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(04/28/08 3:52am)
TIJUANA, Mexico – Massive gunbattles broke out between suspected drug traffickers who fired at each other while speeding down heavily populated streets of this violent border city early Saturday, killing 13 people and wounding nine.\nAll of the dead were believed to be drug traffickers, possibly rival members of the same cartel who were trying to settle scores, said Rommel Moreno, the attorney general of Baja California state, where Tijuana is located.\n“Evidently this is a confrontation between gangs,” Moreno told reporters.\nEight suspects and one federal police officer were injured in the pre-dawn shootings, none gravely, said Agustin Perez Aguilar, a spokesman for the state public safety department. The suspects are being held on suspicion of weapons possession among other possible charges.\nPolice recovered 21 vehicles, many with bullet holes or U.S. license plates; a total of 54 guns; and more than 1,500 spent shell casings at various points in the city where the battles broke out, Perez Aguilar said.\nAt one point, the alleged traffickers fired at one another as their sport utility vehicles sped down a busy six-lane boulevard lined with restaurants, car repair shops, medical offices and strip malls.\nBullet holes could be seen in the walls of a factory building and on the perimeter wall of a housing complex along the road, but no bystander deaths were reported. It was not clear how long the gunbattles lasted.\nA mall security guard who did not want to give his name for fear of reprisals said he heard hundreds of gunshots fired, some of which passed near him.\n“I hit the ground,” the guard said. When he got up again, he said he saw bullet holes in the wall behind him, a dead man lying in a pool of blood and 11 abandoned, bullet-ridden SUVs on the street.\nThe first shootout claimed seven victims. Three subsequent gunbattles – one outside a hospital – claimed five more, police said. The body of a man police believe to be the 13th victim turned up at a city hospital.\nTijuana, a sprawling metropolis just across the border from San Diego, California, is pervaded by frequent violence, much of it blamed on drug cartels battling for control of lucrative trafficking routes. The city is home to the Arellano-Felix drug cartel.\nIn January, eight people died in a gunbattle at a Tijuana safe-house apparently used by drug hit men to hold kidnapped rivals. In that confrontation, hit men holed up inside the house battled police and soldiers with automatic weapons for three hours.
(09/11/07 3:02am)
Dozens of truckers waved signs and American flags at a border crossing Thursday to protest a program that will allow up to 100 Mexican trucking companies to freely haul their cargo anywhere in the United States.\nThe U.S. Department of Transportation was expected to begin issuing operating permits in the pilot program as early as Thursday, starting with 17. The program is designed to study whether opening the U.S.-Mexico border to all trucks could be done safely.\nAs of Thursday morning, 38 Mexican firms were poised for U.S. permits, said Melissa Mazzella DeLaney, a spokeswoman for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates truck safety.\nThe Teamsters union and Sierra Club oppose the program and sued to try to stop it, arguing that there wouldn’t be enough oversight of the drivers coming into the U.S. from Mexico and public safety would be endangered.\nGovernment lawyers countered the program was a necessary part of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement and said trucks enrolled in the program would meet U.S. regulations.\nA federal appeals court ruled Aug. 31 that the Bush administration could move ahead.\nNAFTA requires that all roads in the United States, Mexico and Canada be opened to carriers from all three countries. Since 1982, Mexican trucks have been allowed to operate only within a 25-mile zone along the border. There, they transfer loads to U.S. trucks to go elsewhere in the country.\nDozens of truckers led by the Teamsters union and some anti-illegal immigration activists protested near San Diego’s Otay Mesa border crossing, some flashing signs that read, “NAFTA Kills” and “Save American Highways.”\nBusiness was uninterrupted, said Lt. Hector Paredes of the California Highway Patrol, which inspects about 3,000 trucks a day at the crossing.\n“We’re already inspecting Mexican trucks and will continue to inspect them the same way,” Paredes said. “These trucks already haul product from Tijuana to San Diego. Now they will be able to go beyond San Diego.”
(11/29/05 10:44pm)
SAN DIEGO -- Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, an eight-term congressman and hotshot Vietnam War fighter jock, pleaded guilty to graft and tearfully resigned Monday, admitting he took $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors to steer business their way.\n"The truth is I broke the law, concealed my conduct, and disgraced my office," the 63-year-old Republican said at a news conference. "I know that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions, most importantly, the trust of my friends and family."\nHe could get up to 10 years in prison at sentencing Feb. 27 on federal charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and fraud, and tax evasion.\nInvestigators said Cunningham, a member of a House Appropriations subcommittee that controls defense dollars, secured contracts worth tens of millions of dollars for those who paid him off. Prosecutors did not identify the defense contractors.\nCunningham was charged in a case that grew out of an investigation into the sale of his home to a defense contractor at an inflated price.\nThe congressman had already announced in July -- after the investigation became public -- that he would not seek re-election next year. But until he entered his plea, he had insisted he had done nothing wrong.\nCunningham's plea came amid a series of GOP scandals: Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas had to step down as majority leader after he was indicted in a campaign finance case; a stock sale by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is being looked at by regulators; and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was indicted in the CIA leak case.\nCunningham, a swaggering former flying ace with the Navy during the Vietnam War, was known on Capitol Hill for his interest in defense issues and his occasional outbursts.\nIn court documents, prosecutors said Cunningham admitted receiving at least $2.4 million in bribes paid in a variety of forms, including checks totaling over $1 million, cash, antiques, rugs, furniture, yacht club fees and vacations.\nAmong other things, prosecutors said, Cunningham was given $1.025 million to pay down the mortgage on his Rancho Santa Fe mansion, $13,500 to buy a Rolls-Royce and $2,081 for his daughter's graduation party at a Washington hotel.\n"He did the worst thing an elected official can do -- he enriched himself through his position and violated the trust of those who put him there," U.S. Attorney Carol Lam said.\nCunningham was allowed to remain free while he awaits sentencing. He also agreed to forfeit his mansion, more than $1.8 million in cash, and antiques and rugs.\nThe case began when authorities started investigating Cunningham's sale of his Del Mar house to defense contractor Mitchell Wade for $1,675,000. Wade sold the house nearly a year later for $975,000 -- a loss of $700,000 in a hot real estate market.\nProsecutors did not specify if the house purchase was part of Cunningham's guilty pleas.\nIn addition to buying Cunningham's home at an inflated price, Wade let him live rent-free on the congressman's yacht, the Duke Stir, at a yacht club. Wade's company, MZM Inc., also donated generously to Cunningham's campaigns.\nAround the same time, MZM was winning defense contracts.
(11/18/05 3:44pm)
SAN DIEGO -- The high-top sneakers cost $215 at a San Diego boutique, but the designer is giving them away to migrants before they cross to this side of the U.S.-Mexico border.\nThese are no ordinary shoes.\nA compass and flashlight dangle from one shoelace. The pocket in the tongue is for money or pain relievers. A rough map of the border region is printed on a removable insole.\nThey are red, white and green, the colors of the Mexican flag. On the back ankle, a drawing of Mexico's patron saint of migrants.\nThis side of the border, the shoes sit in art collections or the closets of well-heeled sneaker connoisseurs. On the other side, in Tijuana, it's a utilitarian affair: Immigrants-to-be are happy to have the sturdy, lightweight shoes for the hike -- or dash -- into the United States.\nTheir designer is Judi Werthein, an Argentine artist who moved to New York in 1997 -- legally, she notes.\nOne recent evening in Tijuana, after giving away 50 pairs of shoes at a migrant shelter, Werthein waved the insole and pointed to Interstate 8, the main road between San Diego and Phoenix.\n"This blue line is where you want to go," Werthein, 38, said in Spanish.\n"Good luck! You're all very courageous," she told the cheering crowd of about 50 men huddled in a recreation room after dinner.\n"God bless you!" several cried back.\nWerthein has concluded that shoes are a border crosser's most important garment.\n"The main problem that people have when they're crossing is their feet," Werthein said. "If people are going to cross anyway, at least this will make it safer."\nOnly 1,000 pairs of the "Brinco" sneakers (it means "jump" in Spanish) have been made in China for $17 each. The shoes were introduced in August at inSite, an art exhibition in San Diego and Tijuana whose sponsors include nonprofit foundations and private collectors.\nBenefactors put up $40,000 for the project; Werthein gets a $5,000 stipend, plus expenses.\nSome say Werthein is encouraging illegal immigration -- but she rejects the criticism, saying people will cross with or without her shoes.\nEloisa Haudenschild, who displays a pair of the sneakers at her resplendent San Diego home, said the shoes portray an uncomfortable reality about the perils of crossing the border.\n"It's a reality that we don't like to look at," she said. "That's what an artist points out."\nAcross the border, several curious migrants waiting for sunset along a cement river basin approached Werthein as she took white shoe boxes out of a sport utility vehicle. One man already wore a dirty pair of Brincos. Another, Felipe de Jesus Olivar Canto, slipped into a size 11 and said he would use them instead of his black leather shoes.\n"These are much more comfortable for hiking," said Olivar Canto. He said he was heading for $6.75-an-hour work installing doors and windows in Santa Ana, about 90 miles north of border. "The ones I have are more dressy."\nFrom there, Werthein went to Casa del Migrante, a Tijuana shelter that will receive a share of the proceeds from Brincos sold in the United States.\n"Does it have a sensor to alert us to the Border Patrol?" joked Javier Lopez, 33, who said he had a $10-an-hour job hanging drywall waiting for him in Denver.\nSpending two years researching the best design, Werthein interviewed shoe designers, migrants, aid workers and even an immigrant smuggler. She joined the Mexican government's Grupo Beta migrant-aid society on long border hikes. She heard from a Salvadoran woman in Tijuana who said she was kidnapped and raped by her smuggler.\nBased upon those interviews, she added a pocket -- migrants told her they were often robbed. She also added the flashlight -- many cross at night.\nSome get lost -- hence, the compass and map.\n"If you get lost," she told the men at the shelter, "just go north."\nIn downtown San Deigo, a boutique called Blends displays the shoes on a black pedestal. Werthein says Blends and Printed Matter, a store in Manhattan, have sold about 350 pair.\n"I wouldn't wear them and I wouldn't want my husband to wear them," said Blends browser Antonieta LaRussa, 28. "But the cause is awesome. There's so much opposition to immigration. She's looking at it from the other side of the fence and asking why"