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watchtower and vanished into an olive grove.
• Such hazardous crossings are a smuggler's tradition at the border, where Turkish plans to clear a vast belt of land mines have been clouded by Syria's civil war. Last week, Turkey asked NATO allies to deploy Patriot missiles as a defense against any aerial attacks from Syria after shells and bullets spilled across the border, killing and injuring some Turks.
• Starting in the 1950s, Turkish forces planted more than 600,000 U.S.-made "toe poppers" -- mines designed to maim, not kill -- and other land mines along much of its 900-kilometer (560-mile) border with Syria, which runs from the Mediterranean Sea to Iraq. The aim was to stop smugglers whose cheap black market goods undercut the Turkish economy and later to thwart Kurdish rebels from infiltrating Turkey's southeast.
• However, the mines also killed and maimed civilians, took arable land from Turkish farmers and are now considered by many as a too-crude method of policing.
• ___
Ark. man suspected in death of 6-year-old girl who was chained to dresser in 2011 due in court
• BENTONVILLE, Ark. (AP) -- After her father and stepmother were arrested last year for chaining her to a dresser, young Jersey Bridgeman received something of a fresh start when she began kindergarten this fall in northwestern Arkansas.
• Then, last week, the 6-year-old's body was found in a vacant home two doors from where she had been living with her mother.
• "The fact that she went through what she went through when she was 5. ... And then this happens," Chelsea Jouett said Tuesday after dropping a teddy bear off at Jersey's home. "She had such a rough life."
• Police have arrested neighbor and family friend Zachary Holly, 28, in Jersey's death. Holly is due in court Wednesday in Bentonville, a city about 215 miles northwest of Little Rock that is best known as the home of Wal-Mart's headquarters.
• Holly was being held on capital murder, kidnapping and residential burglary charges Tuesday night at the Benton County Jail. A judge is likely to appoint a lawyer to represent him during his court appearance Wednesday.
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