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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Fourteen mutilated corpses and a threatening message aimed at a drug cartel were found inside a truck in the parking lot of a supermarket in a northern Mexico city, local media reported on Saturday. Mexico's attorney general's office could not immediately confirm the reports of the grisly discovery in Mante and police officials in the crime-ridden city were not immediately available for comment. Mexican media said the body parts belonged to 10 men and four women and the message was directed at the Gulf cartel.

RUIDOSO, N.M. – In the stables at a prominent quarter horse track in New Mexico, workers quietly nicknamed Jose Trevino Morales's stables as the "Zetas' stables" and say they often saw people show up with bags of cash to buy the horses. On Tuesday, authorities raided those stables and a horse ranch in Oklahoma accusing Trevino and others of running a sophisticated money-laundering operation connected to one of Mexico's most powerful and ruthless drug cartels. Federal authorities accuse Trevino's older brother, Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, a key figure in the Zetas drug operation, of setting up the horse operation that...

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.