Elliot Rodger ( threatens “revenge against humanity.” ) Video of Santa Barbara killer

Mexico ( Five Members of Same Family Killed in Northwestern Mexico )

CULIACAN, Mexico – Five members of the same family were shot and killed in a mountainous area of the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, sources with the state prosecutor’s office said.

A group of armed assailants reportedly abducted nine members of the family in La Cienega, a community in the town of San Ignacio, four of whom managed to escape.

The other five people were killed and their bodies were found in another nearby community.

Four males between the ages of 16 and 20 were among the victims, while the group that escaped consisted of a 16-year-old boy and three men between the ages of 29 and 48.

Mexican army soldiers and investigators with the Sinaloa Attorney General’s Office were dispatched to the area to recover the bodies and launch an investigation.

Authorities have not yet indicated who may be behind the quintuple homicide or a possible motive.

Syria ( Syria Says 39 Dead in Attack on Assad Supporters )

BEIRUT – An attack on an election rally for President Bashar al-Assad left 39 people dead and 205 injured, Syrian authorities said Friday.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier that at least 21 people died and 30 others were wounded in Thursday night’s mortar attack by an Islamist rebel group.

Describing the assault in the southern city of Daraa as a “terrorist attack,” Syrian state television aired images of the dead and wounded lying on the ground in pools of blood.

Assad is widely expected to win a third seven-year term in office in the June 3 contest against Maher Abdul-Hafiz Hajjar, a lawmaker and member of the legal opposition, and Hassan bin Abdullah al-Nouri, a former minister of administrative and parliamentary affairs.

The strike in Daraa was the first mortar attack by the insurgents on an event related to the election campaign, which kicked off on May 11.

Assad has made frequent public appearances in recent weeks and focused his campaign on national unity in Syria, where a three-year civil war has left more than 160,000 dead.

The mortar attack came just hours after government forces broke a 13-month rebel siege of the main prison in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, ending the insurgents’ attempt to free thousands of inmates housed there.

SAN JUAN (16 Puerto Rican Cops Arrested on Corruption Charges )

 

SAN JUAN – FBI agents on Thursday arrested 16 current and former members of the Puerto Rico Police Department on corruption charges.

The accused, among whom are two sergeants, arrested civilians and seized drugs from them which they later sold, U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez-Velez said.

“The criminal action today dismantles an entire network of officers who, we allege, used their badges and their guns not to uphold the law, but to break it,” said Acting Assistant U.S. Attorney General David O’Neil said.

The suspects, Rodriguez-Velez said, “not only betrayed the citizens they were sworn to protect, they also betrayed the thousands of honest, hard-working law enforcement officers who risk their lives every day to keep us safe.”

“Today is a sad day for Puerto Rico, where a group of police officers allegedly disgraced their uniform and are a shame to the Police of Puerto Rico,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Carlos Cases said.

The arrests came a day after the leaders of Puerto Rico’s House and Senate, Jaime Perello and Eduardo Bhatia, respectively, met with new PRPD chief Jose Caldero to monitor the process of reforming the troubled force.

The reform of the PRPD was launched after the judicial agreement reached between San Juan and the Department of Justice as a result of a 2011 report by the ACLU asserting that between 2005 and 2010 almost 2,000 local police officers committed assorted crimes.

One year earlier, the FBI had undertaken in Puerto Rico one of the largest operations in its history against police corruption linked with drug trafficking.

California ( Rapist who " attacked 40 women to be released" in Southern California )

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The so-called "Pillowcase Rapist" who attacked at least 40 women in the 1970s and 1980s will be freed and allowed to live in a remote Southern California desert area despite a host of vocal protests, a judge ordered Friday.

Christopher Evans Hubbart, 63, must be released from a state facility by July 7, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Gilbert Brown ruled.

Hubbart will be permitted to rent a small house near Palmdale, some 45 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.

"Now we are preparing for his arrival," said District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who spent months fighting Hubbart's release. "We will do everything within our authority to protect the residents of Los Angeles County from this dangerous predator."

Hubbart will wear a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week GPS monitor on his ankle and will be accompanied by security people every time he goes out in public for the first six months to a year of his release, Lacey said. He will be transported to therapy sessions twice a week.

Cuba ( Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez states "New website blocked " )

Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez Denounces Blockade on New Online Publication

HAVANA – Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez on Wednesday said on Twitter that the island’s communist government locally blocked her new online publication 14ymedio by redirecting viewers to another Web page.

“We’ve been born and we’re already having our first ‘attack’ on digital networks from #Cuba on the URL http://14ymedio.com redirected to another site,” Sanchez said.

The new online publication could be accessed in Cuba early Wednesday morning but soon when users entered the site’s Web address they were directed to a page called “Yoanislandia” full of articles by government bloggers and journalists and several texts critical of Sanchez, Efe was able to determine.

As the blogger said on Twitter, one can currently only access 14ymedio using an anonymous “proxy.”

“Bad strategy by the Cuban government to redirect our Web site ... from #Cuba. Nothing is more attractive than what is prohibited,” Sanchez wrote in another tweet.

Sanchez launched 14ymedio on Wednesday as a new online newspaper in which she says she intends to talk about the Cuban reality with a “commitment to the truth, freedom and the defense of human rights,” and take up the challenge to reach readers both on and outside the island.

The daily, available at www.14ymedio.com, said it is being launched in digital format “in one of the countries with the least Internet connectivity on the entire planet.”

The new online paper says that it is the fruit of the “effort of independent journalism in Cuba to counteract the monopoly of the official media” adding that “we drink from the experience of other publications born in societies that moved toward democracy and where the press played a role in the formation of the civic conscience and in the securing of freedoms.”

In a text published on her famous blog Generacion Y and inserted onto the main page of 14ymedio, Sanchez said that by starting up the online newspaper she was fulfilling a “dream” of launching a project that has been her “obsession” for more than four years.

China ( Man catches " baby " fallen from 2 story window) video