NightBlogger

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Export-quality tomatoes labeled «Ready to Eat» in English flooded Mexico City markets on Thursday after a salmonella scare in the U.S. stopped them from crossing the border.
There is no proof that Mexico provided the contaminated tomatoes that caused the alarm. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is still hunting for the source of the outbreak that has sickened at least 167 people in 17 U.S. states since mid-April.

The FDA has cleared imports from at least six countries but not Mexico, which sends 80 percent of its tomato exports to the United States. Florida tomatoes are also under suspicion. But some U.S. consumers already associate the outbreak with Mexican produce, and exports from Baja California came to a halt this week. Read More

STEWART M. POWELL
Houston Chronicle
As many as 200 U.S.-trained Mexican security personnel have defected to drug cartels to carry out killings on both sides of the border and as far north as Dallas, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, told Congress on Wednesday.

The renegade members of Mexico’s elite counter-narcotics teams trained at Fort Benning, Ga., have switched sides, contributing to a wave of violence that has claimed some 6,000 victims over the past 30 months, including prominent law enforcement leaders, the Houston-area Republican told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Read more

Photo Omar

The Washington Times
Three Mexican police chiefs have requested political asylum in the U.S. as violence escalates in the Mexican drug wars and spills across the U.S. border, a top Homeland Security official told the Associated Press. In the past few months, the police officials have shown up at the U.S. border, fearing for their lives, said Jayson P. Ahern, the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection.

In the most recent high-level assassination, a top-ranking official on a local Mexican police force was shot more than 50 times. Drug-related violence killed more than 2,500 people last year in Mexico. “I don’t think that generally the American public has any sense of the level of violence that occurs on the border.” Read more