Tag Archives: International

CONFIRMED: The DEA Struck A Deal With Mexico’s Most Notorious Drug Cartel

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"El Vicentillo" being presented to the media in Mexico City on March 19, 2009.

“El Vicentillo” being presented to the media in Mexico City on March 19, 2009.

An investigation by El Universal found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs while Sinaloa provided information on rival cartels.

Sinaloa, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, supplies 80% of the drugs entering the Chicago area and has a presence in cities across the U.S.

There have long been allegations that Guzman, considered to be “the world’s most powerful drug trafficker,” coordinates with American authorities.

But the El Universal investigation is the first to publish court documents that include corroborating testimony from a DEA agent and a Justice Department official.

Read more at Business Insider

Afghan risks US fury over ‘Taliban’ prisoner releases

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_72182267_72182266Afghanistan will release scores of prisoners considered by the US to be a security threat because there is insufficient evidence against them, President Hamid Karzai’s office says.

A statement said there was not enough evidence against 72 out of 88 prisoners previously held by the US.

Correspondents say that the move will further strain relations with the US.

The two countries are at loggerheads over President Karzai’s refusal to sign a security deal with Washington.

The US is strongly opposed to the releases because it says the prisoners have been involved in the wounding or killing of US and Nato troops.

Hundreds of prisoners from Bagram jail have been freed since Kabul took over the running of the prison in March 2013.

The Afghan government says that there is no evidence against 45 out of 88 prisoners, while the evidence against a further 27 detainees is not enough to put them on trial.

Read more at BBC News

Eight fishermen found beheaded in boat in gruesome attack off the Philippines

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EIGHT fishermen including two boys have been shot and beheaded in a gruesome attack at sea off the troubled southern Philippines.

The victims were among a group of fishermen who went missing after being attacked in the Moro Gulf off Mindanao island on December 26, said regional police spokesman Ariel Huesca.

Five headless corpses were first found aboard a boat drifting at sea on Friday by police who had gone in search of the missing fishermen, said Senior Inspector Joel Lozano, police chief of the district where the boat was taken.

“When we further inspected the boat (on Saturday morning), we discovered more headless bodies beneath the floorboard…. In all, it contained eight bodies,” Inspector Lozano told reporters.

The corpses, including those of two boys aged about 12 and 14, were all decomposing, suggesting they were killed a few days earlier, he said.

Read more at News.Com.Au

Fast and Furious gun turns up after Mexican resort shootout

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Washington (CNN) — A dramatic shootout between authorities and suspected cartel gunmen at a Mexican seaside resort this month has ties to a botched U.S. gun operation.

A U.S. official said Tuesday that investigators have traced at least one firearm recovered at a December 18 gunfight in Puerto Peñasco, across from the Arizona border, to Operation Fast and Furious.

That’s the disastrous operation run by agents in the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Agents allowed suspected gun smugglers to buy about 2,000 firearms with the goal of trying to find and prosecute high-level traffickers. They couldn’t track the firearms and most are believed to have ended up with cartels and gangsters in Mexico.

Many have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico and the United States, including at a shooting that killed a U.S. border agent in 2010.

The shootout in Puerto Peñasco, also called Rocky Point by Arizona tourists, two weeks ago left at least five suspected cartel gunmen dead, including possibly a high level Sinaloa cartel chief, according to Mexican authorities.

Read more at CNN

Suicide bomber kills at least 16 at Russian train station

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By Sergei Karpov
VOLGOGRAD, Russia

Interior Ministry members stand guard in front of the train station where a bomber detonated explosives in Volgograd
(Reuters)—A suicide attacker set off a bomb in the entrance hall of a Russian train station on Sunday, investigators said, killing at least 16 people in the second deadly attack within three days as Russia prepares to host the Winter Olympics.

Authorities said the attacker detonated a shrapnel-filled bomb in front of a metal detector just inside the main entrance of the station in Volgograd, a busy hub north of the violence-plagued North Caucasus region on Russia’s southern fringe.

Islamist militants in the North Caucasus have carried out a long string of attacks since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000. They now confront him with his biggest security challenge, threatening to disrupt the Olympics that start in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in 40 days.


(Raw video of the bombing released by AP)

Read more and see more video at Reuters

The Man Who Invented The AK-47 Has Died — Here’s His Greatest Regret

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mikhail-kalashnikov

Russian weapon designer Mikhail Kalashnikov presents his legendary assault rifle to the media while opening the exhibition “Kalashnikov – legend and curse of a weapon” at a weapons museum in Suhl, eastern Germany, in this July 26, 2002, file photo.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, the creator of the famous AK-47 assault rifle, has died at the age of 94, according to Russia Today. He had reportedly been suffering from heart problems and was in intensive care since November.

The Kalashnikov AK-47 is frequently cited as the world’s most popular assault rifle, with its only serious rival being the American M-series rifle. Still, Kalashnikov had mixed feelings about his success.

“I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work — for example a lawnmower,” he said on a visit to Germany in 2002.

Read more at Business Insider

USS Freedom Departs U.S. 7th Fleet on Asia-Pacific Deployment

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SOUTH CHINA SEA (Sept. 7, 2013) - Members of USS Freedom's (LCS 1) visit, board, search and seizure team prepare to board a Royal Brunei Navy ship during a compliant boarding exercise as part of Southeast Asia Cooperation and Training (SEACAT).

SOUTH CHINA SEA (Sept. 7, 2013) – Members of USS Freedom’s (LCS 1) visit, board, search and seizure team prepare to board a Royal Brunei Navy ship during a compliant boarding exercise as part of Southeast Asia Cooperation and Training (SEACAT).

YOKOSUKA, Japan – (U.S. Navy Press Release) The littoral combat ship, USS Freedom (LCS 1), crossed the international date line while transiting the Pacific Ocean, Dec. 10, marking her departure from the U.S. 7th Fleet Area of Responsibility (AOR).

The 7th Fleet AOR covers more than 48 million square miles and spans from west of the international date line to the western coast of India.

Operating primarily in Southeast Asia as part of a maiden overseas deployment, Freedom joined about 100 ships and submarines deployed throughout this vast maritime region and assigned to 7th Fleet on any given day.

Since arriving in the AOR March 20, Freedom worked with many regional navies and other 7th Fleet units during a series of port visits, exercises, and exchanges. These engagements directly supported the Asia-Pacific rebalance and further reinforced cooperation and interoperability among the Navy’s partners and allies.

“We put Freedom to the test over the past several months and learned a great deal about how to operate littoral combat ships forward alongside our regional partners and allies in a challenging operational environment,” said Vice Adm. Robert Thomas, commander, U.S. 7th Fleet.

In the weeks prior to departing 7th Fleet, Freedom conducted separate passing exercises (PASSEX) with the Bangladesh navy ship BNS Somudro Joy (F 28) and the Brunei navy ships KDB Darulaman (PV 08) and KDB Ijhtihad (PV 17), supported humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) efforts in the Philippines, and conducted port calls in Brunei and Guam.

As many senior Navy officials noted recently, the maritime crossroads and vital waterways that connect Southeast Asia to the global economy are exactly where the Navy needs to be present, now and well into the future. Rotational deployments of littoral combat ships will help the Navy sustain presence, expand access to vital waterways and interact with littoral regions in unprecedented ways.

“Freedom’s deployment is just the beginning of littoral combat ship rotations to 7th Fleet,” said Thomas. “Increased numbers of these ships will become a regular fixture in this region as a tangible demonstration of our commitment to the rebalance. Their forward presence over the long term supports our Navy’s enduring commitment to security, stability and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific.”

USS Freedom’s first rotational deployment to Southeast Asia began March 1, when the ship departed San Diego and commenced a Pacific Ocean transit that included port visits in Hawaii, Guam and Manila. Freedom used Singapore as a logistics and maintenance hub between April 18 and Nov. 16, during which she participated in the International Maritime Defence Exhibition, three phases of the bilateral naval exercise Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training with Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, and the multinational exercise Southeast Asia Cooperation and Training. During port visits, Freedom hosted thousands visitors from throughout Southeast Asia.

Freedom remained homeported in San Diego throughout this rotational deployment to Southeast Asia. Crew 101, which has operated the ship since a planned swap with Crew 102 in August, will take the ship home to San Diego by the end of the year.

Fast, agile and mission-focused, littoral combat ships are designed to operate in near-shore environments and employ modular mission packages that can be configured for surface warfare, mine countermeasures, or anti-submarine warfare.

Icelanders Overthrow Government and Rewrite Constitution After Banking Fraud

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Rebecca Savastio, December 2, 2013.

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Can you imagine participating in a protest outside the White House and forcing the entire U.S. government to resign? Can you imagine a group of randomly chosen private citizens rewriting the U.S. constitution to include measures banning corporate fraud? It seems incomprehensible in the U.S., but Icelanders did just that. Icelanders forced their entire government to resign after a banking fraud scandal, overthrowing the ruling party and creating a citizen’s group tasked with writing a new constitution that offered a solution to prevent corporate greed from destroying the country. The constitution of Iceland was scrapped and is being rewritten by private citizens; using a crowd-sourcing technique via social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. These events have been going on since 2008, yet there’s been no word from the U.S. mainstream media about any of them. In fact, all of the events that unfolded were recorded by international journalists, overseas news bureaus, citizen journalists and bloggers. This has created current accusations of an intentional cover up of the story by mainstream U.S. news sources.

An “iReport” on CNN, written by a private citizen in May 2012, has questioned the reasons why this revolution has not been widely covered in the U.S., suggesting that perhaps the mainstream media is controlled by large corporate interests and thus has been unwilling to report on Iceland’s activities. That report is currently making its way around social media. CNN today placed a statement on its website saying: “We’ve noticed this iReport is being shared widely on Facebook and Twitter. Please note that this article was posted in May 2012. CNN has not yet verified the claims and we’re working to track down the original writer.” It is interesting to note that CNN’s European version, CNN Europe, already covered the story of the protests and the government’s resignation, leading many to question why CNN would now need to “look into” the claims.

Besides CNN Europe’s own coverage of the scandal, the events in Iceland were widely covered by international media and are easily verified by a simple search on Google which leads to a variety of reputable international news sources that ran numerous stories on the Icelandic revolution. A whole documentary has been made on the governmental overthrow called Pots, Pans and Other Solutions, and now, the conversation is focused on whether or not the citizens’ actions actually worked to make Iceland a more equitable nation.

Read more at Las Vegas Guardian Express

Accident in East Iceland Kills Nine Reindeer

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reindeerherd_psNine reindeer died and three were seriously injured after a truck ran into them on the Ring Road at the turnoff to Vopnafjörður, East Iceland, last night. The driver escaped unharmed but the vehicle was badly damaged, mbl.is reports.

Of the three animals which were injured, two have since been put down.

More at Iceland Review Online

Putin Signs Abortion Advertisement Ban

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President Vladimir Putin has signed a law banning advertisements for abortion, the Kremlin said, a step activists said would infringe on the reproductive rights of women.

Putin has made stemming a post-Soviet population decline a priority during 14 years in power and struck a conservative tone in his new term, praising what he calls traditional values and holding up the Russian Orthodox Church as a moral guide.

He has drawn fire from the West for a law he signed earlier this year that critics say discriminates against homosexuals.

Read more at The Moscow Times