http://www.youtube.com/v/mAyU7CNC2RE?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Link: Turkey vs Syria: Ties fray amid blame game over border bombing
Machete-wielding Hollywood man arrested for threatening to put neighbors ‘in their coffin’
Los Angeles police arrested an unidentified man Wednesday morning following an overnight standoff that allegedly began when he threatened a neighbor with a machete. KTLA-TV reported that another neighbor filmed the man repeatedly telling police, “shoot me” at one point, before…
Ohio women found alive a decade after disappearance
Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight had been held at the home of Ariel Castro, 52, who has lived in that residence since 1992. Aurora Marti, a 75-year-old resident who lived across the street from the house in which the three women had been held, noticed one of the women as she yelled for help.“She was waving her arm and saying, ‘Help me! Help me!’” Marti told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.Another neighbor, Charles Ramsey, also heard one of the kidnapped victim’s cries for help, and knocked down the home’s door, allowing Berry to escape. Ramsey then phoned 911 to report the incident, but the dispatcher did not believe the story.According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, police records show Ariel Castro was arrested for domestic violence in 1993, but never indicted. He was arrested by police at a nearby McDonald’s after fleeing his home.The three women all disappeared within a few years of each other. Amanda Berry had last been seen on April 21, 2003, one day prior to her 17th birthday. Gina DeJesus, 14 at the time, vanished on April 2, 2004 and Michelle Knight, then 21, was last seen on August 23, 2002.Family members said they hadn’t given up hope of seeing Berry and DeJesus again. Among them was Kayla Rogers, a childhood friend of DeJesus.”I’ve been praying, never forgot about her, ever,” Rogers told The Plain Dealer. “This is amazing. This is a celebration. I’m so happy. I just want to see her walk out of those doors so I can hug her.”In January, prison inmate Robert Wolford was sentenced to 4 1/2 years after admitting he provided a false burial tip in Berry’s disappearance. Only last summer, Wolford tipped authorities to look for Berry’s remains in a Cleveland lot. He was taken to that location, which was dug up with backhoes, but no remains were found.Prior to that, two men were arrested for questioning in the 2004 disappearance of DeJesus, but were released after a thorough police search and use of a cadaver dog did not turn up her body.Neighbors and local relatives of the suspect found news of the three women’s reappearance shocking.Julio Castro said that his nephew Ariel used to play bass in various bands that performed at a local club, once owned by DeJesus’ uncle.Meanwhile, a June 2004 story that appeared in a local neighborhood newspaper written by someone named Ariel Castro, which described the community’s anxiety since the disappearance of DeJesus and Berry has been the subject of speculation, though it remains unclear whether it had been written by the suspect. … Read More
Six dead after Illinois massacre
MANCHESTER, Ill. (AP) — The nephew of a small-town Illinois mayor shot and killed five people, including two boys, before leading police on a chase that ended in an exchange of gunfire that left him dead, authorities said Wednesday.Illinois State Police said they believe Rick O. Smith, 43, entered the Manchester home through the back door and shot the victims at close range, leaving two women, one man and the boys dead. Two people were found in a bedroom, two in a second bedroom and the man in the hallway. A sixth victim, a 6-year-old girl, was injured and taken to a Springfield hospital.”The offender took the 6-year-old out of the residence and put her in the hands of a neighbor,” State Police Lt. Col. Todd Kilby said.Officials have not revealed a motive for the killings. Police said the victims are related and they believe Smith and the victims were acquainted but they didn’t provide details of the relationships.A bystander called police and told them that Smith fled the home in a white sedan. A car chase ensued, leading authorities to the nearby town of Winchester, where Smith and officers exchanged gunfire. Officers shot Smith, and he later died at a hospital.Continue Reading… … Read More
Russia to deploy fighter jets, anti-aircraft missiles at new Belarus base – DM
“We are starting to look into the plan to create a Russian air force base in Belarus with fighter jets. We hope that by 2015 an air force regiment will be based here,” Sergey Shoigu announced.The Russian defense chief added that a Russian air force HQ in Belarus will be set up by 2014 and test flights by one wing of fighter jets will start in the same year.Russia will also deliver four battalions of S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Belarus in 2014, Shoigu told the press. The Defense Minister emphasized that in future the Russian Federation would contribute to the Belarus defense capabilities. Belarus has signed an agreement with Russia on creating a joint anti-aircraft defense as did Russia’s eastern neighbor and ally, Kazakhstan.Currently there are two Russian military installations in Belarus, one the radar station that is part of the missile strike warning system, and the other a communications hub that provides links to Russian nuclear submarines on combat duty.Russia also has bases in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Tajikistan. However, some of these installations are currently under threat, though mostly for financial reasons.Last year Russia and Kyrgyzstan restarted a row when the country’s authorities attempted to raise the rent for Russia’s base there, and the situation was only resolved after President Putin visited Bishkek. … Read More
What it would be like to live in violence
I live in Cambridge, Boston’s neighbor to the north, and my proximity to that city and the appalling act of terrorism during Monday’s marathon have me thinking a lot about empathy this week, as I struggle with the limitations of my own. Even as I resist the urge towards tribalism (“We’re all Bostonians today” vs. We’re all humans all of the time), I won’t deny the desperate But this is our home! We LIVE here! feeling that comes straight out of fear. It is a feeling borne of nearness to calamity, but that, of course, is felt by anyone living under threat of violence, be it infrequent or constant.On the phone, talking about the bombings with worried loved ones living far away, I bristled at a question I have myself posed in the past and contemplate with some regularity: “God, can you imagine living in a place where this happened all of the time?” No. I haven’t the first idea what that would be like, and I acknowledge the sheer dumb luck of that. As my dear and brilliant friend Preeta Samarasan says, “So often we say to each other, ‘I can’t imagine,’ when really what we mean is that we don’t want to, that imagining would be unbearable.” For a moment this week, some of us didn’t have to imagine quite so much.Continue Reading… … Read More
North Korea open to talks with U.S.?
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said it was open to dialog with the US but that it would not return to the “humiliating negotiating table” until it has boosted its nuclear arsenal enough to fend off an American attack, the state news agency reported.”Genuine dialog is possible only at the phase where the DPRK has acquired nuclear deterrent enough to defuse the US threat of nuclear war unless the US rolls back its hostile policy,” the North’s foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state news agency, KCNA.The statement came after a series of escalating threats against both the US and its neighbor, South Korea.President Barack Obama said in an interview Tuesday that it is likely that North Korea will display more “provocative behavior” but that it would not be rewarded.Continue Reading… … Read More
