Islam in America Part 2

45 Women Rescued from Traffickers in Dominican Republic

SANTO DOMINGO – Forty-five Venezuelan and Colombian women were rescued from alleged sex traffickers in the northern Dominican city of Licey al Medio, the Attorney General’s Office said Friday.

The women were being sexually exploited at the Night Casa Blanca club, according to an official statement.

Juan Antonio Fernandez, Magdalena Batista, Jairo Castillo Carrera and Venezuelan national Jose Ramirez Jolvert were arrested on suspicion of human trafficking.

The investigation is ongoing, prosecutor Luisa Liranzo said.

Police confiscated multiple unlicensed guns found at the club, including a military-grade weapon.

The rescued women remain under the care of authorities.

5.8-Magnitude Earthquake Shakes Northern Taiwanese Cities

TAIPEI - An earthquake measuring 5.8 magnitude on the Richter scale jolted northern Taiwan on Thursday morning, causing panic and disrupting traffic in Taipei, according to the island's Seismological Observation Center.

The earthquake occurred at 11.17am local time (3.17 GMT) and was centered 15.5 kilometers southeast of the northeastern city of Yilan, originating in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 19.7 kilometers.

The quake was felt strongly in northern Taiwanese cities, where a flurry of jolts and loud noises lasted for about 60 minutes, triggering widespread fear among the population.

One person was injured by falling wall tiles from a tall building in New Taipei City and the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit System has reduced train speeds as a precaution, according to an epa journalist.

Taiwan is located in a tectonic zone and suffers frequent earthquakes, with the most devastating in recent years taking place on Sept. 22, 1999, killing 2,416 people.

On February 6, 2016 an earthquake of 6.4 degrees in Tainan, south of the island, in which 117 people died due to the collapse of buildings was recorded. 

Obama to Keep Secrets about Area 51, but Clinton Promises to Release Info

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama has no plans to divulge information about the secret military base known as Area 51, where spy aircraft were tested during the Cold War and where some believe confidential information about extraterrestrials is being kept, the White House said.

However, Democratic presidential favorite Hillary Clinton has said that, if she wins the election in November and takes office the following January, she will declassify the information on the Nevada Air Force base, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

At his daily press conference, White House spokesman Josh Earnest addressed a question on whether Obama would preempt his possible successor and declassify that information before he leaves office in January.

Earnest said that he was not “aware of any plans that the president has to make public any information about this,” adding that “I have to admit that I don’t have a tab on my briefing book for Area 51 today.”

Earnest noted that Obama has joked in the past that one of the advantages of being president is having access to information about Area 51.

The CIA in 2013 declassified certain documents confirming the existence of the Area 51 military base, created as per executive order by President Dwight Eisenhower in the mid-1950s as a zone in which to test the high-flying U-2 spy plane.

The secrecy surrounding the base for decades sparked an endless number of conspiracy theories, including those that claimed extraterrestrial technology gained from UFOs was being studied there.

In an interview on a New York radio program last month, Clinton said that, if it presents no problems for national security, she would like to declassify the Area 51 information, saying “I want to open the files as much as we can.”

That remark and other recent statements by Clinton that ETs “could have visited” Earth have won her the support of certain UFO enthusiasts, according to the NYT article

Islam in America Part 1

Three Kidnapped Red Cross Workers Released in Congo

KINSHASA – The International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, announced on Saturday that three of its staff members kidnapped last Tuesday in North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC, have been freed.

“We are relieved that their ordeal is over and that they are now back, safe and sound, with their families,” said Alessandra Menegon, the head of the ICRC delegation in the DRC.

The humanitarian organization refused to comment on the perpetrators or motives of the kidnapping and simply condemned the incident.

The three ICRC workers were part of an aid convoy heading to the northeastern town of Kyaghala to distribute supplies to some 8,000 people affect by the ongoing conflict in the African country.

The northeastern DRC has been plagued for decades by ongoing violence between numerous rebel groups and the Congolese army and United Nations forces.

Suspected Killer of Mexican Journalist Arrested

VERACRUZ, Mexico – The killer of journalist Anabel Flores Salazar, who was murdered on Feb. 8, has been arrested, the attorney general of the Mexican Gulf state of Veracruz, Luis Angel Bravo, said Thursday.

Flores Salazar, a police reporter for the El Sol de Orizaba newspaper, “was deprived of her liberty and life for publishing stories that affected the interests of a criminal organization to which the material author of the crime belonged,” Bravo said.

The journalist was kidnapped from her home in a residential area in Mariano Escobedo, a city located in Veracruz’s mountainous central region.

Officials said several days after the killing that Josele Marquez, the regional Zetas drug cartel boss who ordered the killing, had been arrested.

Flores Salazar’s body was found on Feb. 10 on the Cuacnopalan-Oaxaca highway in Puebla state about 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) from the Veracruz border.

The suspect, identified only by the initials A.G.P.V., was ordered held in preventive detention by a judge, the attorney general said.

The man was driving a stolen vehicle when he was arrested by police.

Sixty-nine attacks on journalists occurred in Mexico in the first quarter of 2016, with three members of the media murdered, the Articulo 19 press rights organization said.

Veracruz is one of the most dangerous states in Mexico for members of the press, with 15 journalists murdered in the Gulf state between January 2005 and July 2015.

Four members of the media have also gone missing in the state.