WORLD OF STORY

Syria Jarablus: Turkish tanks roll into northern Syria

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 16:50:00 +0800

A dozen Turkish tanks have rolled across the Syrian border after heavy shelling of an area held by so-called Islamic State.

Military sources told Turkish media 70 targets in the Jarablus area had been destroyed by artillery and rocket strikes, and 12 by air strikes.

Turkish special forces entered Syria earlier as part of the offensive.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the operation was aimed against both IS and Kurdish fighters.

Turkey shelled Syrian Kurdish forces in the region this week, determined not to let them fill the vacuum if IS leaves, the BBC's Mark Lowen reports from Gaziantep, near the Syrian border.

The concern in Ankara is that the Kurds could create an autonomous area close to the border which might foster Kurdish separatism within Turkey itself, our correspondent says.

In another development, counter-terror police in Turkey's main city, Istanbul, launched dawn raids targeting IS suspects across the city, Turley's Dogan news agency reports.

US Vice-President Joe Biden arrived in Turkey on Wednesday in the highest-ranking visit by a Western official since the failed coup on 15 July.

Tank assault

According to a photographer for the AFP news agency, the tanks were followed by several smaller military vehicles believed to be carrying Turkish-backed Syrian rebels.

Shelling began at about 04:00 local time (01:00 GMT), with 224 rounds were fired at 63 targets in the space of one hour and 45 minutes.

Air strikes by Turkish and US planes began just after 06:00, Turkish media report.

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionSyrian tanks could be seen manoeuvring

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionA coach said to be carrying Syrian rebels was spotted by reporters in Karkamis

The Turkish town of Karkamis - just across the border from Jarablus - was evacuated as a precaution following earlier IS mortar attacks.

Turkey has vowed to "completely cleanse" IS from its border region.

"The Turkish Armed Forces and the International Coalition Air Forces have launched a military operation aimed at clearing the district of Jarablus of the province of Aleppo from the terrorist organisation Daesh [IS]," said a statement from the Turkish prime minister's office.

Turkey blames IS for a bomb attack on a wedding that killed at least 54 people in Gaziantep on Saturday.

Turkey's air strikes are its first inside Syria since the downing of a Russian jet in November. Moscow and Ankara only mended ties in June after punitive Russian sanctions.

This is also Turkey's first known ground incursion into Syria since a brief operation to relocate the tomb of Suleyman Shah, a revered Ottoman figure, in February of last year.

'A buffer against the Kurds'

An unnamed senior US official in Washington told BBC News before the start of the Turkish operation that it was "partly to create a buffer against the possibility of the Kurds moving forward".

"We are working with them on that potential operation: our advisers are communicating with them on the Jarablus plan.

"We'll give close air support if there's an operation."

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionKarakamis - which borders Jarablus - has been evacuated

Fighters from the Syrian Kurd YPG militia led the battle to drive IS out of the strategic crossroads town of Manbij earlier this month.

Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Turkish-Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy since the 1980s, but the YPG is backed by the US as one of the most effective forces battling IS.

On Tuesday the YPG took control of most of the north-eastern Syrian city of Hassakeh.

A truce was reportedly brokered by Russia after recent clashes between the Kurds and Syrian government forces there.

source:http://www.bbc.com/news

The unassuming garage where £2m worth of supercars are parked..

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:34:00 +0800

It is a line-up of supercars that wouldn’t look out of place in front of a Premier League footballer’s mansion.

An impressive lineup of cars outside the facility in Milton Keynes. Image- ©APC

But this range of stylish motors worth more than £2million are not showcased for all to see. They are being kept in a nondescript storage facility in Milton Keynes and are symptomatic of the straitened times we live in. This is because they have been pawned for cash.

"People aren’t even bothering to go to banks anymore as they don’t believe they will be lent any money," said Paul Aitken, chief executive of Borro.com, who added that the rise in high value cars being pawned was in part down to the financial constraints being felt even among the wealthy. As well as cars the company also holds fine art, jewellery and antiques.

Image- ©APC.

"These sort of times give way for alternative means of lending. A lot of our customers are small business owners or self employed, 60% of the time they do this to get some liquidity for an opportunity. The other 40% of the time it is people who are more at the distressed side of things, paying for school fees or a tax bill.

"Often the people who have these types of high performance cars will have another, so use one as security for a loan," he added. "We have seen a big increase in our car lending in the last year. Over the last three years we have lent around £6m against these sort of vehicles and it is only something that it is rising as things become more stretched."

Among the current supply of cars in storage are some of the pricier models on the market, as well as those you wouldn’t find in any old showroom. If the Maserati wasn’t impressive enough, Borro also hold a Porsche Cayenne, a Ferrari F430, an Audi R8 and a Ferrari 360.

The firm is also storing a Bentley Continental GTC and a Rolls-Royce Ghost, the former would set you back just under £137,000 bought new.

Image- ©APC.

But it is not only in order to free up cash that customers pawn their luxury motors.

"There are a variety of reasons why these cars have gone into storage; some people have two vehicles, a winter car and a summer car," Mr Aitken told Yahoo! Cars. "Others have parking restrictions or excessive parking costs.

"We have one customer who has a 30-year-old car which we have held for three years in storage which is appreciating in value. He wants to keep hold of it because it is now a classic car and it is actually cheaper to service the loan than pay for parking near his house in Mayfair.

"In the past week alone we have had two individuals who are borrowing £100,000 against diamond jewellery. When you see that these figures are coming up and that loans of £5,000 to £20,000 are also rising you see that we are becoming an increasingly mainstream lender."

Rodney King found dead in swimming pool

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 04:01:00 +0800

Rodney King, whose videotaped beating by police in 1991 sparked the L.A. riots, was found dead at his California home on Sunday. He was 47.

Police said King's fiancée discovered him at the bottom of the swimming pool at their Rialto, Calif., home, about 55 miles east of Los Angeles.

Police responded to a call at 5:25 a.m., pulled King out of the pool and attempted CPR, but could not revive him.

King's representative Suzanne Wickmanconfirmed to his death to KABC-TV. According to TMZ, King's fiancée, Cynthia Kelley, told friends King spent the bulk of Saturday drinking and "smoked marijuana at some point," before she went to went to bed at 2:00 a.m.

The cause of death is unknown, but police are investigating it as a drowning. Rialto Police Capt. Randy DeAnda told CNN there were no preliminary signs of foul play.

King was beaten by four white LAPD officers following a DUI stop on March 3, 1991. Footage captured by an amateur videographer showed the officers hitting King 56 times with wooden batons.

"I just got lucky that night to have the cameras on me," King said in April, marking the 20th anniversary of the L.A. riots. "When I saw the tape, I was so happy that it was on tape and then looking at it, it was like I was in another body. I felt like I had died in that one, and was just watching it."

The four officers--Theodore Briseno, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Sgt. Stacey Koon--were acquitted of criminal charges, sparking the riots that left 55 people dead. (Koon and Powell were later found guilty of federal civil rights charges and sentenced to 30 months in prison.)

"It felt like Armageddon," King said of the acquittal. "It felt like the end of the world. I was hurt. I was past upset.

"I was raised not to be violent, and not to be rioting and carrying on like a wild man," he added, "but at the same time, there was a side of me saying, 'What else can you do?' I didn't agree with it, but I understood."

During the five-day riots--marked by widespread looting, arson and racially-charged beatings throughout South Central L.A.--King made his famous public plea for peace: "People, I just want to say, can we all get along? Can we get along?"

"Through all that he had gone through with his beating and personal demons, he was never one to not call for reconciliation and for his people to overcome and forgive," the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement on Sunday.

King had long struggled with alcohol abuse, much of it detailed in his 2012 memoir, "The Riot Within." According to KABC, he was arrested or detained by police at least a dozen times on charges ranging from DUI to domestic violence.

In 2011--the 20th anniversary of his beating--King was arrested in California on suspicion of DUI.

According to TMZ, King was scheduled to compete in a celebrity boxing match against Jose Canseco in August.

Source: Yahoo news

Surviving Bee Gee mourns Robin Gibb's loss.

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 21:56:00 +0800

Barry Gibb, center, and Robin Gibb's wife Dwina Gibb, right, who holds an order of service, react at the graveside during the burial of Robin Gibb outside St Mary's Church in Thame, England, Friday, June 8, 2012. Robin Gibb a member of the iconic Bee Gees pop group died May 20, after a long battle with cancer.(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

THAME, England (AP) — Surviving Bee Gee Barry Gibb lamented the loss of his brother, telling mourners on Friday that he would miss Robin Gibb's "magnificent mind and his beautiful heart."

He said Robin's death from cancer last month at age 62 means that he would now be reunited with his late twin brother Maurice, who died in 2003.

"They were both beautiful," Barry Gibb said. "And now they're together. They're actually together."

Many mourners at St. Mary's Church wept as Robin's coffin was brought into the church while the Bee Gees classic "How Deep is Your Love" was played.

Robin's widow Dwina and his elderly mother Barbara were close behind.

Barbara Gibb has outlived three of her four sons. Singer Andy Gibb, who had a successful solo career, died in 1988.

The Bee Gees, known for soaring harmonies and disco tunes, were one of the most popular bands in history. Robin Gibb also enjoyed success as a solo artist and as a songwriter.

Crowds of mourners lined the streets of the southern English town before the service as a glass-sided horse-drawn carriage pulled Robin Gibb's coffin to the church. The cortege was followed by Robin's two Irish wolfhounds, Ollie and Missy, along with friends and family.

Barry Gibb told the congregation that his late brother Robin's humor was always present, even in times of tension between the two.

"We were laughing all the way," Barry Gibb said. "Sometimes crying. God knows how much we argued. Even right up to the end we found conflict with each other, which now means nothing."

Guests filed out of the church to the sound of the Bee Gees' song "I Started A Joke," which includes the line: "Till I finally died, which started the whole world living." Gibb was then buried in the churchyard, with a piper playing "Ellan Vannin," the unofficial anthem of the Isle of Man, where the Bee Gees were born. Mourners tossed red roses into the grave.

A memorial service is scheduled for a later date.

SOURCE: NEWS YAHOO.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PASSPORT IN INDIA.

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Wed, 6 Jun 2012 00:38:00 +0800

Girl 17yrs old........future husband 112!

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Mon, 4 Jun 2012 09:23:00 +0800

Where else??????? Africa!!!!

17-year-old bride .. And the groom only 112

Married Somalis in the 112-year-old from a teenage girl, almost a century his junior, aged 17 years. Was quoted by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC )

Hundreds of people attended the wedding man in the 112-year-old named Ahmed Mohammed Dor, the girl net Abdullah aged 17 years in Somalia .
And the role of 18 children of 5 wives and expressed a desire to have more children from his new wife. The role after the wedding ceremony which was held in the region of central Somalia Galgudud "Today, God helped me to achieve my dream ".
The family of the girl that her daughter happy with her new husband .
He pointed to the role of the girl from his village have waited until you grow up to apply for her hand, saying, "I did not force her, but use my expertise to my love and then we persuaded her to marry ".
The BBC said that in Somalia historians consider this the first marriage of its kind in the Horn of Africa for more than a century .

EMBARRASSING MOMENT FOR TULISA "X FACTOR JUDGE" WHEN HER SEX TOY STARTS VIBRATING IN HER HANDBAG AT AIRPORT CHECK-IN.

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Wed, 7 Mar 2012 11:07:00 +0800

Have you recovered? Tulisa arriving at Heathrow from Miami after a vibrator started buzzing in her bag at check-in

Tulisa has told of her embarrassment when a sex toy started vibrating in her bag at the airport check-in.

The X Factor judge was on her way home to London from Miami when the device went off.

Despite being left red-faced, the 23-year-old decided to tell her 1.6 million Twitter followers about the incident.

I'm back! The X Factor star looked happy and tanned as she arrived at Heathrow in jeans and leopard-print shoes

She said: 'Most cringe moment of my life..checkin in 'Mam..ur suitcase is vibrating..can u open ur case n turn what eva that is off'..just kill me.'

She then revealed there was a Rampant Rabbit inside her suitcase.

'It was so embarrassing when it went off buzzing in my bag,' she told The Sun.

And she insisted: 'I only bought it as a present for a mate, but the joke ended up on me.

Are you ready for me? Tulisa has been working on her debut album in Los Angeles and Miami

But sex toys aren't likely to come pre-package with batteries included.

The star was seen giggling like a schoolgirl in the aisles of a sex shop a month ago.

The shop assistant was seen holding up a sex toy for the cameras in the Hollywood store Hustler, as Tulisa and her PA Gareth Varey.

She revealed she was a fan of the battery-powered toy.

In a series of tweets while she was in Los Amgeles, she invited her single followers to cuddle up with a 'wabbit' on Valentine's Day.

She wrote: 'Happy valentines day uk.. all u lovers, I wish u a romantic day... 2 all my singles, hook up wid ur girls n go home 2 ya wabbit! Yeziirr."

Perhaps newly-single Tulisa was ready to experiment under the sheets, having ended her 18-month romance with N-Dubz bandmate Fazer in January.

How rude! The star was seen giggling like a schoolgirl in the aisles of a sex shop a month ago

The couple are believed to have separated after her persistent quest to pursue fame interfered with future plans to settle down and get married.

Tulisa looking happy and tanned as she arrived at Heathrow Airport on Sunday, wearing jeans and leopard print shoes.

The star has been working on her debut album in Los Angeles and Miami and is expected to join the judging panel again on the next series of X Factor this year.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Is this the most embarrassing wedding moment ever? Video captures bride's skirt falling down as she walks down the aisle.

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Mon, 5 Mar 2012 13:16:00 +0800

It is supposed to be the happiest moment of her life. The bride walks radiantly down the aisle as her guests look proudly on and photographers bustle around to capture her special moment.

But as she walks towards the garlanded arch to the tune of ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ her day suddenly turns more bitter than sweet.

Oops!: The bride trips dramatically, falling forwards - while her photographers capture every moment

Unfortunately for the bride, the cameras keep rolling and her photographers go in for a close up.

Her guests stay motionless - presumably dumbstruck - except for one blonde-haired friend who rushes over to help usher the bride out of the room.

Hoax? For some reason the bride chooses to step out of the skirt altogether as she runs out of the room

TO SEE VIDEO CLICK : MOST EMBARRASSING WEDDING MOMENT.

Secret Army volunteer's widow blames VA for spouse's death.

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Sun, 4 Mar 2012 17:31:00 +0800

Veterans who became Army guinea pigs for secret drug and chemical experiments are suing the VA, the CIA and the Defense Department. In this U.S. government photo, Wray Forrest is seen on the far right in 1973 while participating in the program at Maryland's Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center.

(CNN) -- "I promised Wray I would never give up the fight." It was a wife's final pledge to her dying husband, who was once identified as Medical Volunteer No. 6692 at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland.

In 1973, Army Pvt. Wray Forrest spent two months at Edgewood as a volunteer human test subject in a top secret Cold War research program studying chemical and biological weapons.

His widow, Kathryn Forrest, says those tests were his undoing.

During his time at Edgewood, Wray participated in at least five different tests. In one, Kathryn says he was given high doses of Ritalin. In a deposition he gave before his death, Wray described the effect it had on him.

"It wound up making me want to do things very rapidly and in a rushed manner," he says in the deposition. He says he was "wound up like a golf ball teed off in a tile bathroom. Bouncing off the walls."

Ritalin is a Schedule II drug -- a class of drugs considered dangerous and addictive. Large doses can cause dizziness, jitteriness, cardiac arrhythmia, stroke, high blood pressure, even sudden death. Wray was injected with various substances at Edgewood, according to court documents. And his story is just one of many.

In fact, from 1955 to 1975 more than 7,000 soldiers each spent two months at Edgewood. Overall, they tested at least 250 different chemical and biological agents.

The names and effects of these substances were largely unknown to these soldier volunteers. According to now declassified government documents, some were exposed to incapacitating drugs like BZ; or to sarin, an extremely toxic, potentially deadly substance that disrupts the nervous system; or to VX, a liquid neurotoxin considered one of the most dangerous chemicals created. Other exposures included tear gas, and hallucinogenics like LSD.

The men were sworn to secrecy and told to never discuss Edgewood Arsenal or the experiments that went on there with anyone.

The Army suspended the research program in 1975.

TO READ MORE CLICK LINK: CNN NEWS

HOW ISRAEL MIGHT STRIKE AT IRAN.

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 02:50:00 +0800

An Israeli attack would have to cope with a variety of problems.

For all the myriad challenges facing Israel over the past decade it is the potential threat from a nuclear-armed Iran that has preoccupied the country's military planners.

It is this that in large part has guided the development of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) over recent years.

The IAF has purchased 125 advanced F-15I and F-16I warplanes, equipped with Israeli avionics and additional fuel tanks - tailor-made for long-range strike missions.

In addition, Israel has bought specialised bunker-busting munitions; developed large, long-endurance, unmanned aircraft; and much of its training has focused on long-range missions.

Israel has a track-record of pre-emptive strikes against nuclear targets in the region.

Israel has a track-record of pre-emptive strikes against nuclear targets

In June 1981, Israeli jets bombed the Osirak reactor near the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

More recently, in September 2007, Israeli warplanes attacked a facility in Syria that Israel, the US and many experts believed was a nuclear reactor under construction.

However, a potential strike against Iran would be nothing like the attacks in Iraq and Syria. These were both against single targets, located above ground, and came literally out of the blue.

An Israeli attempt to severely damage Iran's nuclear programme would have to cope with a variety of problems, including range, the multiplicity of targets, and the nature of those targets

Many of these problems are daunting in themselves, but when put together, they only compound the difficulties facing Israeli military planners.How to get there?

For a start it is a very long way from Israel to Iran. As a rough estimate many of the potential targets are some 1,500km (930 miles) to 1,800km (1,120 miles) from Israeli bases. Israeli warplanes have to get to Iran and, equally important, get back.

At least three routes are possible.

There is the northern one where Israeli jets would fly north and then east along the borders between Turkey and Syria, and then Turkey and Iraq
The central, more likely route would take Israeli warplanes over Iraq. With the US military gone, the Iraqi authorities are far less able to monitor and control their air space, effectively opening a door to an Israeli incursion
The third, southern route would take Israeli jets over Saudi air space. Would the Saudis turn a blind eye to such a move given their own concerns about Iran's nuclear programme? Could this route be used by Israeli aircraft on the return leg of their journey? We just do not know

What we do know, given the range, is that Israeli aircraft will have to be topped up with fuel en route.

Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, says that "air-to-air refuelling will be critical".

Israel is believed to have between eight and 10 large tankers based on the Boeing 707 airframe

"Israeli aircraft," he says, "need not just to get in and out of Iranian air space; they need to have enough fuel to provide time over their targets and they need sufficient fuel to cover any contingencies that might arise during the mission."

The initial tanking, Mr Barrie says, might be done over the Mediterranean or even in Israeli airspace. "One option," he notes, "would be to take off with a full bomb load and drop tanks containing additional fuel; to climb to cruising altitude and then at this point to replenish their tanks, before setting course for their targets in Iran."

Israel is believed to have between eight and 10 large tankers based on the commercial Boeing 707 airframe, but experts believe that tanking capacity will prove one of the limiting factors in the scope of any operation.What targets to hit?

The problems of range, the nature of some of the targets, and the availability of tanker aircraft will determine the nature and scope of any Israeli operation.

Natanz - Uranium enrichment plant

Fordo, near Qom - Uranium enrichment plant

Arak (pictured) - Heavy water plant

Isfahan - Uranium conversion plant

Parchin - Military site

Douglas Barrie, of the IISS, says that "Israeli planners will be looking for where they can do most damage with the limited number of platforms at their disposal".

"They'll be asking where the main choke points are in the Iranian programme. Clearly, striking enrichment facilities makes a lot of sense from a military point of view," he adds.

So the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, south of Tehran, and Fordo, near the holy city of Qom, would almost certainly be prominent on the target list.

The heavy-water production plant and heavy-water reactor under construction at Arak, in the west, might also figure, as would the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan.

It is unclear whether Israel would have the capacity to strike a range of other targets associated with Iran's missile programmes and explosives testing.

But this target list raises another set of problems. The enrichment facilities at Natanz are underground and the new plant at Fordo is buried deeply into the side of a mountain.Can Israel destroy buried targets?

For an attack like this, says Douglas Barrie, you need good intelligence information. "You need to know", he says, "about the geography of the target site; its geology; the nature of the earth; and the details of the design and construction of any buried reinforced concrete chambers."

"You can assume," he asserts, "that the Americans and the Israelis have been watching these sites closely over time."

The Eitan, the Israeli Air Force's latest generation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

To reach buried targets you need special kinds of munitions. Deeply-buried facilities are not exclusive to the Middle East. There is a kind of race between the diggers and the weapons designers and it is one where the Americans have considerable experience.

The main weapon in Israel's arsenal is the US-supplied GBU-28. This is a 5,000lb (2,268kg) laser-guided weapon with a special penetrating warhead. For an assessment of its capabilities I turned to Robert Hewson, the editor of IHS Jane's Air-Launched Weapons.

"The GBU-28," he told me, "is the largest penetrating weapon available for a tactical aircraft and, since it was first used by the US in 1991, it has been improved with better warheads and more accurate guidance.

"However, Israel's use of this weapon would be hindered by several key operational factors. Realistically, the F-15I - the only delivery platform - can carry only one bomb, so a sizeable attack force would be required - demanding tanker and other support assets that Israel does not have in large numbers.

"The target would have to be attacked from relatively close range, meaning any attacking force will have to fight its way in and out of heavily-contested airspace."

Furthermore, he says that "very accurate targeting data is required to use a weapon like GBU-28 to best effect".

"The potential for success of a GBU-28 attack is not determined by the 'book' performance of the weapon alone."

Of course, the great unknown question is how capable these weapons would be against buried Iranian enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo.

1. The bombs are carried by Israeli F-15Is - but only one per aircraft, which would mean a large attack force for multiple attempts on numerous targets

2. Bomb is released almost vertically over the target, and guided by lasers

3. The bombs can penetrate up to 6m of concrete or about 30.5m of earth before detonating the 4,400lb warhead

Mr Hewson says that the GBU-28 is "effective against any hardened or deeply buried target - up to a point".

"For a weapon like the GBU-28, velocity and angle of impact determine the penetrating effect, so the ideal drop is made from high altitude at maximum speed and hits the target at a near vertical angle," he explains.

"This is less easy to do against a cave or mountainside, so the weapon will be less effective - but still more effective than pretty much any other available munitions."

Indeed, as Douglas Barrie notes, one weapon might be insufficient.

"You could", he says, "attempt to 'dig your way in' using several weapons on the same impact area to try to get through the soil, rock and concrete. Or you could try to block access to the facility by destroying tunnel entrances.

"In addition," he says, "all of these facilities are power hungry, so you could attempt to destroy power supplies and any buried cabling.

"The aim would be to present the Iranians with a compound problem of blocked entrances, no power and collapsed underground chambers."Does Israel have other military options?

So far we have discussed only the known elements of Israel's capabilities, mainly US-supplied aircraft and munitions. But Israel has a hugely advanced aerospace and electronics industry of its own and this may well have produced systems relevant for an attack against Iran.

Douglas Barrie says that there is much about Israel's capabilities, especially its home-grown technology, that we do not know.

"Israel's long-range Heron or Eitan drone could be used to gather an assessment of the damage done by any strikes, but perhaps could also be put to use helping to spoof air defences," he adds.

"Indeed, this kind of deception or cyber-operation will likely be an integral part of the mission with the aim of blinding radars or generating a false picture of what was going on."What about Iran's air defences?

Iran's air defences are largely Russian-supplied systems familiar to Israeli pilots, though Iran also deploys the US-built Hawk system dating back to the days of the Shah.

Surface-to-air missiles - Hawk system (pictured)

For high altitude targets - SA-5 or S-200

For low level targets - Tor-M1/SA-15 Gauntlet

Long-range systems - S-300

Iranian Air Force - Russian-built Mig-29s, US-built F-14 Tomcats

Some of its most capable defences are Russian SA-5 missiles intended to target high-altitude threats, while it also deploys the mobile Tor-M1/SA-15 Gauntlet system optimised to engage targets at lower level.

Russia has consistently refused to supply Iran with the much more capable S-300 long-range system, though the Iranians claim to have procured some batteries elsewhere.

Iran's surface-to-air missile force may be old but still represents a threat. Look at how much effort Nato and the US put into taking down Libya's similar vintage air defences last year.

Israel will not have the time or the resources to embark upon this kind of protracted air campaign and thus the electronic element of any strike to suppress Iranian defences is likely to be as important as the actual dropping of weapons.

Israel's small submarine force could potentially play a role here too. Douglas Barrie says that "there must be a reasonable assumption that Israel has an operational sea-launched cruise missile capability based upon their German-built Dolphin submarines".

Israel's small submarine force could play a role

"These could be used to go after older but capable SA-5 air defence sites and big search and surveillance radars."

But, he notes: "Adding a naval dimension complicates the co-ordination of any attack."

Iran's air force is seen by experts as being totally outclassed by its Israeli counterpart.

It has a small number of US-built F-14 Tomcat fighters and a significant number of relatively more modern Russian-supplied MiG-29s.

But the potential threat from Iranian aircraft again complicates Israeli planning and any air-to-air combat might place additional strains on the limited fuel supplies carried by the attacking aircraft.Would an Israeli strike succeed?

Most experts agree that Israel could hit multiple targets in Iran and do considerable damage to its nuclear programme. They would, however, do much less damage than a full-scale US attack using all of the resources at Washington's disposal.

The Israelis would be operating at the very limits of their capabilities. "If they pulled it off," says Douglas Barrie, "it would be an impressive display of power projection against a difficult and dispersed set of targets."

Only a small number of air forces in the world, he notes, could mount such an operation. But, Mr Barrie stresses: "Even if successful, it would only delay Iran's nuclear programme."

It is a point echoed by IHS Jane's Robert Hewson.

"Israel does not have the mass of forces and will not be given the operational freedom [by Iran] required to destroy Iran's nuclear complex," he says. "If you bury enough stuff deep enough, enough of it will survive. Any Israeli attack can only damage and possibly not even slow the Iranian effort.

"The consequences of such an attack would be dire and global. It is impossible to see any up-side to this venture."

That's a view shared for now by Israel's most important ally.

Only a few days ago, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of staff, Gen Martin Dempsey, said that an Israeli attack would not be prudent.

Such a strike, he said, "would be destabilising and would not achieve their long-term objectives".

However Israel's calculus is very different. Knowing all their operational limitations, might they launch such an operation anyway?

SOURCE: BBC NEWS

SECRET £14MILLION BIBLE IN WHICH 'JESUS PREDICTS COMING OF PROPHET MUHAMMAD' UNEARTHED IN TURKEY

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:21:00 +0800

A secret Bible in which Jesus is believed to predict the coming of the Prophet Muhammad to Earth has sparked serious interest from the Vatican.

Pope Benedict XVI is claimed to want to see the 1,500-year-old book, which many say is the Gospel of Barnabas, that has been hidden by the Turkish state for the last 12 years.

The £14million handwritten gold lettered tome, penned in Jesus' native Aramaic language, is said to contain his early teachings and a prediction of the Prophet's coming.

Secret Bible: The 1,500-year-old tome was is said to contain Jesus' early teachings and his prediction of the Prophet's coming

Ancient: The leather-bound text, written on animal hide, was discovered by Turkish police during an anti-smuggling operation in 2000

The leather-bound text, written on animal hide, was discovered by Turkish police during an anti-smuggling operation in 2000.

It was closely guarded until 2010, when it was finally handed over to the Ankara Ethnography Museum, and will soon be put back on public display following a minor restoration.

A photocopy of a single page from the handwritten ancient manuscript is thought to be worth £1.5million.

Turkish culture and tourism minister Ertugrul Gunay said the book could be an authentic version of the Gospel, which was suppressed by the Christian Church for its strong parallels with the Islamic view of Jesus.

He also said the Vatican had made an official request to see the scripture - a controversial text which Muslims claim is an addition to the original gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.

In line with Islamic belief, the Gospel treats Jesus as a human being and not a God.

Serious interest: The Vatican, under Pope Benedict XVI, is said to want to see the recently re-discovered Bible.

Historic: The £14million handwritten gold lettered tome is penned in Jesus' native Aramaic language.

It rejects the ideas of the Holy Trinity and the Crucifixion and reveals that Jesus predicted the coming of the Prophet Muhammad.

In one version of the gospel, he is said to have told a priest: 'How shall the Messiah be called? Muhammad is his blessed name'.

WHO WAS ST BARNABAS?

Born in Cyprus as Joseph, Barnabas was an Early Christian later named an apostle.

His story appears in the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul mentions him in some of his epistles.

The date, place, and circumstances of his death are historically unverifiable.

But Christian tradition states that he was martyred at Salamis, Cyprus.

He is traditionally identified as the founder of the Cypriot Church, with his feast day on June 11.

And in another Jesus denied being the Messiah, claiming that he or she would be Ishmaelite, the term used for an Arab.

Despite the interest in the newly re-discovered book, some believe it is a fake and only dates back to the 16th century.

The oldest copies of the book date back to that time, and are written in Spanish and Italian.

Protestant pastor İhsan Özbek said it was unlikely to be authentic.

This is because St Barnabas lived in the first century and was one of the Apostles of Jesus, in contrast to this version which is said to come from the fifth or sixth century.

He told the Today Zaman newspaper: 'The copy in Ankara might have been written by one of the followers of St Barnabas.

'Since there is around 500 years in between St Barnabas and the writing of the Bible copy, Muslims may be disappointed to see that this copy does not include things they would like to see.

'It might have no relation with the content of the Gospel of Barnabas.'

Theology professor Ömer Faruk Harman said a scientific scan of the bible may be the only way to reveal how old it really is.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

THE NINJA WOMEN IN IRAN, BEAUTIFUL BUT DEADLY.

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 21:41:00 +0800

Hundreds of beautiful but deadly ninja women, improve their skills in gyms all over Iran, under the leadership of the Federation of Martial Arts Sports Ministry. There are Total 24000 ninjas in Iran.

Muslims Allowed to Attack People for Insulting Mohammad

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 11:06:00 +0800

Jonathon Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, reports on a disturbing case in which a state judge in Pennsylvania threw out an assault case involving a Muslim attacking an atheist for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Judge Mark Martin, an Iraq war veteran and a convert to Islam, threw the case out in what appears to be an invocation of Sharia law.

The incident occurred at the Mechanicsburg, Pa., Halloween parade where Ernie Perce, an atheist activist, marched as a zombie Muhammad. Talaag Elbayomy, a Muslim, attacked Perce, and he was arrested by police.

Judge Martin threw the case out on the grounds that Elbayomy was obligated to attack Perce because of his culture and religion. Judge Martin stated that the First Amendment of the Constitution does not permit people to provoke other people. He also called Perce, the plaintiff in the case, a "doofus." In effect, Perce was the perpetrator of the assault, in Judge Martin's view, and Elbayomy the innocent. The Sharia law that the Muslim attacker followed trumped the First Amendment.

Words almost fail.

The Washington Post recently reported on an appeals court decision to maintain an injunction to stop the implementation of an amendment to the Oklahoma state constitution that bans the use of Sharia law in state courts. The excuse the court gave was that there was no documented case of Sharia law being invoked in an American court. Judge Martin would seem to have provided that example, which should provide fodder for the argument as the case goes through the federal courts.

The text of the First Amendment could not be clearer. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof-" It does not say "unless somebody, especially a Muslim, is angered." Indeed Judge Martin specifically decided to respect the establishment of a religion, in this case Islam.

That Judge Martin should be removed from the bench and severely sanctioned goes almost without saying. He clearly had no business hearing the case in the first place, since he seems to carry an emotional bias. He also needs to retake a constitutional law course. Otherwise, a real can of worms has been opened up, permitting violence against people exercising free speech.

It should be noted that another atheist, dressed as a Zombie Pope, was marching beside the Zombie Muhammad. No outraged Catholics attacked him.

Source: YAHOO NEWS

Huge Arena Funeral For Houston, Say Reports

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:00:00 +0800

Whitney Houston's funeral will be held at an 18,000-seater arena in New Jersey on Friday, according to reports.

TV networks in the US have reported that a private wake is planned for the star on Thursday before a ceremony is held at the Prudential Center the day after.

A picture of Houston appeared on the electronic board outside the arena, one of the nation's busiest entertainment venues, on Monday night as the 48-year-old's body was flown back to her home city of Newark.

The singer died in a hotel room at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Los Angeles-based celebrity website TMZ said a jet owned by film star and producer Tyler Perry was used to return the body to New Jersey.

A police escort accompanied the body as travelled from Teterboro Airport to the Whigham Funeral Home, the same place that arranged her father's funeral in 2003.

Fans awaited the arrival of Houston's body at the funeral home

Houston's family were thought to have been debating whether to have the smaller service at the New Hope Baptist Church, where family members have sung over the years.

It was while singing in the gospel choir at this church that Houston's powerful voice was first noticed.

Mourners have been flocking to the building to leave flowers, notes and candles.

If Houston's funeral is held at the Prudential Center it will echo the 2009 memorial held for Michael Jackson at LA's Staples Center.

But TMZ claimed there might have been a rift in Houston's family over where her funeral is taking place.

It states that the singer's mother Cissy and cousin Dionne Warwick both wanted the burial to take place in Atlanta.

Houston was found dead in a bath in her suite at the Beverly Hilton, hours before she was supposed to appear at a pre-Grammy Awardsparty.

She was under the water and apparently unconscious when found by members of her entourage, police said in a statement.

"Ms Houston was pulled from the tub by members of her staff and hotel security was promptly notified."

The LA police commented after widespread speculation about how the star, who had a well-documented battle with drug and alcohol addiction, died.

TMZ reported Houston did not die from drowning but a suspected "combination of Xanax and other prescription drugs mixed with alcohol".

It added that officials with the LA coroner's office had told the singer's family there was not enough water in her lungs "to lead to the conclusion that she drowned".

LA deputy coroner Ed Winter confirmed there were bottles of prescription medicines in the singer's room but would not give details.

"There weren't a lot of prescription bottles. You probably have just as many prescription bottles in your medicine cabinet," he said.

TMZ also claimed that some of the medicine bottles in the room appeared to be from the same pharmacy that was raided after Michael Jackson's death.

This has not been confirmed.

The actual cause of death will be determined by the coroner's office after final toxicology results are received.

Source: http://news.sky.com/

Whitney Houston's body to be taken home to NJ

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:52:00 +0800

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Whitney Houston's body was set to be flown home to New Jersey late Monday for a funeral to be held at week's end, said two people who have spoken with her family.

The two people spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak for the family and because funeral arrangements hadn't been completed.

Houston's family raised the possibility of holding a wake Thursday and funeral Friday at Newark's Prudential Center, an arena that hosts college and professional sport events and seats about 18,000 people.

The 48-year-old pop star was found dead in a bathtub in her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in California on Saturday, hours before she was supposed to appear at a pre-Grammy Awards gala.

Funeral arrangements were being made by Newark's Whigham Funeral Home, which handled the 2003 funeral of Houston's father, John Houston, according to the two people who spoke to the AP.

A woman at the funeral home, where several police officers were stationed Monday afternoon, said she could neither confirm nor deny reports that it would handle the arrangements. A white tent was set up leading into the funeral home's rear entrance.

The Los Angeles coroner's office said Houston's body was released to the family late Monday morning.

Houston was born in Newark and was raised in nearby East Orange. She began singing as a child at Newark's New Hope Baptist Church, where her mother, Grammy-winning gospel singer Cissy Houston, led the music program for many years. Her cousin singer Dionne Warwick also sang in its choir.

On Monday, mourners left flowers, balloons and candles for Houston at the wrought-iron fence around the tall brick church, which sits near the edge of an abandoned housing project near the train line leading to New York City.

"She was an inspiration to everybody," said Gregory Hanks, a 26-year-old actor who grew up in the neighborhood and who dropped off a bouquet of flowers.

Hanks said he saw Houston perform at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center years ago.

"I grew up listening to her as a little boy, and to hear her sing, you knew she was special," he said.

Sandy Farrow, a technology consultant from Mitchellville, Md., who was in the area visiting relatives, said she was a senior at Clifford J. Scott High School in East Orange when Houston was a freshman.

"We felt like she put East Orange on the map," she said.

Farrow said Houston's death came as a shock.

"We lost somebody who I thought, after all her troubles, was coming back," Farrow said.

Across the street from the church, Bashir Rasheed set up shop with a duffel bag full of T-shirts reading "In Memory of Whitney Houston 1963-2012." He said he had sold 24 shirts at $10 apiece within a few hours.

Source: AP

Questions surround Whitney Houston death.

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:43:00 +0800

WE ALWAYS LOVE YOU...WHITNEY RIP!

QUESTIONS are being raised about the circumstances behind the death of music legend Whitney Houston today.

The cause of the troubled star's demise is unknown but it has been reported that she "partied heavily" on Friday night.

Whitney died at the Beverly Hilton hotel where she was staying prior to her performance at a pre-Grammys party.

According to US showbiz website TMZ, the star was seen with a large group of friends at the hotel bar.

Worse for wear ... Whitney Houston on Thursday night

Sources told the website that the group were drinking and standing out at the heaving venue.

Emergency services were called to Whitney's room on the fourth floor where they found security guards trying to revive her.

The attempts were unsuccessful and she was declared dead at 11:55pm, UK time.

Dazed ... singer looked confused as she left party in Hollywood

Unconfirmed reports claim the body of the Saving All My Love For You singer was found in her hotel bath by a member of her entourage.

Police sealed off the room ahead of a search, TMZ claims.

The website also reports the police want to determine if there were drugs present.

The troubled star star looked distressed and disorientated as she left a club in Hollywood on Thursday night.

The singing diva, 48, was spotted leaving nightspot Tru Hollywood looking worse for wear.

The one-time Queen Of The Night had sung earlier in the evening at the Kelly Price & Friends Unplugged: For The Love Of R&B Grammy Party.

But her late-night appearance — looking haggard, angry and bleary-eyed — suggested she was still tackling her inner demons.

In 2001 Whitney was on top of the world and had signed the biggest record deal in music history, offering her £64million for six new albums.

But later that year she shocked fans with her gaunt appearance at a Michael Jackson tribute concert in New York.

In a US interview in December 2002 she admitted she had experimented with drugs and alcohol.

The six-times Grammy-winning singer, who sold 140 million albums and 50 million singles worldwide, made a comeback in 2009 after seven years and she explained to Oprah Winfrey in an epic chat how her life began to spiral out of control after her 1992 success in The Bodyguard.

Whitney revealed she spent seven months wearing just pyjamas in the depths of her drug hell with former husband Bobby Brown, before their 2006 split.

She said: "I don't like to think of myself addicted. I had a bad habit, which can be broken. I'm not gonna tell you I'm somebody's junkie. My business is sex, drugs, rock and roll. Trust me. I partied my tail off."

She admitted she would smoke marijuana and crack cocaine at the same time, and revealed her mother had to stage an intervention involving armed police to save her.

Her comeback also ended in disaster when fans complained she had lost her talent and seemed confused during concerts.

She also stunned UK fans with a bizarre, disorientated X Factor performance and oddly nervous interview.

Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/

World Leaders Wedding Photos.

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:12:00 +0800

Unique wedding pictures of world leaders. Believe it or not they had to pass all that buttock-pain too ergo that makes them pretty much mortal just like the rest of us.

Barack Obama

Bill Clinton

Margaret Thatcher

Alexander Lukashenko

Viktor Yanukovich

John F. Kennedy

Vladimir Putin

Dmitry Medvedev

Source from Fillinn

THE DISAPPERARING OF ARAL SEA, FOURTH LARGEST IN THE WORLD..

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Thu, 9 Feb 2012 17:14:00 +0800

The destruction of the Aral Sea is a well-known example of unsustainable development. Atlases used to describe the sea as the world's fourth largest lake, with an area of 66,000 square kilometres and a volume of more than 1,000 cubic kilometres. Its waters supplied local fisheries with annual catches of 40,000 tons and the deltas of its tributaries hosted dozens of smaller lakes and biologically rich marshes and wetlands covering 550,000 hectares.

Aral Sea from space, August 1985

Fifty years ago, the Aral Sea was the world's fourth inland sea, after the Caspian Sea, Lake Superior and Lake Victoria. It started shrinking due to Soviet irrigation projects, its surface area declining by more than 50 percent, to 30,000 square km from 67,000 square km, between 1960 and 1996. The sea level dropped by 16 metres, according to the World Bank.

Aral Sea from space, 1997

* The sea straddles the former Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It split into a large southern Uzbek part and a smaller Kazakh portion in 1990.

Aral Sea from space, August 2009

* Central Asia, one of the world's driest regions, has two main rivers, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya. Both used to feed the Aral Sea. In the 1960s Soviet planners built a network of irrigation canals to divert their waters into cotton fields in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, starving the sea of its life blood.

* Mismanagement of land and water resources has caused degradation extending to the entire Aral Sea basin, damaging fish production and causing high salinity and pollution as well as violent sand storms. Fresh water supplies have diminished and human health problems have risen, according to the World Bank.

* Kazakhstan pledged to restore its portion of the Aral Sea when it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Aral Sea region is among the poorest in the oil producing state. At least a quarter of its population lives below the poverty line, and the average monthly income is three times below that of Kazakh financial capital Almaty, according to official data. Average life expectancy is 66 years compared to 70 in Almaty.

* The first phase of a World Bank restoration project is due to be completed at the end of 2008. Total cost is $86 million, including a $64.5 million World Bank loan to the Kazakh government.

The aim is to secure the northern Kazakh pocket of the Aral Sea at 42 metres above Baltic Sea level and improve ecological conditions in the area. The project includes construction of the Kok-Aral dike which separates the northern sea from the southern part, and several hydraulic structures on the Syr Darya river.

* The World Bank is considering a follow-up project to improve environmental and economic conditions further, a scheme estimated to cost $300 million. It includes returning water to the port of Aralsk and nearby villages, rehabilitating delta lakes and improving river flows.

* Similar efforts have been impossible in Uzbekistan, where most river water is still directed to cotton production -- one of the main pillars of the Uzbek economy. The south part continues to shrink. Experts, including the World Bank, doubt the Aral Sea will be ever restored to its original size. (Editing by Catherine Evans)

Homs: Bloody winter in Syria's revolution capital.

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Wed, 8 Feb 2012 07:44:00 +0800

The ancient city of Homs is now a warzone as President Bashar al-Assad's army strikes fiercely at the heart of Syria's 11-month-old anti-government uprising.

Hundreds in Homs have been killed by rockets, mortar rounds and snipers' bullets since the start of the year, say opposition groups, as the Syrian regime tries to regain control of the country's third largest city.

The humanitarian crisis in Homs is worsening -- dozens are reported dead nearly every day, and opposition activists say they don't have enough doctors or medical supplies to treat the wounded.

Homs, known as the capital of the revolution, has seen the worst of the violence that has left at least 6,000 people dead since protests began in Syria in March 2011.

Syrian crisis continues as UN fails

Syrian forces accused of child torture

Sanctions are blow to Syrian citizens

Deadly cat-and-mouse game in Syria

Located in the agricultural heartland of central Syria, the city has long been a transport and commercial hub of vital strategic importance.

The road through Homs connects the capital, Damascus, in the south to Syria's largest city, Aleppo, in the north. Homs is home to one of two oil refineries in the country; preserving that oil supply is crucial to the Assad regime's ongoing efforts to crush the anti-government movement there.

The city's citizens, known as "Homsies," hold a contradictory place in the Syrian national conscience, according to Chris Phillips, a Syria analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit.

"Homsies are often the butt of jokes in Syria," said Phillips, "but they've actually got quite a large cultural and educational influence on the country."

The city of 1 million is one of Syria's most ethnically diverse. Traditionally a Sunni Muslim merchant town, a considerable number of Alawite Muslims, a Shia sect, have settled in Homs in the past 30 years, and there also is a small Christian population in the city.

"We live in a complex community, with many different sects and religions," a Homs opposition spokesman -- who uses the name Abu Rami to hide his real identity from security forces -- told CNN.

"Before the uprising, we were all living here as brothers and we didn't think there were differences between us," said Rami from central Homs, where scores have been killed in non-stop fighting between opposition and regime forces this month.

Homs is more warzone than city now, he says. Parts of the city are without electricity; in other parts, security forces shut off the electricity and telecommunications networks ahead of early morning raids to root out opposition members.

"If you're in a place where they cut off the power or the phones, you know you're in trouble," said Rami.

There is a shortage of everything from children's milk formula to oil for heating, and he says security forces are preventing medical aid from reaching dying citizens.

Many of the injured are being treated in field hospitals in civilian homes, including some who died from wounds that would not have been fatal with proper care.

"Every day there are murders -- snipers on the roofs are shooting anything that moves, preventing the arrival of medical supplies and shooting at ambulances. It's a very hard situation," said Rami.

A 26-year-old born and raised in a middle class family in Homs, Rami left his medical studies at Al Baath University to help organize protests against al-Assad's government in March.

But the city and its once-vibrant sidewalk cafe culture are now in lockdown mode after fighting intensified there recently.

Defectors from the military have joined volunteers in forming the Free Syrian Army in Homs, and residents in some neighborhoods have organized into armed defense committees, according to a report from Human Rights Watch.

With at least 60 checkpoints set up in Homs and dozens of tanks now surrounding the city, the opposition fears al-Assad is plotting an attack that could rival the 1982 crackdown in Hama, when regime tanks and troops killed thousands of people and reduced parts of that city to rubble.

President al-Assad denies responsibility for the escalating violence in Syria, and distanced himself from his armed forces in a recent television interview.

"They are not my forces," al-Assad told ABC's Barbara Walters. "They are forces for the government. I don't own them. I'm president. I don't own the country. So they are not my forces."

The bloodshed has left city residents on edge. Public life is limited to about six hours each day from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., says Rami -- shops close soon after that and people are rarely seen on the street.

Rami himself hid in a friend's basement in the relatively calm Al Ghouta neighborhood for days, as he didn't feel safe to return to his own home.

"My neighborhood is surrounded by shabiha thugs and I'm afraid to be arrested or killed," he told CNN.

The "shabiha" pro-regime militia, reportedly working alongside government forces, has been blamed by the opposition for attempting to stoke sectarian tensions in Homs.

And while Homs has traditionally been a place of religious tolerance, Syria expert Phillips told CNN "there is a real sense now that that is changing and being manipulated by people on both sides" of the conflict.

"The older Sunni merchant class that feel the city is theirs rightfully are now turning on the Alawites, who they see as these recent migrants that don't actually belong in the city," said Phillips.

"Alawites live on the outskirts; they're not seen as really part of the old city. They don't fall within the old city boundaries, they're recent migrants and [some Sunnis] are not very happy with them."

While certain elements of the Sunni community would like to overthrow the Alawite al-Assad and retake what they see as their rightful place as leaders of Syria, Phillips says the Alawite community fears the prospect of persecution if the government falls.

"The regime is trying to persuade the Alawites that if they abandon the government, they will be wiped out in the dog-eat-dog aftermath," he said.

According to Phillips, those who have spent the last 11 months protesting every day in Homs fear that "if they stop doing this, then they will be crushed."

Rami said he would like to stay in Homs if and when the uprising ends.

"I hope Homs will be okay," he said. "I hope in the future we'll stand together in Homs."

As the death count continues to rise and prospects for peace in the near future dims, Rami believes the war in Homs can only end one of two ways.

"Either we all die," he said, "or we get victory at the end."

Source: CNN NEWS

COULD ISRAEL STRIKE IRAN THIS SPRING?

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Mon, 6 Feb 2012 01:52:00 +0800

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has come to the conclusion there is a growing likelihood Israel could attack Iran sometime this spring in an effort to destroy its suspected nuclear weapons program, according to a senior administration official.

The official declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the information.

Panetta's views were first reported by the Washington Post's David Ignatius, who wrote Panetta "believes there is strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June - before Iran enters what Israelis described as a 'zone of immunity' to commence building a nuclear bomb."

Asked by reporters in Brussels, where Panetta is attending NATO meetings, the defense secretary refused to comment. But Panetta told reporters the U.S. has "indicated our concerns" to Israel, according to a transcript provided by the Defense Department.

But the official also noted that Israel goes through cycles of making aggressive statements about its intentions toward Iran in an effort to pressure the United States and the West to take more action.

Iran's supreme leader issued a blunt warning Friday that war would be detrimental to the United States - and that Iran is ready to help anyone who confronts "cancerous" Israel.

"You see every now and then in this way they say that all options are on the table. That means even the option of war," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said during Friday prayers in Tehran. "This is how they make these threats against us.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Thursday that Iran may be close to the point "which may render any physical strike as impractical," according to Reuters.

But just a few weeks ago, Barak suggested things were not as urgent, saying an Israeli decision on whether to strike Iran's nuclear program was "very far off."

A "confluence' of intelligence has led Panetta to this conclusion, the official told CNN, but declined to offer any specifics except noting that the United States conducts intelligence operations aimed at Israel as it does with many other allies.

The senior administration official also noted that there is a general understanding in the administration that Israel may have come to the firm conclusion Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. Just last week, the recently retired chief of Israeli military intelligence told CNN's David McKenzie that the "Iranians have already decided that they want nuclear weapons," he said. But he added they haven't decided fully to go through with creating the weapons.

The official U.S. assessment is that Iran has not yet made that decision, the source said.

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus, who said he has regular discussions with Israel's leadership and intelligence head, noted that "Israel does see this possibility as an existential threat to their country, and I think that it is very important to keep that perspective in mind."

At the same hearing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper noted the United States works closely with the Israelis and said the notion that Israel could strike is "a very sensitive issue right now."

"This is an area that we are very, very concerned about," Clapper said.

Panetta's press secretary, George Little, declined to comment on the report. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently said it would be premature for the United States to consider striking Iran.

Source: http://security.blogs.cnn.com/

Men sentenced to 18 years for slaying South African lesbian

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Sun, 5 Feb 2012 15:49:00 +0800

JUSTICE: Four men were jailed for the murder of Zoliswa Nkonyana in 2006

(CNN) -- Gay rights advocates in South Africa hailed a judge's sentencing of four men to 18 years each in prison for brutally slaying a 19-year-old lesbian.

Sabelo Yekiso and Sicelo Mase, two of the men accused of the murder of Zoliswa Nkonyana seen here entering Khayelitsha Magistrate's Court. Image by: MOEKETSI MOTICOE

Hatred fueled the 2006 stabbing and stoning of Zoliswa Nkonyana, who was targeted because of her sexual orientation, Magistrate Raadiya Whaten ruled.

Four years' credit was given to Lubabolo Ntlabathi, Sicelo Mase, Luyanda Londzi and Mbulelo Damba, meaning they will spend 14 additional years behind bars.

"The sentence sent a strong message that hate crimes would not be tolerated," national prosecuting attorney spokesman Eric Ntabazalila told the South African Press Association.

Gay rights advocates celebrated Wednesday's ruling.

"It was the first time discrimination based on sexual orientation was named as an aggravating factor in a South African criminal trial," the Triangle Project gay and lesbian rights group said in a written statement.

Gay marriage is legal in South Africa, which was the first African nation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Homosexuality is illegal in most African countries, based on rules left over from the British colonial era, when sodomy laws were introduced.

Despite South Africa's anti-discrimination provisions, attacks based on sexual orientation persist, rights groups say.

After interviews in six of South Africa's nine provinces last year, New York-based Human Rights Watch concluded that "social attitudes towards homosexual, bisexual, and transgender people in South Africa have possibly hardened over the last two decades. The abuse they face on an everyday basis may be verbal, physical, or sexual -- and may even result in murder"

This week officials from another rights group said they hope this week's sentencing will set a precedent across Africa.

"We hope that this message is heard loud and clear across the rest of the continent, where homophobic discrimination is widespread and where homosexuality is a crime," the non-profit People Against Suffering, Oppression and Poverty said in a statement.

source: CNN NEWS

GETTING NAUGHTY WITH STATUES ON VACATION

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:27:00 +0800

What the hack this people doing during vacations......just for laugh!!! notihing more.

The Mexico drug war: Bodies for billions

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:36:00 +0800

A skull of someone thought to be a victim of drug violence lies on the ground in Ciudad Juarez in early 2010. The border city of Juarez has been racked by violent drug-related crime, making it one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico's war on drugs. According to figures released on January 11 by the Mexican government, 12,903 people were killed in drug-related violence in the first nine months of 2011.

(CNN) -- There are kingpins with names like the Engineer, head-chopping hit men, dirty cops and double-dealing politicians. And, of course, there are users -- millions of them.

But the Mexican drug war, at its core, is about two numbers: 48,000 and 39 billion.

Two bodies hang from a bridge in Mexico in September 2011. Some cartels have developed reputations for sickening brutality -- seeming to kill for pleasure, just because they can.

Over the past five years, nearly 48,000 people have been killed in suspected drug-related violence in Mexico, the country's federal attorney general announced this month. In the first three quarters of 2011, almost 13,000 people died.

Cold and incomprehensible zeros, the death toll doesn't include the more than 5,000 people who have disappeared, according to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission. It doesn't account for the tens of thousands of children orphaned by the violence.

The guilty live on both sides of the border.

Street gangs with cartel ties are not only in Los Angeles and Dallas, but also in many smaller cities across the United States and much farther north of the Mexican border. Mexican cartels had a presence in 230 cities in the United States in 2008, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Its 2011 report shows that presence has grown to more than 1,000 U.S. cities. While the violence has remained mostly in Mexico, authorities in Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Alabama and other states have reportedly investigated abductions and killings suspected to be tied to cartels.

Mexican black tar heroin (so called because it's dark and sticky), is cheaper than Colombian heroin, and used to be a rarity in the United States. Now it is available in dozens of cities and small towns, experts say. Customers phone in their orders, the Los Angeles Times reports, and small-time dealers deliver the drug, almost like pizza deliverymen.

Traffickers are recruiting in the United States, and prefer to hire young. Texas high schools say cartel members have been on their campuses. Most notoriously, a 14-year-old from San Diego became a head-chopping cartel assassin.

"I slit their throats," he testified at his trial, held near Cuernavaca. The teenager, called "El Ponchis" - the Cloak - was found guilty of torturing and beheading and sentenced to three years in a Mexican prison.

For more than a decade, the United States' focus has been terrorism, an exhausting battle reliant on covert operatives in societies where the rule of law has collapsed or widespread violence is the norm. The situation in Mexico is beginning to show similarities. In many border areas, the authority of the Mexican state seems either entirely absent or extremely weak. In September 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said cartel violence might be "morphing into or making common cause with what we would call an insurgency."

If cartel violence is not contained in Mexico, which shares a nearly 2,000 mile border with the United States, the drug war could threaten U.S. national security and even survival of the Mexican state.

How much is enough?

For most of us, Mexico is reduced several times a week to a sickening barrage of horror flick headlines. Thirty-five bodies left on the freeway during rush-hour in a major tourist city. A person's face sewn onto a soccer ball. Bodies found stuffed in barrels of acid. Heads sent rolling onto busy nightclub dance floors.

What could explain such savagery?

Traffickers don't have a political or religious ideology like al Qaeda.

The answer, some experts say, is a number. Something like $39 billion.

That's the top estimated amount Mexican and Colombian drug trafficking organizations make in wholesale profits annually, according to a 2009 Justice Department report, the latest year for which that calculation was available. The department's 2011 reportsaid that Mexican traffickers control the flow of most of the cocaine, heroin, foreign-produced marijuana and methamphetamine in the United States.

There are seven cartels in Mexico vying for control of smuggling routes into the United States, a bountiful sellers' paradise. South of the border it costs $2,000 to produce a kilo of cocaine from leaf to lab, the DEA said. In the U.S., a kilo's street value ranges from $34,000 to $120,000, depending on the ZIP code where it's pushed.

"How much is enough to the cartels? How many billions justify how many deaths to them?" said DEA special agent and spokesman Jeffrey Scott. "Mexico is their home, too. Their families live there. At what point does the violence cripple their ability to conduct business?"

Scott has been with the DEA for 16 years. Between 2006 and 2011, he led a Tucson, Arizona, strike force that fought smugglers bringing tons of methamphetamine, marijuana, heroin and cocaine across the border. By the time the drugs reach the low-level street dealer, they have been through many middle managers in the cartels' purposely confusing web of workers.

"The people who are arrested will sometimes say, 'Sinaloa who?'" he said, referring to the cartel that originated in the Mexican Pacific Coast state and has the strongest presence in the United States.

Dealers usually don't know or care where their product comes from, Scott said. He said he doubts the tens of millions of Americans who use illegal drugs do, either.

Get Shorty

From foot to head he is short/But he is the biggest of the big

If you respect him, he'll respect you

If you offend him, it will get worse

-- Lyrics to narcocorrido "El Chapo" by Los Canelos de Durango

"El Chapo" (Shorty) is the boss of the Sinaloa cartel. In his last-known photo, the 5 foot 6 inch son of a poor rural family wears a schoolboy haircut and a plain-colored puff-coat. Despite having virtually no formal education, Forbes estimates Joaquin Guzman Loera is worth $1 billion. This month the U.S. Treasury declared him the most influential trafficker in the world. He has eluded capture for more than a decade, is known for coming up with original ways to smuggle, like putting cocaine in fire extinguishers, and is suspected of helping Mexicans and Colombians launder as much as $20 billion in drug profits.

The legend of "El Chapo" began to grow when he escaped, reportedly on a laundry cart, from a Mexican prison in 2001. He seemed even more untouchable last summer when his 20-something beauty queen wife (who has dual nationality) crossed into California to give birth to twins. The birth certificates leave blank the space for the father's name, and she apparently hustled back across the border.

It's anyone's guess where El Chapo is. Mexican President Felipe Calderon wondered last year if he was hiding out in the United States.

Guzman is the drug war. Perpetuating the image of the bulletproof bad guy keeps it alive.

YouTube is full of narco snuff. Those with weak stomachs should avoid the wildly popular El Blog del Narco, which posts gory photos of killings and confessions by drug lords. Cartels make their own movies, glorifying the business. The films are sold in street markets in Mexico and the United States.

Some say it's no coincidence that the first beheadings of Mexican police officers occurred in 2006, when videotapes of al Qaeda beheadings were shown on Mexican television.

Since then, headless corpses have become a cartel calling card. In a single week in September, a sack of heads was left near an Acapulco elementary school and a blogging reporter's headless corpse was dumped in front of a major thoroughfare in the Texas border town of Nuevo Laredo. Her head, along with headphones and computer equipment, was found in a street planter.

A note left at the scene, one of dozens of journalist killings in the past five years, read: "OK Nuevo Laredo live on the social networks, I am La Nena de Laredo and I am here because of my reports and yours ..."

The message was signed with several Z's, indicating the slaying was the work of another major cartel, the Zetas.

One of the first cartels to use the internet, the Zetas are perhaps the savviest propagandists in the drug war. They're known for effective recruitment tactics.

A few years ago, they appealed to the destitute in a nation where the minimum wage is $5 a day, but millions have no work.

Banners were dropped from bridges in major cities.

"Why be poor?" the signs said. "Come work for us."

The good old bad days

Desde que yo era chiquillo tenia fintas de cabron (Ever since I was a kid, I had the fame of a bad-ass)

ya le pegaba al perico, y a la mota (already hitting the parrot [cocaine] and doing dope [marijuana])

-- El Cabron, a legendary narcocorrido, or narco ballad, released in 2005.

Feeding addiction has long been a part of Mexico's relationship with the United States, first becoming a well-oiled operation during Prohibition when Americans crossed over to drink and get high and Mexicans sent marijuana and alcohol to speakeasies in the States.

During this era, narcocorridos, or drug pop ballads glorifying kingpins, became popular. The accordion-based anthems were danceable, fun. Today the songs are no longer so amusing.

Between 2006 and 2008, more than a dozen performers have been murdered. Cartels have held some balladeers hostage for days, forcing them to entertain partying crews. The Mexican government has tried to ban the music, but the effort has only made the songs sexier. They shake butts from Cancun to Culiacan, and across the United States from Los Angeles to New York. Slain narco singers have been nominated for posthumous Grammys. (Watch narco singer Valentín Elizalde's music video "A Mis Enemigos" which some speculate was an attack on the Gulf cartel and led to his murder.)

Narcocorridos have become death impersonating art, a symbol of just how unexpectedly dark the Mexican drug business has become.

The definition of a cartel is an agreement among competing firms. That was the old way for the Mexicans. Pay the cops and the politicians. Don't kill anyone unless absolutely necessary and don't make a mess of it.

Two scenarios made their thieves' agreement possible.

For decades, Mexicans mainly transported cocaine for the Colombians or the Colombians sent the cocaine directly into the United States on planes or speedboats.

That changed in the 1990s when the United States tightened its choke on Colombia's main smuggling point in the Caribbean and Florida and worked with the Colombian government to combat cartels and eliminate kingpins like Pablo Escobar.

The neutered Colombian cartels were then forced to rely on the Mexicans, who smuggled across much more vast and impossible to monitor areas like the border and the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Suddenly indispensable in their industry, the cartels in Mexico reacted like any ambitious corporation. They bought out every last possible competitor, ramping up bribes across the ranks of law enforcement and politicians. They advertised themselves to struggling working class people and the poor as a panacea amid all the government's failures: Cartels were the private-sector alternative.

Within a few years, they gained unrivaled dominance in the global illicit drug trade.

The second scenario helping the cartels, some experts say, wasrampant corruption within the PRI, or the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ran Mexico for 72 years.

There were far fewer deaths and the cartels' bottom line wasn't threatened.

The PRI lost power in 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox, who led the opposition National Action Party.

Known for his cowboy hats, Fox made little of the cartels during his election campaign. But after meeting with American officials in the early days of his administration, he announced he wanted the traffickers gone.

The arrests of kingpins and key players followed, which prompted chaos within cartel ranks as commands were shaken. Cartel members fought amongst themselves and each other. The good old bad days ended.

A real war starts

La traicion y el contrabando (The treason and the contraband)

Son cosas incompartidas" (They are the same thing)

- Lyrics to "Contrabando y traicion" by Tigres del Norte

To understand the drug war, accept that it's impossible to keep track of all its players. Accept that there are no white hats or black hats. There's only grey. Fog.

There is, however, agreement among experts about when war was declared: In late 2004 in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, 10 minutes from Laredo, Texas.

The Sinaloa wanted this golden smuggling route.

Every year, more than 5 million cars, 1.5 million commercial trucks and 3.8 million pedestrians cross northbound from Mexico into the United States here, bringing with them a ton of hidden narcotics.

In 2004, Nuevo Laredo was controlled by the Gulf cartel, which was just as old and Corleone-esque as Sinaloa.

For help defending their turf, the Gulf hired a group of former Mexican special forces soldiers who called themselves Zetas after the federal police code for high-ranking officers, "Z1."

The Sinaloa clan hired their own protection, a gang named Los Negros led by a blond-haired, blue-eyed American from Laredo. The man's cohorts called him La Barbie.

The Zetas battled Los Negros with tactics befitting an elite military. They fired automatic weapons, launched RPGs and grenades. They shot at each other for more than a year. Local gangs jumped in. Civilians dropped.

Emboldened by their Nuevo Laredo victory, the Zetas formed their own cartel. As they went after other cartels throughout Mexico, the Zetas honed a reputation for sickening brutality, seeming to kill just because they can. They have been blamed for setting fire to a casino killing 52 people, shooting dead 72 migrants on a Tamaulipas farm in 2010, murdering and tossing into mass graves women and children and killing bloggers. In April 2011, the bodies of 190 people, some of them migrant workers, were found in a mass grave in the desert of Tamaulipas.

Officials say the Zetas have lobbed grenades into celebrating crowds and blown up a pipeline that sent "rivers of fire" into residential streets. They have terrorized cities that once seemed untouchable by the violence, including the port city of Veracruz and Mexico's richest city, Monterrey, home to many international companies.

As the Zetas enacted their terror, that blond-haired, blue-eyed American leading Los Negros got angrier. La Barbie was Edgar Valdez, a Texas high school football star who worked his way into the Mexican underworld as a pot dealer. In 2005, the Dallas Morning News reported on a video showing four bound and bloody men, suspected to be Zetas, being interrogated off camera by a man believed to be Valdez.

A pistol comes into the frame, goes off and one of the men slumps. The video went viral. People around the globe started asking what was really going on in Mexico.

Journalist Ioan Grillo has been to more murder scenes than he can recall. His new book, "El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency,"includes interviews with hit men, gang members, government and law enforcement officials and people caught in the crossfire.

Grillo repeatedly returns to a single idea. Wars occur because people cannot feed their families. They happen because groups of people feel unimportant, disenfranchised, angry and broke. They want a piece of life. It only takes a few people with particularly hollow morals, capable of shutting off or suppressing guilt, to convince many that killing and dying in spectacular ways is tantamount to glory.

Jihadist groups, kamikaze squadrons, American street gangs, cartels. Their members were all kids at one point. Grillo writes that he has seen teenagers show up at murder scenes showing no grief. It has become routine. They pick up shell casings scattered on the ground and debate whether they've been fired from AK47s or M4s.

There are very few counselors in Mexico to help, and there is very little quality education outside the circles of the comparatively privileged few, he wrote.

Why wouldn't a kid take 50 pesos to be a lookout, or 1,000 pesos to kill someone?

"I would love to see more money spent on these concerns," Grillo said, "than on more military helicopters and soldiers gunning it out with the cartels."

Fighting back

After he was elected president in 2006, the PAN's Felipe Calderon took a page out of his predecessor's playbook and declared war on the cartels. He had the Mexican military fan out across the country and fired hundreds of corrupt police officers. He even disarmed an entire town, saying that most of its police force was working for the cartels.

Plenty of narcos were arrested, and some extradited to the United States, but many thousands of people died. They included cartel members, police and civilians who were caught in the middle of a gruesome war.

Calderon and President George W. Bush reached an unprecedented agreement to fight the cartels. The Merida Initiative (named after the Mexican city where the two met) included a U.S. pledge of $1.5 billion between 2008 and 2010. President Obama requested millions more for 2011 for the program. The program provides aircraft, inspection tools and other sophisticated drug-detecting technology to the Mexicans. It also funds drug counseling and prison rehabilitation programs.

To fight corruption, the United States has also pledged to give money to help train police in Mexico.

For its part, the Mexican government has passed legislation aimed at bolstering its judicial system, and in October 2010, Calderon formally requested a total reshaping of the police force in Mexico. The reform he proposed would create unified state police forces and eliminate municipal police, who federal officials have said are very susceptible to corruption because of their low salaries.

Observers say Calderon underestimated how many police and other law enforcement officers were on the cartels' payroll when he came to power. As of March 2008, 150,000 soldiers had deserted. Traffickers, experts say, spent the Fox administration hunkering down, ingratiating themselves to communities, buying food and paying for medical bills, offering restless young people a sense of identity and hard cash.

And as Grillo has written, many people didn't trust the police and the soldiers as they once did. Authorities were accused of widespread human rights abuses while on anti-cartel missions. Jose Luis Soberanes, president of the Mexican Human Rights Commission, testified in 2008 that his office had received complaints that police and soldiers had entered towns to rape and torture and kill, including shooting dead two women and three children in Sinaloa state.

The cartels had become Robin Hood to many, similar to Colombia kingpin Escobar. In his impoverished Medellin, Escobar built a soccer field and a school. He died in a gunbattle with agents in 1993. At the church Escobar built, some Colombians still come to worship him like a saint.

A Barbie, a fox and some piggies

"La Barbie" was arrested in August 2010 in Mexico, and smiled as he was paraded in front of the press. The green Ralph Lauren polo shirt he wore inspired an international fashion trend.

Calderon's administration trumpets his arrest and others, and vows to keep fighting the cartels. But the president is a lame duck. Term limits prohibit him from running again in 2012.

Many expect the PRI, Mexico's founding party that ruled for seven decades, to return to power in July's elections.

Whoever wins the election will have to answer a critical question: whether to appease the cartels and try to negotiate with them or continue the all-out assault that Calderon launched.

Negotiating with traffickers played a role in Colombia, where religious figures and former guerillas led the talks, experts said.

But they also stress that Mexico is not Colombia, and this is not the late 1980s. Crime syndicates operate differently. Key players on both sides of the border have considerations unlike those during the Colombian crisis. Mexico, they contend, is far less likely to welcome close foreign involvement than Colombia did.

A solution also cannot come from only one side of the border. Former President Fox and other experienced leaders in Latin America have advocated legalizing the consumption of marijuana, saying it would cut the value of the cartels' product. In 2011, the U.N.'s Global Commission on Drug Policy, which included Fox, recommended that governments experiment with drug legalization, especially marijuana.

Last fall, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a candidate for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, said he thought the drug war violence had become so dire that U.S. troops could be sent into Mexico. Drug trafficking in Mexico, he and others have said, fuels criminal organizations around the globe and feeds human and arms trafficking.

Perry had barely finished his thought before being pounced on by critics, many within his own party and especially his opponents: How would a limping U.S. economy pay for that? The United States was already involved in two wars.

Mexico has historically been highly averse to allowing a foreign force to fight on its soil, experts said. The idea of Team America swooping into its sovereign neighbor is offensive to many Mexicans. Consider the country's national anthem, written after the 1840s Mexican-American War in which Mexico lost half its territory.

If some enemy outlander should dare

to profane your ground with his sole,

think, oh beloved Fatherland, that heaven has given you a soldier in every son

In 2009, the group Los Tigres del Norte were banned from performing a popular song titled "La Granja" at an awards ceremony in Mexico City.

The lyrics blast the Mexican government's strategy against the cartels, a "Fox" who came to break plates on a farm. The animals got out "to create a big mess."

The lyrics also suggest that America, Mexico's No. 1 drug customer, is just as dirty.

The piggies helped out

They feed themselves from the farm

Daily they want more corn

And they lose the profits

And the farmer that works

Does not trust them anymore

Source: CNN NEWS

Vanishing victims: The 'open wounds' of Mexico's drug war

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:03:00 +0800

Editor's note: This story is the second in an occasional series looking at the violence tied to Mexican drug cartels, their expanding global connections and how they affect people's daily lives. The first article in the series appeared Jan. 15.

Mexico City (CNN) -- The blue plastic envelope is packed with papers: security camera photos, cell phone records, business cards and letters asking for help.

n addition to information about his son's case, Alfonso Moreno keeps pictures and descriptions of others who disappeared the same way, driving on highways near the northern city of Monterrey. He knows their stories as well as his son's. Off the top of his head, he can rattle off the dates they went missing.

"My folder, this is my son," Alfonso Moreno says.

The young man left Mexico City on a road trip to Texas last January. His parents say 33-year-old Alejandro, a computer systems engineer, vanished just an hour away from the U.S.-Mexico border.

They have been searching for him ever since.

On this day, a wood-paneled meeting room at a Mexico City peace foundation is the next step in their hunt. They sit at a table with parents of a street performer, a real estate agent and a group of gold salesmen.

A year ago, they all were strangers. Now, they greet each other like old friends, with smiles and warm embraces.

A brutal drug war has brought them together.

Their children are among more than 5,300 people who have gone missing in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on cartels five years ago, according to the country's National Human Rights Commission. Officials fear the total number could be far higher, because many disappearances go unreported.

The drug war's mounting death toll grabs international attention, but forced disappearances are one of the most troubling problems that Mexico faces, says Rodrigo Escobar Gil, a human rights representative for the Organization of American States.

As the number of cases grows, Moreno and other parents of the missing have become vocal members of the country's high-profile Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, which has staged nationwide protest marches demanding a new drug war strategy, better treatment of victims and greater efforts to find the missing.

Hope that their loved ones may be found alive fuels their fervor.

Moreno says he and his wife, like many who are frustrated by sluggish responses and scarce results from officials, felt forced to launch their own investigation. Their search for clues has taken them from the quiet confines of their gated community in Mexico's capital into some of the country's most dangerous areas.

"I have more than the authorities do," he says. "Unfortunately, organized crime is organized. Our authorities aren't."

Retracing the trail

This is what Alfonso Moreno knows: His son Alejandro climbed into a red Mazda 3 and left Mexico City at 7 a.m. on January 27, 2011. Late that night, he planned to reach Laredo, Texas, visit a friend and pick up a new computer.

Alejandro never made it to the border. He disappeared. So did his car.

But he left a trail. A systems engineer for IBM and lifelong technology lover, he sent regular updates throughout his journey, firing off text messages and posting details about his location on Foursquare and Facebook.

"I just passed the Tropic of Cancer," he wrote on Facebook as he drove through the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi.

A few hours later, another status update compared rush hour in the northern industrial city of Monterrey with traffic jams in the nation's capital.

Just before 7:30 that night, his mother sent him a text message: "Where are you, son?"

"I'm in Monterrey," he replied.

At 8:55 p.m., he posted on Foursquare that he was at a toll booth 107 kilometers (about 65 miles) away from the industrial city, in the town of Sabinas Hidalgo.

Just after 9 p.m., he posted his location again. There was no message -- just his coordinates. His parents suspect he sent them when he spotted something suspicious along the highway.

He hasn't been heard from since.

Time and time again, Alfonso Moreno and his wife, Lucia Baca, have flown to Monterrey and retraced their son's path. But they can only go so far. Officials have warned them to stay out of nearby towns in the area, a stronghold of the Zetas drug cartel.

"I wanted to go looking for him," Moreno says, "but the authorities told me, 'No, if you go in, you won't come out.' "

This is what the father keeps in his blue folder: a grainy toll booth security camera photo that shows his son's hand, reaching out to pay 186 pesos in Sabinas Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon. Business cards of lawmakers, journalists and human rights organizations who've listened to the family's story. Pictures and descriptions of others who disappeared the same way -- driving on highways near the northern city of Monterrey.

He knows their stories as well as his son's. Off the top of his head, he rattles off the dates they went missing.

This is what Alfonso Moreno said when he met their families: Go to the toll booths now, because they only save the security camera photos for two months.

A growing problem

In October, Mexico's president said the "very high" number of missing people was a growing concern. He listed them among the victims of violence that he described as "open wounds" in Mexican society.

"We don't know the size of the problem," Calderon said during a speech inaugurating a new prosecutor's office aimed at helping victims.

"There are different statistics," says Gil of the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, "but what is certain is that this is a massive phenomenon in which a very high number of people are victims of this scourge. ... It consumes family and friends and the whole community with anguish and uncertainty."

Mexico's Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity has documented 600 recent cases of "forced disappearances" as demonstrators from the group travel across the country, protesting violence and collecting victims' stories.

There are thousands more, says Valentina Peralta, who keeps track of information about victims' cases for the movement.

For every death reported, she hears of at least eight other disappearances. But fear stops many from turning to authorities for help.

"They tell us, 'We don't want to file a complaint, because they'll kill us,' " Peralta says.

Some who do go public have managed to wrangle meetings with Calderon and other top Mexican officials

"Thanks to the movement, doors have been opened," Moreno says. "We are no longer invisible victims."

But the burdens they carry are often hidden from view, masked by the steely determination of their fight for justice.

A father closes his family business. A mother eyes the world with distrust. A grandmother fears for her grandchildren's future. For Moreno, old friendships faded. Acquaintances find it too difficult to ask about a missing child.

"A family of pain has been born," Moreno says. "All, all, all hope and pain."

A father's financial struggle

Melchor Flores Landa used to buy and sell homewares in the town of Nextlalpan. Now his search for his son and protest marches against the drug war consume his life. His business is shuttered, and money is tight.

Pain is the only constant. Everything else is in flux -- mentally, physically and financially.

"It's like a waterfall, all going down," he says. "You don't know when you're going to reach the bottom."

Like the Moreno family, his son disappeared in the Monterrey area. He travels the 10-hour bus ride there as often as he can, searching for information. He says his son, a street performer known as "The Galactic Cowboy," hasn't been seen since local police detained him three years ago.

Flores worries authorities will forget about the case if he doesn't show up in person. It costs thousands of pesos (hundreds of dollars) every time he makes the trip.

One recent afternoon, his young daughter asked for 80 pesos ($6) to buy a book.

"I didn't have enough," he says. "If I give her the money, I can't come here."

A grandmother's fear for the future

When Maria Herrera Magdalena gives her grandson a bath, one thought passes through her mind. He is just like his father -- the way he moves, the words he says.

But for this grandchild and several others, having a father is a distant memory.

Four of Herrera's eight children disappeared on gold-buying trips -- a business for which their small town of Pajacuaran in the central Mexican state of Michoacan is known. Three of them left behind young children who still cry out for their fathers.

"To this date they don't understand what's going on. They think they were abandoned," says Herrera, 63. "We haven't wanted to tell them yet. The truth is that I don't feel strong enough."

Fear has taken her sons' place -- at the dinner table, on the street.

Herrera suffers from constant pain, but she knows her grandchildren will feel the deepest consequences.

"They are not going to grow up, nor can they be, like other children. We do not know what future we can give them. ... The love and security that a family has, I know that no one can give it to them," she says.

Tears stream down Herrera's face.

"When I start to talk about my sons, I can't stop crying."

A mother's life in limbo

Other members of the peace movement do a better job of staying composed, Herrera says. She points across the conference room to 54-year-old Julia Alonso, whose son, a real estate agent, disappeared while on vacation outside Monterrey in 2008.

Alonso says remaining focused on the search for her son is a struggle for her, too. Sometimes, hatred overwhelms her. She invites no one into her home. She doesn't give information out over the phone. She fears her son's trusting nature may have contributed to his demise.

"It's as if they stole half your life. Now you don't trust people's intentions," she says.

Despite her inner turmoil, Alonso says she's vowed not to cry until she finds her son and learns his fate.

"The only way I stay this way, when there are 10,000 ideas running through my mind, immediately I run somewhere quiet, I breathe, I wait for the light to reach my heart, and I know I have to live," she says.

Searching for her son keeps her going, even in her darkest hours.

"For family members of victims who have died, at least they know that they are dead," she says. "We are anxious. It is a situation of not knowing. ... We are the ones that push the most because we have the illusion that they will be found alive."

Moreno says some authorities have told him that could be the case, suggesting that cartels kidnap people to strengthen their own operations, putting them to work.

"The car will appear on a ranch in the area at any moment," one official in Nuevo Leon state told him, noting that his son's advanced computer skills could be valuable. "They must be using him."

In October, Mexican troops freed more than 60 people in the neighboring state of Coahuila. The victims told authorities they had been abducted in various locations throughout the country and forced to work for drug gangs.

Reports of unmarked mass graves have also become increasingly common in the region.

A year after his son's disappearance, Moreno says authorities haven't come up with any leads. He and his wife are waiting for answers, and praying that their son will be released by his captors.

"We don't lose faith," he says. "We don't get tired of looking."

His wife smiles and hugs friends as the meeting draws to a close. Moreno holds the blue plastic folder in his hand.

source: CNN NEWS EDITION

20 Pictures Of Real Accidents

noreply@blogger.com (Captain) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:57:00 +0800

An accident or mishap is an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance, often with lack of intention or necessity. It implies a generally negative outcome These photos are taken from actual insurance accident claims forms. They are really true Look them and be glad it wasnt you.