Cartel

Pasadena, Calif. -- A LITTLE band of willful academics, representing no interest but their own arrogant selfishness, have for 40 years kept clutched to their scholastic bosoms a substantial portion of the Dead Sea Scrolls.These treasures are the ancient documents found in a West Bank cave that cast light on the religious politics roiling the world between 200 B.C. and a century after the birth of Christ.The Kingdom of Jordan first made a deal with a tight coterie of scholars to decipher and publish the precious texts; after the 1967 war, the government of Israel went along with this cozy arrangement, which meant that the non-biblical portions of the scrolls would be dribbled out by the favored academics over a period of decades.

The argument for increasing oil production in the U.S. to decrease gas prices at the pump has sparked passionate debate, but it undervalues the influence of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). In recent years, OPEC has shown an ability to manipulate the price of oil around the world, making it unlikely for an increase in U.S. oil production to reduce gas prices. However, this unfortunate fact has a silver lining: OPEC's need to sustain its market base and hold off the alternative energy industry is likely to keep oil prices from skyrocketing.

Two assassins for a Colombian drug lord have admitted to the 1991 contract murder of a Baltimore waterfront businessman and the killing of a hardware chain vice president who was not their intended victim, prosecutors said yesterday.Their confessions, unveiled yesterday, bring to a close one of Baltimore's most puzzling murder mysteries.Juan Carlos Velasco, 26, and John Harold Mena, 25, Colombian nationals who were living in Queens, N.Y., told federal prosecutors in Brooklyn that they came to Baltimore Sept.

Justin Fenton's article, "2 guilty in drug case linked to cartel" (Feb. 8), plus dozens of previous reports related to the actions of drug cartels on both sides of the Mexican border, are extremely disturbing and disgusting. The distribution and utilization of these drugs by so many Americans is far more damaging to the welfare of our country than some of our global military conflicts when you consider they are actually destroying the hearts and minds of so many of our young people who will be the future foundation of our country.

NEW YORK -- Fourteen months after a crusading anti-drug editor was killed in a New York restaurant, two men were indicted yesterday in the slaying, which prosecutors said was ordered by leaders of Colombia's Cali cocaine cartel.Investigators said the assassination brought to the streets of Queens the brutal code of the Colombian drug lords, who rarely entertain second thoughts about killing journalists in their own country.Police charged Alejandro Wilson Mejia Velez, 19, with firing two 9mm bullets into the head of Manuel de Dios Unanue, a former editor of the Spanish-language New York newspaper El Diario-La Prensa.

MEXICO CITY - Once Mexico's deadliest trafficker, the weakened Arellano Felix drug cartel of Tijuana has merged with another gang in a desperate bid for survival, the country's narcotics prosecutor said yesterday. Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, deputy attorney general for organized crime, said recent intelligence showed that the Tijuana cartel merged with the so-called Gulf cartel led by Osiel Cardenas to fend off usurpers. The main threat is from the Sinaloa-based conglomerate headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and Ismael Zambada.

IN POLITICAL Annapolis, there is life after death.Just weeks ago, a Senate committee killed a bill that would give farmers the power to fix milk prices through state membership in a regional consortium.But dairy farmers have gained House backing to resurrect that plan and allow Maryland to join this cartel, which raised milk prices about 20 cents a gallon in large New England cities after it started operating last summer.The bill remains well intentioned but unrealistic. It won't stem the decline in dairy farms, which is happening nationwide because of more productive cows and industry consolidation.

McALLEN, Texas - An already tense situation along the border worsened yesterday as an internal FBI memo warned that a ruthless Mexican drug cartel could be plotting to kidnap and murder U.S. federal law enforcement agents. Although the plot specifically targets two unidentified agents of the FBI, the bulletin warns that "due to the nature of this immediate threat, all law enforcement personnel are being cautioned to ensure appropriate measures are taken as well as to keep a high degree of vigilance."

PILAR, Argentina - For more than a year, the Argentine public has been mesmerized by the homicide of socialite Maria Marta Garcia Belsunce, a true-life drama with details seemingly borrowed from an Agatha Christie novel. Moments after Belsunce's body was discovered in her bathtub in October 2002, the leading suspects gathered in the living room of her villa in this Buenos Aires suburb to discuss what they should do: her husband, her brother, her brother-in-law, her doctor, even her masseuse.

LONDON - The president of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said yesterday that there was little the group could do to lower fuel prices soon, because OPEC's oil production quotas were not the main problem. His remarks contradicted statements last week by Saudi Arabia, the cartel's leading producer, calling for increases in the quotas to ease price pressures. Purnomo Yusgiantoro, who is both the cartel's president and the energy minister of Indonesia, said the recent sharp rise in retail prices for gasoline and other fuels was "due to factors beyond OPEC's scope."

Two men accused of being co-conspirators in a cocaine distribution pipeline that funneled drugs from a violent Mexican cartel to the Baltimore area were convicted by a federal jury Monday. Wade Coats, 45, of Baltimore and Jose Cavazos, 44, of Dallas were convicted of drug conspiracy charges; Coats was also found guilty of a firearms charge. The men, who rejected plea deals, face a maximum sentence of life in prison, and federal authorities expect a sentence of at least 30 years. "This trial illustrated how drugs are imported and distributed throughout the United States," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a telephone interview.

In April 2009, Mexico's ruthless Gulf Cartel had a Baltimore problem. Officers with the Drug Enforcement Administration had found an associate of the cartel in an Inner Harbor hotel room with more than $600,000 in alleged drug proceeds. When the officers seized the money, prosecutors say, the cartel wanted answers. But the man they sent to investigate would himself be busted by the FBI. Alex Mendoza-Cano would turn informant — and federal prosecutors say his testimony in U.S. District Court this week against two men charged in a cocaine conspiracy provides insight into how Mexican cartels are operating in Baltimore and other U.S. cities.

A book written by three Yahoo Sports reporters attempts to blow the boilermaker top off the sinister, fraudulent and perhaps illegal Bowl Championship Series, now entering its 13th preposterous season. Yahoo, mind you, is no in-depth dandelion. The same investigative news organization that brought you "Near-Death to USC Football" has unleashed "Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series. " Eviscerated in only 195 pages, the BCS is portrayed as the devil incarnate.

The narcotics trafficking, gun violence and dead bodies linked to northern Mexico's drug cartels are reason enough for U.S. lawmakers to get serious about overhauling weapons laws in this country. With federal agents tracing hundreds of weapons used by Mexican drug organizations to gun dealers in the U.S., this problem has become both a national security issue and a foreign policy concern. The mayhem attributed to the drug cartels isn't confined to towns south of the border. Federal prosecutors in Maryland announced last week that 29 people had been indicted on narcotics charges for allegedly selling drugs supplied by the notorious Sinaloa Cartel based in northwest Mexico.

Mexican drug czar held in theft from cartel 4 MEXICO CITY: Mexico accused its former drug czar yesterday of taking $450,000 from a cartel he was supposed to destroy, going public with a scandal that deals a serious blow to the country's U.S.-backed drug war. Noe Ramirez is the highest-ranking law enforcement official detained yet as part of Mexico's sweeping effort to weed out officials who allegedly shared police information with violent drug smugglers....

ALBERTO VILLAMIZAR, 62 Colombian diplomat Alberto Villamizar, a Colombian politician and diplomat whose crusade against drug cartel kidnappings was chronicled by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, died Thursday in Bogota of complications from heart surgery. Mr. Villamizar rose to prominence in the 1980s as an ally of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan. During one of the bloodiest chapters in Colombia's history, the two sought to curb the growing wealth and political power of cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Federal authorities have established a link between the assassination last year of a crusading anti-drug journalist in New York and the 1991 execution-style murders of a Baltimore waterfront businessman and a hardware store chain vice president.In a series of interviews, law enforcement officials said the murders of John R. Shotto, a financially troubled entrepreneur in Baltimore, and Raymond Nicholson, vice president of the Hechinger Co., resulted from an order by the Cali cocaine cartel based in Colombia.

A violent East Baltimore cocaine organization with direct links to a Colombian cartel has been dismantled, fulfilling the new police commissioner's vow to go after top-level drug dealers, police said yesterday. With a state judge's permission, city detectives broke the drug ring by bugging the phones of suspected traffickers and eavesdropping on their illegal activity. It was the department's first use of a high-tech crime-fighting tool usually used by federal authorities, who in the past led investigations such as the one announced yesterday.

It's time to give the hook to a practice that has stifled competition in Baltimore County. Been in a car accident in Baltimore County or otherwise had your car ordered towed by county police? Then you may have an inkling of the problem. For three decades, the county's 33 licensed tow-truck operators have had this business to themselves, and the result has been too many slow responses, poor performances and a system that has fostered little minority participation. Legislation sponsored by Councilman Kenneth N. Oliver would hand the responsibility for dispatching and supervising tow-truck operators to a private contractor, and allow more such operators to be licensed by the county - not just those who have been licensed in the past.

Anyone who's ever made arrangements for a deceased loved one knows that it's expensive. Charles Brown can tell you at least part of the reason why: Funeral industry insiders don't like competition and work hard to preserve an unfair Maryland law that keeps out entrepreneurs like him. Mr. Brown owns a cemetery in Hagerstown and would like to own the funeral home he built there. But he can't realize his dream because he's not a licensed funeral director. Even though he would hire a funeral director to oversee funerals in his funeral home, Maryland law only trusts licensed funeral directors to own funeral homes.