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U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

MONTERREY, Mexico - Suspected Mexican drug hit men dumped the head of a murdered man on top of a car in the street, police said on Friday, in a rare outrage in the wealthy city of Monterrey. The head, found on Thursday night on the roof of a car parked in a middle-class residential area, had a written message next to it signed by the Gulf cartel, the country's most violent drug organization. The ears were chopped off, a senior state police officer told reporters on condition of anonymity. Mexican drug gangs, engaged in a bitter fight with each other...

ST. ANTHONY, Idaho -- A man has been charged with raping a 10-year-old girl who later gave birth in eastern Idaho. The girl gave birth less than two weeks ago by caesarian section at Madison Memorial Hospital in Rexburg, Fremont County Sheriff Ralph C. Davis and other authorities said. Officials would not disclose the gender, date of birth or paternity of the baby. "I wouldn't have believed a 10-year-old could conceive in the first place," Davis said. A hospital spokeswoman would not discuss the condition of the girl or the baby and would not say whether either was still in...

EL PASO, Texas - Mexican Consulate officials in El Paso, Texas, said Mexican drug cartels have been posting help-wanted ads in Juarez, Mexico, newspapers. The officials said publications including P.M., El Diario de Juarez and El Norte have been printing vague help-wanted ads that are designed to trick young people into smuggling drugs over the border into the United States, the Las Cruces (N.M.) Sun-News reported Friday. Mexican Consulate spokeswoman Socorro Cordova said the issue came to the attention of officials nine months ago when the family of a driver stopped at the U.S. border showed the ad to Mexican...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) - Mexican soldiers arrested nine police officers who were allegedly carrying drugs in their patrol cars in the violence-plagued city of Ciudad Juarez, just south of El Paso, Texas. The officers were detained over the weekend while carrying marijuana and radios with non-police frequencies, Mayor Jose Reyes and municipal Public Safety Department spokesman Jaime Torres said Monday. "We know there are officers who aren't upright and are breaking the law," Reyes said. "Our job is to identify them and fire them, and to support the federal authorities in their efforts." Last week, the government sent more...

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – The government of Mexican President Felipe Calderón on Thursday announced a military surge of more than 2,000 soldiers in this besieged border community – caught in the crossfire between two warring drug cartels. "Operation Chihuahua," named after Mexico's biggest state, nestled against New Mexico and Texas, is aimed at restoring law and order in a region that many say has grown lawless. Since Jan. 1, nearly 200 people have been killed in this city of 1.2 million. "In this fight, Chihuahua is not alone," said Mexico's interior secretary Juan Camilo Muriño, who was accompanied by the...

EL PASO, Texas -- The killings in Juarez have spread outside of city limits and into other Mexican cities. This after police said 4 cops were found dead and burned in the city of Palomas, Mexico, Friday. The owner of the “Los Lamenots” ranch found the bodies and made the call to authorities. The violence has gotten so bad, officials have advised for no one to enter the city.

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican investigators found 19 more bodies buried in the backyard of a house in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, increasing the tally of corpses found there to 33, officials said Thursday. Federal agents began digging in the yard in the La Cuesta neighborhood on March 1, initially finding six dismembered bodies, Mexico's federal attorney general's office said in a statement. The remains date back about five years and all but three apparently are males, the statement said. The attorney general's office did not say how the victims died or who may have buried...

EL PASO — Because of increasing violence there, Fort Bliss officials say they've discontinued issuing passes to soldiers who want to travel across the border to Juarez. "This is only for a short term until things settle down and there's no perceived danger to any soldier or anyone going to Juarez," Fort Bliss spokeswoman Jean Offutt said on Saturday. "I think it's just based on the events that are going on in Juarez at this time." Offutt said the disruption for military personnel who are now restricted from entering Juarez to visit family or travel may only be temporary. The...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) - Authorities in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez said Wednesday that they plan to exhume the remains of more than 4,000 unidentified people buried in common graves and take DNA samples in an attempt to identify them. Rene Medrano, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general's office, said the bodies were being exhumed because state attorney general Patricia Gonzalez "wants to bring order and clarity to past police practices." Officials did not provide more exact reasons for the exhumations, which they called part of a statewide project that includes at least 180 exhumations...

EL PASO, Texas -- According to the U.S. State Department, crime in Mexico continues at high levels, and it is often violent, especially in Mexico City, Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, and Monterrey. Some Borderland residents said they do not cross the border for safety reasons. “I don't like to go. I rather stay here in the states where I know I'm safer,” said Crystal Villalba of the Lower Valley. “I don’t go because my parents don’t let me. They say, ‘You're going to die or they're going to kidnap you,’” said Miguel Zavala of Horizon. U.S. citizen who are...

EL PASO, Texas - The mayors of the Texan city of El Paso and the Mexican city of Juarez led a protest by dozens of people on Saturday against a planned border wall to stem illegal immigration into America. The protesters held hands across the Paso del Norte Bridge, which spans the Rio Grande and connects the downtown cores of the two cities. Resentment against the wall runs deep in the border areas of Texas. Landowners are concerned it may cut across their property, conservationists see it destroying crucial riverside habitat, and some activists see it inflaming ethnic tensions. El...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — A Texas man arrested on suspicion of having sex with underage girls in the border city of Ciudad Juarez was charged Thursday with selling drugs, procuring or trafficking minors and child pornography. The suspect, believed to be from Dallas, was arrested Tuesday after police received an anonymous tip, said Marco Antonio Torres Moreno, public safety director for Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted of cocaine possession, and 12 years if convicted on the other charges. A Mexican woman who allegedly recruited girls for the...

(CNSNews.com) - A paid Mexican informer for the U.S. government who worked in an undercover operation targeting a major narcotics cartel allegedly went off the rails and was involved in more than a dozen murders. Amid allegations of a bungled investigation and an accompanying cover-up, at least one member of Congress is calling for hearings into the matter (see related story). Guillermo Ramirez Peyro is now fighting an attempt by the U.S. government to deport him and said he fears for his life at the hands of the cartel should he be sent back to Mexico. Statements from key players...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico- A group of activists protesting U.S. immigration policies and proposals to build more border fences briefly blocked three of four lanes of an international bridge leading into El Paso, Texas, on Thursday. Hundreds of protesters marched for several miles to the Mexican side of the Sante Fe bridge, in the downtown section of Ciudad Juarez, blocking much of the bridge and listening to speeches for about a half hour before withdrawing. The protesters pledged to stop construction of what they called "The Wall of Death," arguing that it would cause more deaths among migrants seeking to reach...

Suspect in Mexican killings underscores revolving door at U.S.-Mexico borderCIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - For years young women have been raped, mutilated, killed and dumped into shallow graves in Ciudad Juarez, the gritty Mexican city across the border from El Paso, Texas. For just as long, the perpetrators have gone unpunished, sparking international outrage at an inept Mexican justice system.... Law enforcement records in Texas and New Mexico show that the suspect, Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz, was frequently in American jails and was sent back to Mexico repeatedly, only to return to the United States and commit more crimes....

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico- A Mexican man arrested in Virginia may be linked to a series of murders of women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, investigators said Monday, a week after another suspect in the slayings was arrested in Colorado. Jose Francisco Granados de la Paz, detained for alleged immigration violations, is suspected of involvement in killings in 2001, the Chihuahua state attorney general's office said in a statement. The statement did not say when or exactly where Granados de la Paz was arrested or give his age or hometown in Mexico. A spokesman for the prosecutor's office in...

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) -- A man suspected of participating in the rapes and killings of at least 10 women in a border city made infamous by the deaths of more than 100 young women since 1993 has been arrested, U.S. officials said Thursday. U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza called Tuesday's arrest of Edgar Alvarez Cruz on immigration violations in Denver "a major break" in the investigation into the unsolved deaths in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas. "We believe Alvarez Cruz's arrest will help U.S. and Mexican law enforcement authorities solve numerous cases involving the murders and disappearances of women...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Police on Monday recovered the body of a woman killed by a blow to the head and thrown out of a moving car in this border city made infamous by years of unsolved slayings of women. An anonymous caller tipped authorities to the whereabouts of the body of 29-year-old Abigail Rodriguez, who was discovered early Monday on a dirt road in Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, police said. State prosecutor Flor Rocio Munguia said no arrests had been made and the circumstances surrounding Rodriguez's killing were unclear. Monday's discovery was the 14th woman's...

Today was the day of the big immigration reform protest here in Dallas. The official estimates are that the crowd numbered between 350,000 and 400,000. The protest was against proposed immigration restrictions being proposed in Washington and to support legalizing what the New York Times calls "undocumented workers." Anytime we read a story in any newspaper now, we have to wonder whether a reporter was paid to make the subject look good or bad.But I digress.I watched some of the protests on television at my parents' house, and then watched a bit more here at home on the internet. It was...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO At least eight inmates were killed and about 10 others injured on Saturday in a fight between gang members inside the municipal prison in the rough border city of Ciudad Juarez. The fight involved rival factions of a single gang, the "Aztecas," either because of internal leadership disputes, or for control of the drug trade, local media reported. In December, six inmates were stabbed or beaten to death at the same prison — which is located across the border from El Paso, Texas — in a clash between the Aztecas and a rival gang known as The...

MEXICO CITY - Mexican agents arrested a former medical student who seized control of the remnants of the Juarez cartel, the country's attorney general said Monday, shedding light on a split within what was once Mexico's most powerful cocaine smuggling gang. Ricardo Garcia Urquiza, captured in a shopping mall in Mexico City on Nov. 11, is accused of overseeing an organization that moved up to 5 tons of Colombian cocaine a month into Mexico and on to the United States. Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca said that since late 2004, Garcia Urquiza was responsible for as much as 20...

MEXICO CITY- Federal officials plan to investigate 11 more killings in the border city of Juarez, where local prosecutors say nearly 100 women have been murdered in a similar manner. In a statement sent out early Friday, Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha said his office would take over investigating the 11 cases because they may have involved federal offenses. He did not elaborate. Local prosecutors say the nearly 100 killings, which have taken place in the last decade, appear to involve a similar pattern of sexual abuse or mutilation. The cases have long fallen under the jurisdiction of...

JUAREZ — Hundreds of disappointed Mexican soccer fans took to the streets after Mexico’s 2-0 loss to the United States, some physically attacking U.S. vehicles and verbally assaulting people wanting to cross the bridge to El Paso. At least one El Pasoan was taken to the hospital and treated for cuts and bruises. Several cars had objects thrown at their windows while drivers waited in line at the Bridge of the Americas early Monday morning. Distraught victims said they saw people carrying Mexican soccer paraphernalia throwing what appeared to be rocks. “I can’t believe this. These are my own people...