Los dos tigres que tras la prohibición de exhibirse en un circo, fueron colocados por su dueño en una casa de la colonia Paraíso, partieron rumbo a Durango luego de permanecer en observación durante un mes.

Ambos se van en excelentes condiciones de salud y con un aumento de más de 15 por ciento en su peso, comentó el delegado de la Procuraduría Federal de Protección al ambiente (PROFEPA), Víctor Jaime Cabrera Medrano.

Se trata de un macho y una hembra de 200 y 180 kilos de peso, uno de ellos atacó el seis de Abril a la persona que los aseaba y daba de comer, en un domicilio de Juchitlán 314 en la colonia Paraíso, de Guadalupe, Nuevo León.

Los animales eran del mago brasileño Ericko Tranvensuli, y en unos tres meses se sabrá la sanción que le van a aplicar, pues demostró ser el legítimo propietario de los tigres, pero el trato que recibían los animales era inadecuado.

El traslado de los tigres corre por cuenta de la PROFEPA y van en unidad climatizada, pues el viaje al estado de Durango se prolonga por siete horas.

How Mexican journalists are reporting in secret on drug cartels.

Reporters use cross-border outlet to break the news gag imposed by gangs.

How is it possible to report in a country regarded as one of the most dangerous places for a journalist to operate? Answer: do it secretly; do it online; and do it remotely.

According to a Christian Science Monitor article, a Mexican reporter called AJ Espinoza worked out this safe way of working some two years ago.

He teamed up with a US-based reporter in order to write stories he thinks fellow Mexicans should read. But they appear in a US-based outlet rather than his local newspaper.

In that way, he can safely report on the activities of the drug cartels that plague the Mexico-US border region where he operates. Espinoza is quoted as saying: “No one else needs to know that I’m doing this.”

He formed a partnership with Ildefonso Ortiz, a reporter for Breitbart along the Texas-Mexico border, who says that people who don’t live in the region find it “hard to grasp that in cities like Matamoros or Reynosa, organised crime has complete control [over the media]”.

Celeste González de Bustamante, an associate professor at Arizona university who studies the effects of violence on journalism, says:

“Newsrooms started waiting for the green light to publish. But the green or red light wasn’t coming from the owner of the paper or managers, but from members of organised crime.” Editors “have to answer to two bosses: the publishers and the cartels.”

Newspapers have come up with creative ways to overcome the problem. El Mañana, one of the oldest newspapers in the region, will occasionally run a sensitive story from Tamaulipas on the front page of its neighbouring Nuevo Leon-based edition, while burying the story locally.

Others have tried to adapt by creating alternative publications that come out less frequently. And some outlets will sometimes risk publishing or broadcasting stories that implicate cartel activity, but will omit bylines or cite hard-to-trace Twitter users as sources.

Ortiz said: “For people not on the border, it’s hard to grasp that in cities like Matamoros or Reynosa, organised crime has complete control. It’s like an alternative form of government. They control the media; they boss around politicians and the government.”

Last year, Ortiz and his Breitbart editor developed a project called the Cartel Chronicles, which is published in both English and Spanish.

But there are still risks, even when working anonymously. In 2014, a crusading Twitter user who publicised details of cartel violence in Tamaulipas was kidnapped and murdered.

Despite those dangers, Espinoza says teaming with Ortiz is worth it. “If no one knows what’s really happening, how can the situation ever change?”

Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, postponed for a third time the launch of six commercial communication satellites from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, officials said on Sunday.

An exterior of the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne

Liftoff of the privately owned company’s Falcon 9 rocket had been slated for 5:30 p.m. EDT/2130 GMT. Aboard the rocket are six small satellites owned by Orbcomm Inc, which provides machine-to-machine data and messaging services worldwide.

SpaceX, which is owned and operated by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, has been trying since Friday to launch what would be its 10th Falcon 9 rocket, a medium-lift booster that also flies cargo capsules to the International Space Station for NASA.

SpaceX is pursuing U.S. military launch contracts as well, hoping to break a monopoly by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Friday’s launch attempt was called off due to a potential technical problem with the rocket’s upper-stage engine. No other information about the issue was provided by SpaceX, though the glitch apparently was cleared in time for a second launch attempt on Saturday. That attempt was canceled because of poor weather at the launch site.

SpaceX rescheduled a launch for Sunday but encountered another technical issue. It was not known if the glitch was related to the upper-stage engine issue that surfaced on Friday. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The ... launch attempt has been scrubbed to address a potential concern identified during pre-flight checks,” SpaceX wrote on its website.

“The vehicle and payload are in good condition, and engineering teams will take the extra time to ensure the highest possible level of mission assurance prior to flight,” it said.

The next launch opportunity is on Tuesday.

SpaceX said it had planned to restore a webcast and commentary for Sunday's launch attempt after imposing an unprecedented media blackout for Saturday's launch try.

“For the first time since the end of the Cold War, a space launch from Cape Canaveral will not be broadcast to the press and the public,” Spaceflightnow.com, which provides live launch coverage, wrote on its website on Saturday.

The blackout spurred an angry backlash on Twitter. The company did not respond to questions about why it canceled Saturday's launch commentary and webcast or why it planned to reverse itself for Sunday's launch attempt.

Twitter and Facebook lit up in a World Cup frenzy this week as millions of people around the world took to social media to share in the ups and downs of the matches.

A man starting his Twitter App on a mobile device.

Defending champion Spain's stunning elimination Wednesday after a 2-0 defeat to Chile generated a lot of buzz, though not as much as the Cup's opening match between Brazil and Croatia.

Google, meanwhile, tracked more than 641 million World Cup-related searches. In the week leading up the U.S. team's game against Ghana on Monday, there were 10 times more searches for the World Cup in the U.S. than for the NBA Finals, which were in progress at the time.

Here's a look at how the World Cup fared online this week:

— TWEET DELUGE

There were 4.9 million tweets sent out Monday during the U.S. team's match against Ghana. That compared with 12.2 million during the opening game last week between Brazil and Croatia, the most tweeted-about match so far. In comparison, there were 19.1 million tweets sent about this year's Oscars, but that was within a 12-hour window surrounding the award show. All 32 participating World Cup teams have Twitter accounts — latecomer Iran joined just in time last week as @TeamMeliIran.

— THE LITTLE GUY

Notice anything different on Google Maps this week? Look a little closer. That's right, the little yellow guy that guides users through the Street View feature ("Pegman," as he's called), has been dressed up in black shorts and a white T-shirt and is holding a soccer ball. While you're at it, you can also look inside all the World Cup stadiums using Street View.

— WHO'S TALKING ON FACEBOOK?

Watching the U.S. beat Ghana on Monday, men aged 25 to 34 were posting about the match the most, followed by men ages 18 to 24, then men 35-44. Women between 25 and 34 came next. As for countries, the top 5 countries with the most posts were, in order, the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand and England. In all, 10 million people generated 15 million "interactions" on Facebook, which include posts, comments, likes and shares.

Why Thailand, you ask, considering it's not in the tournament? The country's military junta, in an effort to "return happiness to the people," negotiated a deal with the tournament's broadcaster to allow all the games to be shown for free. Previously, the broadcaster had only planned to show 22 of the 64 matches for free.

— GOALS ON GOOGLE?

Google is sharing some World Cup stats that look at what people are searching for during the matches. In anticipation of Saturday's Germany vs. Ghana game, for example people in Germany were searching for Ghana player Kevin Prince Boateng 20 percent more than for his brother Jerome Boateng — even though the Jerome plays for Germany.

Germans were also searching for caipirinhas more often than people in Brazil, perhaps because Brazilians already know how to concoct their national cocktail, made from cachaca, sugar and lime. In Brazil, which tied with Mexico on Tuesday, searches for a Mexican TV character called the Crimson Grasshopper soared after Mexico fans dressed as "El Chapulín Colorado" to support their team.

An attack from inside Syria on Sunday killed a 13-year-old Israeli boy on the occupied Golan Heights, the first fatality on Israel's side of the frontier since the Syrian civil war began, relatives and the military said.

An Israeli soldier carries a tank shell near Alonei Habashan on the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, close to the ceasefire line between Israel and Syria June 22, 2014.

Israeli tanks fired at Syrian army positions in response to what an Israeli military spokesman described as an intentional attack.

The Defense Ministry said the teenager, an Arab citizen of Israel from a village in the Galilee, had accompanied his father, one of the ministry's civilian contractors, to the Golan, and that two other people were wounded in the incident.

Israeli officials initially said the boy, Mohammed Qaraqara, was 15. Relatives said he was 13. "He was an excellent student, everyone loved him," his cousin, Salah Qaraqara, 52, told Reuters.

A military spokesman said it was not yet clear whether a roadside bomb or an artillery shell or mortar round, fired from Syria across the frontier fence on the Golan, had struck the water tanker in which the group had been traveling.

"This is the most substantial event that we have had on the border with Syria since the beginning of the (Syrian civil) war," the spokesman said.

Shelling from the Syrian civil war has occasionally spilled over onto the Golan, including what Israel has said were deliberate attacks on its troops. Israel captured the plateau from Syria in a 1967 war and annexed it in a move that is not internationally recognised.While the Syrian army has a presence on the Golan, some areas are controlled by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, including al Qaeda-inspired militants hostile to the Jewish state.

Israel says Hezbollah guerrillas from Lebanon are also operating, on Assad's behalf, on the Golan. Israeli officials have voiced concern that Israel will increasingly become a target during and after the Syrian conflict.

Last March, four Israeli soldiers were wounded in a roadside bombing along the Golan frontier. Israel responded to that incident by launching air strikes against Syrian military sites.

It was a moment to savour for Arnaud Montebourg, France's flamboyant economy minister who carries the torch for the interventionist left in President François Hollande's Socialist government.

View of a Haliade 150 offshore wind turbine at Alstom's offshore wind site in Le Carnet, on the Loire Estuary, near Saint Nazaire, western France, April 27, 2014.

Alstom backs GE bid as Bouygues stake deal takes shape.

The board of Alstom backed a proposed tie-up with General Electric on Saturday as the French government neared agreement with shareholder Bouygues over the last major outstanding plank of the deal.

An accord is taking shape on the price at which the government will acquire 20 percent of Alstom from construction group Bouygues, two sources familiar with the discussions said, adding that it would likely be finalised on Sunday.

Bouygues, GE and Alstom all declined to comment on the ongoing stake sale talks as the French industrial group's board formally endorsed the plan with unanimous support.

The GE deal "not only addresses the interests of Alstom and of its stakeholders but also provides assurances in connection with concerns expressed by the French state", Alstom said.

President Francois Hollande earlier raised the pressure on Paris-based Bouygues, warning that failure to agree a price for the stake purchase could still scupper the tie-up.

"If this sale did not go ahead at a price acceptable to the government, it would be necessary to reconsider the alliance as it has just been announced," Hollande told reporters in Paris.

On Friday the government backed the proposed deal with GE, which vales Alstom's energy business at 12.35 billion euros ($16.77 billion), rejecting a rival Siemens-Mitsubishi offer it had previously encouraged as ministers sought guarantees on domestic jobs and activities deemed strategic.

The announcement drew a line under a two-month battle for Alstom that had become heavily politicized as soon as the first reports of an agreed tie-up with GE appeared in April.

But the official green light remains subject to strict conditions agreed with GE - as well as the government's purchase of the Alstom stake from Bouygues.

"COOL HEAD"

French Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg had said on Friday the state would pay only market price for the shares, which closed at 28 euros, valuing Alstom at 8.65 billion euros.

But Bouygues values the holding at 34 euros per share in its accounts - a premium of 380 million euros or 21 percent over its 1.73 billion market capitalization.

The company had originally paid 2 billion euros to acquire the holding from the government in 2006, two years after a state-backed bailout.

Bouygues "does not feel bound to accept just any price presented by the government as non-negotiable", a source close to the discussions said on Saturday.

"They want to keep a cool head and find a balanced deal that respects shareholders and governance rules," he said. "As in all such discussions, people will try to use all possible leverage."

Pressure on Bouygues may have been heightened by its embattled telecoms division's growing need for supportive government reform and regulation of the sector.

Officials are still examining possible deals or market measures to shield Bouygues Telecom and its jobs from low-cost rival Free. Bouygues earlier failed to secure a tie-up with rival operator SFR despite government backing.

The GE-Alstom deal announcement followed two days of intensive talks with Alstom Chief Executive Patrick Kron, GE boss Jeff Immelt and their Siemens and Mitsubishi counterparts.

The U.S. group would acquire most of Alstom's energy business including gas and steam turbines for power plants, while handing over its own rail signaling division to reinforce the TGV train manufacturer's transport offering.

The tie-up also establishes three GE-controlled joint ventures in France to house Alstom's power grid, renewable energy and strategically sensitive nuclear turbine businesses.

GE's 7.3 billion euro cash outlay amounts to a smaller windfall for Alstom shareholders than envisaged by earlier proposals, reflecting a narrower perimeter of activities purchased outright.

Despite the concessions, granted in response to French concerns, the revised plan "remains accretive in year one", GE chief Immelt said in response to the Alstom board's approval.

"For GE, the overall economics of the deal remain intact," he said in a company statement, adding that the transaction is expected to close in 2015. ($1 = 0.7366 Euros)

Sunni militants have seized another town in Iraq's western Anbar province, the fourth to fall in two days, officials said Sunday, in what is shaping up to be a major offensive in one of Iraq's most restive regions.

Volunteers of the newly formed "Peace Brigades" participate in a parade in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq, June 21.

The officials said the militants captured Rutba, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) east of the Jordanian border, late Saturday. Residents were on Sunday negotiating with the militants to leave after an army unit on the town's outskirts threatened to start shelling.

Photos: Iraq siege: Cities fall to militants

The latest advance has dealt another blow to Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is fighting for his political life even as forces beyond his control are pushing the country toward a sectarian showdown.

In a reflection of the bitter divide, thousands of heavily armed Shiite militiamen — eager to take on the Sunni insurgents — marched through Iraqi cities in military-style parades Saturday on streets where many of them battled U.S. forces a half decade ago.

The towns of Qaim, Rawah, Anah and Rutba are the first seized in predominantly Sunni Anbar province since fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant overran the city of Fallujah and parts of the provincial capital of Ramadi earlier this year.

The capture of Rawah on the Euphrates River and the nearby town of Anah appeared to be part of march toward a key dam in the city of Haditha, the destruction of which would damage the country's electrical grid and cause major flooding.

Taking Rutba gives the insurgents control over the final stretch of a major highway to neighboring Jordan, a key artery for passengers and goods that has been infrequently used for months because of deteriorating security.

Rutba has a population of 40,000 but it has recently been home to 20,000 displaced from Fallujah and Ramadi.

Iraqi military officials said more than 2,000 troops were quickly dispatched to the site of the dam to protect it. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The Islamic State and allied militants have carved out a large fiefdom along the Iraqi-Syrian border. Control over crossings like that one in Qaim allows them to more easily move weapons and heavy equipment. Rebels control the Syrian side of the crossing.

Al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government has struggled to push back against the Sunni militants, who have seized large swaths of the country's north since taking control of the second-largest city of Mosul on June 10 as troops melted away.

The prime minister, who has led the country since 2006 and has not yet secured a third term after recent parliamentary elections, has increasingly turned to Iranian-backed Shiite militias and volunteers to bolster his beleaguered security forces.

The parades in Baghdad and other cities in the mainly Shiite south revealed the depth and diversity of the militias' arsenal, from field artillery and missiles to multiple rocket launchers and heavy machine guns, adding to mounting evidence that Iraq is inching closer to a religious war between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Al-Maliki has come under growing pressure to reach out to disaffected Kurds and Sunnis, with many blaming his failure to promote reconciliation for the country's worst crisis since the U.S. military withdrew its forces nearly three years ago.

In Baghdad, about 20,000 militiamen loyal to anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, many in military fatigues, marched through the sprawling Shiite Sadr City district, which saw some of the worst fighting between Shiite militias and U.S. soldiers before a cease-fire was reached in 2008 that helped stem the sectarian bloodshed that was pushing the country to the brink of civil war.

Similar parades took place in the southern cities of Amarah and Basra, both strongholds of al-Sadr supporters.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most respected voice for Iraq's Shiite majority, who normally stays above the political fray, on Friday joined calls for al-Maliki to reach out to the Kurdish and Sunni minorities. A day earlier President Barack Obama challenged the prime minister to create a leadership representative of all Iraqis.

Al-Maliki's State of Law bloc won the most seats in the April vote, but his hopes to retain his job have been thrown into doubt, with rivals challenging him from within the broader Shiite alliance.

The U.S., meanwhile, has been drawn back into the conflict. Obama announced Thursday he was deploying up to 300 military advisers to help quell the insurgency. They join some 275 troops in and around Iraq to provide security and support for the U.S. Embassy and other American interests.

Obama has been adamant that U.S. troops would not be returning to combat, but has said he could approve "targeted and precise" strikes requested by Baghdad.

Iraq enjoyed several years of relative calm before violence spiked a year ago after al-Maliki moved to crush a Sunni protest movement against alleged discrimination and abuse at the hands of his government and security forces.

On Saturday four separate explosions killed 10 people, including two policemen, and wounded 22 in Baghdad, according to police and hospital officials. And in an incident harkening back to the peak of sectarian killings in 2006 and 2007, two bodies, presumably of Sunnis, were found riddled with bullets in Baghdad's Shiite district of Zafaraniyah, police and morgue officials said.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.

Volunteers in the newly formed "Peace Brigades" raise their weapons and chant slogans against the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant during a parade in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, June 21, 2014.

The detained US soldier convicted of leaking a trove of secret documents to WikiLeaks made a rare foray into public life Saturday to warn Americans they were being lied to about Iraq once more.

In this  June 5, 2013, file photo Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, then-Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, is escorted out of a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md.

Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year prison sentence on espionage charges and other offenses for passing along 700,000 secret documents, including diplomatic cables and military intelligence files, to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks in the largest-scale leak in US history.

"I understand that my actions violated the law. However, the concerns that motivated me have not been resolved," the soldier formerly known as Bradley Manning wrote in a New York Times editorial.

"As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to the question of how the United States military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan."

President Barack Obama said this week he was "looking at all the options" to halt the offensive that has brought militants within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of Baghdad's city limits, but ruled out any return of US combat troops.

Obama has been under mounting fire from Republican critics over the swift collapse of Iraq's security forces, which Washington spent billions of dollars training and equipping before pulling out its own troops in 2011.

While the US military was upbeat in its public outlook on the 2010 Iraqi parliamentary elections, suggesting it had helped bring stability and democracy to the country, "those of us stationed there were acutely aware of a more complicated reality," Manning wrote.

"Military and diplomatic reports coming across my desk detailed a brutal crackdown against political dissidents by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and federal police, on behalf of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. Detainees were often tortured, or even killed."

Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst, said he was "shocked by our military's complicity in the corruption of that election. Yet these deeply troubling details flew under the American media's radar."

Criticizing the military's practice of embedding journalists, Manning charged that "the current limits on press freedom and excessive government secrecy make it impossible for Americans to grasp fully what is happening in the wars we finance."

Manning is serving out the prison sentence at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and had requested a name change after court-martial proceedings revealed the soldier's emotional turmoil over sexual identity.

A US Army general denied clemency to Manning in April, upholding the 35-year sentence.

Police are looking for up to 16 people who walked out of Chicago store with thousands of dollars worth of merchandise last week.

The thieves targeted the K&G Fashion Superstore in the city's South Side on 75th Street and Stony Island at about 4:30 p.m. on Thursday.

Security cameras caught the group calmly walking out of the store with large bags of clothing, shoes and other items. At least $5,000 was believed to have been stolen.

"Male and females come in this store with their own bags, fill their bags up and just come tumbling out of the store," community activist Andrew Holmes said.

Holmes said the thieves obviously had a choreographed plan.

"They came in, they separated, some on the east side of the store (and) the south side of the store," Holmes said.

A manager saw what was happening and managed to snatch a few of the bags away on the sidewalk, but a company rule limits physical contact with customers, so the thieves were able to run away.

"If they get away with it once, they'll come back again and do it again with a larger crew," Holmes said.

It's believed the thieves went to the store at least once to case it out beforehand.

Ivory carvings made from sperm
whale teeth are displayed at a news
conference at JFK international Airport,
Monday, June 16, 2014 in New York to
highlight efforts by U.S. Customs and
Border Protection and
U.S. Fish and Wildlife
to deter illegal trafficking in wildlife.

The U.S. government is stepping up its crackdown on the illegal trafficking of wild animal products across the nation's borders, saying some may be linked to terrorists, federal officials said Monday.

"Poaching in Africa is funding terrorist groups," U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman told a news conference at Kennedy International Airport.

He said such illegal trade is a threat to global security because it's driven by criminal elements, including terrorists using profits from items such as rhinoceros horns and elephant tusks to finance their activities.

On display in an airport cargo warehouse operated by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection was a collection of wildlife products seized at Kennedy — from ivory disguised in a wooden statue and the stuffed heads of a lion and leopard to handicrafts, artworks and musical instruments hiding animal parts.

The single priciest item was a rhino horn. It fetches $30,000 per pound — or about 30 percent more than its weight in gold.

Paul Chapelle, the agent in charge of New York for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said one horn case resulted in 16 arrests, including that of a mobster from Ireland now serving 13 months behind bars.

The wooden statue contained ivory from a dead elephant worth about $18,000 — mostly from the tusk. Also seized was a small rhino horn libation cup worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Kennedy handles the largest cargo volume of any U.S. airport, about $100 billion a year, said Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.

And the wildlife element plays an especially powerful role in national security, said Froman, the chief U.S. trade negotiator and adviser to President Barack Obama.

More than 20,000 elephants were killed last year along with about 1,000 rhinos, meeting a rising world demand resulting in declining populations across Africa, according to officials with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

This treaty was signed by more than 170 countries to protect animals that end up as contraband including live pets, hunting trophies, fashion accessories, cultural artifacts and medicinal ingredients.

U.S. trade officials believe that groups benefiting from the poaching include the militant Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda and South Sudan, the Janjaweed comprised of Sudanese Arab tribes, and al-Shabab, a jihadist group based in Somalia.

In February, Obama approved a new strategy for fighting trafficking through enforcement, as well as partnerships with other countries, communities and private industry. For the first time, U.S. officials are asking trading partners to agree to conservation measures for wildlife and the environment in return for signing agreements.

Kennedy customs officials are reaching out to local businesses, plus auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's and even Carnegie Hall to alert them to illegally traded valuables that may come their way.

A 23-year-old woman has been charged with four counts of failure to stop and render aid for causing a weekend traffic accident in Houston that killed three people, believed to be teenage siblings, police said on Monday.

Booking photo of Raquel Vasquez-Hernandez.

Raquel Vasquez-Hernandez, 23, was taken into custody on Sunday at a family member's residence without incident and then appeared in court, police said in a statement.

"She is accused for her role in the deaths of three people whose identities are pending verification by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences," it said.

A lawyer for the suspect was not listed on her arrest report.

Police said the suspect ran a red light and struck a car, killing the driver and two passengers. The suspect then fled.

The three who died were a 14-year-old male, a 15-year-old male and a 19-year-old female, media reports said.

A witness contacted the Houston Police Department and advised them of Vasquez-Hernandez's whereabouts, leading to her arrest, police said.

Aaron Hernandez's attorneys on Monday sought to have a murder charge dismissed, saying prosecutors don't have enough evidence to tie the former New England Patriots' star to the murder of a semi-professional football player.

Former New England Patriots NFL football player Aaron Hernandez, left, talks with one of his defense attorneys, Charles Rankin, during a hearing at the Bristol County Superior Court House, Monday, June 16, 2014, in Fall River, Mass.

Prosecutors countered that they can show Hernandez was with Odin Lloyd when he was shot and that Lloyd's killing was part of a pattern of Hernandez committing acts of violence following nightclub disputes.

Also Monday, the former tight end pleaded not guilty to charges that he attacked a handcuffed inmate and threatened to kill a guard and his family while at a county jail in Dartmouth.

Hernandez faces murder charges in Lloyd's June 17, 2013, slaying, as well as a separate case in which he is accused of gunning down two men in Boston in July 2012. He has pleaded not guilty in each case and is being held without bail.

Judge E. Susan Garsh will rule at a later date on the motions to dismiss the Lloyd murder charge and to suppress certain evidence gathered by the state, including cellphone records and surveillance video from dozens of cameras at Hernandez's North Attleborough home.

The judge on Monday also floated a possible trial date of Oct. 6, and she set a July deadline for the New England Patriots to respond to the defense's requests for access to the football team's personnel records.

Hernandez defense attorney James Sultan called the prosecution's evidence "woefully lacking" and maintained that the state has yet to suggest a specific motive for Lloyd's killing.

"There's certainly a lot of what I would call smoke. No doubt about it," Sultan said. "But you can't throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and say, 'Well, that's good enough.' That's not probable cause that he committed the crime."

Prosecutor William McCauley countered that the state has "powerful" evidence against Hernandez.

In what amounted to a preview of the state's arguments, he said toll booth, surveillance, GPS and cellphone records clearly place Hernandez in the car with Lloyd at the time of his murder.

McCauley said the state's evidence also shows Hernandez had the "presence, knowledge and intent" to see the murder to its completion.

Prosecutors also suggested incidents in Boston, Providence and Miami show a "common pattern" of violence by Hernandez following disputes at nightclubs.

But Hernandez's lawyers pushed back against that notion, saying it was part of a persistent attempt to trash Hernandez's character. They criticized prosecutors for their focus on his "affinity for guns," his drug use and past run-ins with law enforcement.

Lloyd had been at a Boston nightclub with Hernandez and others days before his bullet-ridden body was found about a half mile from Hernandez's North Attleborough home.

Prosecutors in Boston have said a spilled drink in a nightclub led Hernandez to kill two people in a drive-by shooting.

Another Hernandez associate, Alexander Bradley, has filed a civil lawsuit alleging Hernandez shot him in the face on Feb. 13, 2013, after they argued following a visit to a Miami strip club.

Dressed in a blue blazer and khaki dress pants, Hernandez sat passively through Monday's nearly three-hour court hearing, one of the longest since his arrest last year.

His mother and other supporters sat in the audience, as did Lloyd's mother and others.

Aaron Hernandez's attorneys on Monday challenged the evidence in one of the former NFL star's murder cases, arguing at a pretrial hearing that prosecutors have not established probable cause in a semi-pro football player's slaying.

Prosecutors countered that they have powerful evidence against Hernandez and that Odin Lloyd's shooting followed a pattern of Hernandez committing acts of violence following disputes at nightclubs.

Also during Monday's court hearing, Hernandez pleaded not guilty to charges that he attacked a handcuffed inmate and threatened to kill a guard and his family while at a county jail in Dartmouth.

Hernandez faces murder charges in the June 17 slaying of Lloyd as well as a separate case in which he is accused of gunning down two men in Boston from inside a SUV in 2012. He has pleaded not guilty in each case and is being held without bail.

The former New England Patriot sat passively in a blue blazer and khaki dress pants as his attorneys argued that the charges in the Lloyd slaying should be dismissed because prosecutors have failed to show convincing evidence. Defense attorney James Sultan said the prosecution has enough to prove Hernandez was with Lloyd the night he was killed, but he argued that does not make Hernandez culpable.

"You can't throw a bunch of stuff at the wall. That's not probable cause," Sultan said.

Prosecutors said their evidence includes a flurry of phone calls and text messages among those involved and the fact that Lloyd's body was found about 1,000 yards from Hernandez's home in North Attleborough, where Lloyd didn't know anybody but Hernandez.

Aaron Hernandez

Prosecutor William McCauley also said the state's investigation into incidents in Boston, Providence and Florida show a "common pattern" of allegations of violence against Hernandez following disputes at nightclubs.

An associate of Hernandez, Alexander Bradley, has filed a lawsuit alleging that Hernandez shot him in the face in Florida after they argued at a strip club.

A tentative trial date of Oct. 6 has been set in the Lloyd murder case. The judge did not immediately rule on the motion to dismiss the murder charge.

Google Owns a Satellite Now.

Google will buy the micro-satellite startup Skybox Imaging for $500 million, the company announced today.

While the deal isn’t yet closed, it’s a big moment. I mean, Google owns satellites now! And the deal falls into a pattern we’ve seen so far in 2014, of big companies chasing the next wave of revenue, by entering new markets through acquisitions.

Skybox, after all, is only one of many similar small-satellite startups. Google seems to have long been hankering for a small satellite manufacturer. The two are even both located in Mountain View, California.
But I think there’s something more here, something that makes Google’s purchase of Skybox different than any old Silicon Valley acquisition. Skybox isn’t just a plain-old satellite company, or even a plain-old satellite startup. Google’s purchase might signal a new product—a new area of sincere competition—for the web’s primo ad monger.

Skybox’s Satellites Are Different

As I wrote in January, the ability to send small satellites into space has changed the satellite industry: Instead of hurling singular and unique devices beyond the atmosphere, with multi-million-dollar price tags and reams of insurance; companies can now send many cheaper probes into orbit. The increase in the number of devices has let companies specialize in mass-producing its parts, which has also brought down costs.
There are many companies planning to put cameras in the sky; some remain in stealth mode. But of this new crop of small-satellite startups, Skybox often seemed the most enterprising.

First, Skybox’s satellites capture video—the first commercially available, high-resolution video of Earth. Many of Skybox’s competitors only aspire to medium- or high-resolution still photography. Planet Labs, for instance, makes smaller satellites than Skybox, so while it can send more “birds” into space, its imagery will never be as good. Nor will its imagery move. Urthecast, a Vancouver-based competitor, offers high-resolution video imagery, but it has no satellite of its own. It parks its camera instead on the Russian end of the International Space Station. Two European engineering firms—the German Dauria Aerospace and the Spanish Elecnor Deimos—recently announced their own constellation of tiny, Earth-observing satellites, but they don’t anticipate sending any into space until 2015.

So far, Skybox’s satellites differ from all these firms. Note though, if even some of these companies succeed, a deluge of imagery will follow them. Hundreds of Earth-observing satellites means there will be at least thousands of new photographs everyday. Who will look at all those pictures?
This is Skybox’s second strength.

Skybox’s Business Could Be Different

Right now, the raw imagery created by satellite cameras can be hard to decode and process for non-experts. Therefore, many companies like Skybox hope to sell “information, not imagery.” Instead of pixels, they’ll give customers algorithmically-harvested assessments of what’s in the pixels. For example, using regular satellite-collected data, an algorithm could theoretically look for leaks in an Arctic pipeline and alert the pipeline’s owners when one appeared. Another could estimate the number of cars in all the Wal-Mart parking lots in America on Black Friday, to better estimate the company’s quarterly earnings.

Note the word theoretically. Algorithms that can scan and successfully detect that level of detail don’t seem to exist yet. Facebook bought an Israeli facial recognition company in 2012 for an undisclosed price, in part because it can process pixelated specificity.

Skybox has long talked a slightly different game. It wouldn’t sell pixels or information about them. Instead, it said, it would create a huge archive of data about the Earth, that included not only its own satellite imagery but also historical weather reports and public satellite imagery. Inside this “cloud for the Earth,” companies could experiment and run their own software.

“There’s never been a good sandbox in this industry,” Skybox’s co-founder, Dan Birkenstock, told me last year. As I wrote in January:

What did he mean [by that]? Something like this: In the past half decade, companies have sprung up around Amazon’s hosted cloud services. Amazon operates massive web servers, tools so adaptable you can build a company around them without having to actually pay to operate a data center. Amazon lets its customers pay for what they need, or can use, and no more.

Amazon’s cloud services make billions of dollars every year. Skybox’s goal was to agglomerate all that historical data it had and make one of these—a cloud computing service—that specifically dealt in data about the Earth.

In other words, Skybox’s success doesn’t depend on it developing a perfect image-evaluation algorithm. It merely depends on another developer using its cloud to develop an algorithm.

Now it joins Google. The advertising giant might use the small satellites in its quest for more and faster data for its Maps and Earth services. The company, however, gets its truly high-resolution imagery from DigitalGlobe, and it negotiated its last “multiyear agreement” with the satellite behemoth in February. Owning satellites of its own might help Google when it negotiates its next contract with DigitalGlobe, but that’s now a few years off. (Whatever happens in the world of small satellites, by the way, the military will still pay for access to DigitalGlobe’s enormous WorldView craft. That doesn’t mean its stock hasn’t responded to the news.)

No, it seems possible Google bought Skybox for two reasons.

The first? Skybox will help Google in its effort to extend Internet access to previously unconnected parts of the globe through small satellites. Perhaps its $500 million price tag is part of the $1 billion the company plans to invest, per a Wall Street Journal report last week.

The second? Right now, Amazon’s cloud product dwarfs Google’s. Reddit, Foursquare, Instagram, and the Obama 2012 campaign all depend or depended on Amazon’s web services. Google’s cloud services even recently slashed their prices to compete with the retailer.

If Google follows Skybox’s lead and creates its own cloud service for data about the Earth, then it might have a vanguard product: an industry-leading cloud service of its own. (Think how useful such a service would be not only to financial speculators or Big Agriculture, but to anyone running a global supply chain.) Google famously wants to “organize all the world’s information,” so doesn’t it make sense that it would invest in the team that has thought the most about organizing—and selling(!)—a platform for computing information about the world.

To justify Google’s purchase of Skybox, many will look to the sky. They don’t have to look all the way to space, though: The real answer is in the cloud.

In the months after American forces invaded Iraq in 2003,Abdulla Mizead would look warily as soldiers carrying heavy weapons patrolled his neighborhood in Najaf.

Abdullah Mizead.

Normally, he would keep his distance. But one afternoon he approached some American troops stopped on a street after seeing them having a tough time communicating with an Iraqi man.

The man had been trying to tell the Americans about detainees in a presidential palace who were trapped. The man, an engineer, had built the palace.

"That staff sergeant just goes nuts about it," Mizead said. "And, he (the Iraqi) is yelling at him, 'You need to come with me right now!'"

Mizead, 25 at the time, had learned English growing up around the world and stepped in to help translate.

A few minutes later, he started to walk away and a sergeant asked him to wait. The soldiers needed a translator to replace a Kuwaiti who was returning home. Would he be interested? Unemployed at the time, translating seemed like an adventure, a chance for Mizead to see parts of Iraq he had never visited.

He agreed and that encounter set him on an improbable course that has brought him full circle with the invading American forces who many Iraqis still blame for the ills plaguing the country: He is now a lieutenant in the U.S. Army at Fort Campbell.


Born in Iraq, Mizead grew up internationally as the son of an Iraqi diplomat whose assignments took him to Mozambique; London, where he learned English; Washington; and Tanzania. Mizead and his family returned to Iraq in 1990, around the time President Saddam Hussein was invading neighboring Kuwait.

After graduating from high school in Iraq, Mizead earned a bachelor's degree and then a master's in English literature from the University of Baghdad, where he relished digging into the works of American literary greats like playwright Eugene O'Neill.

Like for all Iraqis, the U.S.-led invasion upended daily life for Mizead's family. Overnight, American soldiers were patrolling major cities, and Mizead kept his distance — until the day he stepped in to translate.

At first, Mizead had mixed feelings about helping American soldiers. As Shia Muslims, his family had been oppressed for years by the minority ruling Sunnis and Saddam Hussein — some of his father's cousins were killed during the failed 1991 Shia uprising — so anything to help topple that system seemed worthwhile. Still, like many Iraqis, he had grown up hearing propaganda about the evils of America.

A month after he began translating for American troops, Mizead started working with the 1st Battalion, 187th infantry, a Fort Campbell-based unit known as the "Rakkasans" — a term the unit ironically got from a Japanese translator after World War II who couldn't immediately come up with the word for airborne unit so used called them "rakkasan," or "falling down umbrella men."

Over the course of three months, Mizread interpreted as troops moved north from Baghdad to Tikrit and Mosul. It was the adventure the man was hoping for when he first signed up, and the Iraqi native brought an expertise to the job that few others would have had.

While working with an intelligence division in Tal Afar, west of Mosul, Mizead's family background came into play. The area was filled with Shiite Turkmen who refused to speak to any of the Kurdish interpreters the Army had been using — a remnant of the long-standing animosity between Turks and Kurds in northern Iraq.

Mizead noticed a picture of a Shiite saint hanging in the house of a village elder.

"I said 'You're Turkmen, right? Shiite Turkmen?'" Mizead asked. "And as soon as I told them I was from Najaf, my parents were from Najaf, they just loved me."

Working north of Baghdad, Mizead followed the soldiers into several towns and villages that backed Saddam's Baath party. Back at the battalion base, Mizead would always lay out for intelligence officers his impressions of people he interviewed while on a mission.

"This guy's faking it. This guy's hiding something," Mizead recalled telling an officer. "I'm just giving him my gut feeling."

As the military moved north, Mizead hoped to go to the Kurdistan region near the Turkish border — a place he had never been. However, the Army had other plans and headed west instead, and he never made it to Kurdistan. Ready for something new, Mizead took a job with National Public Radio, where he was "the street guy."

"I'd roam the streets of Baghdad, go into the provinces, talk to the people. I went to rural places that nobody had ever heard of, places nobody would ever cover," Mizead said.



One day, the horrors of war hit home.

Mizead's father was kidnapped. Four men put pistols to the heads of Azer Mizead and another family member and forced them from the car. The men switched Azer Mizead to another car and fled. Later, they called Mizead's family asking for ransom.

Mizead feared his father would be killed regardless of any ransom, but they had to try to save him.

"I don't want to live with the idea of him knowing we weren't going to pay the ransom," Mizead recalled telling himself. "I don't want him to die knowing his family abandoned him and were not willing to pay $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000."

The family scraped together the cash from savings and Mizead's earnings. Mizead declined to disclose how much the family put forward, but his employer at the time, NPR, put up $10,000 toward the ransom. The kidnappers guided Mizead by phone around Baghdad for about 45 minutes before he dropped the money at a dictated location. He never saw Azer Mizead again.

"I waited and waited and waited for nothing," Mizead said.

Mizead took to searching for his father in the morgues.

"Every time I'd go there, it was like hell," Mizead said.

Soon after his father disappeared, a translator Mizead knew was killed by insurgents, and Mizead worried he could be next. The family decided to leave Iraq.

Mizead applied for a student visa and got into Columbia University and arrived in early 2007 with his wife and two young children.


While completing a master's degree in journalism and working for War News Radio at Swarthmore College, Mizead sometimes thought back with nostalgia on his time translating for the Army. He had enjoyed the camaraderie, adventure and sense of purpose. In 2010, he signed up.

After bouncing around several military posts, including Fort Carson, Colorado, Mizead began working in intelligence for the "Rakkasans."

Mizead saw familiar faces after being transferred to Fort Campbell. Many recognized him, as well.

Seeing Mizead in uniform was "fairly surreal," said Lt. Col. Clint Cox, who was with the 3rd Battalion based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, during the initial invasion of Iraq. "I knew that I knew who he was, but it took a minute."

Mizead, who remains an Iraqi citizen, today looks and acts every inch the soldier, and like many soldiers, he doesn't betray much. Not even about the profound decision to sign on with the invading Army he once eyed warily.

One of the few times he softens is when he concedes he worries about relatives in Iraq. The country is mired in near-daily violence, and many Iraqis blame the U.S. military and President George W. Bush for the invasion that allowed ethnic tensions to come to the fore. Still, Mizead says family back home support his career path, and that someday he may return to help his homeland, much the way he has helped America.

"My family is still there," he said. "It is still where I'm from."

Mexican police arrested a leading figure in the Knights Templar drug cartel who they say is linked to more than a dozen deaths, prosecutors in the country's troubled Michoacan state said.

Mexican police arrested a leading figure in the Knights Templar drug cartel who they say is linked to more than a dozen deaths, prosecutors in the country's troubled Michoacan state said.

Pedro Naranjo Garcia was "associated with the murder of 15 people last year in Apatzingan," a town in western Mexico, state prosecutors said on Twitter Friday.

The leader was an operator under Nazario Moreno, the former head of the Knights Templar who was killed in a shoot-out with soldiers in Apatzingan on March 9, in a major blow to the group.

Newspaper reports Friday said that the 15 victims were day laborers working on a ranch that was part of an area "strategic for Nazario Moreno's illegal activities."

In March, authorities in Michoacan state -- the stronghold for the cult-like cartel -- unearthed 13 bodies in a secret grave in the small, rural enclave of El Alcalde, which belongs to Apatzingan.

The Mexican press said that the individuals were from the group of 15 killed in 2013.

The Knights Templar has seen its leadership largely dismantled, with authorities having killed or captured three of its four major capos this year. However security forces are still hunting for top leader Servando Gomez, known as "La Tuta."

Michoacan, on Mexico's Pacific coast, is a key trafficking area in the drug trade to the United States.

In response to the security crisis, the Mexican federal government has deployed 10,000 federal police and troops in the state since late 2013.

Police are investigating how a loaded gun wound up among children's toys at a Target store in South Carolina.

Shopping baskets are lined up outside a Target department store.

According to a police report, an employee at the Myrtle Beach store reported May 30 that he was investigating a possible theft when he noticed a black handgun on top of a superhero toy box.

The employee told officers he had seen a man repeatedly walking around that section of the store, but authorities said they didn't know if that man had put the gun among the toys.

Authorities said the 9-mm handgun had not been reported stolen and had eight bullets inside. Officers said they would review security camera footage to try to determine who left the gun in the store.

The discovery comes as Target and other retailers face pressure to prohibit customers from carrying guns into their stores. On Wednesday, the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America launched a petition asking the company to prevent customers from carrying firearms in Target stores. The petition is unrelated to the discovery of the gun in South Carolina.