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A mother pushing her child in a stroller in downtown El Paso was struck by an errant bullet fired during a shootout between Mexican police and Cartel suspects just across the border in violence-ridden Ciudad Juarez, according to El Paso police officials.
El Paso, TexasForty-eight-year-old Maria Romero has been treated and released from El Paso's University Medical Center, but authorities continue to investigate the rare cross-border shooting. Her child was unharmed.
Romero, a Mexican citizen, is a legal U.S. immigrant and did not even hear the bursts of assault rifle fire across the border, according to a statement by the El Paso police department. But others did, calling 911 earlier and alerting them to the gun battle apparently taking place on the Mexican side of the border, according to El Paso police Sgt. Chris Mears.
Romero had been walking in downtown El Paso on Overland Ave., a busy shopping district lined with jewelry and western wear stores, when she was hit. There is no line of sight to Mexico. So how did she get shot? "The entry and exit of the bullet shows a high trajectory shot," said Sgt. Mears, meaning that the bullet was likely fired upwards by either the Mexican police or the gunmen, and happened to loop back down right into Romero's calf.
It was a freak shot, said Mears, who added that "no one in the department can remember this ever happening before." It is certainly the first such incident since the Mexican government's struggle to control the drug trade, which has claimed well over 50,000 Mexican lives, erupted into full-blown war.
In 2008, Mexico's powerful Sinaloa cartel took on Juarez cartel rivals over turf, littering the city of low-wage export assembly plants with its daily toll of gunshot victims and mutilated corpses.
But rounds fired in Mexico's drug war next door have previously struck buildings in the Texas border city.
Two years ago, bullets fired in a gunfight between a suspected drug gang and Mexican authorities struck City Hall, smashing a window. Rounds have also struck a building at the University of Texas at El Paso campus, although no injuries were reported.
Politicians in the United States have voiced fears of possible spillover violence from Mexico, although El Paso, a sprawling southwest Texas city of 700,000 residents, was named the safest city of its size in the United States for the first time two years ago.
In fact, statistics show El Paso has a murder rate 26 times lower than another American border town: Buffalo, New York.
And Mayor John Cook said that violence in Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican border cities has been declining. "It's unfortunate that a carjacking like this is going to get national attention when Mexico is actually doing a pretty good job controlling the violence," Cook said.
He said there is no indication that Tuesday's incident was cartel-related.
The ordeal prompted two elementary schools and a middle school near the border to be locked down for half an hour, according to El Paso Independent School District spokeswoman Renee De Santos.
World leaders meet in London to discuss 20 year war in Somalia
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As world leaders meet in London to discuss ways of bringing stability to Somalia, which has been at civil war for over 20 years, AFPTV visited the South of the country. Four months ago Kenyan troops invaded their neighbours, but progress has been slow.
Somalia's fragile leadership, its neighbors and international allies are meeting in London in the hope of speeding the troubled east African nation's progress toward a stable government and containing the threat from Islamic militants who some fear could export terrorism to Europe and the United States.
About 50 nations and international organizations will attend the one-day summit Thursday, including Somalia's Western-backed transitional government, officials from the northern breakaway republic of Somaliland, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
However many are skeptical the talks can agree on concrete steps to address Somalia's complex problems — pirates who target international shipping, the al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab which holds territory in the country's center and south and the effects of a lengthy famine which Britain's government estimates have killed between 50,000 and 100,000 people.
Others suspect the attention of Clinton and world leaders is currently focused on more urgent troubles, including the crisis in Syria — which will be discussed in meetings on the sidelines of the conference.
Somalia has had transitional administrations for the past seven years, but not had a functioning central government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a longtime dictator and turned on each other, plunging the nation into two decades of chaos. The weak U.N.-backed administration — which holds the capital, Mogadishu, with the support of about 12,000 African Union soldiers — has been boosted by recent offensives against al-Shabab and U.N. approval Wednesday for an increase in the size of the peacekeeping mission.
"We are moving from an era of warlordism, terrorism, extremism and piracy and we are moving into an era of peace, stability and normalcy," Somali prime minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali told BBC radio. "Twenty years of lawlessness, violence and chaos is enough. Somalis are ready to move on."
British Prime Minister David Cameron said the London conference would try to bolster tentative signs of progress, including a recent fall in the number of pirate attacks off Somalia's coast.
The European Union's naval anti-piracy patrol said pirates hijacked six vessels between May and December 2011, compared to 19 between January and April. Ransoms last year cost the shipping industry about $135 million.
"It means working with all the parts of Somalia — which has been more blighted by famine, by disease, by violence, by terrorism than almost any other in the world — to give that country a second chance," Cameron told lawmakers Wednesday.
In New York, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize an increase in the African Union peacekeeping force — known as AMISOM — from 12,000 to about 17,700 and expand its areas of operation in an effort to intensify pressure on militants.
Al-Shabab — which earlier this month formalized its relationship with al-Qaida — is currently being hit from three sides in Somalia, pressed out of Mogadishu by AMISOM soldiers, while Kenyan forces who moved into Somalia in October pressure the militants from the south and Ethiopian forces sweep in from the west.
The leaders of Kenya and Ethiopia, who sent in troops amid concerns that Somalia's instability would spread over their borders, are attending the London talks.
Western intelligence agencies worry that al-Shabab militants, including foreign fighters trained in Somali camps, could attempt to mount attacks in Europe and the U.S. In Britain, which hosts the 2012 Olympics in July, spy agencies are recruiting Somali language specialists.
"The security threat is real, it is substantial. It is based on the fact that al-Shabab is an organization that has now explicitly linked itself to al-Qaida, and it encourages violent jihad not just in Somalia but also outside Somalia," Cameron told the BBC Somali service television.
Officials estimate about 40 people have traveled from the U.S. to Somalia to join al-Shabab since 2007, and that around 50 Britons are currently fighting there. Security officials believe Somali training camps are now being used by foreign extremists with no ties to the country, many of whom have been squeezed out of Pakistan's borderlands.
In a message posted to a recognized Twitter feed, Al-Shabab accused Cameron of "meddling in Islam affairs in the hope of reviving a hopeless dream of a British Empire" by holding the talks.
Eritrea, which is accused by Somalia and the U.N. of providing support to al-Shabab, has been refused an invitation.
Leaders of the northern breakaway republic of Somaliland will take a role — but won't win the international recognition they crave, Cameron said. Critics of Western efforts have suggested that local administrations in Somaliland and neighboring Puntland offer a better model for the entire country than attempts to create a central authority.
Explaining Somali's progress against piracy, Capt. Phil Haslam, a naval officer with the EU anti-piracy patrol, said pirates currently hold seven vessels and 191 hostages, compared to 32 ships and 661 hostages in January 2011.
But Haslam, based at the EU's anti-piracy headquarters in London, warned that the EU and other international missions are covering about 3.2 million square miles with around 25 boats. "It's akin to policing Europe with 25 police cars," he said.
Clinton and Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague will travel from the London talks to a conference on Syria's future being held Friday in Tunis.
Real Shocking Crimes caught on camera: "Warning Graphic."
What your mainstream media never tell you: Marvel at the al-Jazeera film crew whipping the crowd to hysteria. This is what most UK/american mainstream media do ; get the crowds TO ACT for the cameras.
Ever noticed the STAGED gun shots or in-the-lens chanting?
It's all fake, staged propaganda for the liars at Sky/ITN/BBC?CNN/Fox.
اسامہ بن لادن ہلاکओसामा बिन लादेन को मार डाला
قتل أسامة بن لادن
Oussama Ben Laden tué
Osama Bin Laden getötet
Usama bin Ladin dödas
DURBAN, South Africa -- “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.
Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is "Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention -- Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean 'for'] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.
The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN's skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.
A mother pushing her child in a stroller in downtown El Paso was struck by an errant bullet fired during a shootout between Mexican police and Cartel suspects just across the border in violence-ridden Ciudad Juarez, according to El Paso police officials.
 |
| Police investigate |
Romero, a Mexican citizen, is a legal U.S. immigrant and did not even hear the bursts of assault rifle fire across the border, according to a statement by the El Paso police department. But others did, calling 911 earlier and alerting them to the gun battle apparently taking place on the Mexican side of the border, according to El Paso police Sgt. Chris Mears.
Romero had been walking in downtown El Paso on Overland Ave., a busy shopping district lined with jewelry and western wear stores, when she was hit. There is no line of sight to Mexico. So how did she get shot? "The entry and exit of the bullet shows a high trajectory shot," said Sgt. Mears, meaning that the bullet was likely fired upwards by either the Mexican police or the gunmen, and happened to loop back down right into Romero's calf.
It was a freak shot, said Mears, who added that "no one in the department can remember this ever happening before." It is certainly the first such incident since the Mexican government's struggle to control the drug trade, which has claimed well over 50,000 Mexican lives, erupted into full-blown war.
In 2008, Mexico's powerful Sinaloa cartel took on Juarez cartel rivals over turf, littering the city of low-wage export assembly plants with its daily toll of gunshot victims and mutilated corpses.
But rounds fired in Mexico's drug war next door have previously struck buildings in the Texas border city.
Two years ago, bullets fired in a gunfight between a suspected drug gang and Mexican authorities struck City Hall, smashing a window. Rounds have also struck a building at the University of Texas at El Paso campus, although no injuries were reported.
Politicians in the United States have voiced fears of possible spillover violence from Mexico, although El Paso, a sprawling southwest Texas city of 700,000 residents, was named the safest city of its size in the United States for the first time two years ago.
In fact, statistics show El Paso has a murder rate 26 times lower than another American border town: Buffalo, New York.
And Mayor John Cook said that violence in Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican border cities has been declining. "It's unfortunate that a carjacking like this is going to get national attention when Mexico is actually doing a pretty good job controlling the violence," Cook said.
He said there is no indication that Tuesday's incident was cartel-related.
The ordeal prompted two elementary schools and a middle school near the border to be locked down for half an hour, according to El Paso Independent School District spokeswoman Renee De Santos.
World leaders meet in London to discuss 20 year war in Somalia
Tweet
As world leaders meet in London to discuss ways of bringing stability to Somalia, which has been at civil war for over 20 years, AFPTV visited the South of the country. Four months ago Kenyan troops invaded their neighbours, but progress has been slow.
About 50 nations and international organizations will attend the one-day summit Thursday, including Somalia's Western-backed transitional government, officials from the northern breakaway republic of Somaliland, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
However many are skeptical the talks can agree on concrete steps to address Somalia's complex problems — pirates who target international shipping, the al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab which holds territory in the country's center and south and the effects of a lengthy famine which Britain's government estimates have killed between 50,000 and 100,000 people.
Others suspect the attention of Clinton and world leaders is currently focused on more urgent troubles, including the crisis in Syria — which will be discussed in meetings on the sidelines of the conference.
Somalia has had transitional administrations for the past seven years, but not had a functioning central government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a longtime dictator and turned on each other, plunging the nation into two decades of chaos. The weak U.N.-backed administration — which holds the capital, Mogadishu, with the support of about 12,000 African Union soldiers — has been boosted by recent offensives against al-Shabab and U.N. approval Wednesday for an increase in the size of the peacekeeping mission.
"We are moving from an era of warlordism, terrorism, extremism and piracy and we are moving into an era of peace, stability and normalcy," Somali prime minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali told BBC radio. "Twenty years of lawlessness, violence and chaos is enough. Somalis are ready to move on."
British Prime Minister David Cameron said the London conference would try to bolster tentative signs of progress, including a recent fall in the number of pirate attacks off Somalia's coast.
The European Union's naval anti-piracy patrol said pirates hijacked six vessels between May and December 2011, compared to 19 between January and April. Ransoms last year cost the shipping industry about $135 million.
"It means working with all the parts of Somalia — which has been more blighted by famine, by disease, by violence, by terrorism than almost any other in the world — to give that country a second chance," Cameron told lawmakers Wednesday.
In New York, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize an increase in the African Union peacekeeping force — known as AMISOM — from 12,000 to about 17,700 and expand its areas of operation in an effort to intensify pressure on militants.
Al-Shabab — which earlier this month formalized its relationship with al-Qaida — is currently being hit from three sides in Somalia, pressed out of Mogadishu by AMISOM soldiers, while Kenyan forces who moved into Somalia in October pressure the militants from the south and Ethiopian forces sweep in from the west.
The leaders of Kenya and Ethiopia, who sent in troops amid concerns that Somalia's instability would spread over their borders, are attending the London talks.
Western intelligence agencies worry that al-Shabab militants, including foreign fighters trained in Somali camps, could attempt to mount attacks in Europe and the U.S. In Britain, which hosts the 2012 Olympics in July, spy agencies are recruiting Somali language specialists.
"The security threat is real, it is substantial. It is based on the fact that al-Shabab is an organization that has now explicitly linked itself to al-Qaida, and it encourages violent jihad not just in Somalia but also outside Somalia," Cameron told the BBC Somali service television.
Officials estimate about 40 people have traveled from the U.S. to Somalia to join al-Shabab since 2007, and that around 50 Britons are currently fighting there. Security officials believe Somali training camps are now being used by foreign extremists with no ties to the country, many of whom have been squeezed out of Pakistan's borderlands.
In a message posted to a recognized Twitter feed, Al-Shabab accused Cameron of "meddling in Islam affairs in the hope of reviving a hopeless dream of a British Empire" by holding the talks.
Eritrea, which is accused by Somalia and the U.N. of providing support to al-Shabab, has been refused an invitation.
Leaders of the northern breakaway republic of Somaliland will take a role — but won't win the international recognition they crave, Cameron said. Critics of Western efforts have suggested that local administrations in Somaliland and neighboring Puntland offer a better model for the entire country than attempts to create a central authority.
Explaining Somali's progress against piracy, Capt. Phil Haslam, a naval officer with the EU anti-piracy patrol, said pirates currently hold seven vessels and 191 hostages, compared to 32 ships and 661 hostages in January 2011.
But Haslam, based at the EU's anti-piracy headquarters in London, warned that the EU and other international missions are covering about 3.2 million square miles with around 25 boats. "It's akin to policing Europe with 25 police cars," he said.
Clinton and Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague will travel from the London talks to a conference on Syria's future being held Friday in Tunis.
Real Shocking Crimes caught on camera: "Warning Graphic."
What your mainstream media never tell you: Marvel at the al-Jazeera film crew whipping the crowd to hysteria. This is what most UK/american mainstream media do ; get the crowds TO ACT for the cameras.
Ever noticed the STAGED gun shots or in-the-lens chanting?
It's all fake, staged propaganda for the liars at Sky/ITN/BBC?CNN/Fox.
اسامہ بن لادن ہلاکओसामा बिन लादेन को मार डाला
قتل أسامة بن لادن
Oussama Ben Laden tué
Osama Bin Laden getötet
Usama bin Ladin dödas
DURBAN, South Africa -- “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.
Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is "Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention -- Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean 'for'] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.
The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN's skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.
