Related: Can You Find Hannah Graham?
"Suspect in missing student case faced previous allegations" Associated Press October 03, 2014
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The man charged with abducting a missing University of Virginia student was accused of sexual assault at two colleges more than a decade ago, but did not face charges in either case.
The allegations came to light after Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr. was arrested last week and charged with abduction with intent to defile 18-year-old Hannah Graham, who disappeared about three weeks ago after a night out with friends. Matthew has now been linked to Graham, the disappearance and death of a Virginia Tech student, and three sexual assault allegations.
In 2003, while Matthew was a student at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, he was accused of sexual assault and left the school about a month later. School officials did not explain why he left or was never charged.
One year earlier, while a student at Liberty University, he was accused of raping a student on campus, but the matter was dropped when the student did not want to move forward with the prosecution.
Virginia State Police have said a ‘‘forensic link’’ connects Matthew to the 2009 case of Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington, whose body was found in a hayfield three months after she vanished. That case, in turn, has been linked by DNA evidence to the rape of a woman in Fairfax, Va., the FBI has said.
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Also see:
"Charlottesville’s police chief said Sunday that an anguished statement from the parents of a missing University of Virginia student has given investigators fresh resolve to carry on with the difficult search. A team of about 100 law enforcement officers and other trained searchers were combing the countryside during the weekend for any sign of the college sophomore. Teams have been searching every day since Graham, 18, vanished."
That's frein, but the search has been aborted. They sent up a chopper to go look, but....
1 dead, 3 hurt in helicopter crash
Found one!
"Girl missing for 12 years found with mom in Mexico" by Jim Vertuno | Associated Press October 02, 2014
AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas girl reported kidnapped 12 years ago has been found in a town outside Mexico City with her mother, who is now facing charges in the United States, authorities said Wednesday.
The FBI and Mexico authorities say Sabrina Allen, 17, was found Tuesday night in Papalotla, Tlaxcala, outside Mexico City. She was reported missing by her father in 2002, after the then-4-year-old girl vanished after a weekend visit with her mother.
The teen and her mother, Dara Llorens, were flown back to Texas Wednesday. Llorens is now jailed in Austin.
Gregory Allen said during a news conference with the FBI and Austin police that he hasn’t yet seen his daughter.
US and Mexico authorities revealed few details about Llorens’s arrest or about how long she had been in Mexico with her daughter.
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Found a few other things, too:
"Mexico prosecutor says mass grave held 28 bodies" by Mark Stevenson and Jose Antonio Rivera | Associated Press October 06, 2014
IGUALA, Mexico — Mexican forensic experts recovered 28 charred bodies from a clandestine grave on the outskirts of this city, where police engaged in a deadly clash with student protesters a week ago, Guerrero state’s chief prosecutor said Sunday.
Uh-oh.
Security forces investigating the role of municipal police in deadly clashes with protesters have found burned human remains in mass graves on the edge of this city in southern Mexico, a lawyer for the families of 43 missing students said Sunday."
That was my print article.
State prosecutor Inaky Blanco said the corpses were too badly damaged for immediate identification and he could not say whether any of the dead could be some of the 43 college students reported missing after the confrontation with police....
The students went missing following a series of violent incidents involving protesters, police and unidentified gunmen last weekend that also resulted in six shooting deaths.
Uh-oh. The my$terious gunman that can only be.... mercenaries?
A group of up to 2,000 protesters blocked a main highway in the state capital of Chilpancingo demanding justice and requesting donations from passing motorists for the students' families and the school. ‘‘You took them alive, we want them returned alive,’’ read a huge banner hung across the road linking Mexico City and Acapulco....
You by now understand the difference, right?
The father of one of the missing students expressed doubt that the remains belonged to the young people.
Anger over the discovery of the graves exploded Saturday night when a group of young people from the school protested outside the governor's Chilpancingo residence. They threw Molotov cocktails and overturned a car after state authorities told them they would not be allowed to travel to the graves to determine if the bodies are those of their missing classmates.
About 100 soldiers, marines and federal and state police on Saturday cordoned off the area where the grave site was found in the poor Pueblo Viejo district of Iguala, which is about 120 miles south of Mexico City.
Blanco said eight more people had been arrested in the case, adding to the 22 Iguala city police officers detained in the case. State prosecutors have said the first of the recent bloodshed occurred on Sept. 26 when city police shot at buses that had been hijacked by protesting students from a teachers college, killing three youths and wounding 25.
The use of the word hijacked is important, as it tells you what slant the propaganda pre$$ is approaching this incident. Those kids are darn near terrorists (like Occupy Wall Street, not those nice Hong Kong kids)!
A few hours later, unidentified masked gunmen shot at two taxis and a bus carrying a soccer team on the main highway, killing two people on the bus and one in a taxi.
Masked gunmen!
The prosecutor said state investigators have obtained videos showing that local police arrested an undetermined number of students after the initial clash and took them away.
He said some of the eight newly arrested people were members of an organized crime gang, adding that some of them had given key clues leading to the discovery of the mass grave.
Blanco said his investigators had found that "elements of the municipal police are part of organized crime.
Yeah, we know.
The Aytozinapa Normal school attended by the missing students, like many other schools in Mexico's "rural teachers college" system, is known for militant and radical protests that often involve hijacking buses and delivery trucks.
Uh-huh.
In December 2011, two students from Aytozinapa died in a clash with police on the highway that leads to the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco. Students had allegedly hijacked buses and blocked the road to press demands for more funding and assured jobs after graduation. Two state police officers were charged in the shootings.
During that confrontation, students apparently set fire to pumps at a gas station on the highway when federal and state police moved in to quell the protest, and a gas station employee later died of burns suffered in the attack.
Those kids deserved to die.
State police and prosecutors have been investigating the Iguala city police for misconduct during a series of violent incidents last weekend that resulted in six shooting deaths and more than two dozen people injured. Investigators said video showed police taking away an undetermined number of student protesters after a confrontation.
Authorities have presented charges against 29 people in the case, including 22 police officers detained soon after the violence. Three of the suspects are fugitives, including Iguala’s police chief. Blanco said they are still investigating the motive for the crime, adding that some of the police have connections to a local drug cartel.
Yeah, turns out authority plays both sides in the drug "war."
Blanco said Saturday that some of those arrested had provided key clues that led investigators to the unmarked burial pits on an isolated hillside on the edge of Iguala, which is about 120 miles south of Mexico City. Speaking at a televised news conference Sunday, he said the site is in rugged terrain about a mile from the nearest road.
The prosecutor said the bodies had been put in the pits on top of branches and tree trunks, which were doused with a flammable substance such as gasoline and set on fire....
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"Alleged Beltran Leyva cartel boss nabbed in Mexico" by Peter Orsi and E. Eduardo Castillo | Associated Press October 03, 2014
MEXICO CITY — Hector Beltran Leyva, the purported head of a feared drug gang allegedly run by his family, became the fourth brother to fall when soldiers grabbed him while dining at a seafood restaurant.
No shots were fired during the operation in San Miguel de Allende, a popular enclave for foreigners and artists in the central state of Guanajuato, federal criminal investigations chief Tomas Zeron said Wednesday night.
With the arrest, Mexico’s government landed another high-profile blow against the country’s cartels. At least nine high-ranking gang members have been killed or captured by security forces since 2009, including elusive Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquin ‘‘El Chapo’’ Guzman, one of the world’s most wanted men.
And yet drugs are everywhere.
Mexican authorities have said Hector Beltran Leyva, 49, assumed leadership of the family’s cartel after his brother Arturo was killed by troops in late 2009. Two other brothers are behind bars for their involvement in the cartel.
The Beltran Leyva gang terrorized parts of central Mexico for years, including Morelos state to the south of Mexico City. It declined somewhat after the brothers’ arrests and killing, but the US Treasury Department said last November that the cartel appeared to be reorganizing and regaining some power.
The U.S. has chosen the Sianola cartel as its chosen deliverer.
Zeron said Beltran Leyva had adopted a ‘‘moderate profile’’ after becoming head of the cartel to avoid detection. An 11-month investigation determined he had made his home in the central state of Queretaro, where he passed himself off as a businessman selling art and real estate.
Zeron said Beltran Leyva was taken into custody along with a man suspected of being involved in the cartel’s finances. DNA tests were being conducted to confirm the suspect’s identity.
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The king is dead, long live the king:
"The ability of monarch butterflies to migrate may hinge on a single gene" by Rachel Feltman | Washington Post October 02, 2014
For monarch butterflies, the ability to migrate may rely on a single vital gene. Every year, millions of North American monarchs make a single round-trip migration to Mexico for winter — a seemingly grueling trip for the delicate-looking insects.
According to a study published Wednesday in Nature, one gene may be central to their long-distance flying abilities.
By comparing the genetic information of North American monarchs with nonmigratory monarchs from other regions (as well as some other closely related butterfly species), the researchers identified more than 500 genes that had some sway in the insects’ ability to migrate. But one gene — one that makes monarchs into long-distance fliers instead of sprinters — seemed to show the sharpest difference between butterflies that migrated and those that stayed put.
‘‘Migration is regarded as a complex behavior, but every time that the butterflies have lost migration, they change in exactly the same way, in this one gene involved in flight muscle efficiency,’’ senior study author Marcus Kronforst of The University of Chicago said in a statement. ‘‘In populations that have lost migration, efficiency goes down, suggesting there is a benefit to flying fast and hard when they don’t need to migrate.’’
Based on the changes they saw in this gene and others in nonmigratory populations, the researchers believe that all monarchs were once migratory, and originated in Mexico or the southern United States. After dispersing to different regions — Central and South America, across the Atlantic, and across the Pacific — the three populations all lost their ability to migrate long distances.
Monarch migration is on the decline, with only 35 million travelers estimated last year compared with about 1 billion in 1996. While the butterflies, who have lost a lot of their primary habitat (milkweed) to herbicide use, are not in danger of extinction, it is troubling to see just how fragile their migratory habits might be.
The limited hangout is pesticides. I'm not saying those poisons are not a contributing factor, but the fact that they are mentioned and certain other methods of farming remain unmentioned gets my wings flapping.
‘‘You used to see huge numbers of monarchs, clouds of them passing by,’’ said Kronforst. ‘‘Now it looks quite possible that in the not-too-distant future, this annual migration won’t happen.’’
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Related: GMOs Killed the Mexican Monarchs
And yet my ma$$ media mouthpiece for Monsanto claims it's a genetic defect.
If they are going to lie about the weather, what would they not lie about?
Did a lot more looking around in Mexico than planned, and didn't see one illegal immigrant child migrating north.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Related: Mexico’s junk food taxes hitting Pepsi, Coke
Poor Pepsi and Coke, but it does explain a lot of Mexican waistlines I've seen.
Also see: Serving Coca-Cola at Breakfast Buffett
