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Authorities found five decapitated bodies in western Mexico, with letters left with the corpses purportedly signed by a drug cartel, officials said.
The bodies, with their heads laying nearby, were found shortly before dawn on Saturday, in two different locations in Michoacan state, a region struggling with gang turf wars.
Three headless corpses were found on a bridge's traffic circle in Tarimbaro, a suburb of Morelia, the state's capital, said Michoacan chief prosecutor Marco Vinicio Aguilera.
"A knife that may have been used to cut the heads was found in the area," he told AFP.
Around an hour later, two more were found in a Morelia public square, with the heads on a sidewalk a little further away, Aguilera said.
Stephen Sawyer
When EMT and squad leader, Sawyer, received a call on December 11 around 11 a.m. at the Webster Street headquarters about a 4-year-old having seizures, a paramedic was dispatched and a call for an ambulance placed, reports Times Herald-Record. Finding an available ambulance proved difficult and after 15 minutes, Sawyer decided he could not wait any longer.
Squad rules state an ambulance driver must be over the age of 21. Sawyer is 20, with experience driving ambulances for Mobile Life. He ignored the squad rule and drove nearly 5 miles, picked up the child, his mother, and the paramedic and got them to Ellenville Regional Hospital without any problems occurring.
That is, until he was awakened later that night by his squad captain asking about the incident.
"I wouldn't have been able to sleep at night or go to school knowing there's a 4-year-old suffering," Sawyer said to Times Herald-Record.
© Walter Hickey/Business Insider
Two floors of pot-growing rooms will have windows showing the shopping public how the mind-altering plant is grown. Shoppers will be able to peruse drying marijuana buds and see pot trimmers at work separating the valuable flowers from the less-prized stems and leaves.
"It's going to be all white and beautiful," the 45-year-old ex-industrial engineer explains, excitedly gesturing around what just a few weeks ago was an empty warehouse space that will eventually house 40,000 square feet of cannabis strains.
As Colorado prepares to be the first in the nation to allow recreational pot sales, opening Jan. 1, hopeful retailers like Williams are investing their fortunes into the legal recreational pot world - all for a chance to build even bigger ones in a fledgling industry that faces an uncertain future.
Officials in Colorado and Washington, the other state where recreational pot goes on sale in mid-2014, as well as activists, policymakers and governments from around the U.S. and across the world will not be the only ones watching the experiment unfold.
So too will the U.S. Department of Justice, which for now is not fighting to shut down the industries.
© Laurence Topham for the Observer
The Russian-operated ship has about 50 passengers - including scientists and paying members of the public - and 20 crew on board. It became stuck in the ice near Cape de la Motte in east Antarctica, abouit 1,500 nautical miles from Hobart in Tasmania, after strong blizzards hit the vessel on Christmas Eve. Surrounding pack ice was pushed by strong winds against the Antarctic landmass, pinning the Shokalskiy in place.
On Friday, the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long tried to battle through the thick ice towards the Shokalskiy but had to turn back after 12 hours and within 8.5 nautical miles of the Russian vessel, because the going was too difficult. The Aurora Australis will arrive at the edge of the sea ice, which is about 20 nautical miles from the Russian ship, in the early hours of Monday local time (about 1pm Sunday GMT).
"What we're depending on is the extra grunt of the Aurora Australis," said Greg Mortimer, co-leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE), which has chartered the ship. "It's a more traditional icebreaker hull, which is like a bathtub with a big engine inside it - it can push over the ice and lay down on top and work its way like that."
© WFAA
KHOU reported that police responded to a disturbance at about 2 a.m. on Saturday morning and a woman who said that she was Dallas County State District Judge Carlos Raul Cortez's girlfriend said that the two had been in a fight over a child's medication.
According to a police report, the responding officer observed red marks on the woman's neck. "[The woman] ... pulled down the portion of her blouse which covered her neck and showed several red marks," the police report noted. "The red marks were clearly visible and appeared to encompass the majority of her neck."
The 26-year-old woman said that she and 44-year-old Cortez had been drinking for several hours before the altercation occurred.
© Rossiya 1 TV, Vesti programThe plane was 1 km from the runway when it disappeared from radars.
The Soviet-built turboprop plane was close to the limit of its 20,000 hour design airframe life, according to the Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee.
It was 130 hours short of this maximum, it was reported. The aircraft fell on warehouses at a military unit outside Irkutsk, causing a fire but no casualties on the ground, said officials.
The An-12 plane, owned by the Irkut Research and Production Corporation, was carrying aircraft components from Novosibirsk to Irkutsk. It crashed at about 21:45, local time, (16:45 Moscow) on Thursday near Batareinaya station of the East Siberian railway during its landing approach.
The plane was 1 km from the runway when it disappeared from radars. On board were six crew and three others, described in some reports as aircraft technicians.
Edward Aronson was arrested at his wife's side in Bethesda Hospital West early Friday morning. Police had been called to the hospital after a nurse overheard Aronson saying that she had broken her hip after he had pushed her.
"She accused me of cheating and was yelling at me so I pushed her," the nurse claims Aronson told someone on the phone. Sylvia Aronson told the arresting officers that she had walked in on her husband browsing a dating website. The couple argued, and as the fight escalated, she slapped him in the face.
Edward Aronson responded by pushing her over. The force of her fall broke her right hip.
© Sergei ChuzavkovPro-European Union activists gather in Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, Sunday, Dec. 29, 2013. About 20,000 people protested in Ukraine’s capital on Sunday, maintaining more than a month of rallies opposing the government’s decision to shelve a key deal with the European Union.
But the turnout on a clear, cold day was markedly lower than at previous rallies, which had attracted hundreds of thousands of people.
As it has before, Sunday's rally opened with speeches by the country's spiritual leaders, including Christian priests, a rabbi and a mufti who called for a national unity and stressed the protesters' right to have the government they want.
Oleh Tyahnybok, head of the opposition national party Svoboda notorious for his racist rhetoric, emphasized that Ukrainians in the west and the east should unite to fight for their rights.
"We are all Ukrainians and want our fair demands to be met," he said in his speech.
Most demonstrators in Kiev come from western and central regions, while many people in the mostly Russian-speaking east and the south back closer ties with Moscow.
James Edward Bryant
"He had a bunch of young boys in his room," recalls Ward. "I never seen him with anyone older than maybe 20."
Neighbors called him 'Preacher Man. '
"Every Sunday, he would come over and ask me to go to church and listen to him preach and he would ask us all to go to church," says Ward.
Ward says Bryant even showed her a preacher's certificate, and she thought he was a godly man who was trying to help wayward young men in the area.
"He would feed them. He would let them stay the night sometimes, which we would have arguments about," says Ward. "But he would take care of them."
Riot police use teargas, water cannon and plastic bullets to break up demonstrations as corruption scandal grows
In scenes reminiscent of this summer's massive anti-government revolts, hundreds of people took to the streets in cities across Turkey on Friday night calling for the government to resign following a high-profile corruption scandal that involves sons of cabinet ministers, leading businessmen and the head of a state-owned bank.
In Istanbul, riot police broke up demonstrations using teargas, water cannon and plastic bullets. According to Turkish media reports, 70 people have been arrested. Protesters chanted "catch the thief", in reference to a highly political corruption probe that started with orchestrated dawn raids on 17 December and is continuing to send shock waves through Turkey, edging ever closer to the heart of the Turkish government.
Seen by many as the most serious challenge to the 11-year rule of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the corruption investigation has targeted persons known to be close to the government of the Justice and Development party (AKP).
Three ministers were forced to resign when police detained their sons following a long-running investigation into allegations of corruption. Two of the sons are still in custody along with 22 others awaiting trial, facing accusations of corrupt practices, including bribery, tender rigging and illicit money transfers to Iran.
© Emrah Gurel/APProtesters run as riot police use water cannon to quell demonstrations in Istanbul.
In Istanbul, riot police broke up demonstrations using teargas, water cannon and plastic bullets. According to Turkish media reports, 70 people have been arrested. Protesters chanted "catch the thief", in reference to a highly political corruption probe that started with orchestrated dawn raids on 17 December and is continuing to send shock waves through Turkey, edging ever closer to the heart of the Turkish government.
Seen by many as the most serious challenge to the 11-year rule of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the corruption investigation has targeted persons known to be close to the government of the Justice and Development party (AKP).
Three ministers were forced to resign when police detained their sons following a long-running investigation into allegations of corruption. Two of the sons are still in custody along with 22 others awaiting trial, facing accusations of corrupt practices, including bribery, tender rigging and illicit money transfers to Iran.
Comment: For a more complete understanding of how sexual predators like this operate, listen to the SOTT Talk Radio interview with Dr. Anna Salter, author of Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders, Who They Are, How They Operate, and How We Can Protect Ourselves and Our Children, and Truth, Lies and Sex Offenders.