Over 30 cans of marijuana were shot into Yuma via cannon, Customs and Border Protection officials said Tuesday.
By Lauren Steussy, NBCSanDiego.com
Over 30 cans of marijuana were shot into Yuma, Ariz., using a cannon, Customs and Border Protection officials said Tuesday.
The suspicious cans were discovered near the Colorado River in Yuma on Friday.
Border Patrol agents said the discovery was "another unique but unsuccessful attempt" to smuggle drugs into the U.S.
An investigation of the area determined that the cans were fired from about 500 feet away with a pneumatic-powered cannon. A carbon-dioxide tank was found nearby. Read more news on NBCSanDiego.com
Mexican authorities were also looking into the incident.
The marijuana weighed 85 pounds and was valued at $42,500. It will be destroyed, according to a statement from the agency.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's top government spokesman voiced protest over North Korea's rocket launch on Wednesday, saying it was "extremely regrettable."
"Japan cannot tolerate this action," Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura told a news conference.
North Korea launched a rocket on Wednesday and the missile appears to have passed over Okinawa, Japan's government said.
(Reporting by Leika Kihara, Editing by Mayumi Negishi)
El Paso County Sheriff s
deputies are looking for the owner of a pony found wandering in Montana Vista on
Monday morning. (El Paso County Sheriff's Office)
El Paso County Sheriff's deputies
are looking for the owner of a pony found wandering in Montana Vista on Monday.
Deputies found the pony walking on the road near Krag and Big John streets
about 9:45 a.m. Monday. Fearing the pony was creating a traffic hazard, deputies
detained the pony for Animal Control officers.
Deputies said the pony is female and doesn't appear to be ill or injured.
Anyone with information on the pony's owner is asked to call sheriff's dispatch
at 546-2280.
Two Juarez police officers were shot to death and three more survived an attack during a violent weekend in Juarez that targeted peace officers.
As a result of those attacks, the municipal police force will be sequestered "as long as it will be necessary," authorities said Monday. "We are going to sequester the officers as we did it before," said Juárez Mayor Héctor Murguía. "They will be sequestered at the federal police headquarters."
The string of violence against city police officers started Friday morning when a police convoy was ambushed by an armed command at the intersection of Montes Urales Avenue and the Oscar Flores Boulevard. Three officers were injured during the attack.
One of them remains in serious condition in a local hospital. The other two were released from the hospital the same day with no threatening life injuries. A second attack on police officers occurred Saturday morning when an officer was killed while still in his pajamas outside of his house at La Chaveña neighborhood in downtown.
That same day in the evening, another officer was shot while watching over a convenience store at the Anahuac neighborhood.
Murguía said the attacks against the officers was a result of the actions taken by the municipal police to fight organized crime and he refused the idea that the violence is resurging in the city.
"The police corporations are working together to reduce the number of crimes in the city", he said in a press release. "We have a strong and qualified police force."
This is the second time that the police force gets sequestered. In January this year, the officers were confined to hotels after a string of violence left more than eight officers killed in just that month.
Adrián Sánchez Contreras, spokeman of the municipal police, said the sequestration process will start today.
He said the officers will continue patrolling the streets, but they won't go to home after their shift. "They will work like normal," he said. "But they can't go home. This is for their safety".
The sequestration process will last as long as necessary, he said.
TUCSON, AZ (Tucson News Now) - Rangers at Grand Canyon National Park have removed an unidentified body found below the canyon rim.
The body was discovered by the park's helicopter pilot on an unrelated routine mission. It was located below the Abyss Overlook on Hermit Road.
Two rangers were flown to the scene to investigate and prepare the body for transport. They determined it was a male of unknown age.
The body was turned over to the Coconino County Medical Examiner. The circumstances surrounding the death are being investigated by the National Park Service and the medical examiner
Two boys, aged 7 and 11, were picked up by police in Portland, Ore., this weekend after they allegedly attempted to carjack and rob a woman with a handgun.
Police said that the two boys had a cocked and loaded .22 handgun that they brandished while telling Amy Garrett, 22, to give up her money and truck.
Garrett told ABC News affiliate KATU she was waiting for her parents at the Freedom Foursquare Church in Portland when she was approached by the boys.
They told her to give them her truck or be shot. It's not clear if they were big enough to be able to drive the truck.
"He was showing me his gun and I asked him if it was real," she said. "He said, 'You don't ever ask somebody if it's real. That's how you get yourself shot.'"
"I didn't think it was real," Garrett said. "They were just two really young kids."
Garrett said that the 7-year-old boy told his friend to "show her your piece," at which point the 11-year-old raised his shirt to show off the gun.
"He said it was fully-loaded and cocked and ready to go. He told me he was going to blow my brains out if I didn't give him anything," Garrett told KATU.
She refused to give the children her truck, and they then demanded her wallet and phone. She drove away and called 911, she said.
"My heart was beating a million miles a minute. I'm surprised it didn't completely beat out of my chest. I was very scared," Garrett said.
Portland police also received a call from another 11-year-old boy saying that he had seen a child with a gun. When officers arrived on the scene, the boys tried to flee but were caught.
The 11-year-old reached for his back pocket, but was grabbed by cops who found a cocked and loaded gun in his pocket, according to a statement released by Portland police.
Officers were then flagged down by Garrett, who relayed her encounter with the boys.
The children were not handcuffed or arrested because of their age, but were taken home to their parents' custody, according to a statement from the Portland police department. Police will report the incident to juvenile court, they said. Detectives are still investigating where the 11-year-old obtained the weapon.
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Unknown gunmen shot dead a senior female government worker on Monday, officials in eastern Afghanistan said, five months after her predecessor was killed in a bomb attack.
Violence against women appears to be on the rise in Afghanistan, which activists and some lawmakers blame on what they say is waning interest in women's rights on the part of President Hamid Karzai's government, claims he denies.
Some men (shoes off ,some shoes on)
Nadia Sediqqi, acting head of the women's affairs department in Laghman province, was killed as she headed to work in the capital Mehtar Lam, said the provincial governor's spokesman Sarhadi Zwak.
"They shot her as she was getting into a rickshaw," Zwak said of the attack about 150 km (93 miles) east of Kabul, adding that she worked without bodyguards -- a common situation for female government workers.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Afghan women have won back basic rights in education, voting and employment since the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001, but fears are mounting that such freedoms could be traded away as Kabul seeks peace talks with the group.
Sediqqi had replaced Hanifa Safi, who was killed in July by a car bomb that her family blamed on the Taliban.
Women who pursue careers in ultra-conservative Afghanistan often face opposition in a society where often they are ostracized, or worse, for mixing with men other than husbands or relatives.
Safi's son later told Reuters that authorities had ignored repeated requests for protection, echoing greater concerns that the safety of female government workers is not taken seriously by Kabul, despite commitments to better the rights of women 11 years into the NATO-led war.
(Reporting by Rafiq Shirzad, writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman, Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
Monday, December 10, 2012 | 
