TUCSON Az ( Homeless kids- Migrant Influx Strains Arizona Children’s Shelters)

TUCSON, Arizona – Children’s shelters in Arizona are overflowing after the arrival of hundreds of Central American immigrants transferred from Texas, the epicenter of a massive arrival of undocumented children characterized by President Barack Obama as an “urgent humanitarian situation.”

The Guatemalan Consulate in Phoenix said that this week it received 70 of its country’s citizens who were released at the Greyhound bus station by U.S. immigration authorities.

The migrants were brought from Texas, where the children’s shelters and detention centers are full due to the avalanche of undocumented Central Americans in recent months.

The situation is also being felt in shelters in Arizona, with the Phoenix centers already overcrowded with children who arrived alone in this country, Guatemalan Consul Jimena Diaz told Efe.

The number of children crossing the border alone has increased more than 90 percent compared with last year, Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said Monday in conjunction with Obama’s presidential memorandum ordering “a unified and coordinated Federal response.”

The number of unaccompanied children entering the United States could approach 66,000 this year, more than quadruple the number two years ago, according to unofficial estimates.

Diaz said she spoke with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and expressed to them her concern over the lack of security for mothers and children, many of whom are babies, when they are left at bus stations.

She said ICE officials assured her that this situation will prevail until Wednesday or Thursday and that then it will “normalize” and “women with children are going to be processed in Texas.”

A recent report by the Border Patrol said that more than 100,000 undocumented Central Americans have been detained on the Texas border so far in fiscal year 2014, which began last Oct. 1, and that the majority of these detentions were of minors.

“If we have a situation where the two parents are coming we ask that the decision be made who will go with the child and who will remain in detention” to be turned over to ICE, Andy Adame, the spokesman for the Border Patrol in Arizona, told Efe.

Meanwhile, activists and community organizations are offering advice and assistance to these immigrant families who are released at Arizona bus stations. One of the organizations is Casa Mariposa in Tucson, which is offering them lodging and food.

“We are helping them understand the situation and the trip. These people don’t know anyone here and everything is new for them,” Kristina Schlaback, a volunteer at Casa Mariposa, told Efe

SAN SALVADOR ( Two Cops Killed in Two Days in El Salvador )

  A Salvadoran police officer was gunned down Thursday by gang members, the second such killing in two days, the Attorney General’s Office said.

Joaquin Rosales, assigned to the Investigation Division, died in an exchange of shots with gang members in the eastern town of Guadalupe, police and the AG’s office told reporters.

Another detective, Antonio Regalado, was fatally shot on Wednesday at a market in the central municipality of Quezaltepeque.

That incident left a civilian and another police officer wounded.

A police corporal and two prison guards were among the six people killed in a May 23 attack on a bus.

Homicides are running at an average of 14 a day in El Salvador, where a truce between the two leading gangs brought a sharp, albeit temporary, decline in murders until the pact fell apart earlier this year.

Levels of lethal violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are greater than in some countries suffering armed conflict, according to a report released last week in Geneva.

The study was the work of the Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS) created by three NGOs: HelpAge International, Merlin and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

“At 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people, Honduras remains the most violent country in the world. El Salvador (41.2) and Guatemala (39.9) have higher homicide rates now than during their civil wars,” ACAPS pointed out

Ukraine closes border posts after night assaults

DOLZHANSKY: Ukraine said Thursday it had abandoned three checkpoints on the Russian border after a series of night-time attacks by separatists, and AFP reporters on the scene said at least one had been taken over by the militants.
The decision to leave the border posts came as the government vowed to beef up its security presence to counter pro-Russian rebels amid reports of continued fighting in the country’s east.
The three checkpoints, all in the volatile Lugansk region, were targeted in attacks by pro-Russian rebels overnight Wednesday to Thursday, the border guards said in a statement.
“After an exchange of fire, the threat to the lives of people crossing the border prompted the evacuation of civilians and border guards at the checkpoints,” the statement said.
On Thursday afternoon, Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag no longer flew over the border post at Dolzhansky after it had been taken over by about 10 armed pro-Russian rebels who allowed vehicles to pass in both directions. 
Numerous civilians were also crossing into Russia on foot with suitcases and bags of belongings, seeking refuge from the hostilities on the Ukrainian side.
“The Ukrainian border guards numbered about 50 and left toward 5 a.m. today,” said Vitaly Bliznyuk, the commander of a group of pro-Russian fighters.
“When we got here, we noticed that the border guards had already left and had detonated their ammunition beforehand,” he told AFP.

JERUSALEM ( Israeli doctors refuse to force feed Palestinian prisoners )

JERUSALEM: Proposed legislation to permit the force-feeding of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike is pitting Israel’s government against the country’s main doctors’ association, which says the practice amounts to torture.
The ethical and legal debate has taken on an urgent tone, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly asking to fast-track the bill as a hunger strike by dozens of Palestinian detainees entered its sixth week.
At least 65 of 290 participating detainees have been hospitalized since the first group began a hunger strike April 24. Many are administrative detainees, held for months or years without charges.
Families of hunger strikers say they support the fast despite the risks.
“My husband is in Israeli jails without knowing why and when this nightmare is going to end,” Lamees Faraj said of her husband Abdel Razeq, who is a member of a small, hard-line Palestine Liberation Organization faction and has been in administrative detention for almost eight of the last 20 years.
Faced with the second large-scale Palestinian hunger strike in two years, Israel’s government is promoting a bill that would allow a judge to sanction force-feeding if an inmate’s life is perceived to be in danger.
There has been mounting opposition from Israel’s medical establishment, with the Israel Medical Association urging physicians not to cooperate. “It goes against the DNA of the doctors to force treatment on a patient,” spokeswoman Ziva Miral said Tuesday. “Force-feeding is torture, and we can’t have doctors participating in torture.”
She noted that the World Medical Association, an umbrella for national medical associations, opposes the practice. The WMA said as recently as 2006 that “forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable.
Israel’s National Council of Bioethics has also weighed in, saying it opposes the proposed bill.
Another group, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, contacted the World Medical Association last month, asking that it help stop the legislation. In a letter to the WMA, the Israeli group reiterated the ethical concerns raised by others and added that “the true motivation ... is to break the spirit and protests of the hunger strikers.”
Despite such criticism, Netanyahu reportedly told his Cabinet this week he’ll make sure to find physicians who will participate in force-feeding. Netanyahu noted that force-feeding is carried out at the US-run Guantanamo Bay detention camp for suspected militants, the Haaretz said.
Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev, declined to comment on the report, but confirmed the government supports the bill.
Hadar said force-feeding would be a last resort. Hunger strikers would be represented in legal hearings and physicians would not be compelled to participate, he said.
He said force-feeding is meant to save lives, while acknowledging other considerations at play.
“People go on a hunger strike for political reasons ... and the consequence could be political damage to the state,” he said. “The state also has the right to stop the strike.”
Qadoura Fares, an advocate for Palestinian prisoners, said Palestinians would seek international condemnation of Israel if the legislation is passed.
So far, 65 hunger strikers have been hospitalized, but none are in life-threatening conditions, said Sivan Weizman of the Israel Prison Authority. She did not know how many voluntarily receive vitamins or glucose.
The families wait and worry, including Amani Ramahi, whose jailed husband Mahmoud is a West Bank legislator for the Islamic militant group Hamas. Israel considers Hamas a terror group because it has killed several hundred Israelis in attacks since the late 1980s.
Ramahi said her husband relayed a message from prison that the hunger strikers are determined to continue, “even if they die, because they want to put an end once and for all to their suffering.”

Florida ( Judge and Lawyer get in Fight outside Court ) haha

Ukraine ( Pro-Russia rebels armed with automatic weapons -attack border )

 

Hundreds of pro-Russia rebels armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades mounted a daylong assault Monday on a key government base used to coordinate the defense of the country's border with Russia, prompting the deployment of air support by government forces.

Border guards killed at least five rebels in repelling the attack on their base, a spokesman for the border guard service said.

In the center of Luhansk, some six miles (10 kilometers) away, a blast at an administrative building held by the insurgents claimed more lives. A health official for the Luhansk region told Interfax news agency that at least seven people had been confirmed dead in what rebels described as a government airstrike.

The government denied carrying out an airstrike and said the blast was caused by misdirected rebel fire from a portable surface-to-air missile launcher.

Russia's Foreign Ministry swiftly condemned what it said was a government attack on the rebel-held building and urged U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Derek Chollet, who was visiting Kiev on Monday, to help calm unrest in Ukraine.

"We urge our Western partners to use their influence on Kiev, to stop Ukraine from descending into a national catastrophe," the ministry said in a statement.

Russia also called an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council to introduce a resolution calling for an immediate halt to the violence and talks to establish a cease-fire. Moscow has almost daily demanded that the Kiev government halt its military operations in the east, but it was the first time it has called for a Security Council resolution. It was unclear how much support the proposal would have.

The rebel assault on the government base continued into the night, ending around 9 p.m. with the border guards succeeded in repelling the insurgents.

Earlier, rebels in camouflage had promised safe passage to the government troops if they surrendered and laid down their arms. The pro-Russian insurgents, who have seized government and police buildings across eastern Ukraine, have waged increasingly aggressive attacks on government-held checkpoints and garrisons in an attempt to seize weapons and ammunition from Ukrainian forces.

The attacks are deeply troubling for Ukraine's new government, whose president-elect, Petro Poroshenko, has pledged to crush the separatist movement in the east. The conflict has escalated markedly in the past week, with rebels attempting to seize a major airport and the shooting-down of a Ukrainian military helicopter.

Serhiy Astakhov, the spokesman for the border guard service, told The Associated Press that five rebels were killed and eight wounded in Monday's attack on the walled compound on the western fringes of Luhansk, a major city not far from the Russian border. He said seven servicemen were wounded, three seriously.

The initial attack by about 100 insurgents was met by gunfire from the border guards, and the number of attackers swelled to around 400 a few hours later, he said. Astakhov said the Ukrainian armed forces sent aircraft to the area, and at least one fighter jet was seen flying overhead.

An AP reporter saw about 40 rebel fighters, and one of them said that more than 200 were involved in the assault on the base.

At least one dead rebel fighter fell about a half-mile away from the base. Fellow insurgents approached and broke into tears as they viewed the body. One insurgent said the dead man was a leading rebel commander.

PHOENIX ( Family Asks McCain to Help Win U.S. Marine’s Release from Mexican Jail )

PHOENIX – Relatives of U.S. Marine Andrew Tahmooressi, who is being held in a Mexican jail for entering the country with weapons in his possession, have asked Republican Sen. John McCain for help in the case.

“We’re very concerned about his well-being. He’s been beaten, he’s suffering from hunger. The only thing they’re giving him to eat is bread and water with sugar,” Beth Whitney, Tahmooressi’s aunt, told Efe as she displayed a photo of her nephew.

Tahmooressi, a Marine sergeant who served two tours in Afghanistan, was arrested in March 31 when he entered Mexico from San Diego with three firearms in the trunk of his car.

Mexico only allows members of its armed forces to carry weapons.

At the entrance of the checkpoints into Mexican territory there are signs indicating that entering the country with firearms is prohibited.

Everything was a mistake, given that Tahmooressi crossed into Tijuana, Mexico, to do some shopping and when he returned to his parked vehicle in San Diego he then took a wrong turn, realizing quickly thereafter that he was once again in Mexico with the firearms in his possession, Whitney said.

His truck “was surrounded by a group of 20 soldiers, all of them pointing pistols at him,” Whitney said.

The family is desperate about the soldier’s “uncertain future” and so on Saturday they went to McCain’s offices in Phoenix to ask for his help with the aim of obtaining Tahmooressi’s release, Whitney said.

The Tahmooressi case spurred Congressman Duncan Hunter Jr. to take the lead in a series of efforts with an eye toward getting his countryman released, arguing that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.

Hunter, a war veteran like Tahmooressi, requested that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel suspend any kind of military aid to Mexico until the Marine is released from the jail in Baja California state where he is being held.