The Mexican army has arrested a top drug cartel chief and four of his bodyguards, the government announced Wednesday. Hector Huerta Rios, also known as "La Burra" or "El Junior," was arrested Tuesday in the city of San Pedro Garza Garcia in Nuevo Leon state, along Mexico's border with the United States. The state-run Notimex news agency reported the announcement, citing a news conference held by the secretary of national defense and the attorney general's office. Huerta was flown to ...

Even as Iraq's Sunni-Shi'ite divide appears to be tenuously mending, another seam in the country's patchwork multiethnic and sectarian society is on the verge of unraveling. Territorial disputes between Arabs and Kurds — in the provinces of Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala — now pose a serious risk of violence. In recent months, long-standing hostility between the two communities has escalated, whipped up by resurgent Arab secular nationalism. At the federal level, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has repeatedly said he ...

The Obama administration said Tuesday it's sending hundreds of extra federal agents and new crime-fighting equipment to the Mexican border as the U.S. struggles to roll back a tide of drug-related violence sweeping the Southwest. The renewed push for a stronger law enforcement presence along the border comes as the administration tries to help the Mexican government break up drug cartels believed to be responsible for the killing of roughly 6,500 people last year in Mexico, according to Homeland Security ...

An Indonesian passenger plane made an emergency landing Monday morning after its engine failed, an airport official said. Maulawi Hassan was killed by members of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in an isolated compound near Kajaki, northern Helmand. Several weapons and explosives were found at the location, according to the ISAF. Hassan was a major player in several attacks, including suicide bombings, the ISAF said. He answered to Mullah Rahmatullah, a senior Taliban leader who guides ...

Forget Al Qaeda, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Axis of Evil. A once obscure acronym is on the lips of President Barack Obama, just about every politician in Washington and a lot of angry taxpayers nationwide. It's AIG., American International Group, a trillion-dollar company operating in 130 countries that was one of the most trusted names on Wall Street. Obama calls its business practices "an outrage" and Republican Senator Charles Grassley called on AIG executives to "resign or go ...

Nine bodies have been found in a common grave in the desert south of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, according to Chihuahua state prosecutor's spokeswoman Daniela Gonzalez. Investigators have yet to determine the identities of the seven men and two women found in the grave, Gonzalez said. They have not released information on how they were killed or how long they have been there. Juarez, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas, has become one of the major battlegrounds ...

The Obama administration has been talking about "pressing the reset button" with Russia after relations "crashed" when Russia invaded Georgia last August. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greeted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva on Friday before sitting down to their working dinner, she presented him a small green box with a ribbon. Insclide was a red button with the Russian word "peregruzka" printed on it. "I would like to present you with a little gift that represents ...

If early last September you'd parked outside Lehman Brothers' Manhattan headquarters with a cell-phone scanner and listened only to some of the "chatter" coming out of Lehman's front office, you almost certainly would have realized that Lehman was going under. But to understand the wider consequences, how capitalism was about to do a somersault into the watery abyss, you would have needed to understand how Lehman fit into the global financial system. But that's the thing about chatter: ...

The rebellion by paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles troops apparently ended Thursday after they handed over their weapons inside their headquarters in the capital city's Pilkhana district, the national press agency quoted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as saying in a nationwide televised address. Earlier Thursday, the country's home minister, Sahara Khatun, said mutinous paramilitary troops were close to laying down their arms and many had returned to their barracks. "They have raised white flags and the situation is in its last stages," ...

British prosecutors said Thursday they will not seek charges against accused Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon, which puts him one step closer to being extradited to the United States to face charges. The Crown Prosecution Service said its decision comes despite McKinnon's admission that he broke the law and intentionally gained unauthorized access to computer systems. "Although there is sufficient evidence to prosecute Mr. McKinnon for these offenses, the evidence we have does not come near to reflecting the criminality that ...