Six In The Morning

 

3 cops wounded after a shootout with suspect in Jewish school slayings; 1 held

 By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services

TOULOUSE, France -- A suspect wanted in connection with the killing three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school wounded three police officers in a shootout at a house in Toulouse, France, early Wednesday and said he was a member of al-Qaida.Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the 24-year-old man targeted in the raid had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that he had shot dead the four out of "revenge for Palestinian children." He is also suspected by authorities of having killed three soldiers of North African origin last week.
Police sources told Reuters that another man had been arrested earlier Wednesday at a separate location in connection with the case.

Shellfire in Damascus suburbs, say Syrian rebels

 Free Syrian Army says army is retaliating after opposition forces attacked local headquarters of secret police unit

 Reuters

Two large suburbs of Damascus came under heavy tank bombardment on Wednesday following renewed Free Syrian Army attacks on forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, opposition activists said.

Artillery and anti-aircraft gun barrages hit the suburbs of Harasta and Irbin, retaken from rebels by Assad's forces two months ago, and army helicopters were heard flying over the area, on the eastern edge of the capital, the activists said.

Suu Kyi hits the campaign trail

It's a sight few thought they would ever see: Burma's democracy leader fighting an election. Brian Rex visits the village where her future will be decided

 

Wednesday 21 March 2012 

 

In a village four miles by boat from the nearest road, Soe Min, a former military doctor, was explaining his party's election policies to a gathered crowd. He told them: "You need to be clear who you should vote for."

Purists of election law may have frowned that Dr Soe was making his pitch from inside a clinic where he was also dispensing free check-ups and on which his party's banner was draped, but they might have understood his seeming digression once they realised the scale of his challenge; in the electoral contest taking place in a fortnight, the doctor's rival is Aung San Suu Kyi – democracy icon, former political prisoner and now the National League for Democracy's candidate for this rural constituency south of Rangoon.

Accused of Terrorism

Turkish Reporters Struggle Against Repression

By Daniel Steinvorth

He has done things in the last 375 days that he would never have imagined doing before. He made dumbbells out of pipe sections, watched too much television, and at some point he discovered the sunflower seeds. That was when he realized that he was losing too much weight in prison. "I chewed those damned sunflower seeds like someone possessed," says Ahmet Sik.

The journalist is sitting in his living room in Istanbul, surrounded by his wife Yonca, daughters and closest friends. There is red wine and chocolate cake, and Sik, a youthful 42-year-old with a thin beard, still can't believe he's a free man. It is the evening of Tuesday, March 13, the day after his release from the Silivri high-security prison for presumed terrorists .

Al-Shabab Islamists lay siege to Somali town

 MOGADISHU, SOMALIA  - Mar 20 2012 11:39

 Witnesses said al-Shabab fighters on pickup trucks mounted with machine guns stormed the town at dawn, driving out the pro-government militia Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa, an Ethiopian-backed force who follow Somalia's traditional Sufi branch of Islam.

"The mujahideen fighters stormed the district after attacking it from two directions early this morning, there was little fighting as the apostate militia fled the city," al-Shabab commander Sheikh Mohamed Ibrahim said by telephone.

In Mexico, extortion is a booming offshoot of drug war

Almost every segment of the economy and society, including businesses, teachers and priests, has been subjected to extortionists who exploit fear of cartels.

 

By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Mexico City—

No taco stand was too small for Juan Arturo Vargas, alias "The Rat."

Every week, Vargas would shake down the businesses in Nicolas Romero, a working-class town an hour outside the Mexican capital. His take: anywhere from $25 to several hundred dollars. His leverage: Pay up, or your kids will get hurt.

 The Rat, police and prosecutors say, worked at the low end of a vast spectrum of the fastest-growing nonlethal criminal enterprise in Mexico: extortion.