Men in border-patrol caps tackle a young Mexican to the ground amid jagged rocks and cacti. "You need papers to come to this country. This is not a game!" shouts one agent as he yanks the man's arms behind his back, almost tearing them from his shoulders. It looks like a scene on the U.S. border that would get human rights groups yelling. But actually, it is a game, and it takes place in the mountains of ...

It took just a couple of days for Admiral Thad Allen to realize how disastrous the well blowout at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig would prove to be. On April 20 last year, the well being drilled by the BP-owned rig suddenly kicked back, spurting oil and gas up the drilling pipe and setting the Deepwater Horizon aflame in the Gulf of Mexico. Crew ran for the lifeboats and even leaped into the fiery waters of the ...

Can the U.S. government take a woman's baby from her because she doesn't speak English? That's the latest question to arise in the hothouse debate over illegal immigration, as an undocumented woman from impoverished rural Mexico — who speaks only an obscure indigenous language — fights in a Mississippi court to regain custody of her infant daughter. Cirila Baltazar Cruz comes from the mountainous southern state of Oaxaca, a region of Mexico that makes Appalachia look affluent. To ...

As Mexico drowns in drug-related bloodshed — suffering almost 12,000 murders in 2010 — it is perhaps unsurprising that government critics have turned up their screaming that the war on drugs isn't working. But it was a bit of a bombshell when former President Vicente Fox added his voice to the chorus. The cowboy-boot-wearing leader, who ruled Mexico from 2000 to 2006, once declared the "mother of all battles" against crime and rounded up drug kingpins. But ...

Jeffrey Bada was comparing notes with his colleague Antonio Lazcano a couple of years ago, when something brought him up short. The two chemists, one from the U.S. and one from Mexico, had met in Texas to give a series of talks on prebiotic chemistry — the substances that gave rise to life on earth — when Lazcano pulled up a slide showing a vial with gunky residue spilling out. "Where did this come from?" Bada asked. ...

Mexico: 12 found dead in Pacific coast state Mexican prosecutors say the bodies of 12 murder victims have been found in a Pacific coast state, eight of them partially burned. The Nayarit state Attorney General's Office says the corpses were discovered together in fields outside the town of Xalisco. The agency said Wednesday in a statement that the killings are believed to be associated with drug trafficking, but there are no suspects. The bodies were found late Tuesday. Drug violence has claimed more than ...

In Mexico, Resuming Life After Quake The day after one of the strongest earthquakes to strike the region in nearly two decades, residents on both sides of the border marveled that damage was relatively light even as waves of mild aftershocks troubled nerves. The United States Geological Survey reported that the 7.2 quake, the strongest in Southern California in two decades, was caused by two rock masses grinding and scraping together along a roughly 45-mile zone. It was felt as far ...

Mexico's arrest of drug cartel suspects has become fairly commonplace. On Thursday, it was six suspected members of La Familia, based in Michoacan. A day earlier, it was a man identified as a top leader of the ruthless Zetas. Whether the arrests are making any difference in President Felipe Calderon's war on the narcotraffickers is another question. Some analysts see them as proof that Calderon was right to declare an all-out fight after taking office in December 2006. "The most ...

A strong earthquake rumbled deep beneath mountainous regions northeast of Kabul early Friday, waking residents and sending some into the streets. Whether the arrests are making any difference in President Felipe Calderon's war on the narcotraffickers is another question. Some analysts see them as proof that Calderon was right to declare an all-out fight after taking office in December 2006. "The most important thing is that the Mexican government is on the offensive," said Bernard Aronson, U.S. assistant secretary of ...

Mexico has qualified for a fifth straight World Cup after beating El Salvador 4-1 in its Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football match.