Cartel

Local and federal authorities moved Thursday to break up an alleged drug trafficking ring connecting a major Mexican cartel to San Gabriel Valley street gangs and arrested 17 people in a pre-dawn sweep. A federal indictment unsealed Thursday charges 27 people with making, possessing and dealing methamphetamine imported by La Familia Michoacana, one of Mexico's most violent cartels, to two Pomona gangs: Los Amables and Westside Pomona Malditos. Thursday's crackdown is the culmination of Operation Crystal Light, a 16-month investigation by the San Gabriel Valley Safe Streets Gang Task Force.

MEXICO CITY - With rare speed, authorities in the violence-plagued coastal state of Veracruz say they have solved the killings of five journalists and news media workers, pinning the slayings on two notorious drug cartels. But press freedom advocates Thursday questioned what they considered a too facile resolution of one of the most alarming strings of journalism attacks in a country where such bloodshed has become all too familiar. "The government of Veracruz is trying to shelve its worst-ever crisis of violence against the press," the advocacy group Article 19 said in a statement.

MEXICO CITY - The nearly simultaneous attacks on the offices of the two newspapers were disturbingly similar: Gunmen armed with automatic rifles and grenade launchers opened fire, shattering glass and terrifying those inside. But the responses by the two news outlets that came under siege, leaving staffers shaken but unhurt, have been markedly different. El Mañana newspaper in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, the northeastern region's dominant daily, announced in an editorial a day later that it would no longer report on "violent disputes," an allusion to the battle between rival drug-trafficking networks fighting over a vast network of criminal activities.

SAN LUIS, Ariz. - The powerful Sinaloa drug cartel is believed to be behind one of the most sophisticated and well-engineered smuggling tunnels ever found along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to U.S. drug enforcement officials who announced the discovery Thursday in Yuma. The “fully operational” tunnel is a 755-foot passageway, tall enough for a 6-foot person to walk through, that burrows under the border fence, a park and a water canal. It connects a small, nondescript warehouse on the U.S. side to an inoperative ice manufacturing plant behind a strip club in Mexico.

"Ballplayer: Pelotero" is not your usual sports film, no sentimental excursion into "the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. " Not even close. And though it examines the lives of two teenage boys from the Dominican Republic who are hoping to collect significant signing bonuses and play professional baseball, thinking of this as only an up-close and personal documentary is limiting as well. Rather, as directed by Ross Finkel, Trevor Martin and Jon Paley, "Ballplayer" is a damning film with a political edge.

"Savages," based on the novel by Don Winslow, tells the story of two Laguna Beach marijuana dealers (Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Johnson) and their shared girlfriend (Blake Lively) tangling with a ruthless Mexican drug cartel. While the material would seem a natural fit for director Oliver Stone, who has never shied away from violence or politics in his work, reviews of the film have been decidedly mixed. What some critics see as a darkly entertaining pulp tale, others find muddled and excessively brutal.

SAN DIEGO - The young woman invited the wealthy businessman over for drinks. He arrived holding flowers and a bottle of Remy Martin cognac. She smiled. Her flirting seemed to promise more than cocktails. The businessman, Eduardo Gonzalez Tostado, also brought condoms. But when he walked through the door of the two-story home in Chula Vista, Gonzalez said, he got the surprise of his life. Several heavily armed men in ski masks jumped him, raining blows until he passed out. When he awoke, he could hear them celebrating his capture.

"It's that kind of a story where things got so out of control," says O, the narrator of"Savages. "She's talking about the plot, but she might be talking about the filmmaking as well. Adapted from the bestselling Don Winslow novel, "Savages" has a lot going for it, including a pip of a story, a propulsive narrative drive and the über-cool blacker-than-night attitude and language of author Winslow, who told one interviewer, "I don't know that I'd want to visit my brain except with a gun and a flashlight.

Oliver Stone's new movie "Savages," based on the Don Winslow novel of the same name, centers on marijuana trafficking and the bloody fights it inspires. But the filmmaker believes it isn't a classic crime tale like his 1994 picture "Natural Born Killers" or 1983's "Scarface," whose remake Stone wrote for director Brian De Palma. Nor, Stone says, is it a drug tale akin to 1978's "Midnight Express," which he wrote for filmmaker Alan Parker. "There are so many drug movies, so many gangster movies," said Stone.

In Mexico, the media called her la bonita ("the pretty one") or la chula ( "the beautiful one") or la reina del crimen ("the queen of Mexican crime"). Mexican authorities have long alleged that Anel Violeta Noriega Rios, 27, was a top operative in the La Familia drug cartel working out of the United States. They said that she helped smuggle drugs from Mexico into the United States, once using a gardening company to move drugs brought by sea into Long Beach. But when authorities arrested Noriega Rios at a modest El Monte apartment last week on immigration charges, there were no indications the woman had a 5-million peso reward on her head.