[NBCNEWS] The good news for the Chinese visitor to Bangkok was that a doctor had successfully removed a foreign object from her large intestine that could have damaged her digestive system.
The bad news: It was a 10 million baht ($278,000) diamond the woman was accused of stealing from a jewelry fair, adding a piece of rock-hard evidence to the case against her.
Police Col. Mana Tienmaungpak said Sunday that authorities got to the bottom of the theft when a doctor wielding a colonoscope and the medical equivalent of pliers pulled the 6-carat gemstone from the large intestine of the woman alleged to have filched it, after nature and laxatives failed to get it out.
The woman, identified as 39-year-old Jiang Xulian, and a Chinese man were tossed in the calaboose Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! Thursday night at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport on their way out of Thailand on the basis of surveillance video from the fair just outside Bangkok, where earlier that day the duo allegedly switched a fake stone for the real one after asking to inspect it. The dealer at the booth selling the diamond also identified the two.
The suspects initially denied involvement, but X-rays showed a diamond-like object in the woman's intestine, and police said she then confessed.
If convicted, the two face up to three years in prison, according to police.
Mana, the chief investigator for the case, said the woman agreed to Sunday's delicate operation after being told that the gemstone risked injuring her. The diamond's owner identified the stone after it was removed.
Hiding gems in the digestive system is a rare but not unknown ploy. The method is more commonly used by drug smugglers, who swallow condoms filled with cocaine or other illicit substances to get them past customs checks.
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09/14/2015 00:00 ||
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ouch. another poo-done-it solved, blocking a turd burglar from evacuating on a jet plane
Max Gesner Beauvoir, the supreme chief of the voodoo religion, died at the age of 79 in the Haitian capital, his relatives announced.
Beauvoir, a biochemist by training, was named in 2008 the "National Ati," or spiritual guide for voodoo practitioners. The title was created to defend Haiti's historic religion from increased attacks from some Protestant churches and Evangelical preachers.
In 2010, influential US televangelist Pat Robertson stirred controversy when he claimed that the earthquake that struck Haiti that year and killed more than 200,000 people had a demonic origin.
Robertson claimed that the quake was caused by "a pact to the devil" that Haitians swore in 1804 when they rose against the French colonizers to obtain independence.
Beauvoir worked hard to counter negative stereotypes of the religion and explain voodoo to foreigners, and even opened the religion's temple to the public during important religious ceremonies.
At the start of Haiti's 2010 cholera epidemic, scores of voodoo practitioners were lynched by people who accused them of creating a powder that spread the disease.
Colombia is demanding an explanation from Venezuela after spotting two military aircraft flying in Colombian airspace, the defense ministry said Sunday. The confrontation comes amid a larger diplomatic rupture between the countries as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has closed major border crossings and deported of thousands of Colombian nationals.
Colombia’s aerial defense systems detected two Venezuelan military planes entering its airspace over the northern La Guajira province Saturday afternoon, the defense ministry said in a statement, according to news agency Efe. The ministry said it transmitted information about the airspace violation to the foreign ministry’s office “so that it will ask Venezuela for relevant explanations for these acts.”
The statement came just a day after both countries’ foreign ministers met in Ecuador’s capital of Quito to try to forge an agreement over the simmering border dispute that began when Maduro closed off a section of the border last month. The ministers agreed to renew diplomatic ties that had been cut off when the dispute began, but were unable to set up a meeting between Maduro and Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos to resolve the crisis.
Maduro closed off two major border crossings with Colombia Aug. 20, saying that Colombian paramilitary groups were behind the attack of three Venezuelan soldiers and a civilian who were attacked near the border the day before. Since then, Venezuelan officials have deported around 1,300 undocumented immigrants from Colombia living near the border, and reports of families being separated or people being deported without their belongings have proliferated. An additional 21,000 Colombians living in Venezuela have also fled the country for fear of being forcibly removed, according to the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.
Border activity had been a source of tension between the countries for years, as Maduro blamed smugglers for taking goods out of Venezuela to fetch higher prices next door. Santos has blasted the deportations, saying they were not carried out humanely. A recent survey by Venezuelan polling firm Hinterlaces published Sunday, however, found that 61 percent of Venezuelans supported the border closures.
Many analysts have viewed the crisis as a way for Maduro to distract the populace from Venezuela’s own economic and political turmoil. Santos hinted at that in a speech earlier this week: “The closing of the border is not the fault of Colombia, and every day it is clearer that it is due to other interests,” he said.
#4
Need anti-aircraft lasers powerful enough to burn a message into the paint of the offending aircraft. Something like "This is Colombian airspace you loser"
#6
I may be wrong, but I suspect this little shennanigan has much to do wid the proposed Canal project linking deep into the Amazon River Basin = Brazil interior, perhaps more succintly which Country gets to control the entrance + entry fees.
h/t Instapundit
The United States, ranked second in worldwide economic freedom as recently as 2000, has plummeted to 16th, according to a new report of world economies.
The Fraser Institute's annual report, Economic Freedom of the World, showed that the country's drop started in 2010, the second year of the Obama administration.
Ask, and ye shall be answered. We wondered, after the great train jihadi was disarmed and beaten with his own AK-47, how such a person could get such guns in strictly gun-controlled Western Europe. Here is the beginning of an answer.
[AnNahar] The French government said Sunday it was determined to choke off the supply of weapons and disarm criminal gangs, several hours after a man was rubbed out in the center of Marseille, the southern city known for its high crime levels.
"Within the next six weeks I will put forward a wide-ranging and extremely aggressive plan to fight against the trafficking and possession of weapons in our country," Interior Minister Bernard Cazenueve told Europe 1 radio.
In the early hours of Sunday, shots were fired from a car outside a bar near the Old Port area of Marseille, killing one man and wounding five others.
"There is still too much violence in this city," Cazeneuve said.
"We must step up the disarming of all these criminal groups."
He said 6,000 weapons a year were being seized from criminal groups, of which 1,200 were combat rifles and other weapons of war.
Investigators believe the shooting in Marseille followed an argument between a bouncer and a group of several people at the bar.
"It appears that after an argument a vehicle drove down the road and someone opened fire with a Kalashnikov on people who were at the entrance to the bar," the Mediterranean city's deputy prosecutor, Andre Ribes, said.
Shootings are a regular occurrence in Marseille. On August 6, a man in his fifties who was active in the organized scene of the crime was bumped off in the street by two men, including one on a cycle of violence.
#2
".....Shocked, I am SHOCKED that these criminals had firearms when they are so clearly illegal!!"
/Seriously, is there ANYTHING Casablanca doesn't have an appropriate line for?
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/14/2015 5:36 Comments ||
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#3
Just remember, gun control will solve all the violence problems.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
09/14/2015 7:51 Comments ||
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#4
Look, France and Germany are HAPPY to sell dual use industrial equipment to Iran and other ME states that can be used to produce NBC weapons. But they are worried about firearms. Got it...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/14/2015 10:57 Comments ||
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[DAWN] Police were hunting Sunday for a suspect who illegally stored explosives in a restaurant building in central India that sparked a deadly blast, killing 88 people and injuring nearly 100.
The blast occurred in the town of Petlawad in Madhya Pradesh state's Jhabua district Saturday morning when many office workers and schoolchildren were having breakfast in the restaurant and scores of labourers waited at a crowded bus stand near the building.
"The official corpse count is 88, but the actual number may be higher, nearly 100. That will be confirmed soon," senior Jhabua district police official Seema Alava told AFP by phone, adding that about 100 others were maimed and rescue operations had been wrapped up.
She said police earlier thought the kaboom was triggered by a gas cylinder, which detonated explosives that were stored illegally in the restaurant building and amplified its impact, destroying neighbouring buildings and vehicles.
"It was the other way around. The explosives in the building went kaboom! first... extreme heat sparked a urea nitrate chemical reaction and then that was it. Everything went off after that," Alava said.
She said a suspect, Rajendra Kasawa, who has been on the run with his brothers since Saturday, had illegally stored urea, gelatine sticks, detonators and other explosives used for digging wells, construction and mining in a warehouse in the building.
Although Kasawa had a license for the material, Alava said he stored them "in an unauthorised way in a residential area" and therefore, been booked for culpable homicide and unlawful possession of explosives. "We were up almost all night. We will find him, it is only a matter of time," she said.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan visited Petlawad, 950 kilometres south of New Delhi, on Sunday.
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09/14/2015 00:00 ||
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[IraqiNews] Baghdad – Baghdad Provincial Council announced on Saturday the emergence of cholera infections in areas west of Baghdad, stressing the need to rehabilitate the Abu Ghraib water project, which needs a billion dinars.
The head of the Council Riad Adad said in an interview for IraqiNews.com, “The areas of Abu Ghraib, Radwaniya, Zaidan and west of Baghdad have witnessed cholera infections.”
Adad demanded “urgent and fast processing to Abu Ghraib hospital with ambulances and laboratories to deal with these cases,” stressing “the importance of rehabilitation of Abu Ghraib water project, which needs a billion dinars in order to provide healthy drinking water.”
[AA.TR] Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej is suffering from a fever and a chest x-ray has shown inflammation in his left lung, the Royal Household Bureau announced late Sunday.
The statement said the oxygen concentration in the 87-year-old monarch's blood had also dropped while his heartbeat slightly increased.
It added, however, that his blood pressure had returned to normal after a minor rise Saturday and he was able to take in some water, the Bangkok Post reported.
Last month, the Bureau had announced that Adulyadej had recovered from increased cerebrospinal fluid and lung inflammation.
He had left a hospital in Bangkok on May 10 to reside at a seaside palace, only to return to Siriraj Hospital, where he has been confined extensively since 2009, and remained after having his gall bladder removed last October.
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[Hurriyet Daily News] A campaign to boycott "substandard and expensive" Iranian-made cars has fired up social media in the Islamic republic, where its supporters have been accused of anti-revolutionary treason.
Iranians are turning to the Internet to vent long-simmering dissatisfaction with a domestic car industry dominated by producers Iran Khodro and Saipa, following years of sanctions that led to the exit of foreign makers.
Iran's automakers "have put profit before their conscience", wrote Vali, a user of the messaging service Telegram.
"The lives of many have been lost to technical faults."
Almost 20,000 people die on Iran's roads each year, and police say faulty cars are partly to blame.
Although domestic vehicles have features such as airbags and anti-lock brakes, "the safety of these cars is not satisfactory," deputy police chief Eskandar Momeni said, quoted by state media.
"This is because of a lack of competition and supervision in domestic manufacturing," he added.
Iranian officials argue that domestically produced cars are much cheaper than imported brands, and say the industry has created hundreds of thousands of jobs.
"Creating and supporting campaigns not to buy cars is treason to the national interests," the trade, mining and industry minister Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh said recently, quoted by the Fars news agency.
"This campaign is wrong and sinful and anti-revolutionary and it would inflict damage on the domestic economy," he said, in remarks that sparked an online backlash.
"Imposing substandard, expensive and un-exportable cars on the nation is treason to the people and Iran's industry," retorted Twitter user Hassan Mostafavi.
Several newspapers also reacted furiously to Nematzadeh's comments, insisting that people have the right to choose not to buy Iranian cars.
"The minister, of course, did not issue a verdict for the automakers who with their low quality products endanger the lives of people," the Ghanoon daily said.
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#1
"This campaign is wrong and sinful and anti-revolutionary and it would inflict damage on the domestic economy,"
Buy our crappy crap for the Glorious People's Islamic Revolution! I'm sure sounds better in Persian.
#4
Iranian officials argue that domestically produced cars are much cheaper than imported brands, and say the industry has created hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Another factor that made the Mullahs attractive to the White House.
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.
[NBCNEWS] The good news for the Chinese visitor to Bangkok was that a doctor had successfully removed a foreign object from her large intestine that could have damaged her digestive system.
Max Gesner Beauvoir, the supreme chief of the voodoo religion, died at the age of 79 in the Haitian capital, his relatives announced.
