La Familia

Marking a gruesome new setback in the war on drug gangs, Mexican authorities said Tuesday that 12 people found tortured and fatally shot in the western state of Michoacan a night earlier were federal police officers. Officials said the slayings were the work of La Familia, a Michoacan-based trafficking group that has carried out at least 10 attacks against federal police in the state since Saturday, when authorities captured an alleged leader of the group.

Authorities were interrogating a suspected ringleader of the drug cartel La Familia on Sunday after the crime syndicate launched a series of coordinated commando attacks against federal police and Mexican soldiers over the weekend that left five dead and a dozen wounded. The ambushes Saturday in eight cities across the western state of Michoacan were carried out with disciplined force by small units of La Familia cartel gunmen with military-grade assault rifles and grenades.

There are few places in Mexico that better illustrate the way traffickers have corrupted the political system from its very foundation than Michoacan, the home state of President Felipe Calderon. A relatively new and particularly violent group, La Familia Michoacana, is undermining the electoral system and day-to-day governance of this south-central state, pushing an agenda that goes beyond the usual money-only interests of drug cartels.

Mexican security forces swept into President Felipe Calderon's home state of Michoacan on Tuesday and arrested a total of 27 mayors and other government officials, the largest operation to target politicians in Mexico's bloody drug war. The officials, including 10 mayors, are being investigated for alleged ties to drug traffickers and other organized crime syndicates that in effect control large sections of Michoacan, the federal attorney general's office said. Michoacan Gov.

Eleven people were found shot to death around Mexico, some bearing signs of torture and left with threats emblematic of drug violence. Four of the victims were found in a car in the western city of Apatzingan, along with a message threatening the Zetas, hit men for the Gulf cartel. The message was signed La Familia, a drug gang battling for territory in Michoacan state. Four bodies were found in the southern Pacific coast state of Guerrero, including two men in the trunk of a car in the resort of Zihuatanejo.

Three men were being held as possible suspects in the fatal grenade attack this week on an Independence Day celebration in the western state of Michoacan, authorities said Thursday. Two were detained in northern Zacatecas state late Wednesday after being hospitalized with injuries from a car crash. The third, who had been in the same crash but was released from the hospital, was arrested Thursday afternoon in Zacatecas.

Questions about the future are percolating at F. Gavina & Sons Inc., a family-run coffee company in Vernon. The same is true at Pasadena-based Liborio Markets, which is run by two generations of the Alejo clan: Enrique and his sons, John and Rick. Like hundreds of other businesses across Southern California, these so-called ethnic family companies are thriving. Gavina, for example, has just moved into a new headquarters and roasting plant, bringing seven operations together in one building.

Maybe Jay-Z should have waited a little longer to release his new album. Only 10 months after issuing his fourth collection, the Brooklyn rapper returns with an album that lacks the punch usually associated with this supreme lyricist. While his last two albums included spectacular singles, "The Dynasty" is essentially a collection of album cuts. The strongest work comes when Jay-Z and his colleagues explore the heartbreak accompanying damaged or broken relationships.