Puebla

No one wins when a game ends with the score tied. But no one loses either, which was the perfect scenario for Monterrey in Sunday's final game of group play in the seventh Interliga soccer tournament at the Home Depot Center. Needing only to avoid a one-sided loss to unbeaten Puebla to advance to the tournament finals, Monterrey turned conservative to protect a second-half tie. Yet, it emerged with a 2-1 victory anyway when Osvaldo Martinez scored a minute into extra time. In Wednesday's championship round, Monterrey, winner of the Mexican Clausura season, will meet Group A champion Club America of Mexico City at 8:30 p.m. Puebla, the Group B winner, will play Jalisco's Estudiantes Tecos at 6. The winner of each game will represent Mexico in the Copa Libertadores, Latin America's version of Europe's Championships League.

Only five minutes had been played before Puebla FC started dancing. Puebla midfielder Andres Olivera scored the first goal in the sixth minute Thursday and Chivas USA lost, 2-1, at Home Depot Center to begin SuperLiga, a yearly event that brings MLS and Mexican league teams together to compete. Olivera found the net when he skipped a ball past Chivas goalkeeper Dan Kennedy and into a hole on the right side. Kennedy was unprepared for the soft goal. He raised a hand to point the finger at himself afterward.

Guillermo Cossio scored on a free kick to give Puebla a 1-0 victory over National Team of El Savador in the Copa de Las Naciones Thursday night at the Coliseum. An estimated crowd of 20,000 also saw Cruz Azul, another Mexican club team, play National Team of Guatemala to a scoreless tie. Puebla won the cup for being the only team with two victories. It also beat Guatemala Tuesday night.

Political parties across the spectrum looked for ways to claim bragging rights Monday after gubernatorial elections in a dozen states yielded surprises but no clear overall victor. With results still being tallied, the outcome so far offered something of a boost to President Felipe Calderon, whose conservative party avoided an embarrassing sweep by joining with leftist parties in several key states. Those oil-and-water alliances stunned the surging Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in two states it has long ruled: Oaxaca and Puebla.

Memo Ochoa has been to a World Cup, played in a Gold Cup and the Copa America and made nearly 200 starts in goal for Club America, one of Mexico's most storied soccer franchises. Yet he says he still holds a soft spot in his heart for the 11-nation Copa Libertadores, Latin America's version of the UEFA Champions League that begins with preliminary-round games later this month. "My second game as a professional was in the Copa Libertadores," Ochoa said Tuesday. "It's a tournament that means a lot to me. And I play it with enthusiasm."

In a major strategy shift, FairMarket has signed a deal with EBay instead of trying to compete with the rival auction site. Under the deal, which takes effect in the second quarter, FairMarket clients can choose to list items for auction on EBay's site. Previously, Woburn, Mass.-based FairMarket had set up a network of auction sites to compete with San Jose-based EBay. Terms of the arrangement were not disclosed. FairMarket launched its auction network in late 1999, teaming up with Microsoft's MSN, Excite@Home and Dell Computer.

On April 10, will we be buying the best candidate or the best pitch? Could we please keep the act of voting based, as it should be, on the person, platform and principles? Campaigns have become merely battles of advertising prowess. Even last year's presidential debates were more akin to infomercials than a true discussion of issues. All voters should get out there and cast their ballots for the candidate that best represents their views. Let's leave the judging of advertising to the CLEO Awards.

Schoolchildren from across Los Angeles got a living lesson Tuesday in the final days of Mexico's Aztec empire. The empire's last leader, Montezuma, portrayed by Fabian Gregory Cordova of Canoga Park, wore a beaded breastplate, loincloth and an elaborate feathered headdress. Cordova has performed educational presentations as Montezuma for 10 years.

The first thing you may notice about Rocio's Mole de los Dioses, an immodestly named restaurant not far from the Burbank airport, is the cactus. By this I don't mean that there are potted cactus plants around, or pictures of cactus on the walls, or a blinking neon cactus in the window, but that there is cactus on the plate almost everywhere it is possible for cactus to be. (The restaurant is somehow related to the cactus-intensive tortilleria Nopaltilla next...

Not too long ago, Rena Puebla and Ellie Genuardi had a hard time getting distributors to carry their unique cake toppers -- porcelain-like figurines that interchange to make gay, straight and interracial couples. When they pitched the figurines to home shopping networks, executives shot them down. Ditto mainstream stores. No one told them expressly why they wouldn't carry the decorations, but to the business partners who designed the diverse dolls, the message was clear.

A month after winning Mexico's Apertura, Monterrey is going to the prestigious Copa Libertadores for the first time in more than a decade after beating Club America in penalty kicks in the finals of the Interliga soccer tournament before a sellout crowd at the Home Depot Center at Carson. After failing to find the back of the net during regulation, Monterrey couldn't miss it during penalty kicks with Luis Ernesto Perez, Walter Ayovi and Osvaldo Martinez all beating America goalkeeper Memo Ochoa.

Memo Ochoa has been to a World Cup, played in a Gold Cup and the Copa America and made nearly 200 starts in goal for Club America, one of Mexico's most storied soccer franchises. Yet he says he still holds a soft spot in his heart for the 11-nation Copa Libertadores, Latin America's version of the UEFA Champions League that begins with preliminary-round games later this month. "My second game as a professional was in the Copa Libertadores," Ochoa said Tuesday. "It's a tournament that means a lot to me. And I play it with enthusiasm."

No one wins when a game ends with the score tied. But no one loses either, which was the perfect scenario for Monterrey in Sunday's final game of group play in the seventh Interliga soccer tournament at the Home Depot Center. Needing only to avoid a one-sided loss to unbeaten Puebla to advance to the tournament finals, Monterrey turned conservative to protect a second-half tie. Yet, it emerged with a 2-1 victory anyway when Osvaldo Martinez scored a minute into extra time. In Wednesday's championship round, Monterrey, winner of the Mexican Clausura season, will meet Group A champion Club America of Mexico City at 8:30 p.m. Puebla, the Group B winner, will play Jalisco's Estudiantes Tecos at 6. The winner of each game will represent Mexico in the Copa Libertadores, Latin America's version of Europe's Championships League.

Closing out a year of triumphs that have buoyed its hopes of regaining the presidency, Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party easily kept control of the governorships of Puebla and Tamaulipas in state elections Sunday. But the former ruling party, known as the PRI, was locked in tight races with President Vicente Fox's National Action Party in Sinaloa and Tlaxcala states.

A Ventura County jury convicted a Fillmore man Monday of first-degree murder and attempted rape in the New Year's Day 2003 slaying of college student Valerie Zavala. Samuel Puebla, 19, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole at his sentencing, scheduled for Sept. 20. Although tried as an adult, he is not eligible for the death penalty because he was a juvenile at the time of the killing.

Chances are that nearly every Volkswagen tooling down a U.S. road was made in the sprawling, meticulously kept VW factory here, one of the largest and most modern in the Americas. VW's Puebla operation is no mere assembly line for the Jettas, New Beetles and Cabriolets it sells in the U.S. It's a remarkably self-contained manufacturing complex that includes metal stamping, motor and axle making and composite forming, as well as its hemispheric research, design and road-test center.

Well, so much for soccer as an instrument of world peace. International relations, at least those between Scotland and Uruguay, took it on the chin here Friday afternoon. What happened on the Neza '86 Stadium field during the teams' 0-0 World Cup tie was bad enough. What happened during the postgame press conference was nothing less than astonishing.

Chances are that nearly every Volkswagen tooling down a U.S. road was made in the sprawling, meticulously kept VW factory here, one of the largest and most modern in the Americas. VW's Puebla operation is no mere assembly line for the Jettas, New Beetles and Cabriolets it sells in the U.S. It's a remarkably self-contained manufacturing complex that includes metal stamping, motor and axle making and composite forming, as well as its hemispheric research, design and road-test center.

The 32 wax figures on display at Don Presley's auction house in Orange tell two historical tales: One set in 19th century Mexico, the other in the Orange County of the 1970s. The life-size figures were part of the unrealized dream of Allen Parkinson, founder of the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, who wanted to open a "Latin Historical Wax Museum" to complement Movieland.