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Fusion Core Solution Now Available to First Responders to Better Analyze and Respond to Security Threats, Natural Disasters

July 11, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

SAN DIEGO, July 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Today, at the Esri Homeland Security GIS Summit being held in San Diego July 10–13, Microsoft Corp. announced the broad availability of the Fusion Core Solution (FCS), a public safety and homeland security solution architecture jointly developed by Esri and Microsoft. The solution allows federal, state, local and tribal agencies to efficiently manage the intake, analysis, dissemination and archiving of information to more effectively identify and help prevent threats posed by organized crime, gangs, drug cartels and terrorists. The Fusion Core Solution leverages technologies within Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Esri’s ArcGIS Server to provide enhanced intelligence and information-sharing capabilities.

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“Fusion centers work with massive amounts of information, which can be difficult to organize, analyze and distill into meaningful and usable intelligence,” said Joe Rozek, executive director of Homeland Security and Counterterrorism at Microsoft. “Without access to effective information management, fusion center managers and analysts often lose valuable time and effort determining what information is relevant to the current task.”

Recently, the first full-scale deployment of FCS took place in Salt Lake City at the Utah Statewide Information & Analysis Center (SIAC). Already FCS is at work enhancing Utah’s security through collaborative intelligence, and eventually it will be available to over 180 local law enforcement agencies including police departments, sheriff’s offices, state corrections and specialized task forces.

SIAC is a public safety partnership designed to collect, analyze and disseminate intelligence, enhancing protection provided to Utah’s citizens, communities and critical infrastructure. The impetus to build the SIAC stemmed from the state’s need for a solution to help identify growing threats posed by organized crime, gangs, drug trafficking organizations and potential terrorists.

“Previous attempts to work in such a collaborative way proved fruitless, as it involved an inefficient use of time and resources. Now we can better use existing assets and integrate with domain-specific applications, while improving business processes, compliance and communication,” said David Carabin, former Intelligence Bureau Chief and Commander of the Utah Department of Public Safety. “This allows us to take more proactive action to prepare for and respond to crises and to counter potential threats and criminal activities.”

The state uses FCS’s enterprise geographic information system (GIS) platform for the spatial analysis of suspicious activity reports, crime data and other criminal threat information. This has been shown to increase situational awareness and help expedite the dissemination of alerts, notifications and intelligence products to first responders. Through the tools available in SharePoint Server, analysts are also able to collaborate on generating and viewing intelligence reports, as well as risk assessments, from remote locations via the Internet.

More information about the Fusion Core Solution is available at http://www.microsoft.com/fusion.

About Esri

Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com/news.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Collaborative Intelligence, Core Solution, Crime Gangs, Director Of Homeland Security, drug cartels, Fusion Center, Fusion Core, Information Analysis Center, Infr, law enforcement agencies, Microsoft Office Sharepoint, Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server, Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007, Office Sharepoint Server, Rozek, Safety Partnership, scale deployment, Sharepoint Server 2007, Solution Architecture, tribal agencies

US spends $40 mn for ‘secret’ Mexican anti-drug unit

May 15, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Mexico City, May 15 (IANS/EFE) The US has spent around $40 million for training a ‘secret’ dedicated unit of around 200 Mexican police and army personnel in an effort to hunt down drug kingpins, a media report said.

The group was trained by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and has captured at least four ‘top-level lieutenants’ of Mexican drug lords during 2006-2010, Mexican newspaper Milenio said in a report Friday.

The secret unit, called the SIU, received $40 million from the DEA in salaries, equipment, training and consultancy in the last four years.

The daily also cited DEA documents as saying that the US Congress has been asked to budget another $10.8 million for the year 2011 in order to provide the Mexican unit with additional security teams.

The Mexican government and the US Embassy are hoping that the trained unit would weaken the drug cartels ‘by means of lightning-like operations’, the report said.

The government has deployed over 45,000 soldiers and 20,000 federal agents in its war against the drug cartels.

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: additional security, army personnel, Consultancy, drug cartels, drug enforcement administration, drug enforcement administration dea, Drug Kingpins, federal agents, lieutenants, lightning, Mexican Army, Mexican Drug Lords, Mexican Government, Mexican Police, Mexico City, salaries, security teams, siu, US Congress, us embassy

Hitmen kill 10 youths in Mexico’s drug-hit north

March 30, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Suspected drug hitmen killed a carload of children and teenagers in northern Mexico in the latest of a rash of attacks on minors that have angered the public as drug gang violence spins out of control.

Ten youngsters aged from eight to 21 died on Sunday when gunmen opened fire and lobbed explosives at their pick-up truck after it sped through an improvised roadblock on an isolated highway in Durango state, in Mexico’s “Golden Triangle” drug-producing region, the attorney general’s office in Durango said.

Mexico’s drug cartels are growing ever more brazen, and a spate of brutal attacks in recent weeks, including the murder of two Americans, are worrying Mexicans along with tourists, foreign investors and the United States, which sent a high-level delegation to Mexico City last week.

Mexican soldiers on Monday captured a suspect linked to the fatal shooting this month of an American employee of the U.S. consulate in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, her U.S. husband and the Mexican husband of a fellow consulate worker.

Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont said on Monday the rampant violence only showed the importance of keeping up the pressure with the government’s army-led assault on drug traffickers. He waved off the idea of backing down.

“If some people think that events like those of the weekend where criminals slay youngsters in this cowardly way, if faced with these events Mexico is going to back off, they are mistaken,” Gomez Mont told a news conference.

Nearly 19,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006 and deployed tens of thousands of troops to drug hot spots across the country, sparking new turf wars between rival cartels.

But the conservative president’s anti-drugs strategy has been criticized following several brutal attacks on youths in the violent region along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In January, suspected drug cartel gunmen burst into a high school birthday party in the border city of Ciudad Juarez and killed 15 people, mostly minors, sparking angry protests from relatives and other city residents sick of daily violence.

Several of Sunday’s victims were related.

Gomez Mont said drug violence in Durango state was being driven by a violent turf war between the local Sinaloa alliance and the Zetas, the former armed wing of the rival Gulf cartel that is now trying to run its own smuggling operation.

Criminal gangs are known to sometimes set up military-style roadblocks to snag targets, and the northern business city of Monterrey was hit this month by a series of road barricades erected by armed men believed to be linked to drug gangs.

(Writing by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Catherine Bremer and Cynthia Osterman)

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U.S. lobbies a hurdle in Mexico drug war – Calderon

March 29, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Powerful groups in the United States appear to be blocking efforts to stem the flow of assault weapons fueling Mexico’s drug war, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

Calderon, who has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and police to fight drug cartels, told Fareed Zakaria’s “GPS” program on CNN that there was resistance in Washington to Mexico’s demands that sales of such weapons be stopped.

“They (U.S. officials) say that they are facing strong opposition and there is powerful lobbies in the Congress in order to change that situation,” Calderon said in a pre-taped interview in Mexico City.

The Mexican leader added that solving the cross-border gun trafficking problem was critical to his bid to crack down on the drug-related violence that has killed 4,600 people in the past two years.

Mexico says 90 percent of the weapons used by drug gangs are bought in the United States, often legally. Mexican officials also want to see the U.S. Congress reinstate a ban on the sale of assault weapons that expired in 2004.

U.S. gun rights groups generally oppose such a restriction.

The United States is already deeply involved in Mexico’s struggle with drug gangs and has pledged some $1.4 billion over three years in a thus-far unsuccessful effort to crush cartels who ship $40 billion worth of illegal drugs north each year.

But concerns the violence in Mexico is escalating — two U.S. citizens were shot to death this month in the violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez — has led top U.S. officials to pledge more assistance.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led a high-level delegation to Mexico City last week for talks, underscoring the Obama administration’s concerns about the drug violence south of the border.

Washington has started to increase searches of southbound vehicles on its border with Mexico for guns and money heading to Mexican cartels.

(Writing by Paul Simao, Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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U.S. lobbies a hurdle in Mexico drug war: Calderon

March 29, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

(Reuters) – Powerful groups in the United States appear to be blocking efforts to stem the flow of assault weapons fueling Mexico’s drug war, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

World | Mexico

The Mexican leader added that solving the cross-border gun trafficking problem was critical to his bid to crack down on the drug-related violence that has killed 4,600 people in the past two years.

U.S. gun rights groups generally oppose such a restriction.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton led a high-level delegation to Mexico City last week for talks, underscoring the Obama administration’s concerns about the drug violence south of the border.

Washington has started to increase searches of southbound vehicles on its border with Mexico for guns and money heading to Mexican cartels.

(Writing by Paul Simao, Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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FBI probes consular slayings in Mexico

March 17, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Faced with a brazen challenge from drug cartels, US FBI agents have joined a Mexican probe into attacks on US consular staff and their families that left three dead in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, officials say.

Mexican authorities blame the drive-by murders of an American employee of the US consulate, her husband and the husband of a Mexican consular employee on “the Aztecas,” a gang linked to the powerful Juarez drug cartel.

But investigators say it is still unclear why they were singled out by hit teams who ambushed the two family groups just minutes apart on Saturday after they left a birthday party in Ciudad Juarez.

“It could be a mistaken identity, it could be that they were targeted; we don’t know at this point,” said special agent Andrea Simmons, a spokesperson for the FBI’s El Paso, Texas, office just across the border from Ciudad Juarez.

She says seven or eight FBI agents have joined the investigation, along with agents from the US Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

An official with Mexico’s Chihuahua state prosecutors’ office has also confirmed that “various FBI agents are in Ciudad Juarez to help in the investigation”.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley says the Ciudad Juarez consulate, one of the largest such US facilities in the world, will remain closed as it undergoes a security review.

The city’s mayor has told reporters that security had recently been beefed up at the consulate following a bomb threat.

“We will, as the secretary and president pledged, work tirelessly with Mexican authorities to bring the killers… to justice,” Mr Crowley said.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who is travelling to the troubled northern city for the third time in two months, reaffirmed Mexico’s “commitments to solve these crimes”.

The victims have been identified as Lesley Enriquez, an American working at the Juarez consulate; her American husband, Arthur Redelfs and Jorge Alberto Sarcido, the Mexican husband of another consular employee.

Ms Enriquez and her husband were killed in a hail of bullets as they were driving back to the US side of the border with their one-year-old daughter in the back seat, officials said. The baby survived unharmed.

In a separate attack, gunmen opened fire on Mr Sarcido’s car, killing him and wounding his two children, ages four and seven. His wife, a Mexican employee of the consulate, was following in a second car and escaped injury, a US official said.

- AFP

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US demand to blame for drug violence: Hillary Clinton

March 8, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

GUATEMALA CITY: Demand for illegal narcotics in the United States is fueling drug violence in Central America, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has said, acknowledging a measure of US responsibility for what she called a “terrible criminal scourge.”

“The United States under the Obama administration recognises and accepts its share of responsibility for the problems posed by drug trafficking in this region,” she told reporters yesterday ahead of the talks in the Guatemalan capital.

“The demand in the large market in the United States drives the drug trade,” she said. “We know that we are part of the problem and that is an admission that we have been willing make this past year.”

Clinton made the same admission last year on a trip to Mexico, which was then beginning major military operations against drug cartels. At the time, her comments drew fierce criticism from US conservatives who said she was unfairly blaming America for the situation overseas.

Some Republican lawmakers and commentators accused Clinton of blaming America for social and criminal ills in other countries.

They said such admissions were unwarranted. President George W Bush’s administration had tacitly acknowledged the problem of US demand but had always kept the focus on the war on drugs in narcotics producing and trafficking countries.

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MJ’s death probe: Cops discover secret email accounts

August 25, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Aug 24 (ANI): Cops investigating Michael Jackson’s death have discovered two secret email accounts he may have used to buy prescription drugs.

The detectives said they have recently discovered the King of Pop operated the Gmail and AOL sites.

“They could hold vital evidence with regard to Michael’s death and the drugs he was using regularly,” the Mirror quoted a source close to the investigation as saying.

“Not only did he get prescription drugs through a network of doctors, it’s believed he may also have got them from illegal websites or drug cartels. The LAPD has to get a search warrant first and this takes a few days,” the source added.

It has also been said that police have got the number for a private mobile phoneline used by Jacko.

The detectives had not been told about the rarely used number until last week. There’s a possibility that the ‘Thriller’ hitmaker used the phone to contact people for his drugs. (ANI)

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Mexico arrests 27 high-ranking officials; journalist murdered

May 27, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Mexico City – Mexico’s police on Tuesday arrested 27 high-ranking officials in the south-western state of Michoacan, among them several mayors, on charges of supporting a drug cartel.

Prosecutors said the officials were part of a network that worked to protect the La familia Michoacana drug cartel.

“We hope that they will confess,” prosecution spokesman Ricardo Najera said.

The cartel is not only involved in drug trafficking but also believed to be responsible for numerous kidnappings and blackmail attempts.

Police did not inform provincial Governor Leonel Godoy of its plans, several of the governor’s staff members were among the detained.

Rivalling drug cartels have been engaged in a violent conflict in the country. According to officials, 8,200 people lost their lives since January 2008.

Meanwhile a journalist was murdered in the central Mexican state of Durango, Tuesday after he was kidnapped by eight armed men the day before, police said.

Eliseo Barran Laguna, a journalist writing for the Milenio newspaper, had recently reported about a conflict within the security forces in nearby Torreon city, leading to 302 police officers being suspended.

Mexico’s national human rights commission CNDH said it planned to investigate the murder. Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries world-wide for journalists.

Barron Laguna is the 50th journalist to be killed since 2000. Parts of the police, judiciary and armed forces are infiltrated by organized crime, most of the murders are never solved or the perpetrators brought to justice. (dpa)

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Drug cartel leader held in Mexico

May 24, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Mexico City, May 24 (EFE) A senior leader of a dreaded drug cartel of Mexico has been arrested in the northeastern city of Ciudad Victoria, authorities have said.

Nelson Garcia Lozano, the Gulf drug gang’s head of operations in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas province, was held following a gun exchange between his men and troops Saturday, the national defence secretariat said.

Three police officers protecting the drug gang leader were also arrested.

Two armoured vehicles and huge cache of arms and amunitions have also been recovered from them, the secretariat said in a statement.

Separately, security officials also arrested four kidnappers and freed a 37-year-old man who had been held hostage since May 16 at Lazaro Cardenas port, in Michoacan.

So far this month, 28 people suspected of involvement in kidnapping have been arrested and two of their victims released in Mexico.

Kidnapping is a serious problem in Mexico, with people from all classes of society targeted either to quickly drain their savings account – a crime known as ‘express’ kidnappings – or to extract ransom payments from relatives.

According to experts, the nation’s well organised, heavily armed drug cartels have even turned more regularly to kidnapping as a source of revenue due to the disruption of their operations by Mexican security forces.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of army soldiers and federal police to a dozen states to crack down on the cartels, whose internal power struggles and battles over drug routes have left more than 12,000 dead nationwide since 2006.

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Texan financier Stanford was ‘US government informer’

May 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New York, May 11 (ANI): Texan financier and cricket promoter Sir Allen Stanford, who has been accused of a eight billion dollar bank fraud, is known to have worked as a US government informer, a BBC report claims.
According to The Telegraph, a Panorama investigation has suggested that Sir Allen was shielded from an earlier inquiry into his activities because he co-operated with a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) attempt to track money laundering by Latin American drug cartels.

US officials closed down his banking activities in February, alleging a vast fraud centered on his Antigua-based offshore bank. Sir Allen, 59, previously most famous as the sponsor of the Twenty20 cricket tournament, has vowed to clear his name.

Panorama claimed some US officials were aware of Sir Allen’s cartel links as long ago as 1990.

It reported that Stanford paid a 3.1 million dollar cheque to the DEA in 1999 after that sum was invested in his bank by another Mexican drug gang, the Juarez cartel of Amada Carillo Fuentes.

According to Panorama, whose investigation will air on Monday, Stanford was initially investigated by the SEC over suspicions he was running a Ponzi scheme in the summer of 2006, but the inquiry was over by the winter of that year.

The BBC claims the decision to close the investigation followed a request by another government agency. (ANI)

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Gunmen kill eight in Mexico

April 20, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Mexico City, April 20 (EFE) Eight law enforcement officials, including two federal police officers and two prison guards, were killed in an attack on a police convoy in western Mexico, authorities said Sunday.

According to the public safety secretariat, the assailants opened fired Saturday on the police convoy transporting an important drug suspect to a prison in the coastal state of Nayarit.

The gunmen were trying to free nine inmates, including Jeronimo Gamez Garcia, a top leader of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel, officials said.

Garcia, who is suspected of being the logistics and finance chief of the criminal organization run by the Beltran Leyva family, and was in charge of buying cocaine from Colombia’s Valle del Norte drug cartel. He was arrested in January.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence, with powerful cartels battling each other and the security forces, as rival gangs vie for control of lucrative smuggling and distribution routes.

Armed groups linked to Mexico’s drug cartels murdered around 1,500 people in 2006 and 2,700 people in 2007, with the 2008 death toll soaring to more than 6,000.

So far this year, more than 1,750 people have died.

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1ST LEAD: Obama in Mexico for brief visit

April 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Mexico City – US President Barack Obama arrived in Mexico Thursday for an overnight visit to meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

“Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners and necessity has made us allies,” Calderon said as he welcomed Obama, quoting the late US president John F Kennedy.

Discussions are set to focus on drug trafficking and crime, as the death toll in Mexico’s drug wars has soared to more than 7,000 since January 2008.

Obama praised Mexico for having “so courageously taken on the drug cartels,” and stressed his government’s commitment to stopping the flow of guns and cash that come into Mexico from the United States.

The US government has conceded in recent weeks that the two countries share responsibility on this issue, as drugs flow north and weapons flow south.

While Calderon hailed “the opportunity of a new era of trust,” Obama said that “Mexico is not just a regional leader but also a global leader.”

“It’s critical that we join together around issues that cannot be solved by any one nation,” Obama said.

He recalled that about 33 per cent of people in Chicago, his home city, are of Mexican heritage.

The delegations from the two countries were set to meet later, prior to a private meeting between their two leaders.

This is the first visit to Mexico City by a US president since then-president Bill Clinton in 1997.

From Mexico, Obama is to fly Friday to Trinidad and Tobago for the Summit of the Americas. (dpa)

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13 killed in Mexico clashes

April 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Mexico City, April 16 (EFE) At least 13 people have been killed in a gunbattle between the military and suspected drug traffickers in southern Mexican state of Guerrero, authorities said Thursday.

The clash occurred Wednesday in San Nicolas del Oro, a town near the city of San Miguel Totolapan, during an operation by the security forces in the remote area, Guerrero’s Public Security Minister Juan Heriberto Salinas Altes said.

He said the clash started when the suspected drug traffickers opened fire on a military patrol near the town.

‘Twelve suspected gunmen and an army soldier died in the shootout,’ prosecutors told EFE, adding that the soldiers seized 20 assault rifles, several pistols, explosives from nine vehicles they were travelling in.

The shooting happened just hours ahead of US President Barack Obama’s visit to the country. Obama was set to arrive in Mexico City Thursday, for a brief visit focused on the fight against drug gangs.

Armed groups linked to Mexico’s drug cartels murdered around 1,500 people in 2006 and 2,700 people in 2007, with the 2008 death toll soaring to more than 6,000.

So far this year, more than 1,750 people have died.

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Obama backs treaty to curb flow of guns over border

April 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Thursday he will push the U.S. Senate to ratify a long-stalled arms trafficking treaty meant to curb the flow of guns and ammunition to drug cartels in Latin America.

Activists want Washington to push for ratification of the Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials.

The convention, known by Spanish acronym CIFTA, has been languishing in the U.S. Senate since it was adopted in 1997.

Obama, who visited Mexico to show his support for President Felipe Calderon’s efforts to reduce violence and rein in drug cartels, said he would put his weight behind the treaty’s ratification.

“I am urging the Senate in the United States to ratify an inter-American treaty known as CIFTA to curb small arms trafficking that is a source of so many weapons used in this drug war,” he told a joint news conference with Calderon.

Denis McDonough, Director of Strategic Communications at the White House’s National Security Council, told reporters the treaty was on a list that had been submitted to the Senate of treaties the president viewed as priorities.

“This is one of the priority treaties that we’d like to see the Senate’s advise and consent on,” he said.

That may be difficult.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the United States had to help reduce violence without violating Americans’ right to bear arms, which is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“We must work with Mexico to curtail the violence and drug trafficking on America’s southern border, and must protect Americans’ Second Amendment rights,” he said in a statement. “I look forward to working with the President to ensure we do both in a responsible way.”

The treaty has to garner 67 votes in the 100-member Senate, where lawmakers have been loathe to take on the National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful gun lobby, despite a spate of domestic shootings that have resulted in multiple deaths.

The NRA opposes the treaty.

Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president, said his organization takes “a back seat to no one” in opposing illegal arms trafficking.

“The answer is to enforce the current law. Everything these drug cartels are doing involving firearms is illegal on both sides of the border already,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who was the main negotiator of the treaty during the Clinton administration, said the treaty would not impose any new restrictions on legal gun sales or ownership in the United States.

“It is designed to help U.S. law enforcement track abuses of firearms of criminals back to the last lawful sale so they can determine what went wrong. It is completely consistent with all U.S. laws and does not ever impose a foreign law on a U.S. person who has abided by U.S. law,” Winer told Reuters.

(Editing by Todd Eastham; additional reporting by Richard Cowan)

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Obama stands next to Mexico in war on drugs

April 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – President Barack Obama stood alongside Mexico’s Felipe Calderon on Thursday and promised to help his “courageous” fight against ruthless drug cartels waging turf wars along the joint border.

In his first trip to Latin America as U.S. president and fresh from his first big foray onto the global stage in Europe last month, Obama said Mexico and the United States both needed to strengthen and coordinate their drug war efforts.

Obama said he had not “backed off” from the idea of trying to reinstate an expired ban on assault rifles — which are showing up in droves at Mexican crime scenes — but for the time being he would focus on halting the smuggling of arms and cash over the Mexican border, which would yield faster results.

“Something that President Calderon and myself absolutely recognize is that you can’t fight this war with just one hand,” Obama told reporters.

“At a time when the Mexican government has so courageously taken on the drug cartels that have plagued both sides of the border, it is absolutely critical that the United States join as a full partner in dealing with this issue,” Obama said.

White House officials have played up the symbolism of Obama’s visit to Mexico, which is struggling to contain a surge in drug violence that killed 6,300 people in Mexico last year and is starting to spill over into the United States.

Mexico has a tangled history with the United States, but many Mexicans seemed riveted by Obama’s arrival.

Workers in office towers pressed against their windows for a glimpse of his helicopter and television stations interrupted broadcasts to show his speech at a welcome ceremony where he was wildly applauded.

Obama made a day and night stop in Mexico en route to meet other Latin American leaders at a Summit of the Americas on Friday in Trinidad and Tobago, acknowledging that the drug war yards from American soil has become an urgent issue for him.

OUTREACH TO MEXICO

Drug killings, often involving gruesome torture and beheadings, have soared as Calderon’s army-led crackdown has triggered fresh turf wars between rival cartels, creating the biggest threat to stability in Mexico in years.

A strong-willed conservative and U.S. ally, Calderon says he has been personally threatened by drug gangs. He also called on Thursday for closer cooperation than ever before.

Obama, who hopes to improve relations with Mexico and the rest of Latin America after a deterioration in relations his advisors blame on former President George W. Bush, lavished praise on Calderon’s efforts.

He said he would push the Senate to ratify a treaty designed to reduce the flow of arms and ammunition to the Latin American cartels that supply cocaine and marijuana to users in the United States.

A surge in gunbattles since Calderon started his army offensive in 2006 recently prompted the Obama administration to ramp up checks on southbound traffic at the Mexico border to reduce trafficking in U.S. guns to Mexican cartels.

On Wednesday, 16 people died in a shootout between troops and suspected drug traffickers in southern Mexico.

Obama’s outreach to Mexico included a visit last month by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who soothed Mexicans by acknowledging the violence stemmed partly from Americans’ “insatiable demand” for drugs. She offered Black Hawk helicopters to bolster Calderon’s effort.

Obama’s reception was in stark contrast to a visit by Bush in 2007 when he had to be barricaded off from protesters in the southern city of Merida and demonstrators in the capital burned the American flag. Many Mexicans bristle at Bush’s building of a partial border fence and years-old tensions over territory lost to the United States in the 19th century still rankle older Mexicans.

Obama said the millions of Mexicans now living in the United States, had brought the countries closer together.

He said he hoped to fix a dispute with Mexico that flared up recently over a ban on Mexican trucks on U.S. highways. In return, Mexico slapped tariffs on a long list of U.S. exports.

(Additional reporting by Pablo Garibian and Jason Lange; Writing by Catherine Bremer and Alistair Bell)

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Obama strongly backs Mexico’s effort to fight drugs

April 18, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

MEXICO CITY: In his second big trip abroad since becoming US president, Barack Obama pledged strong support on Thursday for the Mexican
Barack Obama
President Barack Obama shakes hands with Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the end of a joint news conference in Mexico City. (AP Photo)
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government’s fight against powerful drug cartels, who are waging turf wars along the border.

Obama, who made his first major foray onto the international stage in Europe earlier this month, offered Mexican President Felipe Calderon a partnership in his efforts to combat drug gangs.

“At a time when the Mexican government has so courageously taken on the drug cartels that have plagued both sides of the borders. It is absolutely critical that the United States joins as a full partner in dealing with this issue,” Obama said at a welcoming ceremony.

White House officials have played up the symbolism of Obama’s visit to Mexico, which is struggling to contain unprecedented drug gang violence that is spilling over into the United States.

“I think that President Calderon has done an outstanding and heroic job in dealing with what is a big problem right now along the borders with the drug cartels.” Obama said on CNN’s Spanish-language channel.

Obama is also expected to discuss energy and the economy with Calderon in Mexico City before heading to Trinidad and Tobago for the Summit of the Americas on Friday.

Obama hopes to improve relations with Mexico and the rest of Latin America after a deterioration in relations his advisors blame on former President George W Bush.

More drug violence

On Wednesday, about a dozen people died in a shootout between troops and suspected drug traffickers in southern Mexico, typical of the clashes that killed 6,300 people across the country last year.

But Calderon said that he was “absolutely not” losing the war on drugs.

Obama will push the US Senate to ratify a treaty designed to reduce the flow of arms and ammunition to drug cartels in Latin America, a senior US official said.

The Obama administration is tightening security at the US-Mexico border to prevent trafficking of guns from the United States to Mexican cartels and hopes to send Black Hawk helicopters to bolster Calderon’s effort.

Obama’s outreach to Mexico has already included a visit by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who soothed Mexicans by acknowledging the violence there stemmed partly from Americans’ “insatiable demand” for drugs.

Obama wrote in an op-ed article sent to a handful of Latin American newspapers that his efforts to help wipe out organized crime would start at home — reducing US demand for illegal drugs and stemming the flow of arms and cash over the Mexican border.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Wednesday named a “border czar,” Alan Bersin, a former Justice Department official who had served in a similar role under former President Bill Clinton. She said his mission was to see that pledges on border security fed through to results.

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Colombian authorities arrest drug lord “Don Mario”

April 17, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Bogota – Colombian police arrested Wednesday Daniel Rendon, known with the alias “Don Mario,” the boss of a paramilitary gang devoted to drug trafficking.

Cesar Mauricio Velasquez, press secretary at the government palace in Bogota, said that the man – one of the most sought after suspects in Colombia – was arrested in the town of Apartado, in the northwestern region of Antioquia.

Police said that the operation that led to the arrest started a month earlier, when 600 elite officers cornered “Don Mario” between Apartado and Necocli, a town in the Urabab region, on the Panamanian border.

Rendon was the leader of a group of some 1,000 paramilitaries known as the Autodefensas Gaitanistas, which was regarded as one of Colombia’s main drug cartels.

Colombian authorities had offered a reward of some 2.1 million dollars for information leading to the arrest of “Don Mario,” 43. The United States is seeking his extradition.

Police said last month that 11 gangs with a total of 2,500 armed men currently control the drug business in Colombia.

Rendon and a handful of others took over the business following the death, arrest or extradition to the United States of the more prominent bosses of the Medellin and Cali cartels, which dominated drug trafficking in the 1980s and 1990s, and of the North of the Valley Cartle, which the authorities think disappeared more recently.

Freddy Rendon, a brother of “Don Mario,” was arrested a few months ago in the framework of negotiations between the government and the extreme-right paramilitaries, which led close to 32,000 people to lay down their weapons 2003-2006.(dpa)

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13 soldiers killed in Peru guerrilla ambush

April 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Lima, April 12 (EFE) Thirteen troopers in Peru have been killed by a rebel guerrilla group, Defence Minister Antero Flores-Araoz said Sunday.

According to the minister, the Shining Path guerrillas ambushed two army patrols in a jungle area in southern province of Ayacucho last Thursday, killing 13 soldiers and injuring three others.

Two troopers have also been missing since the attacks, Flores-Araoz said.

The Peruvian Army expressed its ‘deepest condolences to the families’ of the dead soldiers, calling the men ‘valiant defenders of the fatherland and democracy’.

Flores-Araoz, for his part, said the government would not change its policy of fighting the guerrillas, who are backed by drug cartels.

‘The important thing is that we are going to win this war. It was a cunning, cowardly ambush,’ the defence minister said.

The Shining Path is a Maoist group fighting the government since the 1980s. Its objective is to replace the ‘bourgeois’ democracy with a new form of democracy.

But experts believe that the group has now turned into a drug cartel operating in the southern region of the Latin American country.

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Mexico’s “Saint Death” cult says is drug war victim

April 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Followers of Mexico’s “Saint Death” cult figure, revered by thieves and drug runners but also law-abiding housewives, say their faith is being persecuted by the government’s war against drug cartels.

Dozens of worshipers marched through Mexico City on Good Friday, many barefoot and showing off tattoos of the macabre cult figure, in the latest of a series of protests after soldiers and police bulldozed elaborate roadside shrines to the saint near the northern border with Texas.

Known as “Santa Muerte” in Spanish, the saint is often depicted as a skeletal “grim reaper” draped in white satin robes, beaded necklaces and carrying a scythe. Followers leave offerings of tequila, rum, beer, cigarettes, cash, flowers and candy at altars adorned with rosaries and candles.

Mexican authorities destroyed more than 30 such shrines erected near the city of Nuevo Laredo last month on the grounds they were built without the proper licenses. Some shrines were also knocked down in Tijuana, triggering protests there.

“We just want people to respect our faith like we respect other religions,” said Pablo, a 28-year-old at the protest who says he once avoided a jail sentence by praying to Saint Death.

The Catholic Church frowns on the cult, whose origins may trace back to Aztec and Mayan death-gods or to ancient European traditions, but many devotees call themselves Catholics.

The lure of the death saint is that she is said to honor requests without judging them.

Her followers number up to 5 million, according to the cult’s high priest David Romo, ranging from police and politicians to kidnappers and gangsters who are said to ask her for protection before setting out on hits.

Romo says his church condemns violence and has no links to drug traffickers, but he leaves the door open to everyone.

“Christ went to see prostitutes, thieves, all marginalized people,” Romo said in his cramped office in the saint’s largest sanctuary in Mexico City, a run-down storefront around the corner from a street lined with prostitutes.

SHRINE-SIDE ASSASSINATIONS

President Felipe Calderon has launched an army assault on Mexico’s drug gangs, but the increased firepower has failed to contain the violence. Some 6,300 people were killed last year.

In 2007, gunmen from the powerful Gulf Cartel handcuffed three men and shot them dead at a Santa Muerte altar in Nuevo Laredo, leaving lit candles, flowers and a taunting message for rivals.

At the shrine in Tepito — a rough part of the capital with a market that reputedly sells contraband and drugs — chicken coops line the walls near the pews facing two life-sized skeleton statues wearing glittering dresses and crowns.

Friday’s marchers walked in silence from the shrine to Mexico City’s historic center, carrying Saint Death statues and flaming torches. One held a skull on a stick sporting wispy black hair.

Santa Muerte offers a refuge to people who can be shunned by traditional Catholic hierarchies. “If a narco opens the doors of his heart and comes to us asking for spiritual assistance wanting to convert, we say welcome,” Romo said.

Followers say their death saint is being unfairly targeted, since criminals profess all kinds of religions.

“They link her with criminals because many of the people they arrest bear her image. But there are a lot of hard-working people behind her,” said protester Ernesto Hernandez, 40, who said he owns a furniture shop on the edge of the capital.

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