Noe Ramirez Mandujano, a veteran federal prosecutor who resigned in July as head of an elite unit known as SIEDO, is charged with passing tips to the

Noe Ramirez Mandujano, a veteran federal prosecutor who resigned in July as head of an elite unit known as SIEDO, is charged with passing tips to the Beltran Leyva gang in the western state of Sinaloa, Mexican Atty. Gen. Eduardo Medina Mora said.
Ramirez, 47, becomes the highest-ranking law enforcement official to be arrested amid a government investigation of infiltration of police agencies by drug traffickers.Five other officials from SIEDO, a division of the attorney general's office that spearheads drug investigations, already face charges of leaking intelligence to the Sinaloa group.Medina Mora said a member of the gang told authorities he paid a total of $450,000 to Ramirez as part of a monthly payoff scheme "in exchange for providing information about investigations and ongoing actions" against the Sinaloa drug smugglers.The attorney general said Ramirez had voluntarily appeared before prosecutors to answer the accusations but there was sufficient cause to detain the former official.If true, the accusation represents another serious setback to President Felipe Calderon's war on Mexican drug cartels, a centerpiece of his 2-year-old administration. Mexico is awash in drug violence, with more than 4,000 people dead this year, according to unofficial media counts.
This latest arrest, amid a government inquiry called Operation Cleanup, may demonstrate Calderon's commitment to rooting out official corruption but it also will likely further undermine public confidence in the war on drugs.

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Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expressi

Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Timms, a resident of the San Diego community of South Park, refused to take off a black leather vest with the motorcycle club's “death's head” insignia when he reported for jury duty. He's a big burly man, 5 feet 8 inches, 250 pounds, with a full beard and auburn-colored, shoulder-length hair. At 7:45 a.m., Timms' stance got him booted from the San Diego Superior Court's Hall of Justice by sheriff's deputies, along with another Hells Angel who also refused to remove his insignia vest. Nine hours later, representatives of both the Superior Court and the sheriff's department apologized to Timms and club member Mick Rush for “misunderstanding” an order issued April 24 by Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser. Rush also had been reporting for jury duty. “It all boils down to a misunderstanding of Judge Fraser'

Rashawn and Deon Beneby Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip

''They may have been into drugs but they didn't do anything to harm anybody,'' said their aunt, Cheryl Watkins. ``It was cold-blooded murder to lay them out like that.''Miami-Dade County's 80th and 81st homicides of 2008: Rashawn and Deon Beneby, brothers and suspects in a string of violent robberies, shot dead Thursday afternoon next to the Liberty City middle school they once attended. ''It's cold-blooded, outright killing out there -- and we're not even in the summer yet,'' said the Rev. Richard Dunn, a community activist who lives three blocks away. Witnesses said a group of men were gathered outside an apartment at the Annie Coleman Gardens housing project when the shooting started.Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip next to the chain-link fence that separates the community from the baseball field at Charles R. Drew Middle School, 1801 NW 60th St. Rashawn was executed -- shot in the head an

Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow

Rivi was, for a time, the hit-man of choice for Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow. Griselda was the grande dame of the Miami cocaine business, a Colombian mother of three, of impoverished origins, who slaughtered and intimidated her way to the top of a billion-dollar industry. She is a central character in this movie, the most deadly figure in a story in which the bodies are stacked like dominos. Conspicuous by her absence as an interviewee, she is one of the few key survivors of the era whom the film-makers were unable to coax before the lens. “Her release was imminent at that point, as was her deportation. I think she has changed her mind since, because we have been reapproached,” Corben says. contract killer Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, the director of Cocaine Cowboys Billy Corben says: “He told me where there is a body buried in Miami, by the Florida turnpike. It’s all developed now, malls and condominiums. He knows where all the bodies are buried. We told the police. I think he told the

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