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Chicago Tour Bus Used To Move Pot, Cash NationwideBy TODD RICHMOND, Associated Press Writer Oct 6, 2009 6:31 pm US/Central CHICAGO (AP) - The purple tour bus rumbled toward Arizona. On board were 15 passengers, all promised $1,000 and a hotel stay. Stuffed into the luggage compartments, in four black duffel bags, was $1.4 million. Trailing the bus were Wisconsin Department of Justice agents, heading straight into a case that reads like a crime novel. A Detroit drug lord named Adarus Mazio Black was using the tour bus to smuggle his cash and dope across the country and was so...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is planning to move several hundred Border Patrol agents away from the U.S.-Mexico border and will not secure a single additional mile of the U.S. border in fiscal 2010, according to the department's annual performance report. The document -- "Department of Homeland Security Annual Performance Report: Fiscal Years 2008-2010" -- was originally published by the Bush administration on Jan. 15 and was updated by the Obama administration on May 7. Excluding the border between Alaska and Canada, the combined length of the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada is about 6,000 miles (with almost...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Last month, our Fox News' "War Stories" team was in Colombia, covering the tough fight against a narco-insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. This month, we're in Afghanistan, covering another narco-insurgency, the Taliban. In Colombia, cocaine fuels and funds the terror. Here in Afghanistan, it's opium. Despite extraordinary differences in culture, climate and terrain, there are dramatic parallels in the two campaigns. More importantly, lessons learned in the Andean basin are being applied here in the shadows of the Hindu Kush. Both countries have isolated agricultural populations vulnerable to coercion by insurgents financed by...

Two of the District's top law enforcement officials are warning that dozens of federal prisoners with ties to Colombian rebel groups and international drug rings are a threat to security at the D.C. Jail and pose a risk of escape into the surrounding neighborhood. The concerns have led city officials to ask the federal government for more money to provide security for the increasing numbers of prisoners, who are being held at the District's corrections campus in Southeast. Devon Brown, director of the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC), outlined concerns about such prisoners in a U.S. District Court filing last...

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Last month, a hit squad sent by a Mexican drug cartel brazenly broke into the homes of nine police officers in a ranching town in northern Mexico. They kidnapped the officers, piled them into a convoy of SUVs and sped off into the night. After being summoned by local authorities, troops from Ciudad Juarez, 80 miles to the north, located the convoy and fought a running gun battle with the kidnappers. When the smoke cleared, 21 people were dead, including six policemen who had been tortured and murdered before the soldiers could save them. Even in Mexico, where a spiraling...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=53293 Gates: U.S. Military Could Help Mexico Fight Drug Cartels By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, March 2, 2009 – The United States could increase its military support to help Mexico fight drug cartels that pose an increasingly alarming security risk, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday. “I think we are beginning to be in a position to help the Mexicans more than we have in the past,” Gates said during an NBC “Meet the Press” interview. “Some of the old biases against cooperation between our militaries and so on,...

MEXICO CITY — The street peddler's face darkened when asked how the Mexican government should deal with the rash of kidnappings and drug slayings terrorizing the nation. "They should catch the perpetrators and kill them," said Luis Bote, 21, as he served steaming tacos from a basket on his bicycle. "Only if the criminals are afraid will these crimes ever stop." Bote isn't alone. Such calls to reinstate the death penalty are gaining ground in Mexico amid an unprecedented surge in violent crime. Most of the violence is tied to the warring narcotics gangs, who killed a record 5,500 people...

HAVANA, May 22 (Reuters) - Colombia's second largest guerrilla movement said on Tuesday it would agree to a cease-fire if the government dropped a free-trade pact signed in November with the United States. Setting new conditions for peace, the National Liberation Army (ELN) also demanded a freeze of all privatization of state companies, including the Cartagena oil refinery and 20 percent of the state oil company ECOPETROL. A cease-fire is the major stumbling block in the peace talks, which began 17 months ago in Havana in a bid to end the Cuban-inspired guerrilla insurgency begun in 1964 by radical students...

PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: President and Mrs. Bush arrived in Bogota, Columbia today. His visit is a show of support for the Columbia, which is a staunch ally of the United States. The following AP/USA Today piece summarizes the visit. Bush pays brief call on Colombia Updated 41 mins. ago BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — President Bush renewed U.S. support to Colombia, a strong but drug and violence-plagued U.S. ally which receives more U.S. aid than any country outside the Middle East and Afghanistan. Bush arrived in the nation's capital on Sunday to meet with President Alvaro Uribe in a...

Diamonds are no longer a girl's best friend By Chris Hastings, Stephanie Plentl and Beth Jones, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:29am GMT 07/01/2007 Diamonds have been synonymous with Hollywood glamour since Marilyn Monroe declared them to be a girl's best friend in the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. But now a new generation of Hollywood stars is shunning the stones as a new film exposes the darker side of the international diamond trade. Blood Diamond tells the story of forced-labour diamond mines For the first time in the 79-year history of the Oscars, certain kinds of diamond will be absent from...

NUEVO LAREDO — After a respite of nearly two weeks in the violence that has plagued the Sister City, the head of the local emergency headquarters disappeared under ominous circumstances and a man was found dead in an apparently unrelated incident. C-4 chief José Luis Jácome Moreno, 60, was heading to work Tuesday morning when he was picked up by unknown men at the bus stop near his home in the Infonavit neighborhood, officials said. The panic button on his police radio was punched at about 6:20 a.m., alerting C-4 as well as other law enforcement agencies of an officer...

Bogota, Jul 23 (EFE).- Five members of Conservation International and a cameraman working for the environmental organization were kidnapped in northern Colombia by suspected members of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, guerrilla group, Colombian media reported. The group was caught by surprise by ELN fighters in the hamlet of La Paz, which is close to Sincelejo, the capital of Cesar province, some 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) from Bogota, according to radio and television reports. The environmentalists had left Sincelejo last week and were working on a project to protect sections of the Serrania del Perija, a mountain range rich...

ACAPULCO- The decapitated heads of two police officials were found early Thursday dumped in front of a government building in this Pacific coast resort... The heads of police commander Mario Nunez Magana and officer Jesus Alberto Ibarra were found at the same site where four drug traffickers died during a shootout with law enforcement. The heads of the two -- who were involved in the Jan. 27 shootout -- were accompanied by sign that warned, "So that you learn to respect." They were discovered about 3 a.m. in front of the city's Finance Department -- just over a mile from...

Illegal aliens robbed trying to cross into U.S. FROM STAFF REPORTS Feb 21, 2006, 9:23 pm Forty-four illegal aliens were robbed twice Tuesday morning, first on their way into the United States and again once they crossed the border. The Yuma County Sheriff's Office responded at 8 a.m. to County 18-1/2 Street and the Colorado River near Gadsden for the group who had been apprehended by the Border Patrol. Those in the group said they had been robbed in Mexico and then robbed again after they crossed the border. "I don't know of anything they could have had left," said...

HARLINGEN -- Gov. Rick Perry and Mexican Gov. Eugenio Hernandez Flores were scheduled to discuss border security and drug violence at a joint appearance today. Hernandez Flores is governor of the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, which includes the violence-plagued city of Nuevo Laredo. Perry has said U.S. border security is a federal responsibility but that the state cannot wait for Washington to direct more equipment and manpower toward the border. Border violence, particularly in Nuevo Laredo, has been blamed on cartels warring over a smuggling hub where Mexican and U.S. highways converge. In 2005, more than 170 people were...

MEXICO CITY - Wracked by violent drug crime and too poor to arm its police properly, the Mexican state of Guerrero is seeking a $24 million bank loan to buy more guns and security equipment. The local government plans to use the credit, approved by its Congress, to get guns, communications gear and police cars for the most cash-strapped parts of Guerrero, one of Mexico's poorest states, the state government said on Friday. "We want to seek a credit line to acquire transportation and arms," a state government spokesman said. Guerrero, whose craggy hills hide numerous marijuana and poppy fields,...

"Washington wants to curb Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's anti-American influence by lobbying allies to try to expose any anti-democratic policies, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday..." "Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican, and influential player on U.S. policy toward Latin America, said Chavez may give $50 million to the Palestinian group Hamas, which the United States considers a terrorist organization... "...Such a move would further strain deteriorating ties between the United States and one of its top oil suppliers after the countries each expelled diplomats this year in a dispute over alleged U.S. espionage. "Chavez has said the...

We are bordering on madness By Dimitri Vassilaros TRIBUNE-REVIEW Friday, February 17, 2006 Two nations are threatening American law-enforcement officers who protect this republic's southern border. Mexico is the obvious threat. The other will stun you. Men dressed as Mexican soldiers have set foot on American soil more than 200 times in the last decade. The Mexican government claims they are impersonators helping drug warlords' shipping into the United States. Whether soldiers or soldiers of fortune, Mexico has done virtually nothing to stop incursions by heavily armed forces in military-style Humvees. Mexico's inaction surely has helped embolden drug warlords salivating...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist who just announced that she is weighing a run for Senate, plans to protest again outside President Bush's Texas ranch, Venezuela's president said Sunday with Sheehan by his side. Hugo Chavez, his arm around Sheehan's shoulders, told a group of activists that Sheehan had told him that during Holy Week, in April, "she is going to put up her tent again in front of Mr. Danger's ranch." "She invited me to put up a tent. Maybe I'll put up my tent also," Chavez said, to applause from activists invited to his...