Day 77 in the Gulf: Weather KO’s Gulf cleanup effort – Feds are ineffective and ill prepared

“We don’t even have the equipment to do the job right,” Biggs said. “The (equipment) we’re trying to do this with is inoperable in over 1 foot of seas.” For many involved in the cleanup effort, nagging storms have whipped up choppy seas and gusty winds that make offshore work both unsafe and ineffective, stranding crews on dry land.

Mexican President Calderon Loses While Drug Cartels Advance In Mexico’s Election

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico – President Felipe Calderon’s allies held back a resurgence by Mexico’s old ruling party, according to results Monday from state elections marred by drug gang violence so severe a large majority of citizens stayed home in two of the most dangerous border states. Desperate alliances between Calderon’s conservative party and Mexico’s leftists [...]

Mexican Drug Cartel Kills Ten Students – Age 8 to 21 – At Road Side Check Point

PUEBLO NUEVO, Mexico, March 30 (UPI) — Ten students, ages 8 to 21, were shot to death while traveling in the Mexican state of Durango to receive government scholarships, officials said. Officials said gunmen at a checkpoint — the type used by drug traffickers who control parts of Durango — opened fire and threw grenades [...]

Mexican Drug Cartel Preaches Religion – Peddles Methamphetamine

Busloads of teenagers descend on this sweltering agricultural town 500 kilometres west of Mexico City every few months to participate in self-improvement seminars … Unbeknownst to the participants, a quasi-religious drug cartel known as La Familia Michoacana promotes the seminars and underwrites the expenses…”These people carry a Bible in the right hand . . . and a gun in the left hand,”

Grissly Slayings Announce Mexican Cartel Violence In U.S.

Five men dead in an apartment. In a county that might see five homicides in an entire year, the call over the sheriff’s radio revealed little about what awaited law enforcement at a sprawling apartment complex. A type of crime, and criminal, once foreign to this landscape of blooming dogwoods had arrived in Shelby County. [...]