NBC News reporters bring you compelling stories from across the nation. For more US news, follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Michael Dwyer / AP file

The New England Patriots' Aaron Hernandez kneels on the field during practice in May.

A prosecutor says a Boston man found dead in an industrial park about a mile from New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez's home was a homicide victim.

Bristol District Attorney Samuel Sutter's office said Wednesday the state medical examiner has identified 27-year-old Odin Lloyd and ruled he was a homicide victim.

Lloyd's family says he had connections to Hernandez but hasn't elaborated.

Sutter's office says investigators are asking for the public's help to find a silver mirror cover believed to have broken off a car somewhere between Boston and North Attleborough, where Hernandez lives.

Police have been at Hernandez's home for two days.

Hernandez's attorney says his client isn't commenting.

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 19, 2013 9:56 PM EDT

Anthony Devlin / Pool / Reuters

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks to the media inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London June 14, 2013.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday said members of his anti-secrecy website have been in contact with lawyers of alleged National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and are helping him seek asylum in Iceland.

Speaking to reporters during a conference call on the one-year anniversary of his own asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, Assange said his group has a “common cause” with Snowden, but would not comment on whether he personally has spoken with supposed whistle-blower.

Assange did say, “We are in touch with Mr. Snowden’s legal team and have been, are involved, in the process of brokering his asylum in Iceland.”  

Snowden leaked details about far-reaching Internet and phone surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post earlier this month. He revealed his identity while in Hong Kong, where it is believed he is still hiding.

Assange believes that if Snowden is returned to the U.S., he will likely face a similar fate to that of Bradley Manning, who handed over thousands of military documents and sensitive government communications that were posted on Wikileaks. Manning is currently facing trial for aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act.

"Will Edward Snowden be in the same position that Bradley Manning is in ... and is the United States the type of country from which journalists must seek asylum in relation to their work?" Assange asked.

Assange has taken up residence in London's Ecuadorian embassy to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on sexual assault allegations. He has denied the allegations, but fears the U.K. or Sweden could send him to the United States where a grand jury investigation is reviewing WikiLeaks' roll in publishing the documents Manning provided them.

Also on the call with Assange were well-known leakers Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, and Thomas Drake, who faced felony charges for leaking the Baltimore Sun information showing alleged mismanagement at the NSA in 2005.

Ellsberg, who is now widely seen as courageous for making public the papers that revealed secret military action in Vietnam, said he belongs in the same category as Snowden and Manning.

“We acted in the same spirit and I feel a great affinity for all of them,” he said.

Nita Bhalla / Reuters

Phul Kumari, 25, stands with her child in front of a window in a village community center in  in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh in 2011. From a poor rural community in India's Jharkhand state, Kumari was trafficked to Uttar Pradesh to become a bride.

Nine 7-Eleven store owners and managers who authorities say ran a “modern-day plantation system,” employing dozens of immigrant workers at New York and Virginia convenience stores, were just one thread in a vast human trafficking and forced labor web that stretches around the world and into American homes.

Investigators filed indictments earlier this week against the eight men and one woman who were accused of hiding dozens of illegal immigrants from Pakistan and the Philippines at a string of convenience stores in two states.

The nine defendants arrested by investigators allegedly employed more than 50 illegal immigrants at ten 7-Eleven franchises in New York and four more in Virginia, using stolen identities to cover up their illicit activities, authorities said on Monday.

But while these alleged victims were discovered, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that millions of victims of human trafficking slip past law enforcement every year as he released the State Department's 2013 Trafficking in Persons report.

"When we think of the scale of modern-day slavery, literally tens of millions who live in exploitation, this whole effort can seem daunting, but it's the right effort," Kerry said. "There are countless voiceless people, countless nameless people except to their families or perhaps a phony name by which they are being exploited, who look to us for their freedom."

Only about 40,000 victims of human trafficking have been identified in the past year, the report said, based on information obtained from governments around the world. The estimated number of men, women, and children who are trafficked at any one time worldwide may reach as high as 27 million, according to the report.

“Because reporting is uneven, we can’t say for certain how many victims of trafficking are identified each year,” said Ambassador Luis C. deBaca, director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, in an introduction to the report.

“That means we’re bringing to light only a mere fraction of those who are exploited in modern slavery,” deBaca said. “That number, and the millions who remain unidentified, are the numbers that deserve our focus.”

The report designated 21 countries as Tier Three, signifying that they make no significant effort to meet minimum standards of compliance set by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a 2000 law that allows for the prevention and prosecution of human trafficking.

The Tier Three countries listed by the report are: Algeria, the Central African Republic, China, the Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, North Korea, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.

Yet the number of traffickers convicted by the Department of Justice fell over the past year, the report said, recording 138 traffickers convicted in 2012, according to the report. A year earlier, 152 convictions were obtained by the Justice Department in trafficking cases, the report said.

Justice Department task forces reported fewer investigations for 2012, as well, saying that the department conducted 753 investigations into human trafficking suspects last year, compared to 900 investigations into 1,350 suspects in 2011.

As many as 100,000 U.S. children may be victims of domestic human trafficking, according to estimates cited by a 2013 Congressional Research Service report. The tally of victims brought into the U.S. by traffickers each year might be as high as 17,500 people, according to the report.

In another domestic case announced by investigators this week, a woman with cognitive disabilities and her young daughter beaten and threatened in their Ohio home for more than two years, authorities said. Three people were arrested for holding the two victims captive against their will since May 2011, according to the U.S. Attorney for Northern Ohio.

Jessica L. Hunt, 31, and Daniel J. Brown, 33, and Jordie L. Callahan, 26, allegedly held the two victims captive and kept them under surveillance using a video monitor in an Ashland, Ohio apartment, according to an affidavit filed on June 17 in Ohio’s Northern District Court.

Police were alerted to the alleged abuses when the adult victim was arrested in October of 2012 for shoplifting a candy bar, and asked to be taken to jail rather than back to the apartment, according to the affidavit.

The victims in Ohio were forced to shop and clean for their captors, as well as care for their pit bulls and pet reptiles, according to the affidavit. They were denied food, beaten, and threatened with firearms, as well as snakes including a poisonous coral snake, and 130-pound Burmese python, and a ball python, according to the affidavit.

"We are yet again reminded that modern-day slavery exists all around us," said Steven M. Dettelbach, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. "One of our nation's core values is freedom, yet this woman and her child were denied freedom for two years.”

The chief executive of the Polaris Project, a non-governmental organization that works to prevent human trafficking, said the report brought attention to the “appallingly high rate” of global human trafficking in a statement.

“The average American should understand that human trafficking is much larger and more prevalent than most people realize, and they may come across human trafficking in their daily lives,” Polaris Project CEO Bradley Myles told NBC News in an email. “Hundreds of thousands of vulnerable women, men and children right here in the U.S. are lured or forced into commercial sex or to provide labor against their will.”

President Barack Obama has named human trafficking as a priority of his administration, and last year signed an executive order tightening safeguards and adding protections against use of trafficked labor by the government and federal subcontractors. In April, the White House hosted a forum on its efforts to crack down on human trafficking.

“But for all the progress that we’ve made, the bitter truth is that trafficking also goes on right here, in the United States,” Obama said in a speech on human trafficking in September 2012. “It’s the migrant worker unable to pay off the debt to his trafficker.  The man, lured here with the promise of a job, his documents then taken, and forced to work endless hours in a kitchen.  The teenage girl, beaten, forced to walk the streets.  This should not be happening in the United States of America.”

Related:

• Enslaved in America: An NBC News special report 
• The sex slaves next door: New form of trafficking invades US
• Survivor of sex trafficking speaks out as battle against crimes continue

Three male Naval Academy midshipmen have been charged with allegedly sexually assaulting a female midshipman last year and with making a false official statement.

The woman told investigators that she was assaulted by the men — all Academy football players at the time — at an off-campus party in April 2012. 

On Wednesday, the academy announced the accused men were charged with making a false official statement and with rape, sexual assault, and other sexual misconduct. 

"Midshipmen, like other members of the military, are subject to military law contained in the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice], a federal statute. These charges are accusations, and the accused midshipmen are presumed innocent until proven guilty," Commander John Schofield, a spokesman for the academy, said.

The woman initially reported the incident in 2012, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service immediately launched an investigation, sources told NBC News. But the woman essentially withdrew her complaint when she stopped cooperating with investigators, and the probe was halted.

Then, in February 2013, she renewed her complaint, and the investigation continued. 

Sources said the woman knew the men and considered them friends, but during a night of heavy drinking the three allegedly had non-consensual sex with her at different times.

The woman's lawyer, Susan Burke, has told NBC News that her client was "ostracized" for the accusations, and that the incident was "widely known at the Naval Academy." 

Burke has been critical of the Academy for how they have handled the investigation, saying that said her client was disciplined for drinking while the alleged attackers went unpunished for more than one year. 

One of the accused had his graduation put on hold while the investigation was still pending. 

The other two are juniors at the Annapolis, Md., academy.

NBC's Andrew Rafferty contributed to this report.

Joe Burbank / Pool via Getty Images

George Zimmerman, left, listens to jury consultant Robert Hirschhorn in Seminole circuit court on June 19, in Sanford, Fla.

George Zimmerman's parents were in a Florida courtroom Wednesday to "visibly advocate" for the former neighborhood watch volunteer charged with second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin.

Robert and Gladys Zimmerman have not previously attend jury selection, which began June 10, because they have received death threats and have been taking care of an elderly relative with Alzheimer's, their older son, Robert Zimmerman Jr., said in a statement emailed to NBC News.

“Despite safety considerations, the time was right to do what they could to visibly advocate for George's innocence,” the statement said.

"Going forward, security and other concerns are paramount and our periodic absence from court should not be misinterpreted as a withdrawal of support.”

The parents were joined by their daughter, Gracie, as prosecutors and defense lawyers began trying to winnow down a pool of 40 potential jurors to a panel of six.

Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda asked the pool if any of them had been victims of a crime, and 14 said they had. Four of those said they had been victims of violent crime, and one said she would not be able to put aside her own experience.

"It's very similar," the woman said of the crime, without providing further details. "It's always on my mind."

The jurors were also asked about firearms, and more than two dozen said they either own guns, are associated with gun owners, or have had some experience with guns.

Zimmerman, 29, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder for shooting Martin, 17, during a confrontation in Sanford, Fla., on the night of Feb. 26, 2012. He says that the unarmed teen attacked him and he fired his gun in self-defense.

Robert Zimmerman Jr.'s statement said his family believes his account.

"We are all sympathetic to the tragic reality of outliving a son or daughter, however ... George acted in self-defense, self-defense should not be criminalized & we stand by George because he told the truth," it said.

Zimmerman's wife, Shellie, has appeared in court several times during jury selection. She faces perjury charges in a separate case for allegedly misrepresenting the couple's financial picture during an April 2012 bond hearing. She has pleaded not guilty.

Martin's parents have regularly attended the proceedings. 

Editor’s note: George Zimmerman has sued NBCUniversal for defamation. The company has strongly denied his allegations.

Two upstate New York men, one of them said to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, plotted to build a truck-mounted, industrial-strength X-ray weapon to kill “enemies of Israel” by poisoning them with radiation, federal authorities said Wednesday.

One of them boasted that he could build a “Hiroshima light switch” and that “everything with respiration would be dead by morning,” authorities said.

Investigators said the public was never in danger. The men scoped out Muslims and other groups as potential targets and apparently got as far as building a trigger for the device, but the FBI caught on, set up a sting and made sure the device didn’t work, the authorities said.

The men — Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, and Eric J. Feight, 54 — were charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.

They appeared in court on Wednesday and a federal magistrate ordered that they remain in jail until a detention hearing on Thursday. 

Neither of the men spoke during their appearance.

A criminal complaint said the men wanted to integrate the device into a mobile, industrial-grade X-ray system that could be turned on and off from a distance and could avoid detection.

Crawford, who authorities said made the boast about Hiroshima, is a member of the United Northern and Southern Knights of the KKK, the complaint said. He referred to Muslims as “medical waste,” the complaint said.

Federal authorities said they became aware of the plot and later began working undercover, after Crawford walked into a synagogue and asked for help with technology that could kill enemies of Israel while they slept.

The synagogue declined, and both the synagogue and another Jewish organization approached by Crawford told the FBI, the complaint said.

The plot began in April 2012, and the men sought parts for the weapon this spring, the complaint said. Crawford once traveled to North Carolina to ask for financing from a suspected KKK member, it said.

Crawford worked for General Electric, and Feight was an outside contractor for the company, the complaint said. Efforts to reach GE for comment were not immediately successful.

Information on their lawyers was not available.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 19, 2013 2:40 PM EDT

An argument ended grimly in California this week, with a father found in the driveway bleeding from stab wounds and his son nearby, his severed hands lying on the ground.

Shasta County Sherriff’s deputies responded to a reported stabbing in Redding, Calif., on Monday afternoon to find the gruesome scene with “visible injuries” in the driveway, according to a news release.

Both Gregory Dunn, 58, and his son Jason, 27, were rushed to the hospital, where they remained as of Wednesday morning with life-threatening injuries. Gregory was stabbed multiple times, allegedly by Jason with a pair of scissors. Jason Dunn's hands were cut off to his wrist.

Through multiple interviews, police said they learned the Dunns were in a quarrel prior to the stabbing. Police said they believe Jason Dunn cut off both his hands using a radial saw. More information about the son's reasons behind his self-mutilation and stabbing of his father remain unclear, police said.

Charges had not been filed as of Wednesday, but police said they are investigating the case as an attempted homicide.

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:55 PM EDT

The FBI has called off the dig for Jimmy Hoffa in a suburban Detroit field where a tipster insisted he was buried alive.

No human remains were found during three days of excavation on the one-acre parcel, officials said.

"We're disappointed," said Robert Foley, head of the FBI's Detroit office.

The feds were led to the site by Tony Zerilli, who claims he was told the Teamsters Boss was whacked with a shovel and then entombed beneath concrete slabs in a barn.

"I know he's there," Tony Zerilli told NBC News before the search ended. "I'm not wrong."

Since Hoffa vanished in 1975, authorities have searched dozens of spots for his body. Informants have claimed he was dumped at Giants Stadium, fed to the alligators in the Everglades and shipped to Japan in a compacted car.

Investigators took Zerilli's claim seriously because he's alleged to be the former underboss of a Detroit crime family. Zerilli denies he was in the Mafia or involved in Hoffa's disappearance from a Detroit area restaurant.

Workers did find concrete slabs on property in Oakland Township, lending Zerilli's story some credibility. But backhoes and cadaver dogs failed to unearth anything to solve one of the country's most enduring mysteries.

The FBI said it deployed 40 agents for the search but did not say how much it cost.

"We do not have a profit margin as a bottom line," Foley said.

Carlos Osorio / AP

Law enforcement officials from the Michigan State Police help search the area in Oakland Township, Mich., Tuesday, June 18, 2013 where officials continue the search for the remains of Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa who disappeared from a Detroit-area restaurant in 1975.

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 19, 2013 10:35 AM EDT

A missing elderly Kansas couple who set out on an eight-hour trip from Kansas to Illinois to visit family on Monday afternoon was found Wednesday afternoon in Mio, Mich., – about 400 miles from their original destination.

“They took a wrong turn,” Garnett Police Chief Kevin Pekarek said.

Vernon Hunt, 92, and his wife Goldie, 81, of Garnett, Kan., were reported missing by their son Jay Selanders Monday afternoon. The couple left their house early Monday morning to visit Goldie’s twin sister in Dwight, Ill., but they never arrived.

Pekarek said law enforcement agencies across three states – Kansas, Missouri and Illinois – are looking for the couple, NBC affiliate KSHB reported. A Silver Alert, which notifies the public of missing elderly individuals with mental disabilities, was not issued because they do not fit the criteria.

Pekarek said a few people reported seeing the couple’s car, a black 2005 Chrysler 300 with a Kansas license plate 473 FNM, in parts of Missouri and Kansas on Tuesday.

After police notified Selanders that his parents were found in Michigan, he and his wife went to go pick them up. 

As for the trip to see Goldie’s sister, Pekarek said, “they probably won’t be going by themselves anymore.”

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 19, 2013 10:30 AM EDT

President Barack Obama proposed reducing the American nuclear arsenal by as much as a third on Wednesday, directing the Defense Department to align the United States with what the administration says are the more credible threats of the 21st century.

The proposal outlined by Obama in a speech in Berlin includes the maintenance of a “strong and credible strategic deterrent,” and will instruct the Defense Department to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in response to non-nuclear attacks on the U.S.

“We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe,” Obama said. The U.S. will seek cooperation with Russia for further cuts “to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures,” he said.

The announcement came in the middle of a sweeping speech that drew on Berlin’s history while evoking the ongoing unrest in countries like Afghanistan and Burma.

The U.S. will host a summit in 2016 to address the international flow of nuclear weapons and material, and Obama’s administration will push for domestic support to ratify the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, Obama said.

The president delivered his speech at the historic Brandenburg Gate, the one-time boundary between East and West Germany where President John F. Kennedy spoke fifty years ago. Six thousand tickets had been distributed, according to the German government.

“While I am not the first American president to come to this gate, I am proud to stand on its eastern side to pay tribute to its past,” Obama said.

Obama tries for repeat performance in Berlin

The nuclear defense plan laid out by Obama is separate from American weapons deployed in support of NATO, and Obama underscored the importance of the relationship between the United States and its European allies in an earlier appearance with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday.

“In both conversations with Chancellor Merkel and earlier with your president I reminded them that from our perspective the relationship with Europe remains the cornerstone of our freedom and security,” Obama said. “Europe is our partner in almost everything that we do.”

In a 2009 speech in Prague, Obama said that it must be a priority for all the world’s countries to check the flow of nuclear weapons, calling the continued existence of aging nuclear stockpiles “the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War.”

“Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked — that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction,” Obama said in the Prague speech. “Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.”

The changes come after the release of a 2010 review of the nation’s nuclear defense posture, as well as the ratification of the New START treaty, an agreement with Russia for each country to reduce its stockpiles of nuclear weapons over the next five years to 1,550 weapons each.The proposed reductions would take the U.S. further below that number.

An aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday before Obama’s speech that other countries as well as Russia and the U.S. should be involved in further decisions about nuclear cuts.

“It’s necessary to bring other countries that possess nuclear weapons into the process,” foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov said, according to Reuters.

Obama made passing reference to the threat of nuclear weapons in his February State of the Union address, saying that the U.S. would “do what is necessary” to prevent a nuclear Iran, as well as check the global flow of nuclear weapons.

“At the same time, we’ll engage Russia to seek further reductions in our nuclear arsenals, and continue leading the global effort to secure nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands – because our ability to influence others depends on our willingness to lead and meet our obligations,” Obama said.

Related:

• Obama, Putin to sign new deal on reducing nuclear threat
• Obama and Putin at the G-8: So little time, so much to discuss
• 50 years after iconic JFK speech, Obama honors 'magic' moment in Berlin

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 19, 2013 8:39 AM EDT

FBI via AP

The FBI had offered a $100,000 reward for information leading directly to the arrest of Walter Lee Williams, 65.

CANCUN, Mexico -- Mexican authorities arrested a former University of Southern California professor who faces sex crimes charges in the Philippines on Tuesday, just hours after he was added to the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list.

Walter Lee Williams, 64, was arrested in the southern beach resort of Playa del Carmen. The FBI said he was an anthropology and gender studies professor at the University of Southern California until 2011.

Using academic research as a guise, Williams traveled in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia to have sex with underage boys, according to the FBI. The bureau said it had identified 10 victims between ages 9 and 17.

The Quintana Roo state attorney general's office said police found Williams at a cafe on Tuesday night in Playa Del Carmen, a short drive from Cancun.

"He was sitting in a cafe," said state attorney general Armando Garcia. "It's not known what he was up to but he had a home in Cancun."

The FBI added Williams to its most-wanted list on Monday. The bureau was offering a $100,000 reward for information leading directly to his arrest.

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 19, 2013 7:29 AM EDT