Free Republic

Man is one of Mexico's 24 most-wanted drug traffickers MEXICO CITY — Mexican police on Wednesday arrested suspected Zeta gang leader Gregorio Sauceda Gamboa, one of Mexico's 24 most-wanted drug traffickers. Sauceda Gamboa appears on a list of 24 alleged drug traffickers published by prosecutors in March. Authorities have offered rewards of up to $2.1 million for each suspect. Together with a list of 13 lower-ranking drug suspects, the group covers Mexico's most powerful cartel operators. With Sauceda Gamboa's arrest Wednesday at a home in the border city of Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, authorities have arrested five...

From the original 31 members, the Mexican organized criminal faction Los Zetas has grown into an organization in its own right, operating separate from the Gulf Cartel and just as violent Between the first of the year and mid-March, 2009, the Mexican criminal organization most commonly known as "Los Zetas" has been busy. Members of this group have been linked to a death threat delivered to the president of Guatemala, a grenade thrown into a bar in Pharr, Texas, the death of a high-ranking military general in Cancun, and a fair share of the organized crime-related deaths registered this year...

The purported head of Zeta operations in Reynosa was formally charged with organized crime and firearms violations, Mexico's attorney general's office said Monday. A federal judge in Mexico City ordered that Jaime "El Hummer" González Durán remain in custody pending trial. Federal authorities arrested González during a series of Nov. 7 raids in Reynosa and later fought off Cartel gunmen who chased them to the city's airport as they attempted to fly him out of the city. The raids also uncovered the largest cache of illegal weapons ever found in Mexico. Investigators believe the weapons belonged to González's organization, which...

McALLEN -- Recent U.S. efforts to disrupt drug smuggling routes through the Rio Grande Valley have prompted threats of retaliation against authorities on this side of the river, according to an FBI intelligence report. Vowing to maintain control over valuable trafficking corridors such as those in Reynosa, Matamoros and Miguel Alemán, the Gulf Cartel and its paramilitary enforcement wing, Los Zetas, have begun stockpiling weapons, reaching out to Texas gangs and issuing orders to "confront U.S. law enforcement agencies to zealously protect their criminal interests," the report states. The organizations' encroachment north of the border marks a troubling shift in...

...Dowd may have unwittingly summed up her conundrum in a July piece, in which she remarked to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, "It seems a President Obama would be harder to make fun of than these guys." (For the record, Stewart scoffed at her notion, asking, "Are you kidding me?") Sorry, but Dowd's references to Obama as Beanpole Guy, Barry and No-Drama Obama seem to be forced attempts at humor... For her part, Dowd can occasionally appear to cross the line from sarcasm to meanness. She recently wrote about McCain: "John looks in the mirror and sees his face marred...

ACAPULCO, Mexico — A video purportedly showing the beheading of a drug cartel hit man appeared on video-sharing Web site YouTube, and its makers called on Mexicans to kill more members of the gang. The video appeared as the rival Gulf and Sinaloa gangs wage a bloody battle for trafficking routes and President Felipe Calderon is taking on organized crime with thousands of troops sent to drug-plagued areas. "Do something for your country, kill a Zeta!" read a written message opening the five-minute video posted Friday. The Zetas are believed to be ex-army operatives serving as hit men for the...

LAREDO — In the face of the impunity under which Mexican drug cartels operate along the border, police here secured an arrest warrant for Miguel Treviño Morales, identified as a high-ranking regional Gulf Cartel leader, in connection with a 2006 double homicide. A police official confirmed Treviño was a wanted man after his name appeared in a probable cause affidavit for another defendant in the same case. Juan "Cordless" Ramos, 24, was arrested Tuesday in Laredo in connection with the April 2, 2006, shooting deaths of Jesus Maria Resendez, 36, and his nephew Mariano Resendez, 15, just inside the city...

In their search for patterns, mathematicians have uncovered unlikely connections between prime numbers and quantum physics. Will the subatomic world help reveal the elusive nature of the primes?In 1972, the physicist Freeman Dyson wrote an article called "Missed Opportunities." In it, he describes how relativity could have been discovered many years before Einstein announced his findings if mathematicians in places like Göttingen had spoken to physicists who were poring over Maxwell's equations describing electromagnetism. The ingredients were there in 1865 to make the breakthrough—only announced by Einstein some 40 years later. It is striking that Dyson should have written about...

Tropical Storm Zeta weakened and began to break apart on Friday, bringing a final and overdue end to the costliest and busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record, U.S. forecasters said. By 4 p.m. EST, Zeta was a tropical depression around 900 miles east-northeast of the Leeward Islands of the eastern Caribbean, with maximum sustained winds near 30 mph (45 kph). But the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Zeta was rapidly losing its tropical characteristics. "I suppose it is only fitting that the record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season ends with a record-breaking storm," wrote hurricane center forecaster Stacy Stewart in the Miami-based...

000 WONT41 KNHC 301605 DSAAT SPECIAL TROPICAL DISTURBANCE STATEMENT NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL 1100 AM EST FRI DEC 30 2005 SATELLITE IMAGERY INDICATES THAT AN AREA OF LOW PRESSURE IN THE EASTERN ATLANTIC HAS DEVELOPED INTO A TROPICAL STORM ABOUT 1000 MILES SOUTH-SOUTHWEST OF THE AZORES. A SPECIAL ADVISORY ON TROPICAL STORM ZETA IS IN PREPARATION AND WILL BE ISSUED IN AN HOUR OR SO. FORECASTER FRANKLIN

Bush's Barberini Faun By MAUREEN DOWD Published: February 17, 2005 I am very impressed with James Guckert, a k a Jeff Gannon. How often does an enterprising young man, heralded in press reports as both a reporter and a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com, Workingboys.net, Militaryescorts.com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com, get to question the president of the United States? Who knew that a hotmilitarystud wanting to meetlocalmen could so easily get to be face2face with the commander in chief? It's hard to believe the White House could hit rock bottom on credibility again, but it has, in a bizarre maelstrom...

The Mexican Attorney General's office thinks the "Zetas" gang (ex-army commandos and the muscle of the Gulf Drug Cartel) may have come into possession of the SA-7 Grail missile.