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Does anybody know what this is all about?Tiajuana

Mexican authorities say they found the bodies of six kidnapping victims after hundreds of police fought a three-hour battle with gunmen in Tijuana. They say the victims were discovered tied up, gagged and shot execution-style in a house. One member of the Arellano Felix drug cartel was killed in Thursday's battle. Authorities also arrested four suspects - two of whom are police officers. Four police officers were injured in the gunbattle, which forced the evacuation of nearby schools. Mexican television showed people running for cover to escape the gunfire. The violence is the latest in the Mexican government's crackdown on...

TIJUANA, Mexico -- A shootout with police in Tijuana on Thursday has prompted the evacuations of their City Hall and police headquarters, NBC 7/39 reported. Earlier in the day, more than 100 children were escorted at gunpoint out of their preschool by armed guards, following the gun battle in the Ermita neighborhood. Four people were injured as a result of the gunfire. As many as 1,500 Mexican authorities will be in Tijuana by the end of the week to get control over rioting drug gangs. Authorities in Mexico said they're responsible for the deaths of at least three police officers,...

TIJUANA, Mexico - Officials said they found six executed kidnapping victims inside a Tijuana house where gunmen took refuge Thursday during a chaotic three-hour shootout with soldiers and police. The victims, all male, were blindfolded and gagged and had been shot in the head, said Edgar Millan, a spokesman with the federal Public Safety Department, at a news conference in Tijuana. Soldiers, state and local police were sent in to help control the firefight that began when federal agents prepared to raid a house near the U.S. border that police now say was a shelter for a cell of the...

Still in Control Pervez Musharraf was calm, confident and—despite a flurry of rumors—not about to announce his resignation. Instead, the Pakistani president's "concession" to his troubled nation was an announcement that he would allow Britain's Scotland Yard to help local law enforcement agencies with their investigation into last week's assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Speaking in a nationally televised address two hours after Pakistan's election commission announced the postponement of the ballot to Feb. 18, six weeks later than had been scheduled, Musharraf was notably deferential in his remarks about Bhutto, often invoking her "martyrdom" and extolling...

6 killed, 5 injured in three incidents TIJUANA – A high-ranking police commander, his wife and his 11-year-old daughter were among six people killed in a burst of overnight violence in Tijuana that has left residents shaken and law enforcement officials vowing to fight harder than ever against organized crime. The killings occurred in three parts of the city over six hours late Monday and early yesterday. By the time the violence was over, heavily armed men also had killed two other Tijuana police officers and a civilian, and wounded three adults, a 4-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy. It...

TIJUANA, Mexico, - Three Mexican police were abducted, killed and dumped on a heavily patrolled road near the U.S. border on New Year's Day despite an influx of troops in the area, the state attorney general's office said on Thursday. The policemen from the sprawling border city of Tijuana near San Diego, California -- one of them a senior city police officer -- were found wrapped in sheets outside the nearby beach town of Rosarito on a highway with several army checkpoints. "This looks like a response by organized crime to the military's increased presence here," said an official from...

Law enforcement officials on both sides of the border are seeing a crime wave fueled by U.S. deportation policies, which dump busloads of criminal immigrants in large groups at border cities like Tijuana. "Nobody saw this coming," said Tijuana's Mayor Kurt Honald, who has protested the dumping of criminals at the Tijuana gates. He says deportees have triggered a 300 percent rise in petty crime during the last year, as criminals raise money for a return to the U.S. Others join narcotics cartels and smuggling organizations to pay for their return. "They just go right back to the United States....

SAN DIEGO (AP) - The Border Patrol says its agents were attacked nearly 1,000 times during a one-year period along the Mexican border, typically by assailants hurling rocks, bottles and bricks. Now the agency is responding with tear gas and powerful, pepper-spray weapons, including firing into Mexico. The counteroffensive has drawn complaints that innocent families are being caught in the crossfire. "A neighbor shouted, 'Stop it! There are children living here," said Esther Arias Medina, 41, who on Wednesday fled her Tijuana, Mexico, shanty with her 3-week-old grandson after the infant began coughing from smoke that seeped through the walls....

Agents' Defense Tactics Causing Controversy SAN YSIDRO -- The Border Patrol released photos Friday of attacks on agents that they say have led to the use of pepper spray and tear gas in Mexican border neighborhoods. Officials said that escalating violence at the U.S.-Mexico border is forcing agents to take new measures, and the new tactics are creating controversy. Since October 1, there have been 90 assaults against Border Patrol agents in the San Diego area, according to officials. The violence is most common just east of the San Ysidro port of entry along a 2-mile stretch of border, in...

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...

Surfer's Baja tale is warning to others Camping trip ended in robbery, assault By Terry Rodgers UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER November 19, 2007 Pat Weber didn't plan on being part of a crime trend that has generated worldwide buzz this past week, but he didn't have much choice. The Encinitas resident and surfing instructor got lost on a dirt road in Baja California last month while looking for a surfing spot called Cuatro Casas. He and his girlfriend decided to park for the night on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Just after sundown, two men wearing ski masks approached Weber's motor...

Armed men take body from Ensenada morgue By Anna Cearley UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER 5:17 p.m. November 15, 2007 TIJUANA – Armed men burst into Ensenada's morgue Wednesday night and took the body of a man who died in a helicopter accident earlier this week. The group later killed two police officers who attempted to stop them. The dead man taken from the morgue was identified as Pablo Gonzalez. It'sunclear whether that's his real name or why such drastic measures were taken to recover his body. Mexican media reported he was a suspected member of the region's Arellano Felix drug cartel....

(Babelfish) Flash: Elvira Arellano Already Has Been Deported To Mexico The activist pro immigrant Elvira Arellano already has touched Mexican soil. Towards the 10 p.m. was given by the agents of the Office of Control of Immigration and Customs (HOISTS) to civil employees of the Institute of National of Migracion (INM), revealed to La Opinion official...

Birth in L.A. sparks credentials question TIJUANA – A physician born into a prominent Tijuana family, long active in the city's Red Cross, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Jorge Astiazarán's credentials as a mayoral candidate would seem above reproach. Except for one small thing: He was born in Los Angeles. Yesterday, a Baja California electoral tribunal annulled Astiazarán's candidacy, saying he did not present a Mexican “certificate of nationality” in a timely fashion, as stipulated in Article 80 of the state constitution. Like thousands of others in Baja California and other northern Mexico border states, Astiazarán was born...

CINCINNATI - Hispanic leaders are demanding a public apology from a radio station that put up billboards showing a Mexican flag, a donkey, and a mustachioed man in a sombrero with the headline "The Big Juan." The Hispanic Chamber Cincinnati USA complained that the advertising by WLW-AM stereotyped Hispanics. The community leaders said at a news conference Tuesday that they plan to meet with station executives to talk about sensitivity training and creating a multicultural community advisory board. WLW, which calls itself "The Big One," is the Cincinnati area's radio ratings leader. The Hispanic Chamber and the League of United...

TIJUANA, Mexico — Armed men opened fire and took people hostage at a hospital in this northern border city Wednesday, an apparent attempt to free a prisoner. Two people were killed, including a security guard and one of the attackers, police said. Authorities were attempting to evacuate personnel and other patients from the facility, Red Cross official Fernando Esquer said. Esquer said some hostages had been taken, but he did not know how many. He said the attack was related to the arrival earlier in the day of a Tijuana prison inmate who was receiving a standard medical procedure. Police...

When it rains in this border town, toxic goo from Mexican slums and factories flows down the Tijuana River onto U.S. soil. It winds through tidal marshes and ends up in the Pacific Ocean, closing the beach to swimmers and diehard surfers 198 days last year. The U.S. government found a novel fix: pay a private developer an estimated $700 million to build and manage a treatment plant in Tijuana, Mexico. If the plant sells recycled water to thirsty Mexican factories, U.S. taxpayers will get some of their money back. Ground has not yet broken and the 7-year-old agreement between...

TIJUANA, Mexico: The police got their guns back on Saturday in this violent border city three weeks after they were forced to turn over weapons to federal authorities on allegations of collusion with drug traffickers. Tijuana Public Safety Secretary Luis Javier Algorri said soldiers returned all 2,130 guns to his department. He planned to send a letter to the attorney general's office asking for the results of the investigation so he can clear up any doubts about his officers. No one from the attorney general's office was available for comment Saturday. The officers handed in their guns Jan. 4 after...

TIJUANA, Mexico - The police department has issued about 60 slingshots to officers in the violent border city of Tijuana, where soldiers confiscated police weapons two weeks ago on allegations of collusion with drug traffickers. Municipal police spokesman Fernando Bojorquez said Monday that the slingshots, along with bags of ballbearings, were given to officers patrolling areas of the city visited by tourists. Tijuana's police force of 2,000 officers has been without guns since Jan. 5, but some patrol alongside armed state police. President Felipe Calderon sent 3,300 soldiers and federal police to Tijuana at the beginning of January to hunt...