NEWS,06.04.2012.

Fears of another motorbike serial killer after four shootings in Paris

Police in Paris have linked a 7.65mm gun to four separate murders in the Essone area of the capital since November, raising the possibility of another serial killer following the death of Mohamed Merah in Toulouse on 22 March.The fourth victim, a 47-year-old woman of Algerian origin, was shot four times in the head on Thursday. The gunman was seen to flee on a motorbike.Interior Minister Claude Guéant told radio  Europe-1: "This series of killings deserves our maximum attention and we're putting all our resources into this affair." Prosecutor Marie-Suzanne Le Quéau told a press conference that police were trying to determine whether there the victims were linked, and whether there was one killer or more than one: "On the theory of a serial killer, I will simply say that three of the murders  the second, third and fourth, show similarities."However, it was also stressed that as yet no terrorism link had been made, unlike in the seven murders around Toulouse by Merah, who also used a motorbike.Le Quéau said that a suspect in the first attack was still being held, but had retracted a confession. The fourth victim, Nadjia Lahsene, was shot while in the entrance hall of her housing block in the district of Grigny. A neighbour was quoted as saying: "Everyone is in shock. She didn't feel threatened. She's a normal person, simple, no history." Police appealed for witnwsses who saw the gunman, described as tall and slim.The first victim, Nathalie Davids, a 35-year-old lab assistant, was shot in her block's carpark in Grigny on 27 November. On 22 February, her 52-year old neighbour, Jean-Yves Bonnerue, was killed in the entrance to their building. The third, an 81-year old man, was shot in the suburb of Ris-Orangis on 19 March. 19th.Le Queau said that over 100 officers have been deployed to investigate the case and carry out identity checks in the area of the attacks. All were killed execution-style, with shots in the head. Le Quéau also said that all four deaths occurred at the same time of day, around 4 to 6 pm. Their locations are also near two trunk roads, allowing a fast escape.Following the first murder, a man aged 46 was arrested in December; he had been jilted during an affair with the woman, and had a record for petty crime. While in custody and with his lawyer, the man had confessed, but he then made a retraction in front of the investigating judge.The killings come as France is still distressed by the terror attacks in the south that left dead three Jewish children and a rabbi, plus three paratroopers. Mohamed Merah, the al Qaeda-inspired gunman, also used a powerful motorbike. He was identified, put under siege in his flat, and shot dead while leaping out of the window.France is holding the first round of its presidential election on 22 April, and the Toulouse case has played into a sharpening of the tone in the campaign; an opinion poll put Socialist François Hollande's lead over President Nicolas Sarkozy at its narrowest so far.

Tearful Hugo Chávez prays for God to spare him from cancer

'I have more to do for this country,' Venezuelan president pleads at pre-Easter mass after latest round of treatment in CubaThe Venezuelan president wept in a televised speech from the Catholic service in his home state of Barinas. His voice broke as he eulogised Jesus, the revolutionary fighter Che Guevara and the South American independence hero Simon Bolívar. "Give me your crown, Jesus. Give me your cross, your thorns so that I may bleed. But give me life, because I have more to do for this country and these people. Do not take me yet," Chávez said, standing below an image of Jesus with the Crucifix. Chávez said he had held faith that his cancer would not return after his first two operations last year  which removed a baseball sized tumour from his pelvis  but it did."Today I have more faith than yesterday," he said. "Life has been a hurricane ... but a couple of years ago my life began to become not my own any more. Who said the path of revolution would be easy?"Very little is known about the 57-year-old president's condition, including even what type of cancer he has. Chávez has undergone three operations in less than a year and received two sessions of radiotherapy. He has said the latest surgery was successful, that he is recovering well and will be fit to win a new six-year term at an election in October. But big questions remain about his future and on Thursday the strain appeared to show."Never forget that we are the children of giants ... I could not avoid some tears," the former soldier said as his parents and other relatives looked on from the church rows. Chávez soon seemed to recover his composure, joking with his brother Adan in the congregation that few people were watching because it was Easter, when Venezuelans typically hit the beach. After 13 years of his rule over the continent's biggest oil exporter, Chávez's sickness has thrown its politics into turmoil in the run-up to the election on 7 October.Flying back and forth to Havana for treatment, Chávez has been forced to run a kind of virtual campaign via Twitter and appearances on state television, while his opposition rival Henrique Capriles tours the country.He returned to Barinas late on Wednesday from Havana, where he had undergone a second session of radiotherapy. He said it went well and that all the test results had been positive.But in the absence of detailed information on his condition, Venezuelans have hunted for clues in his appearance each time he is on state TV. One local news website ran a large photo of his heavily perspiring brow after he disembarked from the jet.One Venezuelan opposition journalist who has broken news on Chávez's condition in the past reported that his medical team continued to disagree among themselves over the best course, and a Brazilian blogger said he might travel there for treatment.Capriles has mostly kept quiet about the president's illness, preferring to wish him a speedy recovery so that he can beat him in a fair fight at the polls.But the youthful state governor has criticised Chávez for choosing to be treated abroad, saying it sends a bad message to ordinary Venezuelans if he does not trust local doctors.Capriles, 39, took issue this week with repeated comments by Chávez and his allies that Jesus must have been a fellow leftist radical. "This theme is an obsession of the eternal candidate," Capriles said on Twitter, referring to Chávez. "This holy week we should remember Christ was neither socialist nor capitalist.In the latest opinion poll released last month the president had a solid 13 percentage point lead over Capriles, but many voters remained undecided.

NEWS,22.02.2012

Venezuela's Chavez needs another operation

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speaks with workers at a tractor factory in Barinas 

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez will undergo another operation in the coming days after doctors in Cuba found a lesion in his pelvis where surgeons removed a large cancerous tumor last year, he said.The 57-year-old socialist leader confirmed he travelled to Havana for the tests on Saturday. Rumors of the unannounced trip had prompted a flood of speculation among the opposition and supporters alike that he was at death's door. Chavez’s health is the wildcard ahead of an October 7 presidential election, when he will seek a new six-year term. He has never given many details about his condition so the news he needs more surgery was bound to feed doubts about his recovery.” There is no metastasis, just this small lesion in the same place where they removed the tumor," the president said during a televised tour of a factory in his home state of Barinas on Tuesday.” Because of the growing rumors, I'm obliged to give this information now ... it's a small lesion, about two centimetres across, very clearly visible. This will need to be taken out, it needs more surgery, supposedly less complicated than before.” He said the next operation would take place in the coming days, but that it had not yet been decided where.” No one should be alarmed ... I'm in good physical condition to face this new battle," he said. "It has to be verified whether there is any link with the tumor that was there before.” In a phone call to state TV later, the president added: "No one can say if it (the lesion) is malignant, but there is a high probability because it is in the same place.” He had insisted he was completely recovered, although medical experts had said it was too soon to make such a call. Donning a bright red hard hat to stroll around the proposed site of the giant Veneminsk factory, the president joked with workers and looked to be in reasonable health.A US cancer doctor told  that with such little detail it was impossible to know his real condition, but that the latest turn of events did not look good.” They have always played their cards close to their chest, so you never really know," said the doctor, who has followed the case from afar but asked not to be named.” But a two centimeter lesion in the same space where he had cancer before means there is a high probability of malignancy. This is serious, very significant.” Venezuela’s information minister had earlier denounced a report that Chavez had been rushed back to Havana for emergency treatment as part of a "dirty war by scum," launched by the opposition ahead of the election.A prominent opposition-leaning Venezuelan journalist, Nelson Bocaranda, wrote on Monday that Chavez, who had two operations in Havana last June, had returned unexpectedly to Cuba over the weekend and that some of his relatives had flown there too. Chavez allies were scathing about Bocaranda after the president appeared on television. Deputy Foreign Minister Temir Porras joked on Twitter: "They'll have to take me for an emergency operation in Cuba. I'm dying of laughter!” Local political analyst Luis Vicente Leon said any new "sympathy" bounce in support linked to the president's illness would be lower and short-lasting the second time round."Clearly the tensions within Chavismo will grow because of the uncertainty generated by this announcement," he said.The public's reactions to Chavez's news were mixed."Maybe it's time for a change in the country. Everything points to that," said Elizabeth Gonzalez, a 42-year-old housewife in Caracas. Car park attendant William Perez said the president had looked alright, if a bit swollen-faced.” He didn't appear bad or tired. He's a fighter, and like his motto he'll live and he'll conquer!" he said. Barclays Capital noted that polls show more than three-quarters of Venezuelans believed Chavez had fully recovered."However, if that perception changes it could significantly affect Chavez's re-election chances, not only physically limiting his ability to campaign but also creating doubts about the viability of a new term in office," it said. The opposition is newly united behind one candidate - youthful state governor Henrique Capriles - and see the vote as their best chance to end Chavez's 13 years in power. Recent opinion polls have given Chavez an edge over Capriles, thanks partly to a huge program of new state spending on social projects. But about a third of Venezuelans remain undecided, and competition for their votes will be intense.One medical source close to the team treating Chavez in Venezuela said he had been suffering a tumor lysis, or cell breakdown, which carried symptoms including a high fever.Before Chavez's reappearance on Tuesday, Venezuelan analyst Diego Moya-Ocampos had suggested his absence could well be a strategy by Chavez's campaign team to put the focus back on him and not Capriles, who since winning the opposition primary had been at the center of media and political attention.He said the fact that the latest rumors had spread so fast just underlined the anxiety among loyalists each time Chavez vanished from view for more than a couple of days. Chavez apologised to his supporters on Tuesday, saying he knew the speculation about his health was upsetting for them.” Always these rumors ... There are people who want me dead, who hate me so much," he said. "I am very sorry, because I know that while some people are happy, the majority are suffering.” Venezuela’s widely traded debt was largely flat to slightly higher. Its 2027 Global bond was up 0.56 points in price to bid 80.563, yielding 12.041%, unchanged after Chavez spoke.

NEWS,14.2.2012

Iranian bomber maimed in Bangkok blasts

 

 

Policemen inspect a taxi damaged in an explosion in Ekamai area in central Bangkok  

An Iranian man has been seriously wounded in Bangkok after a bomb he was carrying exploded and blew one of his legs off.

Israel said the incident was an attempted terrorist attack by Iran.

Shortly before the man was wounded, there had been an explosion in a house the man was renting in the Ekamai area of central Bangkok. Soon after that, there was a third blast on a nearby road, Thai police and officials said.

"The police have control of the situation. It is thought that the suspect might be storing more explosives inside his house," Thai government spokeswoman Thitima Chaisaeng told reporters.

Police later said they had apprehended another supsect at Bangkok's main Suvarnabhumi airport, one of two men they were looking for who had been living at the house where the initial blast took place.

"We discovered the injured man's passport. It's an Iranian passport and he entered the country through Phuket and arrived at Suvarnabhumi Airport on the 8th of this month," Police General Bansiri Prapapat.

The three explosions in Bangkok came a day after bomb attacks targeted Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia. Israel accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of being behind those attacks. Iran denied involvement.

Hezbollah is a Shi'ite Islamist group backed by Syria and Iran that is on the official US blacklist of foreign terrorist organisations.

Thai officials declined to speculate on whether the two men they had detained were involved with any militant group, but Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak blamed Iran.

"The attempted terrorist attack in Bangkok proves once again that Iran and its proxies continue to perpetrate terror," Barak said on a visit to Singapore.

"Iran and Hezbollah are unrelenting terror elements endangering the stability of the region, and endangering the stability of the world," said Barak, who spent a few hours in Bangkok on Sunday.

Thai police said they were working to make safe an unspecified amount of explosives found in the house where the initial blast took place.

Police declined to make any link between today's incident and the arrest last month of a Lebanese man in Bangkok who, according to the Thai authorities, had links to Hezbollah.

The police discovered a large amount of explosive material in an area southwest of Bangkok at around the time of that arrest. The United States, Israel and other countries issued warnings, subsequently lifted, of possible terrorist attacks in areas frequented by foreigners.

The Lebanese man has been charged with possession of explosive material and prosecutors said further charges could follow next week.

Tuesday's blasts in the sprawling Thai capital were not near Israel's embassy nor the main area for embassies.

A taxi driver told Thai television the wounded suspect had thrown a bomb in front of his car when he refused to pick him up near the site of the first blast. He was wounded slightly.

Government spokeswoman Thitima said police had then tried to move in and arrest the man but he attempted to throw another bomb at them. It went off before he was able to do so, blowing one of his legs off. A doctor at Chulalongkorn Hospital told reporters the other leg had had to be amputated.

Another doctor was quoted on television as saying three Thai people had suffered minor injuries in the incident, in addition to the taxi driver.

There have been no major attacks blamed on Islamist militants in Bangkok even though Muslim rebels are battling government security forces in Muslim-dominated southern provinces of the Buddhist kingdom.

In 1994, suspected Islamist militants tried to set off a big truck bomb outside the Israeli embassy in Bangkok, but they abandoned the bid and fled after the truck was involved in a minor traffic accident as it approached the mission.