Montreal Gazette, 22 May 2010 - Mexico's Biggest Cartel Banks on Powerful Friends Like most cops in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, Jesus Manuel Fierro-Mendez was dirty. In fact, soon after being promoted to the position of captain, he was smuggling enormous quantities of cocaine into the United States. And when Fierro-Mendez quit his job in the spring of 2007, after someone tried to kill him, he went to work for the Sinaloa drug cartel, Mexico's most powerful drug-trafficking organization, run by Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman, the richest drug lord in North America and the second most wanted man in the world after Osama bin Laden.

Globe and Mail, 22 May 2010 - Arrests of five men last month shows that ease of access into the U.S. can be an illusion Robert Matas - From Saturday's Globe and Mail The international boundary line here is open and unmarked, an easy walk for any smuggler.

Napa Valley Register, 22 May 2010 - For the past few years, crumpled Ramen noodle packaging, Coke cans and half-full bags of fertilizer have languished on a remote hillside in Bothe National Park. Long, black irrigation tubes wove through the area just underneath the surface of the soil.

Wall Street Journal, 22 May 2010 - CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico- Authorities battling drug traffickers in this violent border city have begun to suspect that their efforts to impede the flow of drugs into the U.S. has fostered demand-and turf wars-on their own territory. Ciudad Juarez, which lies across the border from El Paso, Texas, has become ground zero in Mexico's fight against its powerful crime organizations. Drugs from methamphetamines to ecstasy funnel through the border bridge here on their way to U.S. cities. Around 10,000 Mexican federal police and military now patrol the streets to stanch the flow.

New Zealand Herald, 22 May 2010 - The US is thinking about dealing with drug abuse as a medical issue, says Martha Mendoza After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost US$1 trillion ($1.5 trillion) and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.