Written By Unknown on Jumat, 12 Desember 2014 | 22.57
By Stuart Ramsay, Chief Correspondent, in Mexico City
A Mexican hitman, who claims to have killed as many as 900 people, has told Sky News how the police and the military are often involved in the planning and execution of his murders.
"Carlos" has been a paid killer for more than 25 years - working for drug cartels, politicians and the military.
We met the hitman in Tepito market - one of the most dangerous places in the whole of Mexico City, despite being at the heart of its smartest district.
The assassin said the network of cartel power is so entrenched in society and powered by so much money that it is unstoppable.
"On some occasions, we have to go to places where weapons are not allowed and then they (police) meet us.
Video:Sky News Talks To A Mexican Hitman
"They take us to a hotel and they provide all the weapons that we may need, money and everything so that one can do the job one has to do."
The abduction of 43 students last September has forced Mexico into confronting its crime problems.
Carlos believes that the students are already dead, and uses a chilling example from his own experience to explain why he is so certain.
Video:Where The Cartels Get Their Guns
"Let me tell you a story. Some protestors came. We let them in and then we closed the road, we closed the entrance, we closed the exit. When they were stuck in the middle we killed them all," he recounted.
"Then a (rubbish) truck from the army came and collected them all. Then street sweeper machines went past. They opened the road again, as if nothing had happened.
"The students are dead, it is more convenient. For kidnapping you get 160 years, for killing its 35. It's a huge difference, don't you think?"
Video:Mexico City's Tepito Market
Mexico is described by many as a "Narco State", where government and civil society appear powerless against drug money, cartels, corruption and terrible violence - committed on an almost daily basis.
This country bordering the United States and Central America has become a transit point for drugs across the world.
The revenues are mind-blowing - tens of billions of dollars a year.
The CIA's spymaster has disavowed abusive techniques used by his agency in interrogating suspects after 9/11, while staunchly defending his officers.
During a rare news conference at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, John Brennan said: "In a limited number of cases, agency officers used interrogation techniques that had not been authorised, were abhorrent and rightly should be repudiated by all.
"And we fell short when it came to holding some officers accountable for their mistakes."
But he said the "overwhelming majority" of his interrogators acted appropriately and "did what they were asked to do in the service of our nation".
Mr Brennan was addressing a Senate report that detailed the US intelligence agency's "brutal" treatment of al Qaeda suspects in a network of secret prisons around the world.
Video:Dick Cheney Slams Torture Report
He told Thursday's news conference the programme was ordered at a time when the US feared more terrorist attacks.
"There were no easy answers," he said.
"And whatever your views are on EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques)… the agency did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country safe and secure."
Sky News' Dominic Waghorn in Washington says the spymaster chose his words carefully, but they will sound mealy-mouthed and disingenuous to CIA critics.
For instance, Mr Brennan said it was "unknowable" whether EITs managed to extract useful intelligence from terrorism suspects.
But he also said the interrogations did help locate Osama bin Laden, while arguing it was unclear if such intelligence could have been gleaned without such methods.
Mr Brennan said that as far as he was aware only three detainees were waterboarded, though the Senate report asserted the number could have been higher.
As he spoke, Senator Dianne Feinstein went online to issue a point-by-point rebuttal of his arguments.
Video:Torture Produces Bad Intelligence
"No evidence that terror attacks were stopped, terrorists captured or lives saved through use of EITs. #ReadTheReport," she tweeted.
Under the programme, detainees were beaten, repeatedly waterboarded and subjected to medically unnecessary "rectal feeding" and "rectal rehydration". One detainee froze to death.
President Barack Obama, who halted his predecessor George W Bush's programme when he came to office, has said the practices were contrary to US values.
But Mr Bush's Vice President Dick Cheney robustly defended the programme on Wednesday night.
"The report's full of crap," he told Fox News, while conceding he had not read it.
The Senate intelligence committee concluded in Tuesday's report that the CIA deliberately misled Congress and the White House about the value of the information its interrogators were gathering.
China and Iran, whose own human rights records have often been criticised by Washington, denounced the abuses, but so did some close US friends like Germany.
Mexico's drug trade is worth between $19 and $29bn (£12.1 and £18.5bn) a year in cash - but takes an immeasurably greater toll in human lives and misery.
Some 90% of the cocaine bound for the US goes through the country, which shares a long border with its northern neighbour.
The narcotics industry makes up between 3-4% of the country's GDP, and employs half a million people.
Murder - even mass murder - is relatively commonplace. On average, someone dies a drugs-related death every half an hour.
There have been more than 132,000 kidnappings since 2006, and the government lists a total of 22,322 people as missing.
Video:Where The Gangs Get Their Guns
There are 10 firearms deaths per 100,000 people - more than twice the rate of the US - despite the fact there is just one legal firearms dealer in the entire country.
Even amid this carnage, the recent abduction of 43 college students made headlines not just nationwide but around the world.
The victims were attacked by officers in the southern city of Iguala after demonstrations there.
Prosecutors say they were handed over by corrupt police officers to a drugs gang that killed them and burnt their bodies.
The mother of a feared gang leader has survived an apparent murder attempt after she was shot through the front door of her home.
Paramedics treated Lola Hamzy for stomach wounds at the house before taking her to hospital, where she underwent emergency surgery.
The 57-year-old is the mother of Brothers 4 Life gang founder and al Qaeda devotee Bassam Hamzy, who was jailed for life in 2002 for shooting dead an 18-year-old following a nightclub row.
He was also convicted for conspiring to kill a witness due to give evidence against him.
Since being imprisoned he has found himself targeted by criminals from rival gangs.
Mother-of-five Mrs Hamzy, whose home is in Sydney's Auburn suburb, is the second female in the family to be shot through their front door in the last two years.
Another member of the family, Maha Hamzy, Bassam Hamzy's aunt, is now wheelchair-bound after being shot in the legs at her house in March.
Bassam Hamzy's cousin Mahmoud was shot and killed in October last year in an attack thought to have been carried out by gangland rivals.
Inspector Alan Janson from New South Wales Police said: "The family and the home is known to us and all those lines of inquiries we will look at and explore those.
"But until we speak to the victim and obtain some further information, we don't have a lot to go on."
He could not say what type of gun was used in the shooting.
Mrs Hamzy lived at the home alone, but it was unclear whether she was the intended target.
A Palestinian has thrown acid at an Israeli family, including children, after being given a lift in their car in the West Bank, the army has said.
The man attacked them near a checkpoint outside Bethlehem and close to the Gush Etzion settlement, the military said in a statement to AFP news agency.
A man and four children were hurt, Israeli police and the military told Reuters.
The suspect was shot in the leg by a civilian after getting out of the car and he has since been arrested, AFP reported.
The family was attacked near the Gush Etzion settlement
"A vehicle carrying a family with four girls picked up a hitchhiker," the statement from the army said.
"The hitchhiker threw acid on the passengers, injuring them lightly."
Video:10 Dec: Palestinian Minister Killed
The attack comes after Palestinian minister Ziad Abu Ein died in a confrontation with Israeli troops in the West Bank on Wednesday.
He was taking part in a tree-planting demonstration in Turmus Aya when he was confronted by Israeli soldiers and tear gas was fired.
Witnesses also said the cabinet member was involved in a scuffle with an Israeli soldier and there were claims he was hit on the chest by an Israeli soldier's helmet and a rifle butt.
He then began to experience breathing problems, and died while he was being taken to hospital by ambulance.
Video:Soldier Row: What Footage Shows
The Palestinian leadership blamed Israel for Ziad Abu Ein's death and threatened to retaliate.
"We are open to taking up any option against the other side," Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said.
Israeli ministers called for calm and US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday as part of attempts to defuse tensions.
Written By Unknown on Kamis, 11 Desember 2014 | 22.57
Police are hunting for two French students who have disappeared in the Pyrenees.
Julien Perez-Piguet, 22, and Sarah Mazerolles, 21, have not been seen since last Friday, according to the newspaper Le Parisien.
They are believed to have left the Spanish town of Saragossa - where they are at university - that evening, but never arrived back to their homes in the Bearn region of France.
At around 6pm, Sarah had telephoned her mother to tell her that she was driving back with Julien, in his white Peugeot 206.
The two physiotherapy students are understood to have been carpooling.
It is unclear whether they knew each other before they decided to make the journey together.
The last trace of the pair was at 8.30pm, when a signal from Sarah's mobile phone was picked up in Canfranc, on the Spanish side of the border.
Investigators reviewing CCTV from the Somport tunnel - which links France and Spain - say there is no evidence the car passed through.
Police on both sides of the border have scoured the steep sides of the mountain pass, but have found nothing.
Relatives, friends and many fellow students have also joined the search.
Mexico's drug trade is worth between $19 and $29bn (£12.1 and £18.5bn) a year in cash - but takes an immeasurably greater toll in human lives and misery.
Some 90% of the cocaine bound for the US goes through the country, which shares a long border with its northern neighbour.
The narcotics industry makes up between 3-4% of the country's GDP, and employs half a million people.
Murder - even mass murder - is relatively commonplace. On average, someone dies a drugs-related death every half an hour.
There have been more than 132,000 kidnappings since 2006, and the government lists a total of 22,322 people as missing.
Video:Where The Gangs Get Their Guns
There are 10 firearms deaths per 100,000 people - more than twice the rate of the US - despite the fact there is just one legal firearms dealer in the entire country.
Even amid this carnage, the recent abduction of 43 college students made headlines not just nationwide but around the world.
The victims were attacked by officers in the southern city of Iguala after demonstrations there.
Prosecutors say they were handed over by corrupt police officers to a drugs gang that killed them and burnt their bodies.
In the hills above the town of Iguala, a group of families gather to start a search for new mass graves. They have already found three.
Above them, vultures swoop and turn in the deep blue skies.
Dogs had started turning up in nearby villages with human body parts.
Mexico has been in the grip of a staggering crime wave that saw, by some estimates, 120,000 people killed in the six years to 2012.
Another 27,000 people are missing. Rounded up by local police, they were handed to one of the country's notorious cartel gangs and "disappeared": a common expression succinct in its accurate brevity.
Video:'My Family Have Never Appeared'
The families of the local "disappeared" know they are in the right place.
After about 20 minutes, another grave is identified. The searchers madly hack at the earth before a local forensics officer asks them to stop.
In the tearful exchange that follows the family members give a sense of their anger and outrage.
They berate the officer for the failings of the government, for the rampant corruption and the overarching power of the drug gangs.
"Young man, you get to finish your shift then you get to go. We can't, we have to stay here, we can't move from here," a woman shouts through her tears, pointing at the grave.
Video:Mexico's Mass Grave Sites
"We demand that the government come and take them out (of the ground). That they stop treating us like idiots, because that is what they have treated us like.
"People's family members are here, whether it be a brother or sister or child, they have to come and get them out."
It is heartbreaking stuff to witness. The testimonies of "disappeared" family members are uniformly upsetting and almost endless. So many people are affected it's remarkable.
The enormous illegal drug industry is to varying degrees at the root of everything.
The fate of the "disappeared" has exploded onto the national psyche once again after the abduction and probable murder of 43 students in September.
Video:'He Gave His Life For His Family'
The problem for the government is the growing evidence of police and military collusion in this apparently unstoppable cycle of death.
In Iguala, for example, local villagers say that trucks bringing the latest victims of the violence passed their houses along roads closed by the police.
In their desperate attempt to recover their lost relatives, hundreds queue to give blood for DNA tests that may prove a link to bodies recovered from the hills.
They do not trust the government so an independent charity is on hand to guarantee the process.
A total of 170 families have come forward in the first couple of days of the testing process. That equates to between 400 and 500 "disappeared" people.
Video:'This Could Add Up To Thousands'
But this is a tiny town. State-wide and nationwide it runs into tens of thousands of dead people. Killed, often for no reason whatsoever.
The stories of the disappeared are all different; but they are linked by the involvement of crime gangs, law enforcement and the government often working hand in hand.
Susane is the wife of a senior police officer. He disappeared after a meeting with a cartel lieutenant. He was told his entire extended family would die if he failed to turn up.
She and he knew they would never see each other again.
"We knew it was either him or the family. He warned us he might not be coming back alive, that this was probably the last time we would see each other," she told me in the calm surroundings of a church.
Video:Police Pressure On Kidnappers
"He thought he was the one who had to say goodbye to the family. He only asked for a blessing. We gave it to him. We kept pleading with him, but he didn't listen."
He has not been seen since.
:: You can watch an extended special report on the drugs cartels that are tearing Mexico apart, Narco State: Mexico's Drugs War, at 7.30pm on Friday, 5.30am and 4.30pm on Saturday, and 3.30am, 2.30pm and 8.30pm on Sunday.
Watch the report on on Sky channel 501, Virgin Media channel 602, Freeview channel 132 and Freesat channel 202.
Hong Kong police have moved in on the main pro-democracy protest camp and started clearing tents.
A number of arrests have been made, with one protester reportedly shouting "We want democracy. We'll be back," as he was carried away.
Protesters were warned to disperse from the site or face arrest, in what is likely to be a final showdown after more than two months of demonstrations by the Occupy Central movement.
"Police will lock down the occupied area and set up a police cordon area ... If anyone refuses to leave police will take action to disperse or arrest," said senior officer Kwok Pak-chung.
Bailiffs started dismantling barricades at the Admiralty site
Protesters were allowed to leave the site - made up of tents, art installations and supply stalls and stretching for a kilometre along the highway - during the 30-minute lockdown.
Bailiffs armed with cutters and pliers moved in first to remove barricades around the camp in the heart of the business district, but despite the police ultimatum a hardcore of a few hundred refused to leave.
Video:23 Oct: The Umbrellas Explained
There are fears that radical splinter groups will dig in for a last stand, after violent demonstrations outside a government building at the end of November.
The remaining crowds shouted their demands for free leadership elections, and vowed the clearance would not end the campaign, which has left relations with Beijing on a knife-edge.
Protesters were joined by more than 20 pro-democracy lawmakers and other prominent figures ahead of the police action.
Media mogul Jimmy Lai, a fierce critic of Beijing, said he would stay at the site "until I am arrested".
Video:Young Lead Hong Kong Democracy Call
He said: "Definitely you will miss the people you have spent over two months with, other than that we're looking forward to the next one."
Pro-demovcracy lawmaker Claudia Mo said: "This is not the end of the movement. The political awakening amongst the young is irreversible and we will fight on."
The Admiralty site has been the focal point of protests since September, after China's Communist authorities insisted that candidates in Hong Kong's 2017 leadership election would have to be vetted by a loyalist committee.
Hong Kong's leadership had warned they would take "resolute action" against any protesters who resisted the clearance, which they said was being carried out to restore public order and reopen roads.
The Bank of Russia has increased its key interest rate to 10.5%, to help spur the economy amid sanctions and sliding oil prices.
The bank raised the rate from the previous figure of 9.5%.
It confirmed it would also continue to raise the rate even higher if inflation continues to accelerates.
The central bank predicted inflation reaching 10% by year's end due to the plunging value of the rouble, and now expects growth to be flat through to 2016.
"Annual GDP growth is expected to be close to zero in 2015-2016," the bank said in a statement.
Video:Deciphering The Putin Speech
It cited depreciation of the currency and the "external conditions" of Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis and sliding oil prices.
The rouble dropped to new record lows against the US dollar on Thursday after the announcement was made.
The rate rise is insufficient to thwart further currency pressure, according to Rabobank International emerging markets foreign exchange strategist Piotr Matys.
"This is not enough to stabilise the rouble and increases the risk of a full-scale currency crisis," Mr Matys told Sky News.
"The central bank may intervene more aggressively on the market.
"But selling hard currencies already proved an insufficient tool as reflected in the worst rout since the 1998 crisis and the sharp drop in Russia's foreign reserves of almost $80bn (£64bn) so far this year."
Experts believe the central bank may need to raise rates again, at the next planned meeting on January 30, as more pressure is applied.
Mr Matys added: "In the meantime, the central bank is likely to continue selling US dollars to stem the pace of rouble depreciation, which will inevitably lead to another fall in Russia's foreign reserves."
Brent Crude inched above $65 a barrel on Thursday, as the slide in prices approaches six months.
Russia gets much of its foreign currency from petroleum products and the drop towards five-year lows further exacerbates the problems caused by sanctions.
