PUTIN THREATENS TURKISH JETS: TRY IT

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59 Missing in China Landslide

BEIJING – Fifty-nine people are missing in a landslide that struck an industrial park in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Xinhua had previously reported 41 people missing in the landslide that buried 33 residential and industrial buildings in the Liuxi industrial park, later revising those figures downward to 27, but then upping the total to 59. Three other people were slightly injured.

At least 900 local residents were evacuated, the news agency said.

The landslide was followed by a gas pipeline explosion that scattered debris over some 100,000 square meters (about 25 acres), Xinhua said.

“I saw a bunch of red earth and mud moving toward the (buildings),” one of the industrial park employees told Xinhua.

Another eyewitness told the local daily Shenzhen Evening News that he saw the van his father was driving buried by the earth and mud and no sign has been found of either the vehicle or his father.

More than 1,500 emergency workers are participating in rescue operations, looking for survivors among the debris, with the help of some 100 fire trucks, 4 drones and 13 search dogs, although they are being hampered by rain, mud and poor night visibility.

Emergency officials said that possible signs of life had been detected in three spots underneath the debris.

Among the buildings buried in the tragedy were two dormitories for workers at the industrial park, the state-run CCTV television network reported.

Ren Jiguang, the assistant director of the Shenzhen public safety office, told CCTV that most of the evacuated people had been transferred to safe areas.

The Beijing Youth Daily newspaper quoted a local resident who said that the landslide was caused by construction activity and that the earth that gave way had been accumulating at the site over the past two years.

Shenzhen is a prosperous industrial city with four border crossing points providing access to neighboring Hong Kong.

Israel Kills Top Hezbollah Member in Syria Airstrike

BEIRUT – The Israeli air force killed Samir Qantar, an important member of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, considered by many Lebanese to be a “symbol of the anti-Israel resistance.”

The death of the 53-year-old Qantar, who was held in Israeli prisons for almost 30 years and in September had been placed on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorists, occurred on Saturday night and was announced Sunday in a communique by Hezbollah, which said that “aircraft of the Zionist enemy at 10:15 p.m. bombarded a residential building in ... Damascus and killed a fighter, the dean of the Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails, as well as several Syrian civilians.”

Qantar’s brother Basel also confirmed his death.

Al Manar television, run by Hezbollah, showed the ruins of the building hit in the Israeli airstrike by four missiles, which completely destroyed it.

A few hours after Qantar’s death became known, three rockets were fired from the southern part of Lebanon near Tyre into northern Israel, according to both countries’ militaries. So far, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which injured nobody.

In response, Israeli army aircraft entered Lebanese airspace and carried out several very low flights and simulated attacks in the area from where the rockets were fired.

Meanwhile, the leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, announced that he will give a speech on Monday in which presumably he will discuss Qantar’s death, and the Syrian Parliament met and condemned Qantar’s killing, calling the attack a “terrorist crime.”

Qantar, a member of Lebanon’s Druze community and sentenced to life in prison in Israel in 1979 for participating in the murder of an Israeli police officer and two civilians, was held for almost 30 years – the longest of any Lebanese citizen in Israeli jails – until he was exchanged in a 2008 prisoner swap between Hezbollah and Israel.

Israeli military affairs experts are interpreting the airstrike as a message to Hezbollah and Tehran – which is allied with Hezbollah and the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad – not to open a new armed front on the Golan Heights.

Forced marriage of under 15-year-old girls on rise in Iran

Forced marriages of girls 15 years old or even younger have become commonplace in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan Province, south-eastern Iran, according to a report published on the website of the Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran ( NCRI ).
Studies show that underage marriages take place in single parent families or families where the parents are illiterate, drug addicts or psychologically disturbed as well as in families that are struggling with a low income.
In Baluchistan, many girls below the age of 15 are forced into marriage, the report said.

Russia’s upper parliament house freezes contacts with Turkish parliament — MP

MOSCOW, December 18. /TASS/. Russia’s Federation Council upper parliament house has frozen contacts with the Turkish parliament following the incident with Turkey’s downing a Russian warplane in Syria, Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Federation Council’s international committee, said on Friday.

"Our contacts with colleagues in the Turkish parliament, which have been very active until now, has been frozen," he told journalists.

He said the upper house had taken this decision and "sees no point in unfreezing such contacts as long as the Turkish lawmakers are unthinkingly and dogmatically upholding the position taken by the Turkish president." "There is no sense in dialogue in such case," he saud.

Kosachev confirmed that Russian lawmakers had "no contacts" with their Turkish counterparts.

Moreover, Kosachev said he did not even knew his new counterpart, who had taken charge of the Turkish parliament’s international committee after the parliamentary elections in Turkey. "I knew the previous chairman, but I refused to speak with him when he made attempts to contact me," he said.

Earlier, the Russian State Duma lower parliament house said it was suspending contacts with the Turkish parliament. "In the foreseeable future, top officials of the State Duma see no possibility for contacts at the higher parliamentary level between the State Duma and Turkey’s parliament," Alexei Pushkov, the chairman of the State Duma international committee, said on December 7.

The Russian Su-24M all-weather bomber was on anti-terrorism mission in Syria on November 24, when it was shot down by a Turkish F-16 fighter jet. Ankara claimed it downed the Russian warplane after it had violated Turkey’s airspace, while the Russian defense ministry says the bomber was in the airspace over Syria at the time of the attack. Both pilots of the downed warplane ejected safely after they were hit by an air-to-air missile, but the commander was killed in a militants’ gunfire from the ground as he was parachuting.

Two Russia’s Mi-8 helicopters were engaged in the pilots’ search and rescue operation, which reportedly lasted for some 12 hours. One of the helicopters dispatched for the rescue mission came under fire and was subsequently forced to an emergency landing after sustaining damages. One Russian contract serviceman, a marine, was killed during the emergency landing. The rest of the servicemen on board of the helicopter were safely evacuated. The downed Mi-8 helicopter was later destroyed by mortar fire from the territory under control of the militants.