in December 2012, most residents backed the rebels and some even took up arms to fight Assad’s troops and pro-government Palestinian fighters.
Also on Tuesday, the leader of a powerful Al-Qaeda-linked jihadi group in Syria gave a rival Al-Qaeda breakaway group a five-day ultimatum to seek arbitration by leading clerics or be expelled from the region.
Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, leader of the Nusra Front, warned the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant that it would be driven both from Syria and “even from Iraq” if it rejected the results of arbitration “under God’s law.”
The threat came in an audio message produced by the Nusra Front media arm Al-Manara Al-Baydha and was posted on militant websites Tuesday.
Al-Golani’s ultimatum came two days after the killing of Abu Khaled Al-Suri who acts as Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahri’s representative in Syria. He was believed to be assassinated by two ISIL suicide bombers.

Whale News ( Girl gets " Slapped in the face by whale " ) Lol

Mexico ( Police Arrest 26 on Kidnapping Charges, Free 4 Captives in Mexico )

 

MEXICO CITY – The Federal Police arrested 26 people on kidnapping charges and freed four captives in operations carried out in three Mexican states, the Mexican National Security Commission said Tuesday.

Eleven suspected kidnappers were arrested in Mexico state, which surrounds the Federal District and forms part of the Mexico City metropolitan area, and a person kidnapped on Feb. 18 in Morelos state was freed, the commission said in a statement.

Federal Police officers arrested four people, including a Peruvian woman, and freed a captive during a raid on a house on the east side of Mexico City.

Officers seized two vehicles, 37 cell phones, clothing with police logos and other gear from the suspects, the commission said.

Five people linked to at least 10 kidnapping cases in the capital and Mexico state were arrested by the Federal Police.

Two vehicles, two firearms, 14 cell phones, documents and other items were seized from the suspects.

“Six suspected kidnappers were arrested and two victims were rescued” in the southeastern state of Tabasco, the National Security Commission said.

President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration implemented a strategy in late January for fighting kidnapping, a crime that has been rising in recent months.

A total of 1,695 kidnappings were reported in Mexico last year, up 20 percent from the 2012 level, National Public Safety System figures show.

An unknown number of kidnappings, however, are never reported in Mexico.

Syria ( Syrian woman " Saves another woman " shot by Sniper ) Video

MOSCOW ( Russian riot police detained over a hundred protesters on Monday )

MOSCOW: Russian riot police detained over a hundred protesters on Monday at a Moscow courthouse where seven opponents of President Vladimir Putin were jailed from two and a half to four years over a demonstration that turned violent.


The protesters, who blame police for the violence in central Moscow in 2012, demanded the release of the defendants and shouted “shame” and “Maidan” — a reference to the Kiev square that has been the focus of protests that brought the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.
Among those detained were two members of the punk protest band Pussy Riot, released in December near the end of two-year sentences for their own anti-Putin protest in Moscow’s main cathedral in 2012. Alexei Navalny, who emerged from a wave of protests that year as the top opposition leader, was also held.
Relatives and lawyers of the seven said they believed the upheaval in neighboring Ukraine, where police were among the dead in a conflict the Kremlin blames on opposition leaders and the West, had prompted the court to impose prison sentences as a signal that such actions would not be tolerated in Russia.
A Russian state TV news show host linked the trial with the events in Ukraine in a broadcast on Sunday, saying the bloodshed that killed at least 82 people in Kiev last week had started with actions similar to the 2012 anti-Putin protest.
Defense lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky said he would appeal his client Yaroslav Belousov’s two-and-a-half-year prison sentence.
“These sentences are cruel and wrong. They were handed down because of the political situation...We hope our appeal will show that they made a mistake and the defendants won’t have to answer for the Maidan.” An eighth defendant was given a suspended sentence that allows her to avoid jail, but the rulings caused outrage among Kremlin critics who see the prisoners as victims of a clampdown on dissent during Putin’s third term as president.
Opposition activists said more than 230 people were detained by riot police grabbing protesters and dragging them to waiting buses. Police put the figure at more than 100.
The judge on Friday had found the defendants guilty of rioting and attacking police at a protest on May 6, 2012, the day before Putin, in power since 2000, returned to the presidency after a stint as prime minister.
The defendants — seven men and a woman, most of them in their 20s — blame police for the clashes that erupted and pleaded not guilty. The men have been in custody since 2012.