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MEXICO CITY — In a hair-raising standoff that sent motorists scrambling for cover, municipal police pulled their guns on masked federal agents in one of Mexico's biggest cities — a stark display of the tensions caused by a crackdown on drug corruption among the country's lawmen. Federal forces are leading sweeps across the country to round up local officers and politicians accused of collaborating with brutal drug cartels. Many city police are furious at seeing colleagues disarmed, humiliated and dragged away in handcuffs. Monday evening's confrontation started when federal police showed up to disperse city officers who were protesting the...

MEXICO CITY — Soldiers captured one of Mexico's most-wanted drug smugglers, whose nickname "la burra" — female donkey — belies his power as the alleged trafficker controlling drugs flowing through the northern city of Monterrey. Authorities announced the arrest of Hector Huerta Rios on Wednesday, just hours before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives for a two-day visit to discuss security issues and U.S. support for Mexico's battle against the drug cartels. Clinton is scheduled to travel to Monterrey on Thursday. Huerta Rios was detained Tuesday in a suburb of Monterrey, said Army Gen. Luis Arturo Oliver. He was...

Grenades used in three recent attacks in Monterrey, Mexico, and Pharr, Texas, all originated from the same lot delivered from South Korea... That the grenade used in the third attack reportedly came from Mexico indicates that in addition to the well-known path of weapons flowing from the United States into Mexico, arms also are flowing from Mexico into the United States. The first of the three attacks targeted the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico. In the second incident, again in Monterrey, gunmen attacked a local TV station on Jan. 12 in an attempt to intimidate the news agency into cutting...

MONTERREY, Mex. -- Masked gunmen opened fire and tossed a grenade at a Mexican television station during its newscast Tuesday night. The two news anchors asked for help from police on the air. It was a stark warning from drug gangs about the station's drug coverage. No injuries were reported, but it was the latest in a series of attacks on journalists covering drug cartels in Mexico. Witnesses say the masked gunmen arrived in two pickup trucks and opened fire during the station's evening newscast. There was a message left outside the station saying "Stop reporting only about us; also...

MONTERREY, Mexico — The U.S. Consulate General in Monterrey suspended visa service Thursday as combat-ready police surrounded the building after reports of nearby gunfire. The midday mobilization came just four days after two assailants attacked the consulate with at least six .45-caliber gunshots and a hand grenade that did not detonate. “I have made the decision to suspend visa services to the public for the rest of the day today while we assess the security situation,” Tony Garza, U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said in a statement Thursday. The shooting came less than 24 hours after Garza visited the consulate to...

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

MONTERREY, Mexico - Assailants opened fire on the U.S. consulate in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, a Mexican official said. Nobody was injured in Sunday's shooting. Shell casings were found outside the consulate, but there were no witnesses to the attack and no one was in custody, said a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office who was not authorized to give her name. The spokeswoman had no further details. Mexican media reported that one man opened fire on the consulate and another man threw a grenade that failed to explode. El Universal newspaper, citing a U.S. Embassy statement, said...

A car plowed into a bike race along a highway near the US-Mexico border, killing one and injuring 10 others. Police investigator Jose Alfredo Rodriguez says the 28-year-old driver was apparently drunk ... A photograph taken by a city official shows bicyclists and equipment being hurled high in to the air...

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...

MEXICO CITY — A federal police commander escaped killers near Monterrey on Tuesday as authorities in Mexico City pursued leads in a plot to assassinate more top police officials. For the first time, Mexico's warring drug gangs are training their guns on the heads of the nation's security forces. Under siege from an unprecedented federal anti-narcotics campaign, the gangs are switching from bribes to bullets in defending their lucrative smuggling routes to the United States. The result is three police commanders killed in the capital since May 1, including Edgar Millan, who as commissioner of the 30,000-member federal police led...

Operator had 19 citations; owner settled $3.3 million suit The operator of the bus that crashed in Victoria, killing one person and injuring dozens others, has been cited 19 times in the past three years, and the bus owner settled a lawsuit for $3.3 million two years ago with victims in a similar wreck, records show. Capricorn Bus Lines, which once operated under the name Flores Charter and Tours, settled a Houston lawsuit involving a 2002 crash in Nuevo Laredo. In that incident, plaintiffs claimed negligence by the company and the inattentiveness of the driver caused the bus to roll...

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...

MONTERREY, Mexico – Gunmen murdered a police chief in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi Thursday as he drove to a restaurant with his family, the latest killing in a spike in drug violence in Mexico. A group of men shot dead state police chief Jaime Flores in a daylight ambush in the city of San Luis Potosi, destroying his SUV vehicle and leaving 40 bullet casings on the street, the state attorney general's office said. “We believe drug gangs were behind this,” said a spokesman who declined to be named. Flores' wife and two children survived the...

Official Mexican government reports reveal Mexico has entered discussions with the state of Texas and top officials in the Bush administration to extend the Trans-Texas Corridor into Mexico, with a plan to connect through Monterrey to the deep-water Mexican ports on the Pacific, including Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas. The official website of the Mexican northeastern state of Nuevo León contain multiple reports that José Natividad Gonzáles Parás, governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo León, has actively discussed with numerous U.S. government officials, including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the...

MONTERREY, Mexico — Two federal police officers were shot dead Tuesday and two more were injured by gunfire in yet another attack on law enforcers in this violence-torn metropolis. The officers met a hail of high-caliber gunfire around 10 a.m. at a gas station close to a Holiday Inn Express near the center of the city. A least 100 shell casings littered the street around the scene. Their deaths bring to about 30 the number of officers killed in the Monterrey area this year in attacks blamed on organized crime. Authorities did not immediately release names of the officers or...

MONTERREY, Mexico — Two Iraqis traveling to the United States were arrested Monday at the Monterrey International Airport with fake Swiss passports, authorities said. The two men, who said they were Chaldean Christians ages 25 and 30, were fleeing discrimination in war-torn Iraq, said Luis Robles, a Mexican immigration official. "They behaved a little strangely, so they were sent for a secondary interrogation," Robles said. The men were headed to California, where one man said he had a sister, Robles said. There are sizable communities of Iraqi Christians in the state. The arrests marked the second time this year that...

MONTERREY — A billboard in Monterrey hangs high above the highway to Reynosa, alerting motorists that not everyone on this side of the border agrees with putting a wall between the two countries. The billboard reads “McAllen rechaza el muro fronteriza” or McAllen rejects the border wall. It’s just part of a multi-pronged attack city and business officials in the Rio Grande Valley are mounting to convince neighbors in Mexico that the area is still open to their visits — and their money. With the background of a "No Border Wall" poster, McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez visited Monterrey Wednesday to...

Nearly four weeks without an organized crime-related killing ended early Saturday with what police described as the third attempted hit this year on a suburban police chief. Guadalupe Police Chief Candelario Juárez Ríos escaped the attack unscathed, but an officer, who acted as a bodyguard for Juárez, died from multiple high-caliber gunshot wounds. It was the third attempt on Juárez's life since April. The shooting came after a monthlong lull in gang-related attacks that have claimed more than 80 lives this year in Monterrey, the embattled industrial metropolis of northeastern Mexico, which is about 120 miles south of Laredo. More...

Calderon calls for tests and new parks as part of his initiative MONTERREY, Mexico — Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Monday launched a new phase of his anti-narcotics crusade that will include the drug testing of students in more than 8,000 schools nationwide. Calderon's initiative is seen as recognition of a growing problem among Mexican adolescents. Many Mexicans, including police and other officials, have long seen drug trafficking as an American problem, limiting the public's support for combating the problem. "Society is demanding a coordinated response from the authorities to confront this social cancer," Calderon said at a junior high...

SANTA CATARINA, Mexico — Sex never has been safer since a motel called the Thunderclap Ranch reinforced its cinder-block rooms and started advertising them as bulletproof. For $5 an hour, guests here in the gritty outskirts of violence-plagued Monterrey needn't worry about jealous spouses — or more to the point, drug cartel hit men, who usually are better armed. Employee Lucy Regalado, 50, stands inside a room at the 'armored' Thunderclap Ranch hotel in the violent Monterrey area. Business is booming at the $5-per-hour establishment, which also will supply six-packs of beer for $4 and snacks through a porthole in...

MONTERREY, Mexico, June 12 (Reuters) - A Mexican state lawmaker was shot and killed in the busy center of the violent business city of Monterrey on Tuesday, police said, the latest attack in a surge of killings by feuding drug gangs. Unknown gunmen sprayed politician Mario Cesar Rios' car with bullets as he drove down a main city avenue, a police spokesman said. Rios, 44, was a legislator for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in the Congress of Nuevo Leon state, where the party holds power. Some witnesses said Rios survived the attack and drove himself to the hospital...

MONTERREY, Mexico — Heavily armed assailants opened fire on a police station Tuesday morning, wounding four police officers and one civilian in the latest attack on law enforcers in the nation's most important northern metropolis. The gunmen also lobbed a fragmentation grenade at police headquarters in the wealthy suburb of San Pedro, authorities said. "Fortunately, it didn't go off," said a city spokesman who did not want to be identified for personal security reasons. All five victims were in stable condition in area hospitals Tuesday afternoon. A duffel bag containing what some media outlets described as the bloodied uniform of...

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - A motel in northern Mexico is putting steel doors on its rooms to protect guests from kidnappings and shootings in an escalating war between rival drug cartels. Owners of the Rancho El Trueno, or Thunder Ranch, began fortifying the highway motel near Monterrey a year ago but have decided to shield all 35 rooms as drug killings have worsened in the area in recent months. Complete with hot tubs, red imitation-leather beds, mirrored walls and striptease poles, the rooms are shuttered behind steel gates about 1.5 inches (4 cm) thick and some already have steel doors....

MEXICO CITY — Assailants gunned down three police officers within 24 hours around the northern industrial city of Monterrey, the latest in a wave of killings of law enforcement officials across Mexico. Commander Fidel Reyna and agent Rene Reyes were ambushed with a spray of automatic rifle fire as they drove their patrol car through the suburb of Santa Catarina late Saturday, Mexican media reported. Hours earlier, Commander Mario Sanchez, 47, was shot dead in San Nicolas de los Garza, one of Mexico's most affluent municipalities. State police in Monterrey did not immediately answer calls to confirm the killings. Gunmen...

MONTERREY, Mexico — With a warning to travelers and a complaint about criminals enjoying impunity, the United States has turned up the heat on Mexican law enforcers to deliver results against organized crime in the border state of Nuevo León. For the first time, the U.S. State Department singled out Monterrey, a city with close business and tourist ties to San Antonio, in its update of its travel advisory on Mexico. State and federal authorities here responded by throwing even more police officers in jail. At least 22 officers have been taken into custody after the Monday arrests of 112...

A Mexican employee at an organization that fought for the rights of Mexican migrant guest workers in North Carolina and other states in the U.S. was found beaten to death in the northern city of Monterrey, officials said Tuesday. The body of Santiago Rafael Cruz was found early Monday at the Monterrey, Mexico, office of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, Leticia Zavala, international vice president for the organization, said in a telephone interview from North Carolina. The Ohio-based arm of the AFL-CIO represents the rights of migrant farm workers, she said. Officials believe Cruz was killed late Sunday or early...

MONTERREY, Mexico — Assailants shot dead nine people, including two police officers, in less than 24 hours in this northern Mexican city, the latest in a wave of police killings near the Texas border, police said Friday. Nuevo Leon state officer Milton Pacheco, his son, Jesus, and an unidentified man were gunned down in a used car lot Thursday afternoon by assailants who arrived in three sport utility vehicles, police said. Pacheco was the 16th officer killed this year in the Monterrey area, about 220 kilometers (135 miles) from McAllen, Texas, and 440 miles (700 kilometers) north of Mexico City....

MONTERREY, Mexico — A judge on Thursday ordered a Texas couple held over for trial for the alleged kidnapping of a 2-week-old baby they had registered as their own. Nuevo Leon state judge Ernesto Palacios found enough evidence to try Sergio Velez, 42, and Tomasa Ibarra, 39, of Lytle, Texas, on kidnapping charges despite testimony from the baby's birth mother that she willingly gave them the child, said the couple's lawyer, Luis Gonzales. Police detained Velez and Ibarra on Feb. 28 outside the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey after they allegedly inquired about a visa for the infant. The couple deny...

MONTERREY, Mexico — A state police officer assigned to bodyguard duty for the U.S. Consul General here was arrested on suspicion of providing a weapon to a group of law enforcers who allegedly moonlighted as armed robbers. Nuevo León state police officer Ezequiel Nuñez Mata is one of 11 active-duty police officers arrested this week. They're suspected of being involved in as many as 17 armed robberies in Monterrey, authorities said. The officers have not been charged but authorities obtained permission from a court of law to hold the suspects for 30 days while investigating the allegations officials have publicly...

MONTERREY, Mexico — A wave of daylight police killings and other drug gang executions have prompted U.S. authorities to caution visitors to this country's leading northern city. "Visitors are urged to remain vigilant" while in Monterrey, said a report by the Overseas Security Advisory Council, an advisory body involving U.S. business interests abroad and the U.S. State Department. The annual report isn't an official government travel advisory but it marks the first time U.S. officials publicly singled out Monterrey, the capital of the border state of Nuevo León, because of escalating drug violence. "We are concerned about the increasing security...

MONTERREY, Mexico A state police officer has been shot to death today in Monterrey, Mexico, by gunmen who opened fire on his pickup during rush hour. The victim was 43-year-old Javier Trevino. Authorities say Trevino was driving to work on one of Monterrey's busiest avenues when assailants traveling in a small car opened fire with automatic rifles. Police official Hector Santos says the attackers fired at least 18 rounds at Trevino. He was the fifth officer killed this month in the Monterrey area. Santos says Trevino had a "clean record" and had been a Nuevo Leon state policeman for 13...

MONTERREY, Mexico, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Mexican soldiers manned road blocks in the northern industrial city of Monterrey on Friday as part of a nationwide crackdown by President Felipe Calderon against rampant organized crime. Troops armed with assault rifles set up temporary checkpoints overnight across the city in Nuevo Leon state, including the San Pedro business district. Soldiers stopped and searched vehicles but made no arrests. "Violence and organized crime is at critical levels in Nuevo Leon and it is a key objective to contain this and make the necessary arrests," state Attorney General Luis Carlos Trevino told a news...

MONTERREY, Mexico — Eleven Iraqis traveling with fake passports and headed to the United States were arrested by Mexican immigration authorities upon their arrival Saturday at this city's international airport. Mexican immigration authorities said the names of the nine men, one woman and the 2-year-old girl did not match any international alerts for terrorists. "They are not bulletined," said Jesús Gerardo López, the top immigration official in Coahuila state, who said officials determined their real names. He said the FBI, CIA and Interpol were alerted to the arrests. The Iraqi citizens were sent to Mexico City late Saturday, where they...

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) -- A police officer was shot to death Monday, the fourth officer killed so far this month around the northern Mexican city of Monterrey. Mario Martinez, 38, a police officer in the Monterrey suburb of San Pedro Garza Garcia, was guarding a traffic checkpoint when gunmen opened fired with automatic rifles just past midnight, authorities said. Rogelio Lozano, director of public safety in San Pedro Garza Garcia, said the attack against Martinez was a random act and that the officer had never been involved in drug-trafficking cases. "This is worrisome because they are hunting our officers," Lozano...

Beyond the Border Eleven Iraqis were detained with false passports at the Monterrey International Airport, according to a report by newspaper El Norte. Citing anonymous sources, but publishing what is presumably a photo of the family that was detained — including a two-year-old — the report says they were Catholics fleeing the war in Iraq. They apparently obtained false passports in Europe and were to meet a pollero, a human smuggler, in Monterrey. They were reportedly headed to Tijuana, where they would cross into the United States. El Norte reported they will be sent to Mexico City for further investigation.

MONTERREY, Mexico — In another assault suggesting that organized criminals have declared war on area law enforcement, two police officers were killed by gunmen late Wednesday in an industrial suburb near here. Ramiro Calvillo Hernandez and Martha Delia Guillén Moreno, both in their early 30s, were ambushed while attending to a stranded motorist. The killings brought to three the number of officers killed on duty in the Monterrey area in the past 10 days. The incident happened just hours after President Felipe Calderón, speaking at a factory inauguration in the same part of town, said his government "is doing everything...

MONTERREY, Mexico – Gunmen burst into the home of a Mexican political leader in the northern state of Durango, fatally shooting him, two family members and an employee, authorities said Monday. Jaime Meraz Martinez, 63, of the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, was shot three times Sunday night and died a couple of hours later at a local hospital, said Ruben Lopez, a spokesman for Durango state investigators. Meraz's wife, Maria Meraz, 61, his 34-year-old son, Jaime Meraz, and Jorge Marquez, a 22-year-old taxi driver, also were killed, Lopez said. Lopez said Meraz's daughter-in-law was wounded in the attack...

MONTERREY, Mexico — There are no blue helmets on this particular peace mission but a city unable to quell a surge in illicit drug-related crime has called in the United Nations to aid in law and order. The first project in Mexico for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime isn't an easy one. Just months into a five-year program, the U.N. office already has determined that corruption, bad policing and an unaccountable judiciary give criminals the conditions to flourish in Mexico's wealthy northern industrial powerhouse. Like elsewhere in Mexico, only a quarter of crimes are reported here and...

MONTERREY, Mexico — Rival drug cartels continued their bloody turf war in the streets of this city early Thursday with a high-caliber shootout that killed five people, including a woman riding a bus home from work. The four male victims of the shootout included a former police commander and the head of a cell of the sanguinary Sinaloa drug cartel, according to media reports. Nuevo León Gov. Natividad González Parás said the shootout was between drug cartels vying for control of Monterrey and surrounding environs. "The episode ... is a sign that (we're) dealing with a war between trans-state organizations...

MONTERREY, Mexico - A lawyer who defended four alleged drug traffickers was shot to death Wednesday, a day after he announced he was leaving the case for lack of payment. Carlos Martínez Gracia was shot seven times and died instantly around 8:30 a.m. local time as he arrived at his downtown office, police said. Witnesses told reporters a lone gunman shot Martínez Gracia at least five times. According to Agencia Reforma, an autopsy performed on Martínez Gracia revealed that he died of at seven bullet wounds, including two shots to the head. Martínez Gracia's body was found face down next...

MONTERREY, Mexico — The top police investigator for Nuevo Leon, a northern Mexican state that borders Texas, was shot to death by a lone gunman outside an art gallery, police said Wednesday. Marcelo Garza, director of Nuevo Leon's State Investigations Agency, was walking to an art gallery in the upscale suburb of San Pedro Garza Garcia Tuesday night when a gunman approached him and shot him twice in the head, state Attorney General Luis Trevino told reporters. Trevino said the gunman escaped in a silver car. "This is a great loss because Garza was a professional who had obtained great...

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) -- Two police chiefs were shot and killed within hours of each other in a violence-plagued region near the United States where drug smugglers have been battling for control of key routes across the border. It wasn't immediately clear if the killings Monday were related, but authorities say violence has spiked in Mexico's northeast since the 2003 arrest of the area's top reputed drug dealer set off the turf war. Hector Ayala, chief of police in the wealthy town of San Pedro Garza Garcia outside Monterrey, was killed Monday when a car overtook his vehicle and opened...

Mexico invited to G-8 summit MEXICO CITY — This nation said Monday it has been invited to attend the G-8 summit of industrialized nations to be held in Scotland in July, along with Brazil, China, India and South Africa. The G-8 includes the United States, Britain, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Russia and Japan, which together account for the lion's share of the world's economic output. The summit is expected to focus on issues such as climate change, trade and financing for development. Woman was raped,tortured, stabbed MONTERREY, Mexico — A woman whose body was found in an irrigation ditch in...

"The Nation-State Is Finished" by William F. Jasper Robert Bartley, a closet one-worlder at the WSJ, used his newspaper’s "conservative" clout to seduce American business leaders into sacrificing U.S. sovereignty for trade. ‘‘What in blazes can President Bush be thinking?" That has been the general response — on talk radio and in media surveys, Internet postings and letters-to-the-editor — of many current and former Bush supporters angered and confused by the president’s immigration proposals. These folks would not have been surprised by the president’s outrageous announcement on January 7 or his remarks the following week at the Summit of the...

Leaders from 34 American nations agreed Tuesday to support a hemisphere-wide trade area without setting a firm deadline, a concession to Brazil and Venezuela. The United States had sought a 2005 deadline for the Free Trade Area of the Americas in the summit's final declaration, but the document avoids laying out a specific date for an accord. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez instead pushed for a humanitarian fund that could be used to help countries during financial and natural disasters, but said he would sign the document, with reservations. The draft mentions that leaders will consider Chavez's proposal for an...

MONTERREY, Mexico -- Jose Maiz Garcia, a 100-pound power hitter, played left field on this city's Little League team in 1957, when it became the first non-American team ever to win the Little League World Series. Now Maiz hopes to make more Mexican baseball history by bringing the first Major League Baseball team south of the border. Maiz, a construction magnate, is one of the partners bidding to move the vagabond Montreal Expos to a new permanent home here in Mexico's richest city. "When I was 8 years old I started playing baseball -- I just love it," said Maiz,...

Just as we almost had amnesty for 3 million illegal Mexicans foisted upon us "on the sly" by a little rider attached to a piece of innocuous legislation, so, too, we might get the U.N.-sponsored global tax "on the sly." After all, it would only be 7/l0 of l percent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – which is reminiscent of how, in l9l4, the federal income tax began as an itsy-bitsy tax and then grew to gargantuan proportions. Pattern Set The pattern has been set and the handwriting is on the wall. U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte signed the Monterrey...

Who needs foreign aid anyway? SWAMINOMICS / SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR [ SUNDAY, MARCH 31, 2002 12:14:05 AM ] The Monterrey aid summit, organised by the UN to try and double aid to developing countries, hogged the headlines and editorial columns in both recipient and donor countries across the globe. Yet it received remarkably little attention in India. Why? Because India receives no net aid. Interest and amortisation (repayment of principal) of old aid has consistently exceeded fresh inflows since 1995-96, with the result that the dollar flow to India has turned negative. In most developing countries this would be...

MONTERREY PRESS CONFERENCE BY SECRETARY-GENERAL, WORLD BANK PRESIDENT, IMF MANAGING DIRECTOR, WTO DIRECTOR-GENERAL The International Conference on Financing for Development was unprecedented not only in bringing finance and development ministers together with businessmen, but also in the way the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) had worked together in preparing it, Secretary-General Kofi Annan told correspondents this afternoon. At a press conference held jointly with World Bank President James Wolfensohn, IMF Managing Director Horst Köhler, and WTO Director-General Mike Moore, Mr. Annan said: “I have made clear this morning...

HARLINGEN, Texas -- South Texas farmers facing an extended drought said they will closely watch this week's United Nations poverty meeting in Monterrey, Mexico. At stake, they say, is their rightful share of the Rio Grande. The agenda for Presidents Bush and Vicente Fox includes a discussion of the 473 million gallons of water Mexico owes the United States in a debt that has been accruing over the past decade. Mexico has said drought conditions prohibit compliance with a 1944 water-sharing treaty between the nations. Farmers in South Texas don't buy it. "Based on credible data including satellite imagery, it...