Venezuelan authorities seized 20 tons of liquid cocaine aboard a ship headed for Mexico.

The high mortality rate in Mexico’s drug war has seen women progress quickly in the shadowy underworld of the cartels and they are increasingly taking on key management roles, a new book says.

Two Mexican generals, one of them a former deputy defense minister, have been arrested on suspicion of links to organized crime, in a scandal that could develop into the highest-level case of military corruption under the administration of President Felipe Calderon.

More than 100 journalists and supporters gathered Friday — the day after three photographers were found murdered in the eastern port city of Veracruz — to call for more protections for journalists covering Mexico’s complex and deadly drug war.

A reporter for a muckraking newsweekly magazine in Mexico was found dead in her home Saturday, apparently beaten and strangled, authorities said.

The leader of a Mexican drug cartel has been sentenced to more than 22 years in prison by a federal judge in Colorado, who said the kingpin's criminal enterprise sold US$1 billion worth of cocaine in eight US states.

Law enforcement sources in the United States claim that recent intelligence reports are providing evidence that a formal alliance exists between the Salvadorian-based Mara Salvatrucha — better known in the U.S. as MS-13 — and the equally dangerous and bloodthirsty Los Zetas, the most feared criminal organization in Mexico.

One of the founding members of Los Zetas, a ruthless Mexican drug cartel that began as a group of army deserters hired by a drug lord, has been sentenced to 35 years in prison, the federal attorney general's office said.

Mexican drug cartels paid $4.5 million in bribes to buy protection and political favors in a state run by the country's main opposition party, U.S. court documents said on Friday, as the party leads polls to win the presidency in July.

The Mexican economy is "hemorrhaging" billions of dollars annually because of money laundering, tax evasion and other forms of corruption, a new study has found.