Two Police Academy Officials, Federal Police Officer Shot in Mexico

CANCUN, Mexico – Two police academy officials from western Mexico and a Federal Police officer were shot several times in the hotel zone in the Caribbean resort city of Cancun in an apparent fight, state prosecutors said.

The shooting occurred around 3:00 p.m. Saturday in the parking lot of the Teatro de Cancun, the Quintana Roo state Attorney General’s Office said.

A red alert was issued for all security forces, including the army.

Two of the wounded men are officials of the Western Regional Public Safety Academy in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan state, said the Federal Police coordinator in Quintana Roo, Hector Gonzalez Valdepeña.

The police academy’s director, Gerardo Enrique Escarcega Hernandez, 57, deputy director, Aaron Ramirez Vargas, 40, and Federal Police officer Enrique Escarcega Mata, no age given, were wounded in the incident.

Escarcega Hernandez is the father of the Federal Police officer.

“A person who said he was a soldier attacked them with a firearm apparently because the son was urinating in the street. That’s what eyewitnesses stated,” Gonzalez Valdepeña said.

Escarcega Hernandez and Ramirez Vargas are listed in stable condition, while the Federal Police officer, who underwent surgery, is in serious condition, Gonzalez Valdepeña said.

Investigators found six bullet casings at the shooting scene, Quintana Roo Deputy Attorney General Carlos Arturo Alvarez Escalera said.

“We’ve questioned the wounded, they said it was a fight,” the deputy state AG said. “The eyewitnesses said a woman was with the assailant.”

4 men lashed in public in Iran for smoking water pipe

NCRI – Four young men were flogged in public earlier this week in the town of Torqabeh, north-eastern Iran.

The four men each received 74 lashes for smoking a traditional Iranian ghelyoon, or water pipe, in public during the daytime fasting hours in the holy month of Ramadan.

The brutal and degrading sentence was carried out in public Thursday afternoon in a garden, the state-run daily Khorasan wrote on Saturday.

The mullahs’ regime has stepped up the use of degrading punishments such as public floggings during Ramadan. Its main intention is to increase suppression of dissent and spread fear at a time when the regime is negotiating with world powers to curb its nuclear program in return for an end to international sanctions.

Anyone in Iran caught eating, drinking or smoking in public during daytime in Ramadan may receive 74 lashes in addition to a jail term of up to two months, judiciary officials of the regime have threatened. Special patrols are stationed at streets and public parks to deal with those who drink, eat or smoke in public.

At least 500 people have been arrested and the majority sentenced to flogging in Shiraz, southern Iran, for failing to observe a fast during daytime in Ramadan, the regime's deputy prosecutor general in the city has said.

Last year, a Christian man in Iran had his lips burnt with a cigarette for eating during the day in Ramadan. The savage punishment was carried out in public in the city of Kermanshah.

The number of floggings across Iran is much higher than officially announced.

Trump Predicts He’ll Win Hispanic Vote Despite Controversial Remarks

WASHINGTON – Real-estate magnate and TV personality Donald Trump promises he will win the Hispanic vote to become the Republican candidate and then the elected president of the United States, despite his controversial remarks about Mexican immigrants.

Trump made that prediction at a press conference in Los Angeles, where he again defended his opinion about the harm undocumented immigrants are doing to the United States, the daily Los Angeles Times reported.

“When it’s all said and done, I will win the Hispanic vote. I will win the Hispanic vote because I’m going to create jobs. I’m going to take them away from China,” Trump said.

The Republican hopeful has been widely censured for his comments last June 16 when he announced his run for the presidency and at the same time harshly criticized Mexican immigrants and proposed building a “great wall on our southern border.”

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best... They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people!” the magnate said as he launched his campaign.

On Saturday, the billionaire businessman backed his stand by surrounded himself with supporters who said they had lost loved ones in crimes and traffic accidents involving undocumented immigrants.

“People came into the country illegally and killed their children. The illegals come in and the illegals kill their children,” Trump told the press conference.

The magnate added that other countries like Mexico are “sending criminals to us and we’re putting those criminals in jails, often times after they’ve hurt somebody or killed somebody.”

About 150 protesters gathered outside the building where Trump was speaking to blast his remarks, while a smaller group of his sympathizers were also on hand holding up posters that said “Trump tells the truth,” according to the Angeleno daily.

Trump’s statements have lost him several contracts, including those with TV networks Univision, ESPN and NBC, the Macy’s department store chain, Spanish chef Jose Andres and car-race organizer NASCAR.

Republican hopefuls for the U.S. presidency who have distanced themselves from Trump’s comments include Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Rick Perry.

Five Slain by Gang in Northern Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Members of a criminal gang operating in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas killed a grandmother and four members of her family after interrogating them about a rival outfit, authorities said.

The Tamaulipas Coordination Group, a federal-state task force, said the killings took place shortly after 9 p.m. Wednesday at the family’s home in La Soledad, a community on the Reynosa-Matamoros highway.

The dead were identified as Vicenta Garcia Sanchez, 65, son Fidel Martinez Garcia, 39, and grandsons Fidel, Alexis and Pedro Antonio, ages 19, 15 and 10, respectively.

Criminals dragged the family out of their home and questioned them about two suspected members of a rival gang, according to investigators. Unsatisfied with their responses, the assailants fatally shot the Garcias and sacked the house, taking a computer, cellphones and other items.

The attackers also took a car and a pickup truck, but abandoned them a few hundred meters (yards) down the road at a deserted residence, the Tamaulipas Coordination Group said.

State and federal police were joined by military personnel in the search for the killers.

Separately, the Coordination Group said that army troops removed 18 clandestine video cameras installed by a criminal organization in Reynosa, a city just across the border from McAllen, Texas.

State and federal forces dismantled a total of 136 illicit video surveillance devices in Reynosa between May 18 and July 8.

The apparent purpose of the cameras was to allow the criminals to monitor the movements of the security forces.

Tamaulipas has suffered from years of violence associated with a turf battle between the Gulf and Los Zetas drug cartels.

Mexico’s federal government launched in May 2014 a new strategy involving a larger deployment of federal security forces in Tamaulipas and a systematic purge of corrupt officers from state and local law enforcement agencies.

California prison riot - inmate found sawed nearly in two

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Nearly 15 hours after a riot at a Northern California prison, guards found a missing inmate sawed nearly in two, with his abdominal organs and most chest organs removed, his body folded and stuffed into a garbage can in a shower stall a few doors from his cell.

Details of the gruesome May killing at the medium-security California State Prison, Solano, are laid out in an autopsy report obtained by The Associated Press under a public records request.

The grisly discovery raises obvious questions about the prison's security: How could such a gruesome killing happen inside a locked facility with security and surveillance? How could someone obtain weapons sharp enough to dissect a body? And why did it take so long to uncover?

Homicides are distressingly common in California prisons. More than 160 inmates have been killed in the last 15 years, and the state has one of the nation's highest inmate homicide rates. Yet the death of 24-year-old Nicholas Anthony Rodriguez stands out.

Rodriguez's missing organs are "still part of the investigation" at the prison in Vacaville, 40 miles southwest of Sacramento, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton said Friday.

Iran - Man killed over a car full of clothes ?

NCRI - At 7:30 pm of Wednesday, July 8, a 30-year-old man by the name of Mohammad Khezri was killed by direct fire of the suppressive security forces in Lamerd, Fars. He was married and father of an infant.

The security forces opened fire on his vehicle that was carrying a few rolls of clothing on the pretext that he was smuggling goods. Mr. Kherzi was injured and he lost his life due to severity of his wounds after being transferred to hospital.

Six days ago, a savage raid by the security forces on Dehsheikh Village in this area broke out into clashes. In that attack that was conducted on pretext of confiscating smuggled goods, including satellite dishes, over 100 people from Lamerd in addition to 40 hirelings from the Special Unit of the security forces were injured.

Killing deprived people on the pretext of smuggling goods is taking place while Khamenei’s close associates and the revolutionary guards are responsible for astronomical thefts and smuggling and resort to plunder people’s property in absolute immunity and liberty.

These plunders that sections of which usually surface during factional fights inside the regime have caused such blemish to the regime that Khamenei and his atrocious head of the judiciary have urged they not be fanned. Mullah Sadeq Larijani said, “Huge corruption files are under investigation, but talking too much about them changes nothing” (News Network state television – June 22, 2015).

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
July 10, 2015

Cyber Attack on U.S. Govt Affected Data of 21.5 Million People

WASHINGTON - The cyber-attack, exposed in June, on United States government, allegedly by Chinese hackers, was more severe than initial reports, affecting 'sensitive' information of millions of people, the Obama administration said Thursday.

The Office of Personnel Management, victim of the attack, reported Thursday 'hackers' robbed personal data, including social security numbers and other information of 21.5 million people.

Of these, 19.7 million are people who had applied for jobs in administration or the government and other individuals linked to the public sector, on whom the government ran security checks.

The remaining 1.8 million are families of some of the above.

In addition to social security numbers, the hackers also accessed addresses, financial and health histories.

The 21.5 million affected also include several people who were victims of another "separate, but related" cyber-attack, affecting 4.2 million current and former federal government employees.

The sum of all those affected by these attacks amount to around 7 percent of U.S. population, making it one of the most damaging attacks ever recorded against U.S. administration, both in terms of the number affected and sensitivity of stolen data.

Although, there is no "scientific evidence", voices from U.S. media and politics, suspect a Chinese hand.

According to The Washington Post, "China is building massive databases of Americans' personal information," for "recruiting spies or gaining more information on an adversary."