Head of Chilean Teachers Union Assaulted During March

SANTIAGO – The president of Chile’s largest teachers union was attacked on Friday by dissident members during a march to oppose an education bill now before Congress.

Teachers went on strike more than a month ago in rejection of the proposed schools overhaul and Friday’s protest brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets of Santiago.

Members unhappy with what they see as leader Jaime Gajardo’s recent softening of the union’s stance accosted and struck him at the start of the procession.

When the assailants threatened Gajardo with heavy objects, the union chief was whisked away to a nearby office of the Chilean Communist Party.

The union initially demanded that President Michelle Bachelet’s center-left government withdraw the education bill in favor of a new proposal incorporating the teachers’ demands.

In recent days, however, Gajardo has begun to talk about a “redesign” of the existing bill, indicating that he would be open to joining a dialogue with administration representatives and lawmakers, set to begin next Monday.

The union executive committee was set to meet later Friday to decide on the official position toward the prospective tripartite talks.

“They attacked him, it’s not acceptable. We can have a thousand disagreements, but that’s not appropriate,” union vice president Ligia Gallegos said after the aggression against Gajardo. “He continues to be the president of the Teachers Association.”

Besides the march in Santiago, teachers and their supporters mounted large demonstrations on Friday in the cities of Antofagasta, Concepcion, Chillan, Temuco and Osorno.

The union’s main objection to the education bill centers on a proposal to test teachers on their knowledge of specific academic subjects, a provision critics say will become a tool to stigmatize teachers.

Union members are also unhappy about the expected involvement of for-profit firms in the evaluation process.

30 Infected Lab Monkeys Escape from Facility in Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN – About 30 lab monkeys infected with different viruses and used for scientific research escaped over the weekend from a facility in Puerto Rico when someone broke the lock on their cage, police said.

One or more unidentified individuals broke the lock on one of the cages at the Caribbean Primate Research Center, or CPRC, at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus outside San Juan, police said in a statement.

The cage’s padlock was removed and the chain cut, allowing about 30 Rhesus monkeys to escape from the CPRC.

The Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, or DRNA, was notified of the incident so it can assist in recovering the animals, police said, adding that investigators were trying to determine who vandalized the facility.

The animals remained on the CPRC’s grounds and some have already been captured, police said.

Ten-month-old baby rescued from sea off Turkey ( must see video )

Municipal police reported finding three people burned and tied to a tree in the city of Tuxpan, Jalisco.

 

According to the official, the discovery Thursday afternoon when the soldiers was circulated through a gap which is reached by the free road to Colima, after the delegation known as El Platanar. 

The police confirmed that they are three charred bodies, two adults and a child. All were tied to an avocado tree. So far, the Attorney General has not identified the victims nor has evidence of what happened. 

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Iran: At least 900 arrested or flogged for not fasting in Ramadan

The Iranian regime's repressive forces have arrested and flogged at least 900 in the cities of Shiraz, Tabriz, Hamadan and Ilam alone, according to the reports published in state-run media in Iran.

Deputy Prosecutor in the city of Shiraz, Ali Keshavarz, confirmed that 500 have been arrested in Shiraz for not fasting. Of these 500, verdicts were issued for 480 cases within 24 hours. Most sentences were lashing and they were carried out by the henchmen from “Implementation of Verdicts Unit”. Many of the sentences, particularly against the youth, were carried out in public. Moreover, close to 3000 received “verbal or written warnings” and were subjected to street interrogations or persecution by the oppressive Basij forces.

According to this official, in Shiraz alone, “20 government and non-government organs” and 248 patrol teams carry out this oppressive scheme under the pretext of “fighting non-observance of fasting”.

Also, according to the commander of the security forces of Hamadan Rassoul Moradi, 100 were arrested by the Basij Force for not fasting. His deputy stated that 700 groups from the Basij or suppressive forces of the regime “have been formed in Hamadan to promote virtue and prevent vice to fight those who do not observe fasting in public”.

On June 22, ninety-two boys and girls were arrested in Shahriar International Hotel of Tabriz on similar charges. Many of the arrestees were travelers that based on Islamic regulations were not in a condition to fast.
In the first week of Ramadan in Ilam alone, security forces arrested 200 and within a day barbaric decrees to flog them were issued.

Qazvin’s Prosecutor Esmail Sadeqi Niaraki stated on June 23: “Those who do not observe fasting not only receive their sentences on the day of their arrest, but their sentences are carried out as well. May these measures please… the supreme leader.”

The unparalleled ratcheting up of suppression in the society on the pretext of not fasting shows the fear of the religious fascism ruling Iran of uprisings by a people that the great majority of them are unable to support the most rudimentary needs of their livelihood and that of their families particularly as various internal and external crises, especially the nuclear talks impasse, increasingly tighten the noose around regime’s neck.

Mullah Sediqi who is close to Khamenei expressed concern in the Friday prayer show of June 26 regarding the outcome of the nuclear talks and said: “The fate of the country is hanging on this. This is a perilous and critical turn in the history.”

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
July 2, 2015

Seven Mexican Cops Charged with Torture

MEXICO CITY – Seven police officers are charged with torturing suspects to elicit incriminating information about 22 civilians killed by Mexican soldiers in a June 2014 incident that has become known as the Tlatlaya massacre, the Attorney General’s Office in the central state of Mexico said.

The AG office said the charges were filed based on a recommendation from Mexico’s independent National Human Rights Commission, or CNDH, which conducted an investigation of the killings and of authorities’ handling of the case.

The conclusions of the CNDH regarding the conduct of the seven officers coincided with the findings of the AG office’s own probe, the office said in a statement.

Four of the accused officers were taken into custody and authorities are waiting for a judge to approve arrest warrants for the other three, according to the statement.

The cops physically and psychologically abused three suspects in pursuit of information that would tie the 22 people killed by troops to a criminal organization based in neighboring Michoacan state, the AG office said.

Mexico’s defense department initially said after the June 30, 2014, incident in the town of Tlatlaya that 22 suspected members of a kidnapping gang died in a gunfight with army troops.

But one of the three survivors of the episode subsequently told Esquire magazine that only one of the civilians died in the confrontation, while the others were summarily executed after surrendering and undergoing interrogation.

The federal Attorney General’s Office said last October that 14 people had died in the firefight and the other eight had been killed after they surrendered.

But in a subsequent document, obtained by La Jornada newspaper via a freedom of information request, federal investigators concluded that 11 of the victims were “practically executed,” while five others died while in “instinctive defensive” postures.

The troops fired 160 gunshots, while the civilians only fired 12, three of which wounded army personnel, according to forensic studies cited in the document.

Eight soldiers who participated in the Tlatlaya operation were detained last September.

Japan surveys new volcanic island