German Railways to use Mini Drones to Stop Graffiti

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Photo Credit: France 24Germany’s railway operator plans to deploy mini drones to catch vandals who deface its trains with graffiti, with the aerial vehicles shooting thermal images of its train depots at night.

Deutsche Bahn plans to soon start testing the vehicles which have four helicopter-style rotors and can shoot high-resolution pictures.

“We are going to use this technology in problem areas, where taggers are most active,” a spokesman who asked not to be named told AFP.

A “pilot” remotely steers the vehicles at heights of up to 150 metres (500 feet) and speeds of up to 54 kilometres (33 miles) per hour.

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Massive Protests Against Homosexual Marriage in Paris

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Photo Credit: independent.co.ukEarlier about 400,000 people, including many children, had defied warnings of possible far-right violence and marched in peaceful protest against France’s newly enacted law permitting same-sex marriage. Twenty members of a xenophobic far-right group, “Génération Identitaire”, clambered on to the roof terrace of the headquarters of the Socialist party during the afternoon and unfurled a banner calling for the resignation of President François Hollande. They were rapidly dislodged and arrested by police.

Even before the violence broke out, the government said that there had been 96 arrests, mostly for possession of weapons.

The “marriage-for-all” law, allowing gay couples to marry in town halls and adopt children, passed its final legal and constitutional hurdles earlier this month.

The first officially recognised same-sex marriage in France will take place between two men in Montpellier on Wednesday.

The passage of the law, and warnings of possible violence, had been expected to dampen the ardour of protesters for what was billed as the “last demonstration” in a series of half a dozen large rallies that began in December. Police put the turn-out at 150,000. The organisers claimed 1,000,000. Other organisers estimated over 400,000, which seemed closest to the mark.

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Japanese Mayor Apologizes for Saying US Troops Should Visit Adult Businesses to Reduce Rapes

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Photo Credit: APA Japanese mayor apologized Monday for saying earlier that U.S. troops should patronize legal adult entertainment businesses as a way to reduce rapes and other assaults.

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, who is also the co-head of an emerging nationalistic party, said his remarks two weeks ago rose from a “sense of crisis” about cases of sexual assaults by U.S. military personnel on Japanese civilians in Okinawa, where a large number of U.S. troops are based.

“I understand that my remark could be construed as an insult to the U.S. forces and to the American people” and was inappropriate, he said at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Tokyo.

Hashimoto had created another uproar when he said that Japan’s wartime practice of forcing Asian women, mostly from South Korea and China, to work in front-line brothels was necessary to maintain discipline and provide relaxation for soldiers.

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Female Suicide Bomber Injures 11 in Russia

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A female suicide bomber identified as a widow of two killed Islamists blew herself up in the southern Russian region of Dagestan on Saturday injuring at least 12, including two children and five police officers, police said.

The bomber detonated an explosives-laden belt in the central square in the provincial capital, Makhachkala, Dagestan’s police spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said.

The bomber was identified as Madina Alieva, who married an Islamist who was killed in 2009 and then wedded another Islamic radical who was gunned down last year, police spokeswoman Fatina Ubaidatova said.

Since 2000, at least two dozen women, most of them from the Caucasus, have carried out suicide bombings in Russian cities and aboard trains and planes. All were linked to an Islamic insurgency that spread throughout Dagestan and the predominantly Muslim Caucasus region after two separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya.

The bombers are often called “black widows” in Russia because many are the widows, or other relatives, of militants killed by security forces. Islamic militants are believed to convince “black widows” that a suicide bombing will reunite them with their dead relatives beyond the grave.

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French Police Search for Man Who Stabbed Soldier

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Photo Credit: APFrench anti-terrorism investigators were searching Sunday for a man who stabbed a soldier in the throat in the commercial district of La Defense outside Paris.

The 23-year-old soldier, Cedric Cordier, was in uniform patrolling the busy underground corridors where shops and crowded public transport lines converge beneath the famous Arch of La Defense.

Saturday’s stabbing came days after a British soldier was hacked to death on a London street in broad daylight in a suspected terrorist attack that has raised fears of potential copycat strikes. However, there was no immediate confirmation of any link between the two attacks.

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Socialist French Government Takes Steps to Ban Rightwing Party

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Photo Credit: agaw.dilimThe French government is taking steps to ban an extreme far-right movement believed to be planning violence at demonstration against gay marriage in Paris on Sunday.

The Interior Minister, Manuel Valls, said today that he was “studying” ways of banning Printemps Français [French spring], a group linked to a xenophobic writer who committed suicide at the altar of Notre Dame cathedral on Tuesday.

The nebulous movement, which loosely links a number of ultra-nationalist and Nazi-sympathising groups, is accused of making recent threats to public figures – including Frigide Barjot, the more moderate leader of anti-gay marriage protests.

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Family Of Former Marine Kidnapped In Mexico Speaks Out, Hopes He’s Alive

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Photo Credit: TORRES FAMILYThe family of a former U.S. Marine is hoping he’s still alive despite not having heard from him since he was kidnapped in Mexico.

The whereabouts of Armando Torres, 27, who served in Iraq in 2009 as a mechanic fixing military vehicles, are still unknown. The FBI and Mexican authorities are investigating the case and a fellow Marine continues lobbying for congressional help.

Torres’ relatives told Fox News Latino in an exclusive interview that he was likely taken, along with his father and uncle, by gang members or a drug cartel. They were kidnapped in Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas.

The FBI is investigating Torres’s disappearance as a kidnapping and are working with local Mexican officials to find him, according to the FBI.

Armando Torres crossed the border to Mexico last week on Tuesday night to visit his father. His relatives, who spoke to Fox News Latino on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, said they were last seen being escorted out of the father’s home by armed men. Family members describe seeing a white truck outside.

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Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister: Iran Could Produce Dozens of Nuclear Bombs a Year

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Photo Credit: algemeinerIf Iran is not stopped from developing the capability to build a nuclear bomb, the Islamic Republic could become a “nuclear superpower” that produces dozens of bombs per year and has hundreds of bombs in its arsenal, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said Tuesday.

“This is a ramified nuclear industry that has been built not to produce a few bombs but to produce fissionable material for dozens and hundreds of nuclear bombs. The issue at hand is not a nuclear state but the possibility of creating a nuclear superpower,” Steinitz said according to an Israeli government communique. “Today, the Natanz facility has about 12,000 centrifuges and plans to reach 54,000. It will be able to enrich enough uranium to produce 20-30 atomic bombs per annum.”

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Sebelius Preaches to the World Health Organization: “Access to Health Care … is a Right”

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Photo Credit: The New American Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (shown) told the World Health Assembly (WHA) on Monday that “universal health coverage” is a “right” and that it is the responsibility of “national governments” to achieve this goal.

Speaking at a plenary session of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) governing body in Geneva, Switzerland, Sebelius said, “One goal that is particularly essential to health and development … is universal health coverage. Advancing the health of our nations is a fundamental commitment we make to all our people. As President Obama recently reminded us, access to health care is ‘not some earned privilege — it is a right.’’” (Emphasis in original.)

In other words, everyone is entitled to healthcare whether he can pay for it or not. This clearly is not a right in the sense of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — rights that every person can exercise without imposing on others. Instead, it is a government-granted privilege whereby some individuals are permitted to plunder others — and where the victims of this theft are penalized by the government for resisting.

It is clear that this is the kind of “right” that Sebelius has in mind.

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Historian Kills Himself in Paris’ Notre Dame to Make Statement Against Homosexual Marriage and Islam

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Photo Credit: CNNA right-wing historian and author killed himself inside the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris Tuesday in front of horrified tourists, police said.

About 1,500 people at the cathedral were evacuated, CNN affiliate BFM reported. The site is one of the world’s most prominent churches and a huge tourist attraction in the French capital.

BFM identified the man as Dominique Venner, 78.

Le Monde newspaper quoted a rector at the cathedral, who said the man placed a letter on the altar and then shot himself.

On his blog, Venner has lashed out against same-sex marriage and what he called a future Islamist takeover of France.

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