[FOX] A Border Patrol agent was arrested early Saturday after allegedly killing four women -- believed to have been prostitutes -- and kidnapping a fifth, officials say.
Juan David Ortiz, an intel supervisor for the Border Patrol, was found about 2 a.m. when state troopers tracked him to a hotel parking lot in the border city of Laredo, Texas. He was found hiding in a truck.
Officials say they were alerted about the 35-year-old Ortiz after a fifth woman allegedly escaped from him and notified authorities.
Despite withholding information surrounding the killings, including the victims’ identities, Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar said investigators have "very strong evidence" that Ortiz is responsible for the deaths of the four women. Cuellar said investigators believe heacted alone.
Webb County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said that the evidence suggests that "the manner in which they were killed is similar." He said authorities are still trying to pinpoint a motive for the killings, but that all of the women worked as prostitutes.
"We do consider this to be a serial killer," he said.
In a statement, Andrew Meehan, assistant commissioner for public affairs for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said his agency is fully cooperating with all investigators.
"Our sincerest condolences go out to the victims' family and friends. While it is CBP policy to not comment on the details of an ongoing investigation, criminal action by our employees is not, and will not be tolerated," Meehan said.
The district attorney’s office intends to charge Ortiz with four counts of murder and one count of aggravated kidnapping.
[Fox13] TOOELE, Utah ‐ It was just an ordinary day for Tooele Veterinary Clinic - that is, until it turned into Tooele’s version of the running of the bulls.
"That’s only in Tooele," you can hear Fox 13 viewer Louise Sanchez exclaim, as she films a bull casually standing in front of the Walmart off of Main Street.
But how did the bull get there in the first place?
"Bulls don’t like to be messed with," said Tooele Veterinary Clinic DVM Joe Roundy, who just happened to be caring for the run-away bull.
Roundy was supposed to perform a quick 45-minute procedure.
"We’d been fighting him, got him all ticked off because he didn’t want to go into where our squeeze chute is," Roundy said, referring to the area they lead bulls into in order to perform minimal standing procedures.
[Telegraph] India's most celebrated hunter has been called in for a controversial mission to shoot a man-eating tigress blamed for killing 13 people.
Nawab Shafath Ali Khan has begun his hunt after India's highest court dismissed objections from conservation groups and authorised the killing of the four-year-old cat and her two cubs.
The hunter, scion of an aristocratic family, has started combing the jungles of Maharashtra after the tigress known as T1 terrorised villages in recent months.
Wildlife activists had unsuccessfully sought to block any court order allowing the killing of the cat, arguing there was no definitive proof the tigress was responsible for the deaths.
They have also tried to block the involvement of Mr Khan, who is the go-to marksman for Indian officials troubled by man-eating tigers, rogue elephants or destructive wild boar.
Mr Khan is stalking the tiger with elephants because vehicles are too loud and has said he will only shoot to kill as a last resort, instead using a tranquiliser gun if possible. The hunt authorisation calls for Mr Khan to attempt to capture the tigress alive, but to kill it if necessary. Activists fear Mr Khan, who is renowned for killing hundreds of animals, will only make a token effort to take the cat alive.
[Wash Examiner] As Florence sweeps over the Carolinas, one measure of a storm's severity is catching people's attention: the Waffle House Index.
Of the company's 230 restaurants in the path of the tropical storm, 17 were closed Saturday, said a spokesman for the company, with nine others operating without power and seven more open and powered by generators.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency's website says the index tests how a community is faring. Red is closed; yellow is open, but serving a limited menu; green is open and serving a full menu.
Spokesman Pat Warner, in an interview with Fox News, said the restaurant's status has become an indicator of how a community is faring after a storm.
"We're kind of an indicator how quickly the community is coming back after the storm. If we're open quickly, we know they're coming back or get back to a sense of normalcy. We take pride in being the canary in the coal mine, as we've been called," he said. "We've been called the Waffle House index, and we're pretty proud that people look to us to see if we're coming back."
#1
...We have three within five miles and they've never missed a beat - and they've been doing great business too, as we have hundreds of repair crews standing by here in Columbia to help out once things settle down.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/16/2018 3:48 Comments ||
Top||
Posted by: Fred ||
09/16/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11130 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Severe storm weather can be different even one arms length plus a hand. And if you stood out there all day getting blown over, you would walk funny too.
#3
CNN's Anderson Cooper has been seen doing similar faking. He once stood in a ditch ïn waist deep water while the camera men were set up in ankle deep water a few feet away.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Tunisia’s ruling party has suspended Prime Minister Youssef Chahed in the latest escalation of a row with the president’s son that has paralyzed key decisions on the troubled economy.
The North African country is often portrayed as the lone success story of the Arab Spring of 2011 but more than seven years after the ouster of longtime strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali it is still battling high inflation and unemployment and sometimes violent social unrest.
Nidaa Tounes announced Chahed’s referral to its disciplinary committee late on Friday after he delivered a stinging attack on infighting within the party that he said was restricting his government’s ability to revive the economy.
"Secondary political conflicts.. have disrupted the work of the government, holding it back and blocking the reform process and the decisions necessary to achieve economic growth," he said in a televised address to a policy conference.
The ruling party is led by President Beji Caid Essebsi’s son Hafedh, who has been battling to oust the premier for months.
The power struggle previously came to a head in July, when the president himself called on Chahed to resign.
The move received the backing of the powerful UGTT trade union confederation, which opposes the program of austerity budgets and privatizations of state enterprises championed by the prime minister.
But Chahed was saved by the Islamist Ennahdha party, the second largest in parliament, which said it was important for Tunisia’s stability that the prime minister remain in post.
Chahed, who took office in August 2016, is the seventh prime minister since the revolution and already the longest serving. He also has the ear of Western donors.
The premier has since been preparing for any new moves against him, by forming his own separate grouping within Nida Tounes.
He can count on the backing of around 40 politicians -- nearly half of the party’s parliamentary bloc.
The deepening rift within the ruling party comes as the government faces a mid-October deadline to unveil a 2019 budget.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/16/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
[AlAhram] Mubarak's sons were arrested at the court and ordered transfer to the Tora prison.
The defendants were initially put on trial for the case in May 2012, but the case was suspended in 2013 so that the prosecution could include other defendants.
Seven others have also been charged along with Mubarak’s sons in the case.
Last March, the court again delayed the trial for three months, pending the results of a detailed report by a specialized committee on the case, according to an earlier court rule.
Mubarak, who was ousted following Egypt's 2011 revolution, was convicted by a lower court on corruption charges with his two sons.
In May 2015, a court sentenced Gamal and Alaa to three years in jail over embezzling at least EGP 125 million ($16 million in 2015) from funds earmarked for maintenance of presidential palaces.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
09/16/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11129 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
[Salisbury Journal] A cordon is in place on the high street, also affecting New Street, Crane Street and the entrance to the Cathedral Close.
It is believed at least one person has "fallen ill" at the scene, with witnesses describing police "covering someone up" with a blanket.
People inside the Old Ale House pub have been told they cannot leave, and crews are putting on hazmat suits outside.
Emergency crews in white suits and face masks are inside Prezzo, and other officers in full hazmat suits are standing by.
A fire engine, ambulance, four police cars and an incident response unit are at the scene.
Police were called by the ambulance service to Prezzo at 6.45pm following a medical incident involving a man and a woman.
The restaurant and surrounding roads have been cordoned off "as a precautionary measure" while officers attend the scene and establish the circumstances surrounding what has led them to fall ill.
Another witness, Sam Proudfoot said there was "a man in a full white body suit with a mouth mask" at the scene.
It comes after Wiltshire Police issued a warning to drug users in the county as they believed the toxic opioid fentanyl is currently in circulation.
There is currently no confirmation on whether the incident is linked to ongoing nerve agent investigations.
[Bellingcat] An ongoing Bellingcat investigation conducted jointly with The Insider Russia has confirmed through uncovered passport data that the two Russian nationals identified by UK authorities as prime suspects in the Novichok poisonings on British soil are linked to Russian security services. This finding directly contradicts claims by the Russian president on 12 September 2018, and by the two men in an interview broadcast on RT one day later, that they are civilians who traveled to Salisbury for a tourist getaway.
Original Russian documents reviewed by Bellingcat and The Insider confirm definitively that the two men were registered in the central Russian resident database under the names Alexander Yevgenievich Petrov and Ruslan Timurovich Boshirov, respectively, and were issued internal passports under these names in 2009. However, no records exist for these two personas prior to 2009. This suggests the two names were likely cover identities for operatives of one of the Russian security services. Crucially, at least one man’s passport files contain various "top-secret" markings, which, according to at least two sources consulted by Bellingcat, are typically reserved for members of secret services or top state operatives.
These findings, along with peculiarities in the two men’s bookings of their flight to London, make Russia’s official statements that Petrov and Boshirov are civilian tourists implausible, and corroborate UK authorities’ claims that they are in fact officers of a Russian security service.
Last-minute travel plans
Aeroflot’s passenger manifest, reviewed by Bellingcat and The Insider, discredits Petrov and Boshirov’s claims, made in the RT interview, that they had been planning their visit to Salisbury for a long time. The manifest records the times of booking, check-in, and boarding of each passenger. In the case of the two suspects, they made their initial booking ‐ and checked in online ‐ at 20:00 GMT (22:00 Moscow time) on 1 March 2018, the night before their short trip to London and Salisbury.
[Miami Herald] Nearly 40 percent of all Venezuelan stores have closed ‐some of them perhaps permanently ‐after the government of President Nicolas Maduro increased the minimum salary by nearly 3,500 percent in one fell swoop, according the National Council of Commerce and Services of Venezuela.
Many of the companies, which had been barely surviving the gradual collapse of the economy, saw the salary increase and other changes announced last month as the fatal blow in a series of policies that have been gradually strangling their businesses.
"These decisions are leading many business people to say, 'No, I can't do it any more,'" said Maria Carolina Uzcategui, president of the council.
The problem is that Venezuelan companies are being forced to sell at prices far below cost just as employee salaries are increasing 60 times, Uzcategui said.
What's more, the regime has banned stores from increasing their prices to cover the salary increases, arguing that it is not necessary.
If they do increase prices, store owners or managers can end up in prison, Uzcategui said.
"We have inspections, and they force us to sell at last month's prices," she said. "That takes money away from the business because of the hyperinflation, when you can't even sell at yesterday's prices because you lose money."
"And anyone who protests against these measures runs the risk of going to jail, without the right to appeal, without the right to anything, simply because the official whose turn it was to inspect the store just felt like arresting you. He did it, and that's all," she said.
Estimates by the legislative National Assembly show that the country's inflation hit 200 percent in August alone ‐which means the currency, the bolivar, lost two-thirds of its value in 31 days.
About four in 10 stores have not opened since Maduro announced the salary increase two weeks ago. And some of the stores that did open are liquidating their merchandise and plan to close definitively when that's done.
Economist Orlando Ochoa said the stores cannot survive the salary increase, especially because the owners already had problems obtaining foreign currency to buy imports.
"The government sector has the monopoly on imports, the currency market is dysfunctional and there's hyperinflation," Ochoa said. "So, if salaries are increased by decree, and the commercial and industrial sectors cannot sell their products because of these problems, and on top of that because of electricity blackouts, infrastructure problems and the loss of qualified personnel, which is leaving the country, then it's easy to understand that many may prefer to close."
The decision to close is much easier for small and medium-size companies. Bigger companies risk losing equipment and other investments that could be seized by the government, Ochoa said.
The problem becomes even worse because the economic collapse that the country is suffering is pummeling consumers and therefore sales, said Francisco Ibarra, director of the Econometrica company.
"If you already have a demand that has been falling across all Venezuelan sectors, and you have this kind of increase in salary, and then you don't have any way of adding these costs to the prices, and you also don't have access to bank financing, and the company already was not generating significant profits, it's obvious then that what's happening is that the company is dying," Ibarra said.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/16/2018 10:23 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11136 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
Socialism - central planning by people who don't understand fundamentals of economics
#4
Well obviously Maduro needs to pass a law forcing these businesses to re-open at previous employment levels or visit a re-education camp until they realize their capitalist running dog sins and socialism works.
It should be noted that Russia has seized two commercial boats, a fishing boat and a minibulker since September 2nd.
All of this stems from Ukraine seized the fishing vessel Nord earlier last summer.
Video of the incident at the link.
[DefenceBlog] The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine reported on 14 September that Russian Mangust-class patrol boat, also known as Project 12150, arranged provocations by undertaking dangerous maneuvers in the Sea of Azov.
According to the statement, the Russian PSKA-611 Coast Guard vessel dangerously was close to colliding with the Ukrainian combat ship in the area of Dolgaya Spit.
The Mangust-class patrol craft is designed to operate in coastal areas, ports, and other littoral areas, to perform missions like protection of territorial maritime borders, law enforcement, other defense missions, search and rescue, protection of fisheries, and enforcing rules of navigation.
‘During the survey, the Russian crew claimed that follows in accordance with the task, however, after that changed its course and headed in the direction of the Ukrainian boat. Yet, it was undertaking dangerous maneuvers and approached by several meters to the boat of the State Border Guard Service. The Russians were recommended to change their course, in reply, once more they undertook a dangerous maneuver, causing dangerous conditions of navigations. The Russian border patrol boat changed its direction after all,’ the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine claimed.
The 112 Channel also reported that Ukraine’s Border Guard Service also claimed that the crew of the Russian boat violated the requirements of the international rules for preventing collision of ships at sea.
It should be noted that the Russian activity in the Sea of Azov increased over the last three months. Russians do not allow the trade vessels heading to and emerging from the Ukrainian ports to freely pass through the Kerch Strait.
In this regard, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko commissioned the Minister of Defense, the Chief of the General Staff and the Commandment of the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to take measures to stop Russian provocations in relation to blocking the entry of vessels into Ukrainian ports on the Azov Sea. The Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine developed a set of measures in response to Russia’s actions. The set of measures includes the limit of passenger traffic with Russia.
Also,Ukraine deployed modern armoured artillery boats to Azov Sea to counter Russian aggression.
[IsraelTimes] Alleged spies caught as institute was analyzing data on Novichok poison used in UK attack, as well as on chemical attacks in Syria
Dutch intelligence services snatched two alleged Russian spies earlier this year on suspicion of planning to hack a sensitive Swiss laboratory used by the world’s chemical warfare watchdog, reports and officials said Friday.
The two agents, believed to be working for Russia’s GRU military intelligence service, targeted the Spiez laboratory near Bern, Dutch-based NRC newspaper and Swiss daily Tages-Anzeiger said.
At the time, Spiez was analyzing data related to poison gas attacks in Syria, as well as the March 4 attack using the nerve agent Novichok on Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK, they reported.
The laboratory does analytical work for the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
The two were detained "early this year" by Dutch military intelligence (MIVD) working together with several other countries, the newspapers reported.
"The duo, according to sources within the investigation, carried equipment which they wanted to use to break into the computer network" of the Spiez laboratory.
Exact details of the alleged agents’ arrest are unknown.
But on March 26, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced that his cabinet had decided to expel "two Russian intelligence workers from the Russian embassy" as a result of the Skripal attack, without giving further details.
Swiss intelligence officials Friday confirmed they were aware of the incident.
"The case of the Russian spies discovered in The Hague and then expelled from The Hague is known to Swiss authorities," Isabelle Graber, spokeswoman for the Swiss intelligence services (SRC), told AFP.
The Swiss spy agency "actively participated in this operation in collaboration with its Dutch and British partners in prevention of illegal actions against critical Swiss infrastructure," she said.
Dutch intelligence services declined to comment when contacted by AFP, saying "we don’t give information about operations."
Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service information head Sergei Ivanov also told the RIA Novosti state news agency that "the SVR does not comment on this information."
However, a woman is only as old as she admits... in April Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the OPCW of "manipulating" the results of the Skripal probe by omitting findings from the Spiez laboratory.
According to the results from Spiez, the samples sent by the OPCW contained a nerve agent called "BZ" which was manufactured by the West, Lavrov said, citing "confidential information."
Two men who were accused by Britannia of being GRU agents involved in the murder attempt on Skripal insisted in an interview that they were merely tourists who had come to visit Salisbury cathedral.
But the two men in the interview, named by British security services as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, "were not the two agents intercepted" by the Netherlands, the papers said.
#5
Large country on the Asian landmass likely cource of the hacked equipment and tech being used against, and sudden descent suggests knowing participants on-site, hence the air cover to spot leakers. I'm guessing some of the staff have non-Irish names and are worthy of a glance...
#3
Being a women is hard - especially in our times when they're been convinced that being a counterfeit man (never actually as good as the original article) should be a woman's highest ambition.
#5
"The woman who is not pursued sets up the doctrine that pursuit is offensive to her sex, and wants to make it a felony. No genuinely attractive woman has any such desire."
-- H.L. Mencken, In Defense Of Women
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
09/16/2018 4:53 Comments ||
Top||
#10
They need to get a little bigger. Many college kids are skipping out on laptops altogether (at least here in China). They do everything on their phone including writing English papers, and printing them out on a wireless printer.
Posted by: Ulaimble Prince of the Slytherins9770 ||
09/16/2018 8:35 Comments ||
Top||
#12
"Snap-On Tools doesn't have a feminist/LGBTQQ section!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/16/2018 8:44 Comments ||
Top||
#13
My iPhone 5c has been on its last legs, so a few days ago I invested in an SE, which apparently is a 6 in a 5 body. There has long been a sizable and vocal minority, both male and female, who do not think bigger is better in a telephone, and so that body was resurrected to fill a real market niche. I was advised by the Apple store clerk to check back to see if the SE on offer after Wednesday’s upgrade announcement would still have 6 innards or be upgraded to 7 innards, but instead Apple took it off the market altogether.
But this isn’t a feminist issue, merely one of a minority with a strongly felt taste. If the feminists want a mass-market manufacturer to meet their specific desire for a smallish device, they could easily win the point by showing survey results indicating a market size in multiple millions of units.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Fox13] TOOELE, Utah ‐ It was just an ordinary day for Tooele Veterinary Clinic - that is, until it turned into Tooele’s version of the running of the bulls.
[Wash Examiner] As Florence sweeps over the Carolinas, one measure of a storm's severity is catching people's attention: the Waffle House Index.
[Salisbury Journal] A cordon is in place on the high street, also affecting New Street, Crane Street and the entrance to the Cathedral Close.
[Bellingcat] An ongoing Bellingcat investigation conducted jointly with The Insider Russia has confirmed through uncovered passport data that the two Russian nationals identified by UK authorities as prime suspects in the Novichok poisonings on British soil are linked to Russian security services. This finding directly contradicts claims by the Russian president on 12 September 2018, and by the two men in an interview broadcast on RT one day later, that they are civilians who traveled to Salisbury for a tourist getaway.
Miami Herald] Nearly 40 percent of all Venezuelan stores have closed ‐some of them perhaps permanently ‐after the government of President Nicolas Maduro increased the minimum salary by nearly 3,500 percent in one fell swoop, according the National Council of Commerce and Services of Venezuela.
