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MEXICAN authorities yesterday began investigations into the involvement of Colombian guerrillas in the shipment of 5.5 tons of cocaine seized from a commercial aircraft. The high-purity cocaine, the biggest seizure in recent years, was found amid 128 pieces of luggage on a US passenger airline, Aero Flight, which left Caracas in Venezuela and made an unregistered stop in Ciudad de Carmen, Mexico, where soldiers found the drugs. The cocaine is valued at £70 million. Santiago Vasconcelos, of the Mexican attorney general's office, said there was evidence that the drugs came from guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),...

MEXICO CITY – Mexico's foreign secretary suggested Thursday that uniformed men using a military-style Humvee to help drug traffickers on the border could have been U.S. soldiers or criminals disguised as Mexican troops.

Uniformed Mexicans with guns, bulldozer seize drug-bust truck from Border Patrol U.S. Border Patrol agents were backed down this week by armed men, dressed in what appeared to be Mexican military uniforms and carrying military weapons, who seized a captured dump truck filled with marijuana from the U.S. agents and dragged it across the border into Mexico with a bulldozer. The border incident occurred Thursday evening when Border Patrol agents attempted to pull over a dump truck on Interstate 10 in Hudspeth County, Texas. The driver fled from the agents, exiting the freeway and driving toward the Rio Grande which...

Editor's Note: Italian media report that Al Qaeda is moving operatives through Italy on their way to North Africa and Europe with the help of a Naples-based criminal network similar to the Mafia. Italian investigators say Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization is moving deep into the Mediterranean peninsula's underworld of organized crime. Italian media recently revealed that hundreds of Al Qaeda operatives coming from North Africa are being sent to Northern Europe though a maze of safe houses belonging to the Neapolitan Camorra, a Naples-based criminal network akin to the Mafia. The internationally connected Camorra organization specializes in drug...

Yesterday my wife and I attended a community awareness meeting called at our church to talk about the growing methamphetamine and illegal drug problem in our little Idaho community. The County Attorney and a Captain with the Idaho State Troopers made the presentation, with the local Police Chief and Sheriff also in attendance. About 300 people attended. Idaho is an increasing target for the Mexico Drug Cartels for developing and deciminating drugs. The officials clearly showed and demonstrated how these drugs are being funneled, using illegal aliens as carriers, from Mexico, across the remote sections of the US border and...

NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO - When Esteban Perez sold $35 bags of heroin on the streets of this violent border city, he said he felt three things: fear, dread and terror. He feared not having enough money to bribe the local police to look the other way. He dreaded not having enough heroin left to feed his addiction. And he was terrified of not having enough cash for the drug smugglers who had sold him the narcotics and demanded a share of his profits. "I was scared of them, most of all," Perez, 24, said of the traffickers. "They ask you...

An appellate court says it will ask justices to take up Rush Limbaugh's medical-privacy case. Rush Limbaugh's case may be headed to the Florida Supreme Court. The Fourth District Court of Appeal refused to reconsider its Oct. 6 ruling that Palm Beach County prosecutors were within their rights when they seized Limbaugh's medical records using a search warrant. Instead of rehearing the case, the appellate court said Wednesday it will ask the state Supreme Court to take up the case. The state's highest court can either hear the case or pass on it. The conservative talk show radio host has...

PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. -- The federal government opened a base Friday where airplanes, helicopters and high-speed boats will set out to intercept terrorists, drug smugglers and illegal immigrants trying to cross the nation's vast northeastern border. The new Air and Marine Operations facility, formerly an Air Force base in New York's northeastern corner, is one of five that will be responsible for tightening surveillance along the U.S.-Canadian border and will cover a heavily wooded stretch from western New York to Maine. Department of Homeland Security helicopter pilot Dennis Del Grosso said agents are looking for anything, from low-flying planes trying to...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Funk music pioneer George Clinton was arrested and charged with drug possession after allegedly telling an officer he had cocaine in his pocket. Clinton, of Tallahassee, was arrested Saturday and bonded out of jail over the weekend, according to jail officials, who wouldn't release any other information. Clinton's lawyer, Shoshana Zisk of San Francisco, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment. Clinton, 63, who headed the funk bands Parliament and Funkadelic — and the collaboration later known as P-Funk — in the 1970s and 1980s is considered a father of the genre. In 1983, Clinton's solo record...

SAN DIMAS, Calif. -- Several parents recently have been wondering how come their children know so much about the cost of illegal drugs. Blame it on a classroom project. Students at Lone Hill Middle School were assigned imaginary careers and salaries and told to figure out how much various drug habits would cost them. "Samantha came home Wednesday and told us she's addicted to marijuana and has a $300 drug habit," said one parent, Diana Mitchell. "My husband and I were both stunned." Assistant Superintendent Mitch Hovey said the teacher of the seventh-grade math class was pushing an anti-drug message...

CONTROLLING THE SUBSTANCES Doctors' group blasts administration Claims White House punishing physicians for misdeeds of patients Posted: October 2, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Jon Dougherty © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com A physicians' advocacy group is blasting the Bush administration for its pledge to prosecute physicians even if their patients are responsible for the abuse of pain medications they've been prescribed. "Physicians are being threatened, impoverished, delicensed and imprisoned for prescribing in good faith with the intention of relieving pain," said Kathryn Serkes, a spokeswoman for the Tucson, Arizona-based American Association of Physicians and Surgeons. In a Monday press conference at the...

Democrats Fight Bush on Colombia May 9: Colombian President Uribe met with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, trade representatives, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, CIA Director George Tenet, 25 congressmen and businessmen during a five-day stay in Washington that ended Saturday. The Colombian president visited the U.S. to lobby for sustainable aid to Colombia amid Democrat protests of too high a budget for the South American country. Bush and Uribe were allies during war in Iraq and agree on several lines of policy, not least in their treatment of terrorism. The majority of Democrats in Congress complained about the...

GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) - A cloud of ammonia leaked from a chemical plant early Sunday, forcing tourists to evacuate eight hotels along the Gulf Coast. Authorities said it appeared someone had tried to steal the chemical, possibly to make illegal drugs. Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport was also shut down for seven hours, and several churches canceled or postponed Sunday services after police advised residents to stay indoors. A couple of emergency workers had to be treated but no other injuries were reported, police Sgt. Joseph Ashmore said. Anhydrous ammonia, used to make fertilizer, is highly explosive. Exposure irritates the skin and...

Charles Bowden's engaging new book, "Down by the River" (Simon & Schuster, $27), is about a part of the border that many people like to pretend doesn't exist: the underworld ruled by drug lords and their corrupt accomplices. It pulls back the veil on scenes that ought to shame authorities on both sides of the border into action. The way Bowden tells it, the corruption propelled by drug money is so extensive that it has reached into El Paso's financial and law-enforcement communities. According to Bowden, the Drug Enforcement Administration had information in the 1990s that the late drug lord...