TEXAS Highway Patrol (GUN BOATS) TO Fight (Drug CARTEL)

AUSTIN (KXAN) - The Texas Department of Public Safety is unveiling a powerful new tool to fight drug dealers and human smugglers.

A new fleet of patrol boats is poised to join the battle along the Rio Grande and international lakes.

"This is what you call the bad boat. And indeed it is," said Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

McCraw and other DPS officials were on hand at Decker Lake in east Travis County on Thursday to show off the first of six “shallow water interceptors”. Each vessel costs approximately $580,000 fully equipped. The funding comes from the Texas Legislature and federal grants.

The 34-foot long boats feature armored glass and armored hulls, along with 900-horsepower engines. The vessels sport 4 machine gun turrets and state of the art night vision cameras.

"It is fully capable of taking whatever threats they'll encounter. And there will be a full spectrum of threats, because we will be using this as an interdiction tool. The cartels continue to exploit, move ton quantities of drugs or humans across that river and those waterways. We need to be able to interdict those," said McCraw.

AMERICAN photojournalist (MISSING) MEXICO (Covering CARTEL STORY)

A 30-year-old American photojournalist has become the latest reporter to go missing while covering Mexico's drug war, after he left his hotel room in the violent drug cartel stronghold of Nuevo Laredo to take pictures of a shooting and never returned.

The Mexican newspaper where Zane Alejandro Plemmons Rosales had been working disclosed Friday that the San Antonio resident had gone missing in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, the headquarters of the Zetas drug cartel, on the night of May 21. "[He] found himself at his hotel and, upon hearing gunshots, left for the street in order to cover the news," said the Mazatlan-based paper, El Debate. "Since then his whereabouts are unknown."
Plemmons' sister, Lizanne Sanchez, told a San Antonio television station that when she contacted his hotel, she was told that two masked, armed men had entered the hotel at 3 a.m., demanded his room keys from the receptionist, and removed all of this belongings. Sanchez said his bank accounts have not been touched.
Mexico is the most dangerous country in the Americas for the press, according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. "Since 2000, 80 journalists have been killed in Mexico -- eight so far this year -- and 17 journalists remain missing," said Summer Harlow of the Knight Center.

UTAH West Jordan (Police search for KILLER) Victim 6 yr old girl

Sierra Lynn Newbold. Family photo.

There are no leads as of yet in the death of 6-year-old Sierra Lynn Newbold, whose body was discovered Tuesday morning in a West Jordan, Utah, canal. She was found a half hour after being reported missing. West Jordan Police Chief Doug Dia­mond said that when Sierra’s mother called to report her missing, her husband had already left for work, and the family’s two other children were still home.
Sierra’s death has been ruled a homicide, and an autopsy revealed evidence that she was sexually assaulted. In order to protect the investigation, police are not releasing many facts of the case, including how long Sierra was dead before she was found. Also not released are the images recorded by a surveillance camera outside the Newbold house. The Newbold family has been cooperating throughout the investigation, police say.
During a press conference, Diamond said that there is no reason to panic but that ”there’s obviously a predator out there. Unfortunately, we have people out there who are monsters.” He advised families to lock their doors and watch children who are outside.
Makeshift memorials have been erected in Sierra’s neighborhood and at the school she was due to start attending in September.

Chippewa Tribe ( FORMER CHIEF'S 4 yr old son found ) Missing boy

MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. (AP) — The body of a 4-year-old boy missing for a week was found buried Thursday at his home, a family spokesman said.

Carnel Chamberlain's body was found under a wood porch or deck at the home on the reservation of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, 70 miles north of Lansing, Kevin Chamberlain said.

Chamberlain, the tribe's former chief, said he had no details about what led investigators back to the house after many days of searching woods, ponds and the tribe's wastewater treatment areas.

The body "had to be in a grave. We had looked underneath before and didn't see anything," he said.

Carnel disappeared June 21 while in the care of his mother's boyfriend.

"There's a lot of anger, just utter despair and disbelief. I don't know how else to define it," said Chamberlain, who is a cousin of Carnel's mother, Jaimee Chamberlain. "After a long week of searching and hoping, we're at a horrific, bitter end."

Tribal police referred calls to the FBI, which declined to comment on the investigation. Any charges in the case would be handled by federal authorities, who have jurisdiction over major crimes on Indian reservations.

Police have said Jaimee Chamberlain's boyfriend was not very cooperative during the weeklong search and has consulted a lawyer.

DRUG CARTELS (Taunting each other ) ON LINE PHOTO'S of VICTIMS

In the latest example of Mexico's warring drug cartels taunting each other with gruesome on-line videos, footage posted on a popular cartel-tracking blog shows members of the Gulf cartel interrogating and then beheading at least three members of the Zetas cartel.

The grainy three-minute video, which appeared on Mundonarco.com Wednesday, depicts five shirtless men on their knees, their chests painted with large black "Z"s, surrounded by masked members of the Gulf cartel wielding machetes.

Each Zeta prisoner states his name for the camera, at the prompting of an unidentified voice behind the camera. When asked who sent them, each responds "Z-40." "40," as he is known within the Zetas organization, is Miguel Angel Treviño Morales -- the cartel's second-in-command. The U.S. has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the capture of "40," and he and his two brothers are also under federal indictment in Texas for alleged laundering of cocaine profits through a U.S. horseracing venture.

DRUG CARTEL (SHOOT at MAN) Tell Him Not to RUN FOR MAYOR

EMILIANO ZAPATA, Mexico (AP) — Before the sun climbed above the hills around this central Mexican town, Saul Garcia and his family awoke to the sound of bullets piercing the front gate. A masked motorcyclist had opened fire on their brick home, leaving behind a poster signed by the La Familia drug cartel, warning the mayoral candidate to withdraw from the race or the gang would kill him, his wife and three children.

Garcia, a candidate for the local Social Democratic Party, didn't pull out. A state police officer now follows Garcia 24 hours a day while he courts voters on the steep and narrow streets of Emiliano Zapata, a suburb of Cuernavaca in the state of Morelos.

As Mexicans head to the ballot box Sunday, drug cartels are registering their votes with scare tactics and cold, hard cash to make sure whoever is elected doesn't interfere with their lucrative operations. The focus is usually on local politics, where officials and their police departments can cause problems, or smooth the way, for gangs moving drugs or shaking down businesses. It's also easier to influence a local race than an extensive, well-financed national election in the glare of media coverage.

U.S DRONE ATTACKS ( Collateral Damage) DEBATE over HUMAN Life

The recent U.S. drone strike that killed al-Qaida's No. 2 leader in Pakistan was by any measure a step forward in the war on terrorism.
The attack also fueled the debate over the morality and effectiveness of remote-control warfare.
Pakistan registered its disapproval; and the ACLU renewed its argument that drone attacks create more enemies than they kill. What's missing from those arguments is a viable alternative.
Strikes from combat aircraft? No. Just last week, a NATO air attack in Afghanistan killed 18 civilians at a wedding. Drones are more precise. Commando operations? Vastly more difficult, more dangerous and less likely to succeed. Doing nothing? Not an option, given al-Qaida's continuing plots to attack the U.S.

That leaves drones, which have been a remarkably effective way to hunt down terrorist leaders and keep others cowering.
»Civilian casualties. Strikes aimed at terrorists but also kill non-combatants are enormously damaging to the United States. They turn local populations against the U.S. and pressure governments to stop cooperating with U.S. forces.
Accurate counts of civilian casualties are virtually impossible to get, but the U.S. appears to be making progress toward reducing what's euphemistically called collateral damage. The New America Foundation estimates that civilian deaths have fallen from half of all drone deaths in 2008 to fewer than 10 percent last year, a total of somewhere between 16 and 36 people.