BAGHDAD ( militant's post graphic photos of Iraqi soldiers being killed )

BAGHDAD: As the Iraqi government bolstered Baghdad’s defenses Sunday, the Islamic militant group that captured two major cities last week posted graphic photos that appeared to show its fighters massacring dozens of captured Iraqi soldiers.
The pictures on a militant website appear to show masked fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, loading the captives onto flatbed trucks before forcing them to lie face-down in a shallow ditch with their arms tied behind their backs. The final images show the bodies of the captives soaked in blood after being shot.

The grisly images could further sharpen sectarian tensions as hundreds of Shiites heed a call from their most revered spiritual leader to take up arms against the Sunni militants who have swept across the north. ISIL has vowed to take the battle to Baghdad and cities further south housing revered Shiite shrines.
A car bomb meanwhile exploded in central Baghdad, killing 10 and wounding 21, according to police and hospital officials. Baghdad has seen an escalation in suicide and car bombings in recent months, mostly targeting Shiite neighborhoods or security forces.

West Bank ( soldier searches for missing teens )

An Israeli soldier walks past Palestinians in the West Bank village of Tafoh, near Hebron on Sunday, as Israeli army searches for three teenagers who went missing near a West Bank settlement. Israel broadened the search for three teenagers believed kidnapped by militants, arresting 80 Palestinians overnight and imposing a tight closure on the southern West Bank city of Hebron. (AFP photo/ Hazem Bader)

West Bank ( Israel looks for 3 missing Jewish teens in West Bank )

JERUSALEM: Israeli forces are searching for three Jewish teenagers who went missing in the occupied West Bank late on Thursday, the military said on Friday.
As media speculated that the trio might have been abducted, large numbers of Israeli soldiers scoured the countryside around the flashpoint city of Hebron, carrying out house-to-house searches in neighboring villages and blocking roads.
Local media said the three youngsters had last been seen trying to hitch-hike home from a religious seminary in the Jewish settlement of Gush Etzion, to the north of Hebron.
“Forces are conducting a widespread operation to locate the individuals,” the military said in a statement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a special meeting of security ministers and said in a statement that Israel held President Mahmoud Abbas’s Western-backed Palestinian Authority responsible for the safety of the three.
The military did not name the teenagers, who were all males. The newspaper Haaretz said two were aged 16 and one was 19.
Palestinian militants have said in the past that they want to kidnap Israelis to win concessions from the Israeli government. Some 1,027 Palestinian prisoners were freed in 2011 in return for the release of an Israeli soldier held captive in the nearby Gaza Strip for more than five years.
Chief military spokesman Brig.-General Motti Almoz said security agencies were “making a very large intelligence effort to try to glean information on what happened to these three youths in the past hours.”

GUATEMALA CITY ( Guatemala Seizes 1.3 Tons of Cocaine )

   
GUATEMALA CITY – Authorities confiscated 1,224 kilos (2,696 lbs.) of cocaine that arrived in Guatemala aboard a ship from Ecuador, police said Friday.

Police discovered the drugs Thursday night during an X-ray inspection of a container that had been offloaded to a warehouse in Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala’s largest Pacific port.

The container was part of a shipment of fruit bound for the United States, police said in a statement.

No arrests have been made in connection with the drugs, which police valued at more than $15.6 million.

Guatemalan authorities have confiscated upwards of 2.6 tons of cocaine so far this year

CUBA ( Four People Murdered While Planning to Leave Cuba with Foreign Assistance )

HAVANA – Four people were murdered in Cuba in a case presumably related to the group’s alleged plan to leave the country “with help from abroad,” Cuban authorities reported Wednesday, adding that they have arrested six people linked to the case.

The Interior Ministry said in an official statement that on Tuesday afternoon “the bodies of four people who had been violently killed were found on the Niña Bonita farm in the town of Playa Baracoa ... in Artemisa province.”

“According to the preliminary results of the investigation being conducted by a multidisciplinary team, the crime is linked to an alleged plan to illegally leave the country with help from abroad,” the statement said.

So far, Cuban authorities have arrested six people they say were “involved” in the case.

The Interior Ministry said that “reports will continue to be issued” on the case but it provided no further details at the time on the incident in Playa Baracoa, a town located on the island’s northern coast about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) west of Havana.

In Cuba, where all media are controlled by the state, releasing information regarding violent deeds such as murder, robbery or assaults is not a normal occurrence.

In March, in an unusual situation, Cuban media reported a triple murder – evidently “a crime of passion” – in Havana, but in that case authorities released the information after the crime had already been cleared up and the murderer had confessed

Mexico ( Radioactive Material Stolen from Lab in Mexico )

MEXICO CITY – A device containing radioactive substances was stolen from a government research facility and authorities are working to track it down, Mexico’s No. 2 official said.

“We have the report regarding the theft of this material and the alerts and protocol we follow in these cases have already been implemented,” Government Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told reporters after speaking at a conference of state law enforcement chiefs and attorneys general.

Exposure to the cesium-37 and americium-beryllium inside the stolen piece of equipment is not likely to cause permanent injury, the central government said in an alert distributed to authorities in Mexico City and the states of Mexico, Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Guerrero, Michoacan, Guanajuato, Queretaro, Hidalgo, Oaxaca and Veracruz.

A group of armed men grabbed the device Sunday night during an assault on a National Construction Laboratory warehouse in Tultitlan, Mexico state.

Handling the material without proper safeguards or spending an extended period in close proximity to the radioactive substances could result in temporary health problems, according to the bulletin.

Last December, armed robbers stole a truck transporting cobalt-60 from a hospital in the northwestern border city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage center.

Mexican authorities located the truck and the radioactive material days later and arrested six people in connection with the heist.

None the suspects suffered any effects of radiation exposure and officials found no trace of contamination at the site where the truck was recovered

California ( Russian bomber jets came within 50 miles of California coast )

Russian bomber jets came within 50 miles of California coast A spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) confirmed that two long-range Russian bombers came within 50 miles of the Northern California coastline Monday, but didn't creep into United States airspace. The American military deployed a pair of F-22 Raptor jets after noticing the Russian aircraft had entered the outer Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) near Alaska, a 200-miles large plot that is international airspace. The nuclear-capable planes, as Russia Today calls them, then split into two groups: two headed west toward Russia and the other two sped south toward California. Those two planes "were picked up visually" by the American pilots. The Americans didn't communicate with the Russian planes. A U.S. Navy official told the Washington Free Beacon that the incident appeared to be part of a training exercise and said the Russians "acted professionally." This is the first time in two years that Russian bombers came this close to clipping the California coast. - - Jordan Valinsky