In Mexico, where 32 journalists have been murdered in the last four years and hundreds more live under death threats, the real news would have been if Jorge Torres Palacios had turned up alive. But this was not the case. Torres Palacios, a reporter and government worker for the city of Acapulco, was found dead on Monday after being kidnapped outside his home on Thursday evening. His body was decapitated and dismembered and showed other signs of extreme violence, the local media...

MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities said on Sunday they had captured one of the top leaders of the Gulf drug cartel who was responsible for a recent wave of shoot outs and massacres in the northern state of Tamaulipas. Juan Rodriguez Garcia was arrested in a wealthy suburb of the northern industrial city Monterrey, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido told a news conference in Mexico City. Rubido said Rodriguez's struggle to gain control of the Gulf cartel was behind a...

A Guatemalan man suspected of being a boss of Mexico's Zetas drug cartel was captured by police Monday in northern Guatemala, Government Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said. Wilmer Arnulfo Cabrera Franco was arrested in San Pedro Carcha, a town in the northern province of Alta Verapaz, Lopez said. Cabrera is from Teculutan, a city in the eastern province of Zacapa, Lopez said. "He was arrested as he was leaving a residence he frequently visited in San Pedro Carcha and will transported...

Ivan Velasquez-Caballero, aka Talivan or 50, has entered guilty pleas to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute controlled substances and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, announced United States Attorney Kenneth Magidson. Velasquez-Caballero, 44, of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, has been in custody in the United States since he was extradited to Laredo on Nov. 21, 2013. The charges stem from a Feb. 17, 2010, indictment charging Velasquez-Caballero and 33 others with 47...

(Bogotá) - Paramilitary successor groups have abducted and disappeared scores, and possibly hundreds, of residents of the largely Afro-Colombian port of Buenaventura, Human Rights Watch said in a report and released today. Thousands of residents have been fleeing their homes in the city each year, making Buenaventura the municipality with the highest level of ongoing forced displacement in today. The 30-page report, “,” documents how many of the city’s neighborhoods...

The general director of the Scientific, Criminal and Forensic Investigation Agency (Cicpc), José Gregorio Sierralta, confirmed on Thursday the detention of seven individuals allegedly involved in the robbery and murder of Venezuelan actress and former beauty queen Mónica Spear and her partner, Thomas Berry. The individuals have also been held accountable for the injuries caused to the couple's five-year-old daughter. The shooter was identified as 19-year-old Jean Carlos Colina...

Information published by ABC regarding negotiations between Nicolás Maduro's staff-when he was foreign minister-in an FMLN drug trafficking operation in El Salvador, has corroborated suspicions that existed in Venezuelan political and diplomatic circles. "This news confirms what many already knew about the significant and growing presence of drug trafficking in Venezuela and its important relations with the top echelon in the government and the Armed Forces," former...

At least 23 bodies with gunshot wounds and hands bound have been found in western Mexico where drug cartels, vigilantes and and security forces have been fighting for much of the year. The bodies were discovered on an abandoned property near the town of Buenavista Tomatlan in Michoacan state along with a sign indicating they may have been members of the Knights Templar cartel, state prosecutor's spokesman Alejandro Arellano said. The area near the Jalisco state border has suffered a wave of...

A small-town Mexican mayor known for speaking out against drug gangs has been found dead on a roadside. The director of the Association of Local Authorities of Mexico said on Friday that Ygnacio Lopez Mendoza, the mayor of Santa Ana Maya in the western state of Michoacan, had been abducted, tortured and killed. His body was discovered in his truck in the neighbouring state of Guanajuato. Michoacan has been dominated for years by the Knights Templar drug cartel. Its members routinely extort...

At least seven corpses have been recovered so far from the grave in Tlalmanalco, Rodolfo Rios, the Mexico City prosecutor, told Radio Formato 21, and he said officials would run DNA tests to determine their identities. “We have to wait for the autopsies to know how long they have been dead,” he said. Authorities say they found the bodies in an area near Rancho La Mesa Ecological Park in the state of Mexico. “The prosecutor called me and said that nothing is confirmed...