Seven Hours at the Border: Marine Held in Mexico’s New Legal Team Hones Case

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Photo Credit: Fox News The new lawyer for Andrew Tahmooressi, the U.S. Marine held in Mexico for more than two months after mistakenly crossing the border with registered guns, is planning a new legal strategy to win the sergeant’s freedom.

Tijuana-based attorney Lamberto Jesus Esquer Dabdoub will be looking at the prolonged amount of time Tahmooressi was held at the border in the custody of the Mexican military March 31 in what Tahmooressi felt was a failed shakedown.

“Andrew felt something was fishy when the military showed up and wanted to arrest him after the customs officials were willing to accompany him back to the U.S.,” said his mother,Jill Tahmooressi, who plans to travel to Tijuana next week for a news conference with Esquer. “Andrew told me he felt there was an implied expectation of a bribe of some sort by the military but nothing was ever directly requested. He was very uncomfortable with their demeanor.”

The Tahmooressis fired Andrew’s previous attorney amid claims he told the Marine to lie about past travels across the border. The legal shakeup has thrown the already-vague timetable for his case into limbo. But when the case gets back on the docket in Tijuana, Esquer plans to focus on the seven-hour period Tahmooressi spent in custody but without charges at the border between San Ysidro, Calif. and Tijuana.

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Surge in Kids Illegally Crossing into U.S. Alone Strains Border Patrol

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Photo Credit: AP / Brian SkoloffThe flood of young children pouring across the southwestern border is worse than the administration has previously acknowledged, and efforts to deal with unaccompanied minors are overwhelming the Border Patrol, distracting it from going after smugglers and other illegal immigrants, according to an internal draft memo from the agency.

The four-page memo, authored by Deputy Border Patrol Chief Ronald D. Vitiello and dated May 30, contradicts the administration’s argument that the border is secure enough to begin legalizing current illegal aliens already in the U.S.

Instead, Chief Vitiello paints a picture of a government struggling to cope, leaving the children suffering poor conditions, agents unable to focus on major security threats and little sense that it will get better.

Known within the Homeland Security Department as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), their numbers have skyrocketed this year, forcing the department to siphon manpower and money from its other critical border duties.

“The large quantity of DHS interdiction, intelligence, investigation, processing, detention and removal resources currently being dedicated to address UAC is compromising DHS capabilities to address other transborder criminal areas, such as human smuggling and trafficking and illicit drug, weapons, commercial and financial operations,” Chief Vitiello wrote in the memo, which was viewed by The Washington Times.

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North Korea Says it is Holding an American Tourist

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / KCNANorth Korea has detained a 56-year-old man from Ohio, accusing him of an unspecified crime after he traveled to the communist-led country as a tourist, the nation’s state news agency and the man’s family said. The North is now holding three Americans.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency identified the latest detainee as Jeffrey Edward Fowle. It said Friday that he arrived in North Korea on April 29 and authorities were investigating him for committing acts inconsistent with the purpose of a tourist visit. It did not give details.

U.S. officials confirmed the detention but didn’t identify the person for privacy reasons, nor comment on reports that he was held after leaving a Bible in his hotel room.

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“Go To America With Your Child, You Won’t Be Turned Away”

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Photo Credit: KRGV.comCentral Americans say news reports in their countries are encouraging them to make the journey north to the United States.

A mother and child told CHANNEL 5 NEWS that the message being disseminated in their country is, “go to America with your child, you won’t be turned away.”

The woman, Nora Griselda Bercian Diaz, from Guatemala, said she endured threats from the Zetas and extortion from corrupt Mexican police. She eventually crossed the Rio Grande with her 6-year-old Delmi Griselda Paul Bercian by her side.

The woman said she wants a U.S. education for her daughter.

“I want to study,” said the girl who hopes to one day become a doctor.

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3 Times The Obama Administration Has Been Humiliated By Foreign Leaders Since 2013

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Kevin LamarqueIn Obama’s America, foreign officials often disrespect top U.S. leaders…

In terms of how America is viewed by citizens of foreign countries under Obama, polling doesn’t quite yet reflect that America is viewed worse under Obama than George W. Bush, but one suspects that it might shortly. While a 2013 Pew global attitudes poll showed most countries viewing Obama’s America more favorably than Bush’s, it also revealed that America’s image in the world has been falling steadily in a majority of countries surveyed since the euphoria of Obama’s first year in office. In some countries — perhaps most hilariously Kenya — Obama’s America in 2013 was viewed less favorably than Bush’s America at the end of his term in 2008…

1.) Karzai refused to meet with Obama

President Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan over Memorial Day Weekend, but despite being commander-in-chief of the world’s only superpower, he couldn’t secure a meeting with the country’s outgoing leader, Hamid Karzai, according to reports.

The ungrateful Afghan leader is currently at loggerheads with the Obama administration, so far refusing to sign a bilateral agreement that would allow a contingent of American forces to remain in the country past 2014.

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Collision Course: Russian Jet Nearly Collides with U.S. Surveillance Aircraft in ‘Reckless’ Intercept in Asia

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Photo Credit: Air Force A Russian Su-27 jet flew dangerously close to a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the Pacific northeast recently in an aerial clash not seen since the Cold War.

An Air Force RC-135 electronic intelligence jet was flying a surveillance run some 60 miles off the Russian Far East coast, north of Japan, on April 23 when the incident occurred, according to defense officials familiar with the incident.

The Su-27 flew to follow the RC-135, and at one point rolled sideways to reveal its air-to-air missile before flying within 100 feet of the cockpit in an attempt to unnerve the crew.

The showdown was video-recorded by the aircrew.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steven Warren said the Su-27 intercepted the RC-135U as it conducted a routine surveillance mission in international airspace over the Sea of Okhotsk during the afternoon of April 23.

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Chinese General Says U.S. Foreign Policy Has ‘Erectile Dysfunction’ Problems

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Photo Credit: APA Chinese general used a regional security conference this weekend to tell a global audience that U.S. rhetoric about the South China Sea risks provoking Beijing.

For the Chinese language audience, the general used language saltier — and perhaps more provocative — words to describe how he feels about U.S. power.

Maj. Gen Zhu Chenghu, a professor at the National Defense University, made the remarks in an interview with Chinese-language Phoenix TV at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore Saturday.

He suggested that if China came to blows with any of its neighbors, the U.S. might not be a reliable ally.

“As U.S. power declines, Washington needs to rely on its allies in order to reach its goal of containing China’s development,” he told the TV station.

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Christian on Death Row for Apostasy: Sudan Shoots Down Hopes of Imminent Release

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Photo Credit: The TimesA day after a senior Sudanese official told media outlets that Meriam Ibrahim, the Christian woman sentenced to death for apostasy, would be freed within days, Khartoum’s foreign ministry on Sunday clarified that that would happen only if an appeal court rules in her favor.

The conflicting statements were the latest twist in the case of Ibrahim, the wife of an American citizen, who was sentenced to death last month after refused to recant her Christian faith.

Based on its ruling that Ibrahim was a Muslim because her father was a Muslim, the court also determined that her 2011 marriage – to Daniel Wani, a Sudanese Christian and U.S. citizen – was invalid and consequently sentenced her to 100 lashes for “adultery.”

Pregnant at the time of her conviction and sentence, Ibrahim has since given birth in prison to a baby girl, Maya, who is now incarcerated together with her and their son, Martin, a toddler just under two years old. The court said she would be allowed to nurse her baby for two years before the sentence was carried out.

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Sudan Set To Free Woman Sentenced To Death For Refusing To Renounce Her Christian Faith

By Caroline Schaeffer.

Meriam Ibrahim, who gave birth to a daughter while in custody this week, is set to be free, according to foreign ministry officials. Sudanese officials had sentenced the woman to 100 lashings and had given her the death sentence for having abandoned the Islamic faith, the BBC reports.

Ibrahim, 27, was raised as an Orthodox Christian and married an American. A Sudanese judge ruled in May that she should be a Muslim, because it was her father’s faith. The court ruled her marriage void. In the face of all this, she refused to renounce her Christian faith and was sentenced to death by hanging.

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North Korea Gives South Korean Missionary Life Sentence

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Photo Credit: APNorth Korea said Saturday it has sentenced a South Korean Baptist missionary to hard labor for life for allegedly spying and trying to set up underground churches, the latest in a string of missionaries to run into trouble in the rigidly controlled North.

North Korean state media said the missionary was tried Friday and admitted to anti-North Korean religious acts and “malignantly hurting the dignity” of the country’s supreme leadership, a reference to the ruling Kim family. The rival Koreas have different English spelling styles for Korean names, so the North called the missionary Kim Jong Uk, but Seoul has previously referred to him as Kim Jung Wook.

Christian missionaries have been drawn over the years to totalitarian North Korea, which tolerates only strictly sanctioned religious services. North Korean defectors have said that the distribution of Bibles and secret prayer services can mean banishment to a labor camp or execution.

North Korea said in a dispatch dated Friday but released early Saturday that Kim had defense counsel, but the details of the trial could not be independently confirmed.

North Korea does not have an independent judiciary, does not provide fair trials and imposes rigid controls over many aspects of its citizens’ lives, including in religious matters, according to the U.S. State Department.

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Village Protests Rape, Killings of Indian Sisters

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Photo Credit: Dennis Jarvis / Creative CommonsTwo teenage sisters in rural India were raped and killed by attackers who hung their bodies from a mango tree, which became the scene of a silent protest by villagers angry about alleged police inaction in the case. Two of the four men arrested so far are police officers.

Villagers found the girls’ bodies hanging from the tree early Wednesday, hours after they disappeared from fields near their home in Katra village in Uttar Pradesh state, police Superintendent Atul Saxena said. The girls, who were 14 and 15, had gone into the fields because there was no toilet in their home.

Hundreds of angry villagers stayed next to the tree throughout Wednesday, silently protesting the police response. Indian TV footage showed the villagers sitting under the girls’ bodies as they swung in the wind, and preventing authorities from taking them down until the suspects were arrested.

Police arrested two police officers and two men from the village later Wednesday and were searching for three more suspects.

Autopsies confirmed the girls had been raped and strangled before being hung, Saxena said.

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