HOUSTON — A Porter, Texas, man was sentenced to 14 days in federal prison and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine Friday after pleading guilty to shooting and killing a federally protected bald eagle in his backyard, then attempting to hide the wounded bird beneath a tarp in his garage.

Santos Guerrero, 43, was sentenced by U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Bray following his guilty plea earlier this year, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas. Guerrero pleaded guilty on May 14, nearly two years after authorities said he shot the eagle at his home on Oct. 11, 2024.

According to federal prosecutors, authorities initially responded to the scene after receiving reports of the shooting. Investigators reviewed video footage showing the eagle being shot and falling from a tree, and they subsequently traveled to Guerrero’s home, where they identified the same tree captured in the footage. Investigators eventually located the injured bird hidden beneath a tarp inside Guerrero’s garage.

Prosecutors said Guerrero later lied to investigators about the incident. The court reviewed both surveillance video and body camera footage documenting the eagle both before it was shot and after it was subsequently discovered in Guerrero’s garage.

The eagle was transported to an animal hospital following its discovery, but veterinarians ultimately made the decision to euthanize the bird due to the severity of its injuries. According to federal prosecutors, a necropsy determined that the bullet had significantly damaged one of the eagle’s wings, while its subsequent fall from the tree caused additional serious injuries, including liver fractures, internal bleeding and a broken leg.

Although bald eagles have not been classified as an endangered species since 2007, the birds remain federally protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, a law that prohibits killing or possessing bald and golden eagles without proper authorization. Those protections extend beyond the birds themselves to also cover eagle parts, nests and eggs, meaning violations of the law can carry significant federal penalties regardless of an eagle’s current conservation status.

When Guerrero entered his guilty plea in May, prosecutors indicated he faced a potential sentence of up to one year in federal prison, along with a maximum fine of $100,000. Judge Bray’s ultimate sentence of 14 days in prison alongside the $5,000 fine fell considerably below that maximum potential penalty.

Following Friday’s sentencing, Guerrero remains free on bond. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he will be required to voluntarily surrender to a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility that has not yet been determined, a common arrangement in federal cases involving relatively short custodial sentences, allowing the defendant to report to a designated facility on their own rather than being taken into custody immediately following sentencing.

The Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, first enacted in 1940 and later amended to include golden eagles, has served as one of the primary federal legal tools used to prosecute individuals who kill or harm the birds, even in cases, such as Guerrero’s, where the shooting occurred on the defendant’s own private property. The law reflects the bald eagle’s enduring status as a national symbol of the United States, a designation that has continued to afford the species legal protection even after its formal removal from the federal endangered species list nearly two decades ago, a delisting that reflected a significant conservation success following decades of population decline driven largely by the pesticide DDT and habitat loss throughout the 20th century.

Federal wildlife protection cases involving bald eagles are prosecuted through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s law enforcement division, working in coordination with U.S. Attorney’s offices across the country. Penalties for violations can vary significantly depending on the specific circumstances of a case, including whether a defendant is found to have acted knowingly, whether the bird’s death was accidental, and whether any additional conduct, such as Guerrero’s alleged false statements to investigators, factors into how prosecutors approach sentencing recommendations.

Cases involving the killing of protected bald eagles periodically draw significant public attention given the bird’s status as a national symbol, and federal prosecutors have continued to pursue charges against individuals found to have violated the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act in various parts of the country in recent years, reflecting the law’s ongoing role in protecting the species even outside its formal designation as endangered or threatened.

As of Friday’s sentencing, the case against Guerrero has concluded with his federal prison term and fine, closing out a legal process that spanned nearly two years from the original October 2024 shooting to his eventual guilty plea and sentencing. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas has not indicated whether Guerrero faces any additional state-level charges connected to the incident beyond the federal case addressed in Friday’s sentencing hearing.

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President Donald Trump lashed out at Canada early Sunday in his first public comments since trade negotiations between the two countries collapsed, accusing Ottawa of wanting the “benefits of being a State, without being one.”

“Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“They have also charged our great farmers, for many years, massive amounts of Tariffs,” he added. “No more!!!”

The comments come a day after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended negotiations with the U.S. and ordered Canada’s trade team back to Ottawa as Trump’s 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian imports took effect early Saturday.

CANADA’S CARNEY SAYS US MADE LAST-MINUTE ‘POWER PLAY’ AS TRADE TALKS COLLAPSE; RETALIATORY TARIFFS IN PLACE

President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney have traded criticism following the collapse of U.S.-Canada trade negotiations. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images / Getty Images)

For its part, Canada has vowed to retaliate.

Carney said Friday that Ottawa plans to match the U.S. tariffs “dollar for dollar,” with the levies targeting multiple sectors, including steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper and electronics.

The duties are set to take effect the Tuesday after Labor Day, Sept. 8.

The prime minister on Saturday accused Washington of making a last-minute “power play,” saying the U.S. sought to restrict Canada’s ability to negotiate trade agreements with other countries.

US-CANADA TRADE NEGOTIATIONS SUSPENDED, CARNEY VOWS DOLLAR-FOR-DOLLAR RETALIATION AGAINST TRUMP’S 50% TARIFFS

President Donald Trump lashed out at Canada in his first public comments since trade negotiations between the two countries collapsed, accusing Ottawa of wanting the “benefits of being a State, without being one.” (Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

“It’s a power play,” Carney said. “It becomes a question of sovereignty.”

According to Carney, trade talks broke down after the U.S. introduced new demands involving Canada’s other trading relationships, its auto sector and protections for Canadian culture and the French language.

“In short, they asked too much, and they offered too little,” Carney said.

The Trump administration has disputed Carney’s version of events, arguing that Canada walked away from terms the two countries had already agreed to.

TRUMP ALLOWS 300,000 METRIC TONS OF TARIFF-FREE BEEF IMPORTS IN BID TO CUT PRICES, DRAWING RANCHER BACKLASH

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney greets U.S. President Donald Trump at the official welcome ceremony during the G7 Leaders’ Summit on June 16, 2025 in Kananaskis, Alberta.  (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images / Getty Images)

“Our interest is in protecting American workers and protecting American supply chains. We’ve been offering to bring the Canadians along on that path, really to cut the tariffs on them on steel, on autos, even lumber, things that are sensitive for them,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Saturday on “Fox & Friends Weekend.”

“And they’ve always had the best deal, and they still would have an even better deal, but they didn’t want that,” he continued.

Greer said no additional trade negotiations with Canada have been scheduled.

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FOX Business’ Brittany Miller and Fox News Digital’s Madison Colombo contributed to this report.

However, fellow student Jessica, who is also going to study at Liverpool John Moores University, feels she will miss out.

She says she would have loved to live on campus and enjoy student life, but the price of renting is “ridiculous” and “insane”.

“I have a part-time job as everything is so expensive, and then commuting is going to kill a lot of my free time as well,” she says.

“It is a bit sad really when you think about it.”

But she is pleased that staying at home means she will still be able to have her mum and dad’s cooked dinners.

Earlier this year, BBC News followed the daily journey of one first-year student who said she was saving over £7,000 on accommodation by commuting 90 minutes into Manchester each day from home.

The figures were recorded on results day and are expected to rise over the coming month as more students accept university places through clearing.

A record number of UK 18-year-olds have been accepted into university this year.

But student rents have risen sharply in recent years, alongside other living costs.

The Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) said last year that students needed £61,000 over the course of a three-year degree in order to have a “minimum socially acceptable standard of living” – and that’s excluding tuition fees.

Its report found that in 2024 the cost of renting in university-owned accommodation ranged from £108 per week, for 40 to 44-week contracts in Northern Ireland, to £338 a week for the shortest contracts in London, where rent makes up nearly half (46%) of students’ costs.

In most areas it was between £140 and £180 a week, with private halls usually being more expensive.

Many students are eligible for a maintenance loan, which can help with the cost of accommodation, but the average annual price of a room on campus is increasing much faster, according to some student unions.

Hepi says most young full-time students now work in paid employment during term time to make up the difference between their maintenance loan income and the cost of living.

A small power plant has been shut down during a cyber attack.

The government said that at no point was there a risk to the UK’s energy system, but the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has contacted power companies to advise them about the risk of cyber attacks.

The Daily Telegraph reported that the attack, which took place last month, was carried out by hackers affiliated to the Iranian regime.

For security reasons, neither the government nor the National Cyber Security Centre, which deals with attacks on critical infrastructure, would give further details of the site affected. However this was not an attack on an essential service such as a large power station.

According to the Telegraph, external, the power plant was shut down for four days.

DESNZ said the incident had affected a small-scale generator and at no point had there been a risk to the wider energy system.

The UK’s power network has a number of smaller gas generators which provide short-term power when needed.

Protecting the country’s supplies is a key challenge for the government. It is updating its regulations for cyber security, and working on a new energy resilience strategy for later this year.

Iran has long been regarded as a capable cyber power but while the Western cyber-security world is braced for attacks either from the state or hackers linked to the state as a result of its conflict with the US this year, there has been little activity so far.

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Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha’s Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

Kevin Durant’s basketball future through the 2027-28 season is already contractually mapped out, though the final chapter of that timeline ultimately rests in his own hands. The four-time scoring champion signed a two-year, $90 million contract extension with the Houston Rockets on Oct. 19, 2025, a deal that locks him in for the 2026-27 season and gives him a player option to remain with the franchise for 2027-28 as well.

Under the terms of the extension, Durant is set to earn approximately $43.9 million in the 2026-27 season, followed by roughly $46.7 million in 2027-28, according to figures compiled by Spotrac. The second year of that deal is structured as a player option, meaning Durant himself will decide whether to exercise it and remain with Houston for the 2027-28 season, or become an unrestricted free agent at that point instead.

Durant landed in Houston following a blockbuster trade completed on June 22, 2025, one of the largest transactions in NBA history, involving seven teams. The Rockets acquired Durant from the Phoenix Suns in exchange for a package that included Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, and multiple second-round selections. The move made Houston Durant’s fifth NBA team, following stints with the Seattle SuperSonics/Oklahoma City Thunder, Golden State Warriors, Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns across a career that has now spanned 18 seasons.

Rather than pursuing the maximum contract extension he was eligible for, which could have been worth as much as $120 million to $122 million over two years, Durant chose to leave roughly $30 million on the table in order to sign a more team-friendly deal with Houston. His business partner and Boardroom CEO, Rich Kleiman, explained the reasoning behind that decision to ESPN, framing it as a deliberate move to give the Rockets greater roster-building flexibility as the two sides committed to a longer-term partnership. Kleiman said Durant “understood when he chose the Rockets as a trade destination that he would be sacrificing money on a new deal” so that the two sides “could partner for the long term and give the franchise team-building flexibility.”

Durant himself spoke about the decision to sign with Houston in personal terms following the announcement. “It just felt organic and natural coming into the gym and being a Houston Rocket for the first time,” Durant said, according to NBA.com. Rockets forward Amen Thompson offered a brief but pointed reaction to the below-market nature of the deal at the time, telling reporters in Houston simply, “Generous guy.”

The extension carries broader historical significance for Durant’s career earnings. If Durant ultimately exercises his 2027-28 player option and plays out the full extension, his career earnings would reach approximately $591 million to $598 million across 21 professional seasons, positioning him as the highest-paid player in NBA history in terms of total career earnings, surpassing LeBron James’ figure of roughly $583.9 million, according to figures cited by Sports Illustrated and Spotrac.

Heading into the 2026-27 season, Durant remains firmly positioned as the centerpiece of a Houston roster built with genuine championship ambitions. According to SI.com’s breakdown of the Rockets’ 2026-27 roster, Durant, now 38, is under contract for a base salary of $43,902,439 for the coming season, slotted in as a starter alongside a core that includes Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson, Fred VanVleet, Jabari Smith Jr., Tari Eason and Reed Sheppard. Houston’s most notable offseason addition heading into this season was veteran guard Marcus Smart, who reunited with head coach Ime Udoka, his former coach, adding another proven defensive presence to the Rockets’ backcourt.

Durant’s individual résumé continues to stand out even as he enters the latter stages of his career. A 15-time NBA All-Star, Durant is one of only seven players in league history to reach that many All-Star selections. He has averaged at least 25 points per game across 16 consecutive seasons, the longest such streak in NBA history behind only LeBron James’ 20-season run. Durant also holds the record for the highest career points-per-game average in the history of both the Oklahoma City Thunder and Brooklyn Nets franchises, along with the Phoenix Suns, and ranks second in career scoring average within Golden State Warriors franchise history, trailing only Wilt Chamberlain.

Whether Durant ultimately plays for the Rockets specifically in the 2027-28 season, and by extension into the 2027 calendar year, hinges entirely on his own decision regarding that player option once the 2026-27 campaign concludes. Should he decline the option, he would become an unrestricted free agent following the 2026-27 season, opening the possibility of signing with a different franchise, though nothing in his current public comments or in the structure of the extension itself suggests any indication he intends to leave Houston before that option decision arrives. Alternatively, should Houston and Durant part ways before then for any reason, including a trade, that would also alter the picture, though no such move currently appears under consideration based on available reporting.

For now, the most direct and reliable answer to where Kevin Durant will be playing basketball at the start of the 2027 calendar year is the Houston Rockets, given his existing contractual commitment covering the 2026-27 season. Whether that continues into the 2027-28 season and beyond depends on a decision Durant himself will not need to make until closer to the conclusion of the coming campaign, when he and his representatives will evaluate whether exercising his player option remains the right fit as he continues chasing what would be his third career NBA championship alongside a young, talented Houston core built around Sengun and Thompson.

McDonald’s has been compiling extensive personal data files on individual customers, tracking everything from past orders and loyalty points to codes scanned during the company’s Monopoly sweepstakes promotion, according to a Wired investigation that found the resulting customer dossiers can run hundreds of pages long.

Wired reporter Reece Rogers requested a copy of his own customer data file from McDonald’s Privacy Rights Center, a portal the company describes as allowing customers to “exercise your privacy rights at any time.” Because Rogers is a California resident, he had a legal right under state privacy law to request access to the personal information a private company has compiled on him. The result was a 515-page file, which McDonald’s described as containing “specific pieces of personal information about you that were identified by searching McDonald’s systems which contain information about our customers.”

According to Futurism’s coverage of the Wired report, McDonald’s has been feeding that expansive trove of customer data into its own predictive algorithms, using it to estimate metrics such as how many times a given customer is likely to visit the chain over an upcoming period, as well as that customer’s total predicted lifetime dollar value to the company.

The sheer size of the file drew a pointed comparison in the reporting to historical government surveillance records. A 515-page dossier sits right at the threshold typically considered a “large” file within the FBI’s own historical record-keeping standards, comparable in scale to the bureau’s file on musician John Lennon, whose outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War made him a target of deportation efforts by the Nixon administration. The comparison underscores the scale of commercial data collection now occurring at a company known primarily for selling fast food.

Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, offered a blunt assessment of the underlying business model driving this kind of data collection when speaking with Wired. “McDonald’s secret sauce is really commercial surveillance,” Chester said.

The revelation arrives roughly a year after a separate, unrelated security failure at McDonald’s exposed the personal information of an estimated 64 million job applicants through a vulnerability in the company’s virtual hiring assistant system, according to Futurism’s reporting. That earlier incident highlighted a recurring pattern across the corporate data collection landscape: companies amassing enormous quantities of personal information on customers and applicants alike, while not always maintaining the security infrastructure necessary to adequately protect that information from exposure.

McDonald’s extensive customer profiling reflects a broader shift in how consumer data is being collected across industries that have not traditionally been associated with digital surveillance. While technology and social media platforms such as Google and Meta have long been understood to compile detailed behavioral profiles on users, Futurism’s coverage noted a growing trend of similarly extensive data collection by companies outside the traditional technology sector, including retailer Target and even privately owned venues such as Madison Square Garden, which has previously drawn scrutiny for its own use of facial recognition technology to track and restrict entry for certain visitors.

California’s data privacy laws, under which Rogers was able to request his file, represent one of the more robust state-level consumer privacy frameworks currently in place in the United States. The California Consumer Privacy Act generally grants state residents the right to request disclosure of what personal information a business has collected about them, along with the right to request deletion of that information in certain circumstances. Not every U.S. state currently offers residents a comparable legal right to request this kind of detailed accounting from companies collecting their personal data, meaning the scope of information McDonald’s, or any similarly data-hungry company, holds on customers outside California may be less accessible for individual review depending on where a customer resides.

The McDonald’s loyalty program and app-based ordering system, central to the kind of granular purchase and behavioral tracking described in the Wired investigation, has grown increasingly central to the company’s broader marketing and customer retention strategy in recent years, as fast food chains across the industry have leaned more heavily into app-based loyalty programs designed to both encourage repeat visits and generate detailed behavioral data that can be used to refine targeted promotions and predict future customer spending patterns.

Futurism’s analysis characterized this kind of extensive commercial data harvesting as a practice unlikely to be voluntarily curtailed by the companies engaging in it, given the financial incentives involved. As long as detailed customer profiling continues to generate measurable business value through improved marketing targeting and customer retention forecasting, companies including McDonald’s have limited incentive to reduce the scope of personal data they collect and retain on individual customers.

The broader pattern of expanding corporate surveillance extends beyond customer purchase tracking alone. Futurism noted that Burger King, a McDonald’s competitor, has separately begun incorporating artificial intelligence into employee headsets specifically to continuously monitor whether staff members are behaving in a sufficiently friendly manner toward customers, an example the outlet cited as further evidence of AI-driven monitoring technology expanding into new areas of the fast food industry beyond customer-facing data collection alone.

As consumer awareness of the scale of corporate data collection continues to grow, cases such as Rogers’ 515-page McDonald’s file are likely to fuel continued public and regulatory scrutiny regarding how companies across a widening range of industries, not just traditional technology platforms, are compiling, storing and monetizing detailed personal profiles on their customers, often without those customers having a clear or complete understanding of the scope of information being collected about them during the course of routine, everyday transactions such as ordering a meal through a mobile app.