Flickr Commons Sao Paulo, May 4 (EFE).- The use of concepts and experiences from neuroscience is one tool that "optimizes" advertising campaigns resulting in reduced costs and production time, Spanish expert Manuel Garcia said Monday. "Our brains determine our behavior, so the science of the brain helps explain all human behaviors," Garcia, the director of Neuroscience for Nielsen in the Un...

Source: Flickr Commons Austin, Texas, May 4 (EFE).- U.S. authorities on Monday identified the two men shot dead by police as they were allegedly preparing to mount an attack on a cultural center in the Texas city of Garland, where an exhibition of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed was being held. Elton Simpson, 30, five years ago was arrested as he was trying to travel to Africa allegedly to...

Wikimedia Commons Rome, May 3 (EFE).- Italian authorities on the weekend rescued some 3,700 illegal migrants who were sailing from North Africa to Italy in more than a dozen boats, the Coast Guard said in a communique on Sunday. Coast guard personnel said that 3,690 migrants were rescued in 17 separate operations. Italy continues to receive waves of African immigrants due to its geograph...

Wikimedia Commons Los Angeles, May 3 (EFE).- George Miller, one of the great action film directors, is returning to the genre 30 years after his latest movie with a new version of "Mad Max," the classic that launched Mel Gibson to stardom and which now stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. Although the British director said at a Los Angeles press conference attended by Efe that at first he f...

Wikimedia Commons International Sports Desk, May 3 (EFE).- Olympic ski champion Lindsey Vonn and pro golfer Tiger Woods on Sunday announced that they have ended their three-year romantic relationship. "After nearly three years together, Tiger and I have mutually decided to end our relationship," Vonn said Sunday on her Facebook page. "I will always cherish the memories that we've created...

"BradPitt" by Maggie from Palm Springs, United States / Uploaded by Atlaslin. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons Quito, May 3 (EFE).- Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa on the weekend invited U.S. actor Brad Pitt to visit the country's Amazon region to see the pollution the government attributes to Chevron there. The Ecuadorian leader announced the invitation during his regular ...

"Radiation hotspot in Kashiwa 2012" by Abasaa - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons Tokyo, May 2 (EFE).- A small quantity of radioactive water has leaked from a storage tank at Japan's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo daily Asahi Shimbun reported Saturday. A worker at the facility, located in northeastern Japan, found a wet patch measuri...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Las Vegas, May 3 (EFE).- American Floyd Mayweather Jr. won a unanimous victory over the Philippines' Manny Pacquiao in a welterweight title unification bout that featured the largest purse in boxing history. Mayweather put on a display of boxing skills in Saturday night's fight and Pacquiao was never able to get to him. "I wasn't getting hit by a lot of shots un...

Source: Flickr Commons Chilpancingo, Mexico, May 2 (EFE).- Armed assailants shot and killed a mayoral candidate of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. Ulises Fabian Quiroz, a candidate for mayor of the municipality of Chilapa de Alvarez - located 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the state capital of Chilpancingo - in Mexico's June 7 ...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, May 1 (EFE).- Singer Ben E. King, best known for his 1961 gospel-influenced hit "Stand By Me," has died, his agent told ABC News. He was 76. The star, whose real name was Benjamin Earl Nelson, died of "coronary problems" in New Jersey, Randy Irwin said. King, who began his artistic career in the late 1950s singing with the doo wop and R&B group The Drift...

Flickr Commons By David Blanco Bonilla Lima, May 1 (EFE).- Surfers have rebelled against the Municipality of Lima after it decided to lay a new road and place rocks on one of the most popular beaches for that sport near the Peruvian capital. The clash has been full of mutual accusations and even calls for intervention on the part of the navy, which says it has not authorized any construc...

"Calbuco 22-4-15" by Aeveraal - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons Santiago, Apr 30 (EFE).- Chile's Calbuco volcano on Thursday began erupting for the third time after two eruptions last week, the National Geology and Mining Service reported. The cloud of ash emanating from the volcano, located in the southern Los Lagos region, initially rose to three kilometers (1....

Wikimedia Commons By Emilio J. Lopez Miami, Apr 30 (EFE).- Enrique Iglesias exudes charm and a youthful insolence. His eyes are teasing and he moves his hands quickly to emphasize, as he did on Thursday in an interview with Efe, that he is an artist who is guided by "instinct" and what "really touches" people. The popular singer will grace the stage of the new Parque Viva amphitheater in...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Apr 29 (EFE).- Two new videos aired on Mexican television show Rodrigo Vallejo, the son of a former governor of the western state of Michoacan, socializing with Caballeros Templarios drug cartel boss Servando Gomez Martinez. Vallejo, who faces trial for being an accessory to a crime after the fact, is shown having drinks with Gomez Martinez, who has been arres...

Washington, Apr 29 (EFE).- President Barack Obama called on police departments nationwide, instead of "closing ranks" around officers who act inappropriately, to bring them to account, in a radio interview broadcast on Wednesday. If police departments want to create a safer environment for their officers, they must "build more trust (with their communities). It's in their interest to root out p...

Nigerian soldiers during a mission briefing. Wikimedia Commons Lagos, Apr 28 (EFE).- The schoolgirls from Chibok are not among the 200 minors freed on Tuesday in the forests of Sambisa, considered to be the bastion of the jihadist Boko Haram group, Nigerian army spokesman Col. Sani Usman reported. The Nigerian armed forces came to that conclusion after completing the first phase in identify...

Bogota, Apr 28 (EFE).- Colombia's deputy health minister said Tuesday that he expects the government to adopt the ministry's recommendation to suspend the aerial spraying program for glyphosate, a powerful herbicide used to eliminate illicit crops. The decision will not affect the commercial use of glyphosate, sold in the United States under the brand name Roundup, since those users may decide ...

File photo of retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro. EFE/File By Mar Centenera Buenos Aires, Apr 28 (EFE).- "No contact with Manila," Ernesto "Che" Guevara wrote several times in his diary as he marched to his death in Bolivia and, behind the phrase, is Cuban leader Fidel Castro's betrayal and abandonment of the legendary guerrilla fighter, Cuban journalist Alberto Müller said. "Manila" was ...

Garcia Marquez. Source: Flickr Commons By Gustavo Borges Mexico City, Apr 27 (EFE).- If Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez had never written "One Hundred Years of Solitude" or any other novel, it might have been necessary to award him the Nobel Prize in Literature for his short stories, the part of his work that is much less known. That is what leading Mexican writers think about the perf...

Jenner in 2011, Source: Wikimedia Commons Washington, Apr 25 (EFE).- TV star and former U.S. Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner confirmed in a television interview the rumors about his sexual orientation that have circulated for some time, and said he feels like a woman and from now on he will live like one. "For all intents and purposes, I am a woman," Jenner, 65, told Diane Sawyer in an emotion...

New York, Apr 24 (EFE).- A senior U.S. trade representative said here Friday he is "greatly disappointed" by a European Union proposal that would allow individual EU countries to ban imported genetically modified food and animal feed even if the 28-nation bloc as a whole has approved them. Speaking at the close of the ninth round of negotiations on a proposed U.S.-EU trade deal, known as the Tr...

"Calbuco 22-4-15" by Aeveraal - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons Santiago, Apr 24 (EFE).- A total of 6,400 people have been forced to leave their homes because of the activity of Chile's Calbuco volcano, which erupted two days ago for the first time in 42 years. Authorities ordered the immediate evacuation Friday afternoon of 2,000 people from three towns in the L...

Fracking operation in North Dakota. Wikimedia Commons Washington, Apr 24 (EFE).- Earthquakes triggered by man-made practices have risen sharply in the United States since 2009, especially in the central part of the country, prompting the U.S. Geological Survey to outline a preliminary set of models to forecast the frequency and severity of future temblors. Oklahoma has been the state hardes...

"Stephen Curry 2" by Keith Allison from Owings Mills, USA - Stephen Curry. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons U.S. Sports Desk, Apr 24 (EFE).- Superstar point guard Stephen Curry made a game-tying shot from behind the arc with time winding down in regulation and finished with 40 points in the Golden State Warriors' come-from-behind 125-119 overtime victory over the New Orleans P...

EFE file Madrid, Apr 23 (EFE).- Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said here Thursday that Spain has no intention of breaking off diplomatic relations with Venezuela, adding that he hopes for "democratic stability and economic prosperity" in the Latin American country. Garcia-Margallo made these remarks in his speech at the Leaders Forum, organized by EFE and KPMG, where he introd...

Los Angeles, Apr 21 (EFE).- In a life marked by problems with her racial and sexual identity, drug abuse and dabbling in prostitution, Venezuelan model and actress Patricia Velasquez reveals in an autobiographical book her difficulties in "accepting myself." As is made clear in "Sin tacones. Sin reserva. Diario de una supermodelo en busqueda de su verdad," the Spanish language version of her au...

By Jorge Mederos Chicago, Apr 21 (EFE).- Private prisons that have contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress to keep a steady population of 34,000 migrants detained at all times, a study by the Austin, Texas-based Grassroots Leadership group found. Grassroots Leadership researched detention conditions across the country and c...

Source: Pixabay Commons Washington, Apr 21 (EFE).- The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Michele Leonhart, is expected to present her resignation after the news broke that some of its agents were involved in sex parties with prostitutes, U.S. media reported Tuesday. Some of the prostitutes were paid by members of Colombian drug cartels, according to a government report. White ...

Wikimedia Commons San Juan, Apr 20 (EFE).- Seeds for the first legal marijuana crop were sown at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies in Jamaica on Monday, a few days after the amendments to the bill decriminalizing marijuana for medicinal and religious purposes came into effect. In a statement, UWI said that Science, Technology, Energy and Mining Minister Phillip Paulwell p...

Dominican Republic Santo Domingo, Apr 20 (EFE).- Seven people died Monday in the Bavaro tourist area in the eastern Dominican Republic when the small plane in which they were flying crashed onto a golf course. Sources at the Dominican Civil Aviation Institute, or IDAC, told Efe on Monday that aboard the plane were four Spanish tourists, two Britons and the Dominican who was piloting the pla...

By Teresa Bouza San Francisco, Apr 20 (EFE).- Apple and IBM have announced projects to enhance cell phones' use as medical devices that gather and analyze data on different conditions, turning the devices into tools in the diagnostic process. ResearchKit, a tool on Apple's iPhones, will be available starting Tuesday for medical researchers developing apps for diagnoses or to collect and anal...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Berlin, Apr 19 (EFE).- The Skansen Aquarium in Stockholm, Sweden, sent 10 Cuban crocodile hatchlings, descendants of a pair of the animals donated by Fidel Castro to a Soviet cosmonaut in the 1970s, to the Caribbean island this weekend, aquarium director Jonas Wahlstrom said. Cuban crocodiles have been sent to several countries and Cuba expressed an interest in rec...

A massive Corinthians club flag,. Wikimedia Commons Sao Paulo, Apr 19 (EFE).- Armed men gunned down eight members of a radical fan group for Corinthians, one of Brazil's most popular soccer teams, although police on Sunday ruled out linking the massacre to a fight among rival teams' supporters. The killings occurred after 11 p.m. on Saturday in front of the Pavilhão Nove group's headquarter...

OIJ agents on a 2012 raid. San Jose, Apr 19 (EFE).- A Mexican businessman kidnapped on April 11 was rescued and three suspects were arrested by police, Costa Rica's OIJ law enforcement agency said. "The rescue was carried out last Friday in Alajuela province outside a dwelling, where they were apparently keeping the victim, and at the moment when a man guarding him brought him out to move h...

Rome, Apr 19 (EFE).- A total of 28 of the nearly 700 migrants aboard a boat that capsized in the Mediterranean have been rescued and 24 bodies recovered, the Italian coast guard said Sunday. Navy and coast guard ships continue searching for other survivors from the vessel that sailed from Libya and went down near Sicily. The boat carrying the migrants capsized at night, U.N. High Commissione...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Miami, Apr 19 (EFE).- Sofia Vergara denied that she wanted to destroy the embryos she and her ex-boyfriend Nick Loeb froze, contradicting what the U.S. businessman had claimed in a lawsuit he filed against the Colombian actress. "Vergara has never wanted to destroy her embryos," the attorney for the best-paid actress on U.S. television - according to Forbes Magazin...

ISIS fighters in Iraq. Source: Wikimedia Commons Kabul, Apr 18 (EFE).- The Islamic State jihadist group has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing Saturday outside a bank in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad that killed at least 34 people and wounded more than 100 others. If verified, it would be the first major attack by the extremist group in the South Asian country. The attac...

Source: Flickr Commons San Jose, Apr 17 (EFE).- A former U.S. soldier named Robert Lemon was found dead on the private Ojo de Agua Ranch in Puriscal County, San Jose province. He had been shot several times and half of his body was charred, a police spokesperson told Efe Friday. The body was found Thursday next to the stables, together with two dead dogs, by a woman who works on the ranch a...

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, Apr 16 (EFE).- At least 37 tons of dead fish have been removed over the past week from this Brazilian metropolis' Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon, one of the venues for the 2016 Rio Olympics, officials said Thursday. Employees of the Comlurb municipal waste management company were continuing to use nets to remove the silvery fish, called twaite shad, many thousands ...

Wikimedia Commons New York, Apr 16 (EFE).- Rupert Murdoch is putting his 3-story New York apartment on the market for $72 million. The 84-year-old communications magnate, who was born Australian but became a nationalized U.S. citizen, has decided to move from the Manhattan apartment, with its 637 square meters (about 6,850 square feet) of floor space, to a Greek Revival townhouse in the cen...