Tucson AZ ( Homicide - Trucker's body found in Kansas freezer )

 

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) - Police say a frozen body discovered last week in Kansas City, Kan., was a truck driver from Tucson.
He was reported missing in October.

The body of 53-year-old Lawrence Peter Muirhead was found Sunday inside a freezer in a detached garage behind a home in Kansas City, Kan.

Police said Thursday his death is considered a homicide.

Muirhead's family reported him missing Oct. 1 when he didn't return home to Tucson after a trip to Pennsylvania. Relatives said their last contact with him was Sept. 28.

The truck he was driving was found abandoned Oct. 4 in Merriam.

Kansas City, Kan., police haven't said how Muirhead died.

Mexico ( Journalist " Found dead " Murdered )

MEXICO CITY – Journalists in the Mexican Gulf state of Veracruz on Wednesday demanded that officials conduct a full investigation of the murder of newspaper reporter Gregorio Jimenez de la Cruz after authorities said his killing was not linked to his work.

Veracruz Gov. Javier Duarte should carry out “a serious investigation and not rule out his journalistic work” as a motive for the murder, journalist Gregorio Antonio Hernandez, a friend of Jimenez de la Cruz, told MVS radio.

Jimenez de la Cruz, a police reporter for the Notisur and Liberal del Sur newspapers, was abducted outside his residence in Villa Allende last Wednesday.

The reporter’s body was found on Tuesday along with those of two other men in clandestine graves in the city of Las Choapas, Veracruz Attorney General Amadeo Flores said.

Authorities did not consider the reporting Jimenez de la Cruz had been doing on the wave of kidnappings and murders in Villa de Allende over the past three months in the investigation, Hernandez said.

Reporters in the southern region of Veracruz state, who have to use pseudonyms or sign stories with the publication’s name to avoid being murdered, feel “indignant” and “powerless” due to the violence, Hernandez said.

“We are going to continue this fight” until officials fulfill their obligation to conduct an investigation that leads to those behind Jimenez de la Cruz’s murder and guarantee the safety of journalists, Hernandez said.

Nearly a dozen journalists have been murdered in Veracruz since Duarte, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, took office in 2010.

Jimenez de la Cruz’s body was “fully identified” by investigators, the attorney general said in a press conference on Tuesday, adding that the motive for the killing was “personal revenge.”

One of the other bodies found in Las Choapas has been identified as that of union leader Ernesto Ruiz Guillen, while the other body appears to be that of an unidentified taxi driver.

The two men were kidnapped several weeks ago and Jimenez de la Cruz reported on their abductions for Notisur.

The three bodies were found as a result of the arrest Monday of Jose Luis Marquez Hernandez at the bus terminal in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, as he prepared to leave the state, officials said.

Marquez admitted to “having participated in the incidents that led to the disappearance and subsequent murder of Gregorio Jimenez,” the attorney general said.

The suspect told investigators that a bar owner, identified as Teresa de Jesus Hernandez Cruz, hired “a group of hitmen” to abduct Jimenez de la Cruz from his residence and murder him due to “personal differences,” Flores said.

Revenge is still “the consolidated motive” for the killing, Veracruz government spokeswoman Gina Dominguez told Radio Formula on Wednesday.

The investigation is ongoing and authorities are looking for four other suspects linked to the kidnap-murder, Dominguez said.

Marquez’s information was confirmed by the discovery of the three bodies in two clandestine graves at a safe house in Las Choapas, officials said.

The suspect provided information that led to the arrests of four other people, including the bar owner.

Teresa de Jesus Hernandez allegedly paid the hitmen 20,000 pesos (about $1,500) to murder the journalist.

It is “unacceptable to rule out the journalistic work of Gregorio Jimenez as a possible motive for his murder,” the Articulo 19 press rights group said, adding that Veracruz authorities should “exhaust all the possible lines of investigation” and guarantee the safety of the victim’s family and the media outlets at which he worked.

Ten journalists have been murdered, at least three have gone missing and about a dozen others have left Veracruz since 2011 due to the drug-related violence in the state.

A total of 87 journalists have been murdered since 2000 in Mexico, making it the most dangerous country in Latin America for members of the media, the National Human Rights Commission, or CNDH, said.

Iran News ( U.S. threats are like ‘roars of an old lion’ )

Political Desk On Line: 11 February 2014 19:10 In Print: Wednesday 12 February 2014

 

QOM, Iran - Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani says the United States’ threats of military action against Iran are “like the roars of an old lion that does not dare to attack.”   Larijani made the remarks on Tuesday as he delivered a speech in the shrine city of Qom marking the 35th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.   Larijani represents the city of Qom in the parliament.   Larijani also called on officials not to turn the climate of criticism into “accusations”.   Grand ayatollahs in Qom joined people in rallies marking the anniversary of the revolution.   Sadeq Larijani, the brother of Ali Larijani who is Judiciary chief, also said on Tuesday that the Iranian people will not retreat in the face of threats and sanctions

IRAQ ( 25 Alleged Al Qaeda Die in Iraq when Truck Bomb Detonates Prematurely )

BAGHDAD – At least 25 alleged members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network died when a truck bomb they were loading with explosives in a village north of Baghdad blew up prematurely, a police official told Efe on Monday.

The official said the presumed terrorists were intending to attack “an important government installation” in Salaheddin province with the truck bomb but it blew up while they were loading the explosives on Sunday night in a village northeast of Samarra.

Alerted by village residents, Iraqi security forces were dispatched to the site of the blast, where they collected the bodies and took them to a forensic center for identification.

In addition to the fatalities, an undetermined number of extremists were wounded in the explosion, but they fled before security forces arrived on the scene, the police source said.

The intended target of the terrorists is not specifically known, but Salaheddin province is the birthplace of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and a mainly Sunni region.

Meanwhile, the president of the Iraqi Parliament and a prominent representative of the country’s Sunni minority, Osama al Nuyaifi, and his brother, Nineveh provincial Gov. Azil al Nuyaifi, were unhurt Monday in an assassination attempt in the Al Gafran zone south of Mosul, the provincial capital.

Iraqi police told Efe that a bomb exploded as the men’s convoy was passing – en route to Erbil, the capital of the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

One of the wheels on the parliamentary leader’s vehicle was destroyed in the blast, but he was unhurt and the convoy continued on to Erbil after those wounded in the attack were taken to a nearby hospital.

Osama al Nuyaifi in recent months has been very critical of the management of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, a Shiite, accusing him of using the army to suppress the growing protests by Sunnis.

Iraq is experiencing a resurgence of sectarian violence and terrorist attacks. In 2013, 8,868 people – 7,818 of them civilians – died in violent incidents and attacks, according to United Nations figures.

KABUL ( Two civilian contractors working for the NATO force in Afghanistan were killed )

KABUL: Two civilian contractors working for the NATO force in Afghanistan were killed in a bomb attack in Kabul on Monday, a statement from the coalition said.
The car bomb in the east of the capital targeted a convoy of NATO troops, according to witnesses.
The two American contractors were in the war-ravaged nation for the international security force (ISAF), the NATO-led force and a US official said.
The explosion in eastern Kabul was the latest incident to rattle the city ahead of April’s presidential election due to choose the country’s first new leader since 2001.
“Two International Security Assistance Force contracted civilians died as the result of a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack in eastern Afghanistan today,” ISAF said in a statement.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the slain contractors were American.
Afghanistan’s future remains uncertain as the Taleban continue their insurgent campaign and Washington and President Hamid Karzai are deadlocked over a bilateral security deal to let some US forces stay beyond the end of 2014.


NATO forces have already begun to withdraw from Afghanistan, but the US and other nations have been seeking to keep some troops in Afghanistan after 2014 to help the country’s army fend off the Taleban.
On Saturday, the United Nations said that civilian deaths increased in 2013 as fighting intensified between government forces and insurgents.
Militants have stepped up attacks in the final year of the international coalition’s combat mission in Afghanistan, seeking to shake confidence in the Kabul government’s ability to keep order.
A witness said the blast was a suicide attack on a convoy of foreign military vehicles.
Police and ambulances rushed to the scene near the Pul-i-Charkhi prison. Two civilian vehicles lay overturned and nearby shop windows were shattered from the force of the explosion.
A local shopkeeper named Jameel, who uses only one name, said he saw two NATO vehicles leaving the prison and a car slamming into the second one. He said he saw at least two wounded foreigners but he could not tell the extent of their injuries before they were evacuated.
Several American military personnel arrived at the scene, but the NATO-led coalition gave few details of what happened. “We are aware of reports of an explosion in eastern Afghanistan,” the coalition said in a statement.

India ( Tiger " Kills 10th victim " hunters unable to kill him )

LUCKNOW, India: Forest officials say a tiger has killed its 10th human victim in a month while evading hunters on its trail in northern India.
Deputy Director Saket Badola of the Jim Corbet National Park says the female tiger was outside its normal territory and prowling near villages on the border between the northern Indian states of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.
Badola says the big cat mauled a 50-year-old man as he was collecting firewood Sunday night near the village of Kalgarh. The animal ate parts of the man’s leg and abdomen before being scared away by villagers waving shovels and metal rods.
Meanwhile, three hunters hired to kill the animal were having trouble tracking its pug marks in dense forests.

Mexico ( Cartel flaunting " The killing of a Hawk " ) Bird of prey