Four soldiers killed in Colombia firefight

Four Colombian soldiers are dead and six are missing after a firefight with Marxist guerrillas, Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Tuesday. In his second prime time news conference, Obama called on Americans to look to the future with a “renewed confidence that a better day will come.” “We will recover from this recession,” the president said

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Stick It to the Recession: Wynn’s Vegas Encore

The view from the floor-to-ceiling windows in our room at the new Wynn Encore provides a distressingly clear picture of what’s going on in Las Vegas these days. To the south, there’s a casino project that has ground to a halt, half built, its steel skeleton an outline of a multibillion-dollar dream gone hungry. Across the street, there’s a Modernist chapel, a lonely vigil of virtue on the Strip — people seek salvation elsewhere in this town.

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Colombia’s Drug Extraditions: Are They Worth It?

When he was the king of cocaine, the prospect of doing hard time in an American penitentiary was about the only thing that made Pablo Escobar’s blood run cold. Living by the motto “Better a tomb in Colombia than a prison cell in the United States,” Escobar unleashed a wave of car bombings and assassinations that forced the Colombian government to water down extradition laws

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As Crime Mounts, Mexicans Turn to Vigilante Justice

Graphic photos of the alleged thief’s corpse were splashed over the front pages of Mexican tabloids beneath headlines such as “Dead Rat” and “Military Justice.” The confessed shooter, retired general Alejandro Flores, was widely hailed as a hero for firing at the 30-year-old man who had tried to force his way into the military man’s Mexico City home. “Of course he did the right thing,” wrote Felipe Alcocer in one on-line forum on the incident. “I wish everyone would act in the same way and get rid of this anti-social scum.” Given Mexico’s widespread breakdown in security, the praise for Flores’ Feb

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