BEIJING ( North Korea fired a rocket into the flight path of a Chinese airliner )

BEIJING: Beijing expressed concern Thursday after North Korea fired a rocket into the flight path of a Chinese airliner during weapons tests. The incident took place a day after China said it plans to spend 808.23 billion yuan ($132 billion) on its army for 2014.
Pyongyang has drawn criticism from Seoul and Washington for firing half a dozen short-range missiles off its east coast in recent days, followed on Tuesday by a volley of rockets from multiple launchers.
South Korea said a Chinese airliner with more than 200 passengers on board crossed the trajectory of one of the rockets seven minutes after it passed by.
China is North Korea’s key diplomatic protector and the source of much of its trade and aid.
“I want to stress we attach high importance to the security of national civil airlines,” said Beijing’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.
Countries should take “necessary measures” when carrying out military drills “to ensure the security and safety of civil ships and aircraft,” he said.
“Without any doubt, China will verify the relevant situation with the relevant party and express necessary concerns over that,” Qin added.
South Korean officials criticized the North’s artillery launch. Seoul Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok called it a “serious threat” that Pyongyang failed to notify international aviation authorities of its launch plans in the area.
Kim said the plane was traveling at an altitude of 10 kilometers, while the projectile’s peak altitude was 20 kilometers. He said the flight passed through the area about five minutes after the projectile hit the water.
An unidentified North Korean Army spokesman said in a statement Wednesday night that rocket drills conducted from Feb. 21 until Tuesday were part of regular training. He said that neither regional security nor the international navigation were in danger because the North took “scrupulous advance security measures for flight orbit and targets in the designated waters.”

BOGOTA ( Five Gunned Down at " Birthday Party " in Colombia )

 

BOGOTA – Five people were shot to death and another wounded by unknown gunmen who burst into a birthday party in a rural portion of the Colombian city of Santa Marta, authorities said Wednesday.

The mass slaying occurred after midnight Tuesday on a farm in the Masinga rural settlement, some five kilometers (three miles) from Santa Marta, capital of the Caribbean coastal province of Magdalena, police said.

Among those killed were two women and three men who earlier in the evening had participated in a birthday party and were still in the house on the Porton Verde farm when the attack occurred.

The property apparently had been rented for the party attended by about 30 people, most of whom had already left when the attackers arrived, the daily El Heraldo said in its online edition.

The commander of the Santa Marta Metropolitan Police, Col. Fredy Tibaduiza Niño, said that according to witnesses, six armed men came to the house and fired indiscriminately at those present.

Brazil ( TV Cameraman Shot While Covering Carnival in Brazil )

 

SAO PAULO – A TV cameraman was hospitalized in serious condition after being shot several times while he was covering a Carnival procession in the northeastern Brazilian city of Pedreiras, Bandeirantes television said Wednesday.

Hilton Costa Brito, 36, was at a parade when a man got out of a nearby car and opened fire at him, according to Bandeirantes, which is affiliated with TV Atenas, for which the cameraman works as a freelancer.

Brito, who was shot four times in the stomach and legs, was taken to the hospital, where he underwent two operations.

According to the annual report of Reporters Without Borders, five journalists were murdered in Brazil in 2013, making the country one of the most dangerous for reporters in the Americas.

Last month, two gunmen shot to death journalist Pedro Palma, the owner of Panorama Regional newspaper in Rio de Janeiro state.

Cameraman Santiago Andrade, who is also with Bandeirantes, died after being hit by a flare as he was covering a street demonstration in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

“The escalation of violence against journalists is extremely worrisome and that crime cannot remain unpunished,” the Brazilian Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters said Wednesday in a communique.

Ukraine ( Ukraine flew its flag over the government headquarters in the eastern city )

DONETSK, Ukraine: Ukraine flew its flag over the government headquarters in the eastern city of Donetsk on Thursday and ejected pro-Moscow demonstrators that occupied it, ending a siege that Kiev had seen as part of a Russian plan to create a pretext to invade.
Police said they had taken more than 70 people into custody for questioning after clearing out the regional administration headquarters and another government building.


“The people who were removed from the building did not resist,” Donetsk city police chief Maksim Kirindyasov said. “The building was cleared in a matter of a few minutes.”
Later on Thursday, security service agents arrested the protest leader. Pavel Gubarev was led away from his apartment without a fight. The local businessman who called himself the “people’s governor” had demanded control over the police and tried to persuade lawmakers to install him as regional boss while his men occupied their hall.
He was charged with seeking to damage “the territorial integrity and independence of the state.”
The pro-Moscow protesters who had been occupying the building since Monday were first lured out on Wednesday by police who said there was a bomb scare, but fought their way back in after battling police throughout Wednesday.
The building had flown the Russian flag since Saturday, when President Vladimir Putin declared Russia’s right to invade Ukraine.
Donetsk, home city of deposed president Viktor Yanukovich, has seen the most persistent pro-Moscow demonstrations in a wave of protests that erupted simultaneously across southern and eastern cities the day of Putin’s announcement.

Similarities to Crimea
Kiev’s new government has named one of Ukraine’s richest men, metal baron Sergei Taruta, as Donetsk regional governor, a sign that powerful oligarchs, many of whom once supported Yanukovich, are now behind the new authorities.
On Thursday, Taruta promised to restore calm: “I am not a magician, I can’t do it all in a single day, but I think in two weeks or so the situation will be completely different.”
Russian forces seized Ukraine’s Crimea region, an isolated Black Sea peninsula, but did not enter other areas of Ukraine.
Kiev says the protests across the south and east were orchestrated by Moscow to justify a planned wider invasion.
It points to similarities between Gubarev’s tactics and those used in Crimea — where a pro-Russian politician was named provincial boss in a besieged legislature before Russian forces took control — as evidence a wider assault was planned.
The pattern was also repeated in other cities on Saturday where demonstrators raised Russian flags at regional government buildings and pro-Russian politicians held closed-door legislative sessions.
But Donetsk was the only city outside Crimea where the Russian flag flew above the government building for more than a day and the protest leader continued to insist he was in charge.
Most Ukrainians in eastern and southern regions speak Russian as a native language and many are deeply suspicious of the government in Kiev.
The pro-Moscow demonstrators initially enjoyed substantial support, but their tactics and Putin’s invasion threat have increasingly caused a backlash and protest numbers have ebbed.
In Donetsk, anti-Russian protests in the past two days were much larger than the pro-Kremlin demonstrations.
Kiev has said that many of the pro-Russian demonstrators have been bussed in from Russia. Police chief Kirindyasov said those detained at the regional headquarters were all Ukrainian citizens from the Donetsk region, though not from the city itself.
The Ukrainian authorities say they did not take steps earlier against the pro-Moscow protests because of fear that violence would provoke a Russian military response.

Kearny Arizona ( Family say " Man beaten to death " Never threw a punch ) Milo Candeleria

 

                            (  suspects )                                                                      (  milo)

( His family say , Milo never threw a punch ) ?   That would be Murder 1 or 2 ?

KEARNY, AZ - A deadly bar brawl last Friday night in this old mining town left one man dead and two arrested.
Kearny Police say Juan Lopez and Anthony Sigala were drinking at the La Cantina Bar in Kearny when they got into a fight with Milo Candeleria.
Kearny Police responded to the bar at about 11 p.m. Feb 21 where they found Candeleria injured. He was airlifted to UAMC where he succumbed to his injuries, Kearny Police Chief Robert Ingulli said in a release.
Both men were officially charged with aggravated assault and manslaughter

Amman ( Middle East will be vaccinated against polio this month )

AMMAN: Millions of children in the Middle East will be vaccinated against polio this month after the crippling disease resurfaced in conflict-hit Syria, the United Nations said Sunday.
Mass vaccinations have already been launched in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria, while a similar campaign in Lebanon will start on March 9, the UN Children’s Fund Unicef said in a statement.
“Polio does not respect borders,” said Ala Alwan, World Health Organization regional director for the eastern Mediterranean.



“The detection of polio in Syria is not Syria’s problem alone, but one requiring a regional response. The safety of children across the Middle East relies on us being able to put a stop to polio in Syria.”
Preliminary evidence suggests the virus in this outbreak — and also polio samples found in sewage in Egypt, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip — came from Pakistan, one of the disease’s last bastions.
The Syrian Ministry of Health said in October that polio had returned to the country for the first time in almost 15 years.
“We need to get two drops of polio vaccine into the mouth of every child under the age of five, regardless of their previous immunization history, every time there is a campaign,” Khouzama Al-Rasheed, a medical worker at a health center in rural Damascus, was quoted as saying in the statement.
Inside Syria, the campaign is targeting 1.6 million children with vaccines against polio, measles, mumps and rubella,
Seven countries across the Middle East are planning to vaccinate more than 22 million children multiple times over six months, in the region’s largest-ever coordinated immunization plan, said UNICEF.
“To vaccinate so many children in different countries is a huge undertaking,” said Maria Calivis, UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“Each country faces its own set of challenges in order to make the campaign effective — above all in Syria — but this is the only way we can ensure children across the region are properly protected against this terrible disease.”

Ukraine ( Ukraine’s navy chief announced Sunday he had switched allegiance to the pro-Russian ) He should be arrested on the spot !

KIEV: Ukraine’s navy chief announced Sunday he had switched allegiance to the pro-Russian authorities of the flashpoint peninsula of Crimea, a day after he was appointed to the post by interim leader Oleksandr Turchynov.
“I swear to execute the orders of the (pro-Russia) commander-in-chief of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea,” Denis Berezovsky said in a televised statement from inside the Crimean headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, adding that he “swears allegiance to the residents of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.”