BUENOS AIRES ( 2 tons of cocaine headed for Mexico seized )

BUENOS AIRES – The Argentine government seized 2,000 kilos (4,405 lbs.) of liquid cocaine bound for Mexico, and arrested eight suspected members of a “narcocriminal gang,” officials said Friday.

Authorities valued the drug consignment at $40 million.

Of the eight under arrest, three had been members of the Argentine Federal Police – one superintendent and two sergeants – Security Secretary Sergio Berni told a press conference.

The investigation leading up to the police operation began in 2012, but the raid was not ordered until two weeks ago when there was “complete certainty that those transformers (where the cocaine was hidden) were ready for shipment,” Berni said.

Also confiscated in the crackdown on drug trafficking were arms, money and “electronic items,” the secretary said

Colombia ( At Least 16 Burn to Death in Colombia Bus Crash )

BOGOTA – At least 16 people, most of them children, burned to death and another 14 were injured when a bus caught fire in the northern Colombian town of Fundacion, authorities said.

The police commander for Magdalena province, where the accident occurred, Col. Adan Leon, gave Noticias Caracol the preliminary casualty count while investigators were still examining the scene.

“We are talking of 16 fatalities. We have not finished the inspection,” said Leon, who added that the 14 injured people had been transported to nearby hospitals.

Leon said that the incident occurred when a group of more than 30 children who had left worship service at the local Pentacostal Church boarded the bus to return to their homes and the vehicle “caught fire and resulted in the loss of a number of lives.”

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who on Sunday was focusing on the logistics of wrapping up his re-election campaign on May 25 in Bogota neighborhoods, said on his Twitter account that he deplored the incident.

“We deeply regret accident in Fundacion, Magdalena, where according to latest information at least 15 people died, including children,” the president said.

The death toll could rise, given that Fundacion Mayor Luz Stella Duran told Caracol Radio that 26 people had died.

Meanwhile, National Police commander Gen. Rodolfo Palomino told reporters that the initial hypothesis investigators are considering is that “apparently, a mechanical failure caused the fire inside the bus.”

Female genital mutilation ( see video )

ICE Agents ( Released 200 murders - 400 rapists and 300 kidnappers ) into the United States

Nearly 200 murderers, over 400 rapists, and 300 kidnappers in the U.S. illegally were released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement while awaiting deportation proceedings, according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies.

May 12, 2014 11:48 AM

                

A total of 36,007 criminal illegal immigrants that were being processed for deportation were freed in 2013. Together, they committed nearly 88,000 crimes, according to the report, published Monday.

“I was astonished at not only the huge number of convicted criminals who were freed from ICE custody last year – an average of almost 100 a day — but also at the large number of very serious crimes they had committed,” said Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, in a statement.

ICE gathered the statistics — which include a breakdown by crime — in response to congressional inquiry following another report released earlier this year by the Center of Immigration Studies.

That report, which was based on internal Department of Homeland Security documents, showed that ICE encountered over 193,000 illegal immigrant convicts. Charging documents were issued for 125,000, and nearly 68,000 were released.

That review also found that 870,000 illegal immigrants had been removed from ICE dockets despite being in defiance of the law. The number of illegal aliens targeted for deportation fell 28 percent between 2012 and 2013, according to the documents.

The 36,007 illegal immigrants reported Monday were freed by ICE during the final disposition of their cases. The 68,000 from the previous report were criminals who encountered ICE agents — often in jails — but were released without undergoing deportation proceedings.

The 36,007 were released by bond, parole, unsupervised release, or on their own recognizance.

Besides violent criminals, ICE released nearly 16,000 illegal immigrants convicted of driving under the influence. The report also shows that ICE released nearly 2,700 illegal immigrants convicted of assault, 1,300 convicted for domestic violence, and nearly 1,300 convicted for battery.

“These figures call into question President Obama’s request to Congress for permission to reduce immigration detention capacity by 10 percent in favor of permission to make wider use of experimental alternatives to detention,” reads the report.

In June 2011, the administration began applying “prosecutorial discretion” to many deportation cases. This has led to a 40 percent decrease in the number of deportations.

“Congress should resist further action on immigration reform until the public can be assured that enforcement is more robust and that ICE can better deal with its criminal alien caseload without setting them free in our communities,” said Vaughan in a statement.

Iranian women ( The photo's that sparked a movement )

 

 

Meet the young Iranian exile whose stealth Facebook page—it allows women to post pictures of themselves without their hijabs—has outraged the authorities in Tehran.

The photo that sparked a movement is unassuming: Masih Alinejad sits behind the wheel of her car, sunglasses on, a scarf tied around her neck, smiling broadly. Being in public without a head covering—or hijab—could have landed Alinejad in jail in her homeland of Iran. In publicizing that unmasked moment, what Alinejad calls a “guilty pleasure, she has sparked an online revolution for thousands of Iranian women sick of the the government demanding they cover up.

On May 1, Alinejad posted her scarf-less picture on Facebook, hashtagging it #mystealthyfreedom. “Hijab is being forced on women not only by the Morality Police,” she wrote in the caption of Iran’s religious patrols, “but also out of consideration for family, through wanting to keep a job and because of fear of judgment from others.”

Ohio ( Teacher grabs kindergartner by face ) video

Saudi Arabia ( Five more deaths from the MERS corona virus were announced on Saturday )

Five more deaths from the MERS coronavirus were announced on Saturday by the Health Ministry bringing the death toll to 168 since September 2012.
The ministry said nine more confirmed cases of MERS have been reported in last 24 hours, bringing the total number of infected cases to 629 since the outbreak of the chronic disease.
The latest fatalities are three patients from a government hospital in Jeddah, one from Riyadh and one from Madinah.
The three victims in Jeddah are a woman, aged 80, and two men, aged 55 and 67.
The two other casualties are a 71-year-old man in Riyadh and a 77-year-old man in Madinah.
The ministry said that one patient recovered and has been discharged.
Meanwhile, scientists leading the fight against the deadly virus say the next critical front will be understanding how the virus behaves in people with milder infections, who may be spreading the illness without being aware they have it.
Establishing that may be critical to stopping the spread of MERS. It kills about 30 percent of those who are infected.
It is becoming increasingly clear that people can be infected with MERS without developing severe respiratory disease, said Dr. David Swerdlow, who heads the MERS response team at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“You don’t have to be in the intensive care unit with pneumonia to have a case of MERS,” Swerdlow said. “We assume they are less infectious (to others), but we don’t know.”