LA Times News

LA Times News

Mexico army's failures hamper drug war

Posted: 29 Dec 2010 06:32 PM PST

The army often relies on numbers over intelligence and falls back on time-worn tactics, such as highway checkpoints, of limited use against drug traffickers. The shortcomings alarm U.S. officials.

Four years and 50,000 troops into President Felipe Calderon's drug war, the fighting has exposed severe limitations in the Mexican army's ability to wage unconventional warfare, tarnished its proud reputation and left the U.S. pointedly criticizing the force as "virtually blind" on the ground.

Drug lord Pedro Guerrero killed, Colombia's president says

Posted: 29 Dec 2010 06:09 PM PST

Guerrero, who was also the chief of a right-wing paramilitary group, was believed to have been mortally wounded Christmas Day when elite police raided his remote Colombian camp.

Ending a years-long manhunt, troops in Colombia have found the corpse of Pedro "the Knife" Guerrero, one of the country's top right-wing paramilitary leaders and drug traffickers, President Juan Manuel Santos said Wednesday.

In Haiti, a relationship built on adversity

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 12:00 AM PST

An American journalist is drawn into a friendship with a Haitian deported from the U.S. years ago. Each time a catastrophe strikes, Jean is there to help him. But life between the big-news disasters is another level of tragedy.

With his rap sheet and crooked gold teeth, Jean Pierre knew America didn't want him anymore, but he missed it so much he sometimes cried.

Sale of French warships to Russia raises alarm in NATO

Posted: 29 Dec 2010 04:55 PM PST

Eastern European countries fear the deal, worth at least $1.3 billion, will let Moscow exert greater control over coastal regions.

France is selling at least two warships to Russia in an unprecedented military deal that has angered the United States and other NATO countries.

Fighting erupts in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains between NATO, insurgent forces

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 12:00 AM PST

An airstrike kills at least five militants where Taliban fighters have been staging attacks, officials say. The region is where Osama bin Laden notoriously eluded U.S. capture in 2001.

Fighting between NATO forces and insurgents has erupted in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora, best known as the rugged labyrinth where Osama bin Laden evaded U.S. capture nine years ago.

Denmark terrorism plot thwarted with arrest of five suspected militants, authorities say

Posted: 30 Dec 2010 12:00 AM PST

The reported target is the Copenhagen newspaper that published cartoons in 2005 lampooning the prophet Muhammad. Suspects described as 'militant Islamists' are arrested in Sweden and Denmark.

Denmark Jyllands-Posten, Muhammad cartoon, terrorism: Five suspected militants arrested in Denmark terrorism plot

Danish, Swedish police arrest 5 men suspected of planning shooting at prophet cartoon paper

Posted: 29 Dec 2010 08:01 AM PST

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Five men planning to shoot as many people as possible in a building housing the newsroom of a paper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were arrested Wednesday in an operation that halted an imminent attack, intelligence officials said.

3 suicide bombers kill federal police commander in Mosul, level building

Posted: 29 Dec 2010 03:54 AM PST

Lt. Col. Jabouri had been targeted unsuccessfully in the past. Officials say more people might be buried in the rubble.

Three suicide bombers attacked Iraq's federal police headquarters in Mosul on Wednesday, leveling the building and killing the top police commander in the northern city, a prominent figure who had escaped several past assassination attempts, officials said.