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A drug cartel lieutenant has been arrested over a series of firebomb attacks on Mexican potato-chip company Sabritas, a subsidiary of U.S. food giant PepsiCo. The gang-related bombings are believed to be the first time a multinational company has been targeted in Mexico's 5½-year-long drug war. Experts suggested that the attack may be linked to the company's apparent refusal to hand over protection money to the gangs which have terrorised local residents and businesses.

There was a time when higher education wasn’t a national political issue. Then as now, the United States had a flourishing network of private and public colleges and universities, which were supported primarily by fee-paying students and subsidies from state governments, many of which took great pride in building academic powerhouses. But in the decades since Sputnik and the Great Society, the federal role in higher education has increasingly taken center stage. Though Obamacare, taxes, and Iran are soaking up most of the attention, funding for higher education might emerge as a key dividing line in this year’s presidential election....

MONTERREY, Mexico – Imprisoned members of the hyper-violent Zetas drug cartel stabbed and bludgeoned 44 members of the rival Gulf cartel to death and then staged a mass escape, apparently with the help of prison authorities, officials in northern Mexico said Monday. Rodrigo Medina, governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon, said the prison's director and three other officials have been fired and are under investigation for purportedly helping in the escape. The same was done with 18 prison guards. "Unfortunately, a group of traitors has set back the work of a lot of good police," Medina told a...

In March Janet Napolitano assured us that the US-Mexican border was safer than ever. This in spite of Barack Obama and Eric Holder willingly sending 2000 automatic weapons into the hands of the drug cartels south of the border. Well, it turns out that the border is not so safe. The Mexican state of Chihuahua, which borders Texas and New Mexico, is in anarchy. The US-Mexican border is less safe than Afghanistan. Organized crime-related deaths in one Mexican border state during the first nine months of 2011 exceed the number of Afghan civilians killed in roughly the same period in...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two decapitated bodies were found inside a burning SUV early Wednesday at the entrance to one of Mexico's most luxurious malls, feeding fears drug violence is infiltrating privileged realms previously thought safe. Police recovered the mutilated bodies before dawn off a toll highway at a shopping mall entrance in the heart of the Santa Fe district that's a haven for international corporations, diplomats and the wealthy. The heads and a threatening message were dumped a few yards (meters) away, Mexico City prosecutors said in a statement. Hours later, the government released a drug war body count...

Arizona authorities have arrested some 200 people, and seized $7.8 million in cash and more than 1,200 pounds of drugs following an investigation they say has dismantled an "extensive" drug trafficking cell tied to the powerful Sinaloa cartel, federal and state authorities announced Tuesday. Authorities announcing the 15-month-long investigation said that although the Sinaloa cartel almost immediately regenerates after one of its cells have been taken down, their investigation certainly struck a blow. "Arresting a drug dealer is one thing but if we can actually follow that backwards and take out the head of the snake of this organization, we...

What does it take to be a crime reporter in the murder capital of the world? Everything, says Irma Londono. For 17 years, Irma Londono did her part to uncover the truth about drug trafficking in Colombia. As a journalist, Londono disregarded comments that women did not belong in her field, endured challenges to her credibility from corrupt officials and even survived a kidnapping from guerilla rebels. But when threats against her life escalated, the award-winning journalist heeded her mother’s advice and fled to the United States as a political refugee, leaving her family, friends and career behind. “I am...

A multi-agency undercover drug bust in Texas spun out of control Monday afternoon when a civilian working for law enforcement was killed and a police officer injured in what has been described by the local press as a “Mexico-style” attack. The incident occurred in Texas' Harris County, where parts of Houston are located, when the secret operative disguised as a truck driver delivering a 300 pound package of marijuana was driving through the northwest part of the county to a rendezvous point. Out of nowhere three sport-utility vehicles carrying alleged Zetas drug cartel gunmen cut off the 18-wheeler truck and...

The leaders of a powerful Mexican cartel, frustrated that U.S. law enforcement was interfering with their lucrative drug business, plotted a military-style attack on a U.S. or Mexican government building to "send the gringos a message," federal prosecutors allege in documents filed this week. Leaders of the Sinaloa cartel sought dozens of American-made weapons for an attack in Mexico City on possible targets that included government buildings, an embassy or consulate or media outlet, according to documents in the case against Vicente Zambada, an alleged top lieutenant in the cartel.

HIDALGO COUNTY - The sheriff says the shooting involving a Hidalgo County sheriff deputy has a cartel connection. Sheriff Lupe Trevino says Sunday’s shooting can be linked to the death of Samuel Borrego Torres, also known as “Metro Tres,” of the Gulf Cartel. Trevino says Daniel Gonzalez Perez from Rio Bravo, a known member of a gang called Partido Revolutionaro, is the man who opened fire on his deputies. The sheriff says this gang was contracted to find a lost load of marijuana for the Gulf Cartel when Metro Tres was killed. Hidalgo deputies rolled up on Perez and three...

A U.S. Border Patrol agent has been sentenced to two years in prison for improperly handling a teenager he had handcuffed the boy, a smuggling suspect. Prosecutors claimed agent Jesus “Chito” Diaz was responsible for the bruises sustained by a 15-year-old boy during an October 2008 arrest near the Ro Grande in Texas. Diaz, 31, was charged with depriving the teenager of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force when he lifted the boy improperly by his arms, and put his knee in his back. Diaz’s attorneys said that no injuries were sustained from a...

The evidence is mounting that the Fast and Furious gun giveaway was orchestrated and/or initiated from the top of the Obama administration. Forbes Magazine is calling it “Obama’s Watergate.” Are we to believe that they gave away enough guns to equip a small army of narcoterrorists out of a simple error? We would have to be pretty gullible to believe that. We have to ask just what they intended to achieve by doing this. It was a truly extravagant gift to the Sinaloa Federation Cartel. It was not just expensive in tax dollars; it was expensive in political capital, and...

A massive marijuana-growing operation uncovered in Liberty County may have links to a major drug cartel, authorities were told, but nobody's saying which one. "The state and federal authorities do have some individuals they are possibly looking at," said Capt. Rex Evans, spokesman for the Liberty County Sheriff's Office. "They are in contact with folks in South Texas and south of the border. They say not to release any information (about cartels) at this time." Investigators early Tuesday uncovered a sophisticated marijuana growing and cultivation operation at CR 2055 and CR 2050 in Liberty County, just outside Hardin. They pulled...

On Sunday, I wrote a story detailing the presence of the La Familia cartel in Austin, and in particular a group led by men from the central Mexican region of Luvianos.On Monday, after reading the story, officials with the Austin Independent School District canceled a scheduled football game between Travis High and the team from Monterrey Tech, citing safety concerns. If the game really was nixed simply on the basis of our story, it struck me as a curious decision. While I tried to explain how and why La Familia came to use Austin as a distribution hub, the presence...

"In Blog del Narco [they] are amplifying the public relations efforts the cartels had already started," says Rosental Alves, a journalism professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who follows new media in Latin America.

(CNN) -- Two bodies dangling from a pedestrian bridge in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, created an image as gruesome as any in the four years of the country's offensive against the drug cartels. A man and a woman, both in their early 20s, were left hanging like cuts of meat. The woman was hogtied and disemboweled, her intestines protruding from three deep cuts on her abdomen. She was then hung from the bridge by her feet and hands, topless. The bloodied man was suspended next to her by his hands, his right shoulder severed so deeply you...

Jean Baptiste Kingery seems to be yet another thug that took advantage of the Obama Administration's criminal stimulus package for the southwest, building grenades and IEDs for the Sinaloa cartel. So what did the Department of Justice do when they caught him. They released him free as a bird within hours.Federal authorities are probing why the U.S. in 2010 let go an Arizona man accused of supplying grenades to a Mexican drug cartel, a case that played a role in the ouster last week of the nation's top firearms regulator and the U.S. attorney in Phoenix. U.S. officials said missteps...

Officials with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration say they took down several bosses from the Sinaloa Cartel in a move they say "decimated" a Utah-based cell of the Mexican crime ring. At least seven arrests came Tuesday .. part of an 18-month investigation that has yielded more than 30 arrests in Utah, California and Nevada. Authorities have also seized more than 30 pounds of methamphetamine, 200 pounds of marijuana, a kilogram of heroin and a kilogram of cocaine, as well as more than $322,000 and guns.

The death toll climbed as workers continued to pull bodies out of a burned casino in northern Mexico, where gunmen spread gasoline and ignited a fire that trapped and killed at least 53 gamblers and employees. ... Attorney General Leon Adrian de la Garza said a drug cartel was apparently responsible for the attack, though he didn't name which one. Cartels often extort casinos and other businesses, threatening to attack them or burn them to the ground if they refuse to pay. It was the second time in three months that the Casino Royale was targeted. Gunmen struck it and...

In recent weeks, small numbers of C.I.A. operatives and American civilian military employees have been posted at a Mexican military base… Genaro García Luna, put a helicopter in the air within five minutes after receiving a call for help from Mr. Zapata’s partner, the authorities said. Then he invited American officials to the police intelligence center – an underground location known as “the bunker” – to work directly with Mexican security forces in tracking down the suspects. Mexican officials hand-carried shell casings recovered from the scene of the shooting to Washington for forensics tests, allowed American officials to conduct their...

MEXICO CITY -- A key drug cartel figure who acknowledged ordering 1,500 killings has been captured in northern Mexico, federal officials said Sunday. Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez also is a suspect in last year's slaying of a U.S. consulate employee near a border crossing in Ciudad Juarez.

For those haven't seen the evidence of Tuesday's blatant silver manipulation (which we expected beforehand here), where the cartel sold 250,000,000 paper ounces of silver (1/4th of Global world silver production) in 1 minute to smack down silver, prepare to have your eyes opened. 5 times the volume of all silver mined in the US annually was sold in 1 minute to knock silver below $40. We have said repeatedly to expect the cartel to become more and more like a caged animal as the silver manipulation end game nears.

Another Mexico Drug Cartel Lead Has Been Arrested And He Says The Cartel’s Guns Have Been Supplied Directly By The U.S Government, And The CIA Has Infiltrated (AKA RuA leader of another Mexico Drug Cartel has been arrested and says U.S government supplied gunsnning) The Columbia Drug Cartels. As previously reported, a hacker data release revealed the arrested leader of the La Familia drug cartel in Mexico was in fact the feds point man for the U.S government drug smuggling operation to Mexico drug cartels. As Obama supplies the cartels with guns he uses the cartel’s violence as a justification...

MEXICO CITY – Federal authorities apprehended the leader of the cult-like, pseudo-Christian La Familia cartel on Tuesday, saying they had dealt a debilitating blow to a major organized crime group that terrorized western Mexico. Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, alias El Chango, or "The Monkey," was arrested in the central state of Aguascalientes without confrontation or casualties, said federal security spokesman Alejandro Poire. A state official who was not authorized to speak on the record said Mendez was taken at a federal police checkpoint, but authorities didn't provide more details.

Get ready for higher gas prices. The push to get higher production from OPEC ran into “unexpected� resistance as the oil-production cartel’s meeting turned into a bickering mess. As a result, the group will not hike oil production, and reaction to the decision by the market came swiftly: In a decision that surprised oil markets and sent oil prices higher, OPEC officals said Wednesday the group had failed to reach consensus to boost output. …Gulf delegates have been pushing in recent days for an increase of one million to 1.5 million barrels a day. But some other OPEC members have...

Link only Five women brutally murdered in Mexico beach resort

National Security: The Defense Department warns that the cartels making Mexico a war zone are operating easily here too. And a secret U.S. report leaked in Mexico warns of even worse. So why isn't anyone talking about it? To hear Janet Napolitano tell it, as she did March 25 at El Paso's Bridge of the Americas, security at the U.S.-Mexican border "is better now than it ever has been." The secretary of homeland security has since denounced those warning of Mexico's war spilling into the U.S. as "simply inaccurate" and dismissed warnings from state leaders from Texas to California as...

Although labor unions have been celebrated in folk songs and stories as fearless champions of the downtrodden working man, this is not how economists see them. Economists who study unions—including some who are avowedly prounion—analyze them as cartels that raise wages above competitive levels by restricting the supply of labor to various firms and industries. Many unions have won higher wages and better working conditions for their members. In doing so, however, they have reduced the number of jobs available in unionized companies. That second effect occurs because of the basic law of demand: if unions successfully raise the price...

A cartel is a group of people, organizations, or companies which cooperates together to control production, marketing, and pricing of a product. Under antitrust laws in many regions of the world, cartels are explicitly illegal, because they eliminate fair market competition. However, several international cartels continue to exist despite these laws, and within nations, private cartels may secretly control the market for certain commodities. For the members of a cartel, cooperating together has a distinct advantage. By agreeing to not compete, the members of the cartel mutually benefit. Cartels are often successful in driving the price of the commodity they...

The decapitated bodies of 15 young men have been found in the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco. Police said they were discovered near a shopping centre and were all aged between 15 and 25. They were dumped there by drug cartel members fighting over the control of the drugs business in the city. SNIP In this latest violent incident, police responding to a report of a burning vehicle near Acapulco's Plaza Senderos shopping centre shortly after midnight found five other abandoned vehicles and the decapitated bodies. Media reports say that three messages signed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, leader of...

Many still remember the movie True Grit, with John Wayne playing Rooster Cogburn, the irascible drunk who reluctantly agrees to help Mattie track down Tom Chaney who murdered Mattie’s father. The phrase “true grit” defines one who knows right from wrong and then does something about it. When a Mexican drug cartel delivered an ultimatum to Don Alejo to give up his ranch or suffer the consequences, it was expected that within 24 hours the place would be vacant, and it would be just another asset captured by the cartel. But they didn’t know they were dealing with someone with...

MORELIA, Mexico – A letter purportedly signed by La Familia drug cartel announcing a one-month truce circulated Sunday in the western state of Michoacan. In the one-page message, distributed by e-mail and in some cities door by door, the gang claims it will halt all crime activity during January to demonstrate that the cartel "is not responsible for the criminal acts federal authorities are reporting to the media."...

Google Translate: Teachers warn hurt them, their families and their students if they fail 50 percent of the benefit Teachers warn hurt them, their families and their students if they fail 50 percent of the benefit Chihuahua, Chih., November 11 .- Hundreds of teachers in the state have been harassed by criminals who are asking 50 percent of his bonus, or otherwise threaten to harm them, their family or their pupils. The threats have been given in schools and even magisterial subdivisions, both in the city of Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez, but there are reports that this type of extortion...

While the Obama administration worries about security issues half way around the world in such places as Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea, a serious problem is brewing right on our southern border. Drug-related violence in Mexico has claimed some 29,000 lives since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels four years ago. The situation is now so bad that some analysts worry that Mexico could become a “failed state.” That outcome is a relatively unlikely, worst-case scenario, but the violence is already bad enough that it warrants far more attention from America’s

Well armed and trained assassins are loose in the United States. Can you guess who they are? If you are thinking al-Quida, Hezbullah, or perhaps home grown terrorists – try again. Would you be that surprised to find out that they are drug smuggling Mexicans cartel members! A few weeks ago I wrote an article detailing the growing threat of Mexican drug cartels. After showing the evidence of the gangs’ escalating aggressiveness and violence leaving a body count now totally to over 27,000 dead since 2006 I posed the question “do Mexican drug cartels pose a greater threat” to the...

Drug smuggling gangs in Mexico have sent well-armed assassins, or "sicarios," into Arizona to locate and kill bandits who are ambushing and stealing loads of cocaine, marijuana and heroin headed to buyers in the United States, the Department of Homeland Security has warned Arizona law enforcement authorities.

Mexican drug cartels are like a malignant cancer that keeps on spreading. Mexico has spent billions of dollars on its drug war to combat the power and influence of the cartels, but when you look at the statistics it seems as if little progress has been made. Considering the dramatic impact cartels have on the United Sates, America should consider if securing our border is as important to our national security as is the war we are fighting in Afghanistan. Mexico’s war on drugs has been ongoing since 2006, but the problem keeps getting bigger each year. So does the...

MEXICO CITY (AFP) – A heavily armed gang kidnapped about 20 Mexican tourists in the beach resort city of Acapulco earlier this week and their whereabouts are still unknown, police said Saturday. The tourists from Morelia in neighboring Michoacan state were "deprived of their liberty" Thursday when they were overtaken by an armed group, prosecutors said in a statement, adding they did not know the identity of the gunmen or the fate of those abducted. "On Thursday night, about 20 people were abducted by armed men as they arrived in Acapulco. There is no immediate word on there whereabouts, the...

US authorities and outraged Texans are pondering a plan of action to deal with Mexican pirates after a US jet skier was shot Thursday and his fleeing wife chased onto the US side of a border lake. The shooting on Falcon Lake, part of the Rio Grande watershed near Zapata, Texas, follows a months-long surge in attacks by drug-cartel-linked pirates on US boaters who have crossed into Mexican waters. It is the first instance in which an American has been hurt. "Piracy on Falcon Lake is an incredible story, especially when Somali piracy has been so much in the news,"...

MEXICO CITY -- As if Mexicans needed more evidence that criminal groups are trying to hijack the political life of the nation, it came with a ferocious triple-whammy punch in the past 24 hours. Assailants shot and seriously wounded the mayor-elect of a town in the border state of Chihuahua on Friday afternoon, less than a day after commandos in Nuevo Leon state executed a sitting mayor, making him the 10th municipal chief slain so far this year. In Mexico City, a fugitive legislator with drug charges pending against him sneaked into Congress and took his seat, automatically obtaining immunity...

A parrot in Colombia has been arrested after it was seized during a police drugs raid. According to environmental authorities, Lorenzo the parrot was trying to tip-off a local drug cartel when officers conducted an undercover raid early Wednesday. "This parrot was sending out alerts," said police officer Hollman Oliveira. "You could say he was some sort of watch bird." Authorities claim Lorenzo is one of nearly 1700 parrots seized by officials after being trained by drug traffickers to act as lookouts.

Apart from helping New Orleans win the Super Bowl last year and dating Kim Kardashian, Reggie Bush is most famous in that he is about to lose his Heisman Trophy. The Heisman Trophy is awarded to the best college football player each year, and Bush won his back in 2005 when working for USC’s football program. Most crimes, short of murder, are not punishable five years after the alleged transgression, so Bush must have done something horrible to now lose his Heisman. His crime was to accept unapproved compensation during his time as a USC football player – horrible. ....

GALICE, Ore. – Police uprooted another marijuana grow site in Galice. According to Josephine County Sheriff Gil Gilberston, authorities found a huge amount of marijuana in the area of Galice. Gilbertson says the grow is linked to the Mexican Drug Cartel. So far, police have put 18 people in jail. Gilbertson says the grow is massive but he cannot release the total amount of plants because the case is still under investigation. Galice Resident Cole Smith says he is frustrated with police. Authorities have been parked in front of his house for a week and won’t explain why they are...

MONTERREY, Mexico - Suspected drug hitmen killed the mayor of a small town in northern Mexico on Sunday in a region where two car bombs exploded last week and the bodies of 72 murdered migrant workers were found. Mayor Marco Antonio Leal was shot dead by gunmen in SUVs as he drove through his rural municipality of Hidalgo near the Gulf of Mexico in Tamaulipas state, the local attorney general's office said. Leal's 4-year-old daughter was slightly wounded in the attack, a spokesman said. It was not immediately clear why Leal was targeted, but Tamaulipas has become one of Mexico's...

A "major gunbattle" between drug traffickers and Mexican federal police broke out Saturday evening in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just 30 yards from the U.S. border at El Paso, Texas, causing U.S. authorities to cordon off a section of the city, according to a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman.

Police in Mexico say members of a drug cartel blocked off at least 13 major roads in Monterrey on Saturday. Drivers were dragged out of their vehicles by armed men and their cars used to cut off the roads in the north-eastern city. The blockade happened after a shootout between the Mexican army and alleged members of a drug cartel, in which four people were killed.

Unlike domestic pot operations of years past, many of the plantations now growing on federal land are operated by Mexican drug-trafficking organizations who are well-financed and well-armed, the sheriffs said. "The longer it goes on, the harder it will be for us to overcome," Winters told Walden. "They are better funded than us ... There are more of them than there are of us." In fact, the U.S. Department of Justice's National Drug Intelligence Center's 2010 national drug threat assessment released in February reported that the number of plants removed from public land grew more than 300 percent from 2004...

MEXICO CITY – President Felipe Calderon said Wednesday that Mexico's cartels in many cases have moved beyond drugs as their main money-earner and are even trying to supplant the government in parts of the country. Speaking at an anti-crime conference, Calderon said gangs are imposing fees like taxes in towns they dominate, extorting money from both legitimate and unauthorized businesses. "This has become an activity that defies the government, and even seeks to replace the government," he said. "They are trying to impose a monopoly by force of arms, and are even trying to impose their own laws."

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Mexico is the main foreign supplier of marijuana and methamphetamines to the United States. It is also a main transit point for cocaine, heroin and other drugs coming to the U.S. from other countries. Mexican cartels have displaced Colombian groups as the dominant cocaine traffickers in the world. Several drug cartels have operations in Mexico, and much of the violence stems from struggles over territory. The cartels' control over specific regions of the country shifts as alliances change and government arrests disrupt the balance of power.