His rescue from kidnappers wins praise for Mexico’s federal police
Just freed in a daring police raid after two months in the hands of kidnappers, Ruben Omar Romano said Thursday he can’t wait to get back to work as the coach of one of Mexico’s most popular soccer teams.
“I feel a bit weak, and I still can’t believe I’m out of captivity,” said a smiling Romano, the Argentine coach of Cruz Azul, at a news conference the morning after his rescue.
“But I’m happy to see my family, and I’ve got the strength to go on fighting and be back with the team as quickly as possible.”
On Wednesday evening, officers from the Federal Agency of Investigation, or AFI — Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI — liberated Romano, 47, from a cinderblock house in a working-class Mexico City neighborhood where he had been held blindfolded for 64 days.
Authorities arrested seven men and women in the house without firing a shot, AFI Chief Genaro Garcia Luna said at the news conference.
More: chron.com
Mexico police score rare win in soccer coach rescue
Berated for endemic corruption and their failure to defeat drug cartels, Mexico's police basked in a rare victory against organized crime on Thursday after the bloodless rescue of a kidnapped soccer coach.
Federal agents sprung Ruben Omar Romano, the Argentine coach of leading team Cruz Azul, from captivity in a house in the crime-ridden neighborhood of Iztapalapa on Wednesday night, without a shot being fired. Seven people were arrested.
Romano, who was being held for a $5 million ransom that was never paid, spent two months blindfolded in the house after being seized
MEXICO CITY – Federal agents have rescued an American woman kidnapped in Texas and held in northern Mexico, the Attorney General's office said Friday.
Police arrested the woman's captor, Simon Andres Garcia, during the rescue operation late Thursday in the parking lot of a Church's Chicken in Monclova, officials said in a statement. Garcia's nationality was unclear.
The woman, who was in a car with Garcia at the time of the arrest, was able to get the attention of federal authorities, the statement said. She told them she was kidnapped on Aug. 16 in San Antonio, Texas.
Source: Signonsandeigo.com
GE Unit Wins Contract From Mexico Utility
GE Energy said Thursday it was awarded a contract by Mexico's state-owned electric utility to expand output capacity at the country's only nuclear power plant.
In a news release, the unit of General Electric Co. said the contract from the Federal Electricity Commission, or CFE, is to initially provide safety and licensing evaluations for plans to increase output by 20 percent at the Laguna Verde plant in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.
Soure: news.moneycentral.msn.com
Mexico: Plainclothes police gunned down
Four plainclothes police officers were shot and killed in the notoriously violent border town Nuevo Laredo by unknown gunmen, El Universal reported Friday.
The officers -- members of the intelligence branch of the Mexican Federal Preventative Police -- had their vehicle sprayed with gunfire, said witnesses.
Nuevo Laredo, along the U.S. border, is a known crossroads for drug smuggling from Mexico into the United States and has been the scene of several police killings in recent months.
More: news.monstersandcritics.com
The government has assigned bodyguards to at least seven federal judges and magistrates after death threats were made against them in recent weeks, an official who oversees the federal judiciary said Wednesday.
Some analysts said the announcement, which comes after high-profile killings of police officers and prison workers, shows that Mexican drug gangs are launching an all-out assault on the government and civil servants, as they did in Colombia.
Elvia Diaz de Leon, head of the Federal Judicial Council, said the judges under threat are overseeing cases involving drug gangs.
"Today we have seven or eight cases of threats against circuit judges and
Thalia's sister aids Mexico cops
A man arrested here Thursday told officials he helped abduct pop singer Thalia Sodi's sisters in 2002, federal authorities said.
The man was among people arrested at a house in Mexico City where two hostages were rescued.
Officials were investigating the claims, and one of Sodi's sisters, actress Laura Zapata, was working with police. Zapata was taken to the house and later said she was sure it was the place she'd been held, but she could not identify the kidnappers.
Zapata and her sister Ernestina Sodi, a writer, were abducted as they left a play Zapata appeared in
Cruz Azul's Technical Director Abducted in Mexico
Omar Romano, the technical director of the Mexican football team Cruz Azul has been abducted by a well organized group of kidnappers.
According to the police, armed people in a car kidnapped the 47-year-old Argentinean technical director Thursday. The incident took place near a training field in Mexico City, renowned for its worst abduction statistics in the world. Investigations are underway it was reported.
More: zaman.com
Mexican troops joined police and civil defense workers in the rescue effort in Aguililla, roughly 410 kilometers (245 miles) southwest of Mexico City.
Local news media reported at least one person had died. Mary Cortez of the Michoacan state civil defense agency said no confirmed deaths had been reported to the state headquarters, but she said people were missing and 200 houses were damaged.
About 10,000 people live in the town of Aguililla, the county seat of an area that has strong family ties, due to emigration, to Redwood City, California.
The flooding came a day after President Vicente Fox toured parts of
Kidnap fear stalks Mexico as soccer coach snatched
Heavily armed kidnappers snatched the Argentine coach of one of Mexico's biggest soccer teams in broad daylight, a brash crime that put fresh pressure on authorities to contain growing violent crime.
Police admitted on Wednesday they had few clues about who abducted Ruben Omar Romano, trainer of first division Cruz Azul, by blocking a road and grabbing him from his car Tuesday after a training session in the south of Mexico City.
"Whoever did this kidnapping is a perfectly well organized group that had enough vehicles and armed elements to carry out an exact
Mexico to Let Police Pursue Drug Smugglers
Mexico changed its constitution on Monday to allow state and local police to pursue drug traffickers, removing a major stumbling block in anti-drug efforts that had long been the exclusive realm of federal officers.
The measure is part of a package of bills that includes the possibility of using millions of dollars in seized drug money to fund rewards for the capture of traffickers; the blocking of cell phone calls from inside prisons and the registration of bulletproof cars frequently used by drug traffickers.
``We are multiplying our power in an extraordinary way,'' Eduardo
