PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico (AP) - A police beat reporter at a newspaper in northern Mexico and her infant son are missing and they are feared kidnapped, a newspaper official said Tuesday. Reporter Stephania Cardoso works for the El Zocalo newspaper in the city of Saltillo, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from the U.S. border. She has been missing since Friday, said Eduardo Mendoza, El Zocalo's editor. She was last seen at a party with colleagues Thursday night. Mendoza said she called a...

William A. White, a former neo-Nazi leader and more recently a fugitive from the law, is back in the United States. White is being held in a federal detention facility in Miami, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Authorities flew White to Miami from Mexico, where he was arrested Friday on charges of violating his probation. White was quickly deported from Mexico, apparently because he entered the country illegally, said Chief Deputy Brad Sellers of the U.S. Marshals Service. ...

A retired FBI official told a House subcommittee that the imprisonment of a New York Chasidic Jew in Bolivia is “state-sponsored kidnapping.” Along with the ex-official, Steve Moore, the U.S. House of Representatives human rights subcommittee on Wednesday heard testimony from the family of Jacob Ostreicher, who was arrested a year ago by Bolivian police after it was alleged that he did business with “people wanted in their countries because of links with drug trafficking and...

Nine FARC guerrillas, among them the alleged commander of the 37th Front, have died in combat in the north fo Colombia, the country's Ministry of Defense said Wednesday. Roberto García Márquez, the commander of the Colombian navy, said that among the "FARC" members killed is the commander of the 37th Front, alias "Silvio" or "El Frances," whose real name was Luis Enrique Benitez Cañola. Benitez Cañola had been a member of the FARC...

Like other observers, Reporters Without Borders is not entirely convinced by the Oaxaca state attorney-general’s announcement last week that a former public education employee, Lenin Osorio Ortega, has been arrested for the fatal shooting of US journalist Brad Will, an Indymedia cameraman, in the southern city of Oaxaca in October 2006. Coming nearly six years after Will’s murder during a wave of unrest that was crushed violently by the Oaxaca state authorities, this new...

A new case of harassment of human rights advocates has been recorded in Venezuela. On Wednesday, armed men robbed Hernán Antonio Bolívar, the husband of Marianela Sánchez Ortiz, the legal coordinator of the Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones (Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, OVP). The criminals intercepted Bolívar when he was arriving in his place. There, he was forced to get into his car. The criminals threatened to retaliate against Bolívar and his...

Nursing a bullet wound but looking healthy, French reporter Romeo Langlois emerged from the jungles of southern Colombia on Wednesday after being held 33 days by the nation’s largest rebel group. Released to an international delegation and brought to the village of San Isidro in the department of Caqueta, Langlois, 35, said the guerrillas shared what little food they had and treated him with respect. “Other than being detained for a month while I was wounded, everything was...

A drug cartel lieutenant has been arrested over a series of firebomb attacks on Mexican potato-chip company Sabritas, a subsidiary of U.S. food giant PepsiCo. The gang-related bombings are believed to be the first time a multinational company has been targeted in Mexico's 5½-year-long drug war. Experts suggested that the attack may be linked to the company's apparent refusal to hand over protection money to the gangs which have terrorised local residents and businesses. Gerardo...

The tortured body of a Mexican police reporter has been found on the side of a road in the northern state of Sonora on Friday. A day earlier he had been kidnapped by gunmen while waiting at a car wash. Marco Antonio Avila Garcia's body was found inside a black plastic bag near the city of Empalme, about 68 miles south of Ciudad Obregon where he was abducted, said Sonora state prosecutors' spokesman Jose Larrinaga. Larrinaga said police found a message signed by a cartel but would not...

A Minnesota man with suspected ties to white supremacist groups had devised a plan to attack the Mexican consulate in St. Paul and believed his actions would "manifest national awareness," according to a federal affidavit obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. The affidavit, recently unsealed in federal court, provides details of the investigation into the alleged plans of Joseph Benjamin Thomas. The 42-year-old was indicted in April on drug charges, though authorities were...