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Nazi suspect arrested in Hungary

July 18, 2012

Laszlo Csizsik-Csatary suspected of Nazi war crimes has been arrested in Hungary. The Simon Wiesenthal Center found Csizsik-Csatary as part of its Last Chance project, said Efraim Zuroff, director of the center’s Israel office. He is accused of sending more than 15,000 Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said. They consider him their most-wanted Nazi war criminal.

“We found eyewitnesses on three different continents,” Zuroff said. Those witnesses told the center about Csizsik-Csatary’s brutality to Jewish detainees and his role in deportations.

A 1941 Ukraine deportations witness had nine family members that were deported. Csizsik-Csatary had four of them brought back from labor with the Hungarian army so they would be deported and killed, according to Zuroff.

Csizsik-Csatary served as a senior Hungarian police officer in the city of Kosice, the center said. Csizsik-Csatary was involved in the deportation of 15,700 Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944, witnesses have told the center. He also played a role in “deportations to the Ukraine to be killed,” Zuroff said.

In 1949 Csizsik-Csatary arrived in Canada and told immigration officials he was Yugoslavian, according to The Toronto Star newspaper. Sometime after his arrival the Canadian authorities investigated allegations that he had lied to immigration authorities about his past when he first arrived. Canada revoked his citizenship in 1997 and began an investigation. As deportation proceedings were under way, Csizsik-Csatary voluntarily left Canada. Csizsik-Csatary then returned to Hungary.

“Hungarian authorities knew that he was back,” said Zuroff.

Authorities in Hungary started an investigation in September 2011 after receiving information from Zuroff regarding Csizsik-Csatary’s residence in Budapest and his role in the Auschwitz deportations, the center said. This later led to the arrest of Csizsik- Csatary.

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Man decapitates daughter for her ‘indecent behavior’

June 19, 2012

Police in Rajasthan, India say they were shocked when a man showed up at a police station holding a bloody human head and sword.

The head was of the man’s daughter Manju Kunwar. It was chopped off because of her “indecent behavior.” The beheading took place on Tuesday in Dengar Ka Guda, a village in Rajsamand District. Villagers said the father, whose shirt was soaked in blood, had carried his daughter’s head through the village and described what he had done to his neighbors.

Kunwar was in her 20s and was living with her parents at the time. She left her husband from an arranged marriage two years ago. She recently began seeing several men which “disgusted” her father, deputy police superintendent Umesh Ojha said. Kunwar eloped with a man two weeks ago and her father forced her to return home on Sunday.

Authorities said her father accused her of acting inappropriately with other men. He accused his daughter of bringing dishonor to the family and making it difficult to find future husbands for her two unmarried sisters. The authorities say Kunwar’s mother is a farmer and that she was working in the fields at the time.

The weeping women lined the road of the village in Rajasthan as a march carried Manju Kanwar’s remains to her funeral pyre. In many north and west Indian villages the women are not allowed to attend the funeral even if they are family members of the deceased.

In India women hold some of the highest positions in society. Women are company CEOs, the president and speakers of the House. But this case highlights another side of India in which women still undergo the consequences of long-held traditions.

India topped this month’s Thomson Reuters Foundation poll as the worst place to be a woman among the top 19 economies in the world. The foundation cited abuse, killings and discrimination on a matchless scale to other nations.

Transit of Venus, Tuesday

June 1, 2012

There’s a lot of excitement around the Transit of Venus event even though this rare astronomical experience will hold little scientific value. This upcoming Tuesday, Venus will cross the face of the sun. The journey will take about seven hours and begin at 6:09 p.m. EDT.

The next time Venus journeys across the sun will be in the year 2117, says Jack Lissauer, Kepler Mission co-investigator and planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research. “This is the last chance for almost everybody unless we have huge medical advances,” Lissauer says.

In 1769 Capt. James Cook set up an examination point in Tahiti, French Polynesia, where he collected data on Venus during the transit that took place over 243 years ago. To this day, the place Cook observed Venus’ trail across the sun is known as Point Venus. For those who want to watch the entire six-hour, 40-minute event, Tahiti is a good place to be. Past Transits of Venus were used to understand the size of the solar system and the distance between planets, Lissauer said.
“If you are in a certain part of the globe, and this includes Alaska and much of the Pacific and eastern Australia and some of northeast Asia, you can see the entire transit,” Lissauer says.

If you would like to look at the transit before sunset you will need either a special pair of glasses, a telescope with a special filter or a pinhole camera so you do not damage your eyes.

Those in the mid-Pacific will have great views because the sun will be high above during the crossing. In the United States the sunset will offer the best views. At sunrise in 2004, the end of the Transit of Venus was visible in the eastern United States. This time it will be sunset when people all over the United States will be able to view part of the transit. According to Lissauer, sunset is the best time to watch because you can observe Venus with the naked eye.

“When the sun is very close to the horizon and it is very red and you can normally look at the sun without hurting your eyes,” Lissauer says. “Then you can actually look at the sun directly and you will see this little circle caused by Venus blocking part of the sun’s light.”

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Mexico’s drug war: Latest 49 dead bodies

May 14, 2012

In Monterrey, Mexico police found 49 mutilated bodies spread around the entrance to the town San Juan on a highway that connects the industrial city of Monterrey with Reynosa. The 43 men and 6 women with their feet, hands, and heads chopped off were found before dawn on Sunday. Some of the bodies were in plastic garbage bags, most likely brought to that spot and dropped from a back of a dump truck, said Nuevo Leon state security spokesman Jorge Domene. A white stone arch that welcomes visitors to the town was spray painted with the words“100% Zeta”. It is referred to the Zetas drug cartel.

In Mexico the number of body dumpings has increased in the last 6 months due to the growing fight between the Zetas and Sinaloa Cartel. In less than a month, the maimed bodies of 14 men were left in a van in downtown Nuevo Laredo and 23 people were found hanged or decapitated in the same border city. Near Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara, 18 dismembered bodies were left out in the open. Nuevo Laredo like Monterrey is considered Zeta territory. Guadalajara has long been controlled by gangs loyal to Sinaloa.

The Sinaloa Cartel is said to be run by fugitive drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and its allies, said the federal Attorney General’s office in a statement on Sunday. The office is offering $2 million reward for any information that can lead them to the arrest of Guzman, Zetas leader Heriberto Lazacano and Miguel Trevino. The two cartels have emerged as Mexico’s two most powerful gangs and are battling over strategic transport routes and territory.

The Zetas are a temporary gang without real territory or a secure stream of income, unlike Sinaloa with its profitable cocaine trade and control of smuggling routes and territory, said Raul Benitez Manaut, a security expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. But the Zetas are heavily armed while Sinaloa has weak weapon enforcement, he said.

Drug violence has killed more than 47,500 people since President Felipe Calderon launched a step up offensive when he took office in 2006. Mexico is now in the middle of a presidential race to replace Calderon. Drug violence seems to be rising but none of the candidates have referred directly to the mass killings. They all say they will stop the violence and make Mexico a more secure place but offer small to none details on how their plans would differ from Calderon’s.

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