MEXICO CITY – The
burned bodies of two women and a man were found by police on a dirt road in the
central Mexican state of Morelos, prosecutors said.
The bodies were found
early Saturday some 150 meters (about 490 feet) from a municipal building in the
city of Huitzilac, the Morelos Attorney General’s Office said.
The
victims were about 80 percent burned and had been gagged, the AG’s office
said.
Another body was found in Xochitepec, a city in Morelos, media
reports said, adding that the victim was shot in the head.
Numerous
murders have occurred in Morelos recently, with the killings linked to drug
trafficking.
Posted: Jun 24, 2013 4:50 PM by Associated Press Updated: Jun 24, 2013 5:51 PM
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TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - Federal authorities say the bodies of three men have been found in the southern Arizona desert and all appear to be heat-related deaths.
U.S. Border Patrol officials said Monday that Casa Grande Station agents discovered two bodies near Quijotoa.
They say the bodies and three marijuana bundles were spotted Friday by air patrols.
The Tohono O'odham Police Department took custody of the scene.
Tucson Station agents reported finding the body of a man Saturday near Arivaca within 100 yards of a road.
The man's sister told agents her brother had fallen and was unresponsive before being abandoned by the group crossing the desert.
Authorities say the nationalities of the three men aren't immediately available
Ecuador Confirms Snowden Has Filed Asylum
Request The former CIA employee cited “danger of persecution” by the U.S.
government in his asylum request, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño
said
BANGKOK –
Former CIA employee Edward Snowden has filed a request for asylum in Ecuador,
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño said Monday.
The 30-year-old
Snowden cited “danger of persecution” by the U.S. government in his asylum
request, Patiño said in a videoconference from Hanoi, where he is on an official
trip.
“The United States is intercepting the majority of the
communications in the world,” Snowden said in a letter read by the foreign
minister.
Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong in early June after leaking
documents about two top-secret National Security Agency surveillance programs to
Britain’s Guardian newspaper and The Washington Post, asked Ecuadorian President
Rafael Correa for political asylum.
The former CIA technician and NSA
contractor flew from Hong Kong to Russia on Sunday, a day after the United
States requested his extradition on espionage and other charges.
Snowden
could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Hong Kong’s government
said it rejected the extradition request because the United States did not fully
comply with the region’s laws.
WikiLeaks said in a Twitter posting that
it helped Snowden leave Hong Kong and seek “political asylum in a democratic
country,” but it did not say where the former intelligence operative was
headed.
Quito granted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asylum last year,
but he is still in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London awaiting a safe conduct
guarantee from Great Britain.
Snowden has admitted releasing details
about the secret surveillance programs, but he denies being a traitor. EFE
A male red panda has been missing from the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington D.C. since 6:00 p.m. Sunday evening.
"The keepers last saw him when they fed him on Sunday night," said Devin Murphy, a spokesperson for the zoo. "They noticed he wasn't in his cage at 7:30 a.m. when they went to check on him."
She said that zoo officials are combing the grounds for the panda, who is less than a year old and is named Rusty.
"He could be sick & hiding, or someone could have taken him," the Zoo posted on Twitter on Monday morning. "Please help us keep an eye out for Rusty."
Red pandas are typically the size of a house cat and have big, bushy tails. (Read: Red panda facts.)
They spend most of their time in trees, even sleeping in the branches. They are most active at night, as well as in the early morning and early evening hours.
"They're raccoon-like and share certain raccoon characteristics but they're not as adept or opportunistic as raccoons," said Marc Brody, a conservationist and National Geographic grantee who founded Panda Mountain, a panda conservation center.
"And they would be hard pressed to make it on their own," he said. "If it was late in the season, there would be a lot more fruiting plants around the National Zoo. I'm sure he can live for a couple of days but to forage indefinitely, it's early in the season to feed on fruits and berries."
Brody also warns that Rusty may be in trouble if temperatures climb. Red pandas typically live in a cooler climate and might not adapt well to the humidity of Washington.
"Red pandas generally tend to sleep in trees during the heat of the day," said Murphy. "They're not aggressive, but we are advising people to respect that he is a wild animal."
Rusty arrived in Washington D.C. in April, from a zoo in Lincoln, Nebraska. He has been on exhibit for about three weeks and is up to date on all of his shots.
He is not the only red panda to go on the lam. Yin, who lived at the Virginia Zoo from 2007 until her death in 2011, escaped twice in a month shortly after arriving in Norfolk, Va.
"She was quite the escape artist," said Winfield Danielson, the marketing and PR manager for the Virginia Zoo. "We design the habitats in accordance with the standards of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to keep the animals secure in their habitats but sometimes things happen. One time a branch fell from a tree and allowed Yin to climb over."
The National Zoo has asked anyone who spots Rusty to immediately tell an official at the zoo or call 202-633-4888
Women arrested after being banned from attending Iran's 2014 World Cup celebrations
Details
Published on Thursday, 20 June 2
NCRI - Furious Iranian women staged a mass protest outside Tehran's Freedom Stadium after they were banned from taking part in celebrations to mark Iran's qualifying for the 2014 World Cup.
Many women were arrested after they used the demonstration to demand the liberation of political prisoners within the regime. The female crowd chanted, 'The stadium is empty, because the women's seats are empty’ before they were rounded up by security forces who branded the gathering illegal.
Meanwhile, the state-run Mehr news agency reported that public relations department of the Iranian regime's Football Federation announced in a statement: "In this ceremony only men are allowed to be present and women who like the national team are asked to avoid coming to the Freedom Stadium."
Iran Human Rights, June 21: After a two-week hiatus due to the Presidential election, Iranian authorities have begun to execute again. Four prisoners, including one woman, were hanged in Shahr-e-Kord (western Iran) on June 20.
According to the state official newspaper Kayhan, the prisoners were identified as Mohammad Ebdali, Vahid Fayooj, Golafrooz Fayooj (woman), and Ghobad Fayooj.
The four prisoners were convicted of purchasing, possessing, and trafficking 4,534 grams of heroin, said the report.
Three of the prisoners were hanged in Shahr-e-Kord Prison while Ghobad Fayooj was hanged in public in the "Mahdiyeh" area of Shahr-e-Kord. The public executions were carried out under heavy security.
Prisoners were elevated by using a crane and then hanged. It typically takes several minutes for the execution to be carried out when using the crane method. Iran Human Rights (IHR) strongly condemns these executions. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the Founder and Spokesperson of IHR said: "It seems that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has recommenced the horror show after a two-week hiatus in order to carry out a show of democracy for the Presidential election." Amiry-Moghaddam called on the international community to condemn the executions.
Additionally, the execution of four other prisoners, who were convicted of murder, was scheduled for June 18 in Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj (west of Tehran). One of the prisoners was hanged while the other three were pardoned by the families of the offended.
BEIJING (AP) — An American executive said Monday he has been held hostage for four days at his medical supply plant in Beijing by scores of workers demanding severance packages like those given to 30 co-workers in a phased-out department.
Chip Starnes, 42, a co-owner of Coral Springs, Florida-based Specialty Medical Supplies, said local officials had visited the 10-year-old plant on the capital's outskirts and coerced him into signing agreements Saturday to meet the workers' demands even though he sought to make clear that the remaining 100 workers weren't being laid off.
The workers were expecting wire transfers by Tuesday, he said, adding that about 80 of them had been blocking every exit around the clock and depriving him of sleep by shining bright lights and banging on windows of his office. He declined to clarify the amount, saying he wanted to keep it confidential.
"I feel like a trapped animal," Starnes told The Associated Press on Monday from his first-floor office window, while holding onto the window's bars. "I think it's inhumane what is going on right now. I have been in this area for 10 years and created a lot of jobs and I would never have thought in my wildest imagination something like this would happen."
Workers inside the compound, a pair of two-story buildings behind gates and hedges in the Huairou district of the northeastern Beijing suburbs, repeatedly declined requests for comment, saying they did not want to talk to foreign media.
It is not rare in China for managers to be held by workers demanding back pay or other benefits, often from their Chinese owners, though occasionally also involving foreign bosses.
MEXICO CITY – The
burned bodies of two women and a man were found by police on a dirt road in the
central Mexican state of Morelos, prosecutors said.
BANGKOK –
Former CIA employee Edward Snowden has filed a request for asylum in Ecuador,
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño said Monday.
