Six Bodies Zacatecas State, Mexico

Police in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas on Thursday found the bodies of six people, including a 13-year-old boy who had been arrested on Feb. 4 as a presumed murderer but was released a few hours later due to his age, a government official said.

The six bodies showed signs of torture and were found Thursday morning on the outskirts of the towns of Morelos and Vetagrande, the head of the Zacatecas state prosecutor’s office, Arturo Nahle, told reporters.

According to witnesses quoted by the Zacatecas daily NTR, shots were heard in the area about 2 a.m. (0800 GMT), presumably emanating from a clash between rival criminal bands.

The bodies - four of them women - were found after an anonymous telephone call was received by the local emergency services department, the daily said.

The boy whose lifeless body was found with the others had been arrested on Feb. 4 for allegedly participating in 10 murders. However, and despite the fact that he admitted being the killer in three of the murders, he was released a few hours later.

The boy’s release came as a result of the Zacatecas Justice for Adolescents Law, which allows the prosecution of supposed criminals only if they are 14 years of age or older.

Due to the public indignation sparked by the release of a confessed murderer, Nahle proposed reducing the minimum age set by the law to punish younger killers and he called the boy extremely dangerous.

Although no precise figures exist on the number of children and teenagers who might be involved with criminal groups around the country, the Network for the Rights of Children in Mexico calculates that between 15,000 and 20,000 minors are the victims of various kinds of “narco-exploitation.”

Workers Camp at Abandoned Nogales Factory, Hoping for Pay

It's been 25 days and 24 nights that more than a dozen people have taken turns camping out in front of a recently closed U.S.-owned factory in Nogales, Sonora, making sure nobody tries to take the machinery left inside the building -- one of their last hopes of getting paid.

On Feb. 1, 134 employees left Legacy de Mexico at about 3 p.m. for a long weekend. When they returned the following Tuesday, the door locks had been changed and a manager was there to tell them the company had shut down, workers said.

The unexpected closure affected everyone from operators to maintenance workers to supervisors and engineers. Among them are people who had worked for the company since it opened in 1996 and those who had been hired six months ago.

Since the closure, small groups spend their days and nights in makeshift tents set outside the glass doors of the main entrance, next to the big block metal letters, "L-E-G-A-C-Y." Some go out to try to find jobs, but most watch television and talk among themselves, trying to kill time.

"Once you are over 40, it becomes a lot harder to get a job," said Aureliano Flores, 59, who worked as a maintenance supervisor and had been with the company almost 14 years.

The Nogales municipal government gave them tarps, blankets, small mattresses and food, and provided them with a portable bathroom. Other elected officials and people who support their cause sometimes help with bags of rice, beans and oil.

The workers were offered a month's pay, the workers said. But under Mexican law, the owner is responsible for a 90-day severance package.

"They were offering us less than 20 percent of what they owe us," said Flores, who earned about $44 a day and was the breadwinner at his household.

The group estimates it would take about $600,000 to pay about 115 workers off. The 15 others were contractors and aren't part of the suit.

Meanwhile, a legal battle against Legacy is advancing. Representatives for the factory, owned by Denver-based Legacy Imaging, which makes printer cartridges, didn't show up to the first hearing Thursday regarding a labor suit its former employees have filed with Sonora's mediation entity in Nogales, according to the workers. The president of the entity confirmed there had been a hearing, but he said he couldn't provide additional information over the phone.

Multiple calls and emails to Michael Frothingham, listed as Legacy Imaging's chief executive officer on the company's website, weren't returned.

"The closure took everyone by surprise," said Manuel Hopkins, economic development director for the municipal government of Nogales.

"First and foremost, it's important to act in a responsible manner. We are aware that businesses aren't always successful, but there's always room to negotiate," he said. "This shouldn't be happening, and we will continue to work to prevent this type of situation and raise awareness."

The municipal government and the Maquiladora Association of Sonora in Nogales are collaborating to help displaced employees find jobs.

"Under the current circumstances, it's imperative the employees get what's most important: a job," said Rene Moreno, vice president of the maquiladora association in Nogales.

Legacy was not a member of the association, he said.

"We were told one of our members will have about 70 jobs available in the upcoming weeks, and we've invited the employees to come to us for information on where they can apply for these jobs," he said. Moreno recalls one or two similar incidents in the last decade, where a company left without paying its workers, but he said it's not common.

"This is something very isolated," he said. "It also affects smaller businesses, but it's less obvious to the public because they hire less people."

Cirila Quintero is a researcher who specializes in maquiladoras and labor with the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tamaulipas, and she says this has been an ongoing problem since the 1960s and '70s.

"This practice became less common as the maquiladora industry started to be regulated, but it still exists," she said.

It especially happens in times of crisis and is more prevalent in factories that don't have many ties to the community or those that don't work with a lot of equipment, such as textiles, she said.

The legal process is a long and arduous one, Quintero said, and many times workers give up. Other times there's not enough money to compensate the workers because the embargoed machinery is old or there aren't many buyers interested in the equipment, she said. "What would help Mexico would be to have a sort of deposit the companies pay to help cover the workers' wages in cases where they close and leave."

Meanwhile, Legacy's former employees, who consider each other to be like family, will continue the vigil until they hear from the owner or something gets resolved.

"We'll stay here as long as it's needed," said Lilia Ruiz, 58, who worked as an operator for almost nine years, earning $7 a day. "It's not fair that they've abandoned us this way."

"First and foremost, it's important to act in a responsible manner. We are aware that businesses aren't always successful, but there's always room to negotiate. This shouldn't be happening, and we will continue to work to prevent this type of situation and raise awareness."

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Coahuila State Mexico

Army troops killed at least four suspected gunmen in a shootout in Monclova, a city in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila, prosecutors said.

The shootout occurred in Monclova’s Pipila district, where the soldiers were on patrol, the Coahuila Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.

The soldiers were attacked by armed civilians and “four assailants lost their lives when the aggression was repelled,” the AG’s office said.

Investigators found a four-door SUV at the scene of the shootout with a dead person and an assault rifle inside, the AG’s office said.

Three other bodies and three assault rifles were on the ground near the vehicle.

Authorities seized four AK-47 assault rifles, two grenade launchers, four AK-47 ammunition clips and 15 .223-caliber ammunition clips.

One of the gunmen has been identified as 18-year-old Jesus Garcia Martinez, prosecutors said.

Coahuila has been at the center of a turf war among the Los Zetas, Gulf and Sinaloa drug cartels in recent years, leading to a spike in violence in the state.

The war on drugs launched by former President Felipe Calderon, who was in office from 2006 to 2012, left about 70,000 people dead in Mexico, the government says.

Calderon deployed thousands of soldiers across the country to fight drug cartels, which infiltrated and gained influence over officers in many state and municipal police departments.

Mexican press tallies estimate that about 12,000 people died in violent incidents linked to organized crime groups in 2012.

Drug movement into the U.S.

Mexican smugglers have used tunnels, cars, boats and even the human body in attempts to sneak drugs past U.S. agents in an endless cat-and-mouse game on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Now smugglers have devised a new invention to ferry their contraband over the nearly militarized border: cannons.

An air-powered cannon fires bags of illegal drugs into the air from Mexico and plops them on U.S. soil, for nighttime retrieval by conspirators, U.S. authorities said Thursday.

Mexican authorities recently confiscated one such cannon in the bed of a pickup truck in Mexicali, police there said. Mexicali shares the international boundary with Calexico, California.

The confiscation of the cannon -- which Mexican authorities publicized in a photograph -- is the first that U.S. border and customs agents are aware of, a U.S. official said.

 

Domestic drones in U.S. skies

"Well, I've been in (law enforcement) for over 20 years, and it seems like within the last five to 10 years they have gotten really, really creative in how they bring their drugs across," said Andy Adame, special operations supervisor for the Joint Field Command Arizona of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Border Patrol officers to be furloughed

Cannons apparently are smugglers' newest creation, said Adame, who's based in Tucson.

"This is the first one that I've seen," he said Thursday of the one seized by police in Mexicali. "That was actually a pretty good one.

"They are definitely out of the ordinary," Adame said.

In another incident, U.S. authorities found 33 cans of marijuana embedded in Arizona farmland last December, as if they dropped out of the sky, Adame said.

In fact, U.S. authorities believe a pneumatic cannon fired each canister 500 feet over the Colorado River from Mexico.

American agents notified Mexican authorities to search their side of the border, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement last December.

Only a carbon dioxide tank was found, the U.S. agency said.

The 33 cans contained a total of 85 pounds of marijuana, valued at $42,500, U.S. authorities said.

Aussie police make big meth haul

"The smugglers were trying to pick these up before daylight, but there was probably an agent in the area," Adame said, explaining why the smugglers on the U.S. side never collected the canisters that pockmarked the tilled land.

Last week, police in Mexicali found a cannon made from a large tube in the back of an abandoned Dodge Ram pickup truck, said spokesman Edgar Lopez.

The device operated with a compressor connected to the truck, Mexican authorities said.

No arrests have been made.

Last year, Mexican authorities seized a catapult that was used to launch bundled drugs, Lopez said. In connection with that incident, U.S. authorities seized marijuana near Naco, Arizona, that was apparently launched over the border fence, Adame said.

Mexico slaughters 1.2 million chickens bird flu

Mexican authorities say they've slaughtered more than a million chickens infected with bird flu.

Investigators detected the virus in 18 farms in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, Mexico's Agriculture Ministry said this week.

Chickens there were infected with the H7N3 virus, which Mexican authorities said does not pose a threat to humans.

"This virus is exclusive to birds, so there is no risk for public safety," the Agriculture Ministry said earlier this month.

Authorities offered different tallies of how many infected birds had been slaughtered.

Agriculture Minister Enrique Martinez said Monday that more than 2.1 million chickens had been killed -- including 519,000 egg-producing chickens, 722,265 breeding chickens and 900,000 chickens raised for meat.

On Tuesday, Javier Usabiaga Arroyo, a state agriculture official, said the total number of infected chickens killed was about 1.2 million, Mexico's state-run Notimex news agency reported.

Officials have vaccinated 1.9 million birds since the outbreak began earlier this month, and they plan to vaccinate millions more, the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement this week.

The outbreak has sparked concern about a possible spike in food prices, but authorities said Monday that the number of slaughtered chickens is a small fraction of the country's overall population and there is no reason for egg or chicken prices to increase.

"The outbreak of avian influenza is controlled," Mexico's food safety agency said in a statement.

Other strains of bird flu have spread to humans and prompted authorities to slaughter animals.

In 1997, authorities in Hong Kong killed about 1.5 million chickens after H5N1 avian influenza passed from birds to humans there.

Last year a new strain of H3N8 flu jumped from birds to mammals and was responsible for the death of more than 160 seals off the New England coast.

Mexican newspaper attacked again by armed men

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico—Mexican authorities say gunmen have attacked a newspaper in the northern city of Torreon for the third consecutive day, killing a bystander and wounding two federal police officers guarding the building. Coahuila state prosecutors say the attack on the offices of El Siglo de Torreon happened Wednesday afternoon. Just hours earlier, the newspaper published a story detailing an attack on Tuesday in which gunmen wielding automatic rifles fired at least 30 shots at the building's main door from a car.
On Monday, attackers shot at federal police officers guarding the building. No one was injured.
The newspaper's offices have been attacked periodically by gunmen since 2009. No one had been hurt until Wednesday. The newspaper decided after the first attack in 2009 to stop all investigative journalism.