Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Saturday 10 January 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 09 Jan 2015 02:46 PM PST


Hostages have been taken in a jewellery store in Montpellier, Southern France. The new incident is evolving shortly after hostages were freed in Paris and Charlie Hebdo suspects killed in Northern France.
According to the media, two people are being held in a shop in the center of the city. The police have surrounded the area.
There is no precise information yet about the siege. However, the media report it could be an attempted robbery which turned into hostage taking.
People from the surrounding shops were evacuated by the police and the electricity was cut briefly to prepare for the police attack to release the hostages.






The armed man reportedly held the two shopkeepers for about an hour, threatening them with a gun. However, no one was killed nor wounded, local Midi Libre said.
Special police forces arrived on the scene along with the region’s prosecutor and the city mayor.
According to Montpellier prosecutor Christophe Barret, cited by Midi Libre, the situation is “very calm” and there is no reason to connect the siege in Montpellier with the events in Paris and in Northern France.
People from the surrounding shops were evacuated by the police and the electricity was cut to prepare the police attack to release the hostages, the newspaper reported.
The incident in Montpellier has caused a new wave of panic in France as it followed less than an hour after the Charlie Hebdo suspects were killed in Northern France and a hostage siege in a kosher store in Paris, where a gunman was killed. France’s Interior Minister has confirmed that “several” hostages have been killed. There have been four deaths reported in the Paris hostage taking.
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Posted: 09 Jan 2015 02:24 PM PST
Security forces stand guard near Montevideo’s World Trade Center, January 8, 2015.
Uruguayan security staff have reportedly found and dismantled a small improvised explosive device (IED) near the Israeli embassy in the capital, Montevideo.
According to media reports, police dogs discovered the device which was placed in a grocery bag some 100 meters from Montevideo’s World Trade Center complex, which houses the Israeli mission.
The area around the suspicious explosive device was evacuated from inhabitants for bomb disposal experts to safely dismantle it on Thursday.
The IED was believed to be used either to bomb the embassy or to check the security in the area ahead of an attack.
The army spokesman, Colonel Yamandu Lessa, said the object had detonating cord, which is by itself an explosive, but no detonator that could set it off.
In December 2014, shots were fired at Israeli embassy in Greece in a pre-dawn, drive-by gunfire attack in the capital Athens, in which no injuries were reported.
According to police, the shots were apparently fired from a motorcycle with two assailants passing the embassy building.
The police added that two other people on a second motorcycle were also suspected of participating in the incident.
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Posted: 09 Jan 2015 02:21 PM PST


A Mexican drug cartel reportedly placed a $45 million bounty on Texas Gov. Rick Perry, prompting heavy security around the governor, a political insider said.
The insider, who is deep within Republican politics, said an unusual number of black-clad, heavily armed state troopers are escorting Perry to speeches and other public events, such as a recent dinner in South Carolina.
“My state representative was just at a dinner honoring Gov. Perry and observed an unusual amount of security, so [he] asked around and found Perry has a $45 million bounty on his head from [a] Mexican cartel,” he said. “They have been trying to keep it quiet for obvious reasons, but the security is humongous.”
When reached for comment, Perry’s press secretary, Lucy Nashed, confirmed the dinner but referred security questions to the Texas Department of Public Safety, which when contacted refused to give “specifics.”
Cartels placed several multi-million dollar bounties on Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio over the past several years and they also routinely set bounties on Border Patrol agents ranging from $250,000 to $2 million.
Perry previously called the cartels and drug gangs “narco-terrorists” in a 2011 speech.
“What we are seeing south of our border is nothing short of a war being waged by these narco-terrorists,” Perry told the audience. “They represent a clear and a present danger.”
In response, he spearheaded a rapid deployment of state law enforcement agencies to the border, which filled the gaps left by the Border Patrol after the White House ordered the agency to stand down from enforcing immigration and trafficking laws.
State troopers in particular heavily outnumbered the Border Patrol agents seen in and around a border highway in Texas this past summer when the U.S. was hit with a surge of illegal immigrants.
Perry even deployed National Guard troops to the border.
“As the Border Patrol is spread even thinner and thinner with this high influx of the illegal aliens, the gaps in the border have become bigger and you now are the tip of the spear protecting Americans from these cartels and gangs,” he told troops in Bastrop, Texas.
So while the feds backed off, the state of Texas stepped in, so it’s plausible a cartel has placed a price on Perry’s head.
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Posted: 09 Jan 2015 11:26 AM PST
A view of a house razed during a Ukrainian army strike in Stanitsa Luganskaya village, east Ukraine.
Amnesty International has warned that the violence-scarred eastern Ukraine is sliding toward a humanitarian disaster as local residents struggle to get food as well as medicine.
Denis Krivosheev, deputy director of Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International, said on Thursday that the people in Lugansk and Donetsk regions, especially vulnerable people such as pensioners, are under financial burdens to pay for food and medicines.
“While it may be too early to call this a humanitarian catastrophe, it’s clearly progressing in that direction,” Krivosheev said.
Amnesty further noted that pro-Kiev battalions are increasingly blocking humanitarian aid into eastern Ukraine, arguing that they often act like “renegade gangs” and urgently need to be brought under control.
Meanwhile, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has expressed major concern for the elderly in eastern Ukraine following Kiev’s November 2014 decision to stop the flow of social benefits, including pensions, to the militia-held regions.
UNHCR spokesman, William Spindler, said the elderly and the sick together with those living in institutions are not receiving needed financial support.
Ukraine’s mainly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in the east have witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Russia forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations to silence the pro-Moscow protests in mid-April 2014.
Violence intensified later in May after the two flashpoint regions held local referendums in which their residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation.
According to the latest figures released by the United Nations, more than 4,700 people have been killed in the fighting. More than one million people have been also driven from their homes by east Ukraine conflict.
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Posted: 09 Jan 2015 11:18 AM PST
Several hostages freed at Jewish supermarket in Paris.
Four people and one hostage-taker have been killed at a Jewish supermarket in Paris as security forces undertook a rescue operation, according to reports. A worker in Dammartin-en-Goele has been freed, and the two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo massacre killed.
Several loud blasts were heard and smoke has been rising over the printworks in the industrial zone north east of Paris.
Security forces had the building surrounded for most of Friday before the explosions happened.
The National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN), a special operations unit of the French Armed Forces, launched the assault, reported Le Figaro.
The Hebdo suspects emerged firing on security forces, reported an AFP source. One policeman was reportedly injured in the operation. However, he is not in a critical condition.
While the printing works employee in the same building was initially believed to be a hostage, it has been reported by French media that the two Charlie Hebdo massacre suspects holed up in the printworks, Cherif and Said Kouachi, had not been aware that the worker was in the building with them.
Lilian, a 27-year-old graphic designer, hid in a box for the duration of the situation and sent his father a text saying: “I hid on the first floor. I think they killed everyone. Tell the police to intervene…” reported Le Figaro.
The two Islamic terrorists Cherif Kouachi (L), aged 32, and his brother Said Kouachi (R), aged 34 were on US’s no-fly list ‘for years,’ trained with Al-Qaeda in Yemen, yet France let them in with their uncontrolled immigration system.
He gave valuable information to the security services, reported France-based television channel BFMTV. Forces reportedly decided to launch the assault when the two Muslim gunmen started praying to Allah and Prophet Muhammad.
Meanwhile, the hostages who were held at the grocery store in Porte de Vincennes in Paris are being released. One hostage taker is reportedly dead, after special forces entered the building and killed him, according to Le Monde.
Subsequent unconfirmed reports suggested that as many of four of the hostages in the kosher supermarket had been killed.
A police union source told Reuters that at least four were feared dead, and that he believed up to 20 hostages in total had been held in the building.
However, France’s Interior Minister has confirmed that “several” hostages have been killed, without expanding on the precise figure.
While figures remain unclear, a security source also told AFP that as many as four had been critically wounded.
One suspect from the kosher supermarket hostage taking scenario is still at large. She is thought to be 26-year-old Hayat Boumeddiene. Thirty-two-year-old Amedy Coulibaly was killed in the operation. “These people may be armed and dangerous,” said a police statement released earlier on Friday.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 09:37