SAN JUAN ( 1.5 tons of cocaine seized off 40 foot boat )

SAN JUAN – A Dominican citizen was arrested on Thursday after 1,400 kilos (3,083 lbs.) of cocaine he was transporting in a 40-foot boat was seized from him, the Puerto Rico Police Department said.

Leonardo Perez Meson was arrested after his boat ran aground on the seashore in the southern town of Patillas, the PRPD said in a statement.

An anonymous telephone call alerted the PRPD, which also seized a vehicle that was found at the site, although several other people who were with Perez Meson managed to escape.

PRPD and FBI agents are continuing the investigation at the site of the arrest.

The main cause of criminality in Puerto Rico is the violent jockeying among criminals for control of drug sales points on the streets of the island.

Puerto Rico is used by drug trafficking networks as a conduit for introducing illegal drugs into the continental United States.

Kamil ( Residents in Kamil fear swine flu outbreak )

Residents in Kamil, a governorate northeast of Makkah, are demanding government intervention amid fears that the swine flu has spread across their neighborhood following the death a 27-year-old Saudi woman in the area two days ago.

The victim had been diagnosed with swine flu at Hera General Hospital, a leading hospital in Makkah, after being diagnosed with pneumonia and respiratory failure at a local hospital.
Many residents have said that several patients who had died at the same hospital had been suffering from similar symptoms as the latest victim.
Mohammad Al-Othaini, the woman’s father, said his daughter had experienced fever, acute coughing fits and diarrhea when she was first admitted.
“My daughter remained hospitalized for four days, but we had transferred her to a private hospital in Usfan when her condition worsened,” he said. “She was given painkillers after undergoing testing.”
“Her condition took a turn for the worse, so we took her to Al-Kamil Hospital and then to a hospital in Makkah,” he said. “We had to wait for two hours outside the hospital for the ambulance driver to transport us to Hera General Hospital, where she was diagnosed with swine flu and died a few days later."
“The Ministry of Health has still not sent a medical team and infection specialists to the governorate to check for other cases,” said Al-Othaini. “Medical personnel from Makkah’s Health Affairs must come to the area before the disease spreads because our local hospital is not equipped to diagnose the disease.”
“My daughter was the first patient to be diagnosed with this type of flu at Hera Hospital,” he said.
The Al-Eqtesadiah newspaper spoke with local residents, who have called on the Makkah governorate to save them from negligence. They have also demanded an investigation into "a series of misdiagnoses" at local hospitals.
A local official, however, has denied the existence of other cases and said that this is a one-off case.
Al-Kamil Hospital is a general hospital that contains a comprehensive array of medical specialties and lab equipment, he said. Certain cases, however, are referred to Makkah when infectious diseases are suspected.
“This is the third such case to reach our hospital,” said Walid Hussein, director of the Hera General Hospital. “One patient was treated and discharged, while the other patient is still in hospital.”

Kiss ( Paul Stanley talks about the " rock n roll " hall of fame )

BAGHDAD ( Gunmen kidnapped and killed 6 men )

BAGHDAD: Gunmen near Iraq’s capital kidnapped and later shot to death six men, the deadliest of a series of attacks Sunday that killed at least 15 people across the country, authorities said.
The gunmen broke into the homes at dawn Sunday in the town of Latifiyah, a mainly Sunni town 30 km south of Baghdad, a police officer said. 
Authorities later found the bodies, all with gunshot wounds to the head, in remote, rural farmland near the capital, the officer said.
No one immediately claimed the slayings and the motive behind the killing was unclear. 
Shiite militiamen could be seeking revenge for the ongoing Sunni insurgent attacks against Shiite neighborhoods. 
Militants with Al-Qaeda’s local branch targets Sunnis in attacks as well or it also could be a personal vendetta.
Meanwhile Sunday, a suicide bomber rammed a fuel tanker into a police headquarters in the northern city of Tikrit, killing three police officers and wounding 13, another police officer said. Tikrit is 130 km north of Baghdad.

Syria ( 13 rebels died when their bomb went off to soon )

DAMASCUS: At least 13 rebels died in a blast in the city of Homs in central Syria on Sunday as they primed a car bomb for an attack, an NGO said.
In the capital, meanwhile, two people were killed when mortar fire struck the Damascus Opera House.


The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 13 rebels were killed in the besieged Old City of Homs when a car bomb exploded.
“The death toll is likely to rise because there are dozens of people missing and body parts in the area of the blast,” the Britain-based group said.
In the capital, SANA said two people were killed in mortar fire by rebel fighters. The attack damaged the Opera House.
Mortar fire also wounded three people in the Abbasids neighborhood of northeast Damascus, SANA said.
Meanwhile, a man was killed and 10 other Syrian refugees were arrested when a riot broke out in a desert camp of northern Jordan, a security chief said Sunday.
“Unknown assailants shot and killed a 25-year-old Syrian man during the riots on Saturday” at Zaatari refugee camp, Brig. Gen. Waddah Hmud said.
“Police did not use weapons against the refugee,” said Hmud, who heads a department in charge of Syrian refugee affairs, told reporters at the sprawling camp.
Another security official named the man as Khalid Nemri.
Witnesses in the camp, which is home to more than 100,000 refugees, told AFP on Saturday that a woman was killed in a clash with Jordanian police.
“Police arrested 10 Syrian rioters for their role in the riots,” Hmud said, adding that 29 policemen were injured in the violence.
Jordanian officials said the riot broke out after the detention of a group of refugees who had left the camp “illegally.” Three refugees were injured. “Around 5,000 Syrians took part in the riots. Anti-riot police had to fire tear gas to disperse them,” Hmud said.
Since opening two years ago, Zaatari which lies near the border with Syria has been the scene of several protests, mainly over poor living conditions. Jordan is home to more than 500,000 Syrian refugees.

Bolivar state ( Students forced to eat "rotten food " during protest )

"They were about to throw me out of the armored car"

Students arrested in Bolívar state (south) declared in court about ill-treatment suffered at the hands of the National Guard

The National Guard has been singled out as major human rights abuser (Handout photo)

JUAN FRANCISCO ALONSO |  EL UNIVERSAL

Saturday April 05, 2014  12:00 AM

The news that a group of young students arrested on March 17 by the National Guard in Puerto Ordaz (Bolívar state) was allegedly force-fed foul-smelling substances as they were held inside armored riot control vehicles, has caused a huge stir in the public opinion and set the alarm bells ringing in the judiciary.

This is suggested in extracts from the case records drawn up by the preliminary proceedings court during the hearing for arraignment of the six students, one of them an underage girl. They were all charged with fomenting unrest. El Universal had access to those records.

During the hearing, prosecutors Jairo Chacón and Eurenis López requested the judge, Eduardo Fernández, to order endoscopy procedures be performed on the detainees to assess the allegations.

At the face-to-face interview in the presence of the judge, each was asked whether they were force-fed any "excrementitious substance" by their incarcerators. 

Four of them denied it, but a young man identified as Joaquín Pérez Valdez, a student at Puerto Ordaz-based Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), said: "They fed me rotten food; it was foul-smelling." The underage girl (whose name was omitted) declared that an officer holding a can "containing a brownish substance" said to her, ‘Since you are so fancy, try some sardine.' "He tried to force it down my mouth, but it came down my nose (...). I tried to spit out as much of it as I could (...). It smelled like sardine at first, but after I spitted it out it smelled like rotten garbage", she stated.

D.C News missing money ( The State Department misplaced and lost some $6 billion ) haha

The State Department misplaced and lost some $6 billion due to the improper filing of contracts during the past six years, mainly during the tenure of former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, according to a newly released Inspector General report.

The $6 billion in unaccounted funds poses a “significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions,” according to the report.

The alert, originally sent on March 20 and just released this week, warns that the missing contracting funds “could expose the department to substantial financial losses.”

The report centered on State Department contracts worth “more than $6 billion in which contract files were incomplete or could not be located at all,” according to the alert.

“The failure to maintain contract files adequately creates significant financial risk and demonstrates a lack of internal control over the Department’s contract actions,” the alert states.

The situation “creates conditions conducive to fraud, as corrupt individuals may attempt to conceal evidence of illicit behavior by omitting key documents from the contract file,” the report concluded.

The State Department’s inability to properly file its paperwork is causing most of the losses, according to the report.

The IG “found repeated examples of poor contract file administration” over the years, the report said.

Contracts related to the U.S. war in Iraq, for instance, could not be produced in 33 out of 115 instances, according to the report.

“A recent OIG audit of the closeout process for contracts supporting the U.S. Mission in Iraq revealed that contracting officials were unable to provide 33 of 115 contract files requested in accordance with the audit sampling plan,” the report states.

The value of the 33 “missing files” totaled $2.1 billion, according to the report.

Additionally, 48 of the 82 contract files that were produced “did not contain all of the documentation required by” internal regulations, according to the report.

The 48 “incomplete files” were worth another $2.1 billion, according to the report.

A further audit of the department’s Bureau of African Affairs found that administrators “were unable to provide complete contract administration files for any of the eight contracts that were reviewed.”

These contracts were worth $34.8 million.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/4/state-dept-misplaced-6b-under-hillary-clinton-ig-r/#ixzz2y8Cmd3ya
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