Mexican Drug Smugglers' New Export Method - Catapults

Behold - the marijuana catapult.

Mexican soldiers on Wednesday seized a large drug catapult that smugglers were using to launch packages of pot into a remote area of Arizona.

U.S. National Guard troops at the Naco Border Patrol station about 80 miles southeast of Tucson tipped off the Mexican Army after a surveillance camera spotted several traffickers hurling bundles of weed over the border last Friday night.

The soldiers found the launcher about 20 yards from the border on a flatbed platform towed by an SUV, according to The Associated Press.

Sounds like the drug smugglers have been paying attention to the Punkin' Chunkin' contests in Delaware.

Mexican Corruption Complicates Drug War

While Mexican authorities would love to pin the violent drug war on an eager and large base of American drug users, those same Mexican authorities need to take a fast and hard look at the rampant corruption within Mexican institutions including the prison system.

After all, it wasn't American guns or American drug users that led prison guards to release and arm drug thugs to go on a murderous rampage that left 17 people dead.

Those drug thugs were already incarcerated until the prison guards and officials released them and armed them.

Guards and officials at a prison in northern Mexico allegedly let inmates out, lent them guns and allowed them to use official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings, including the massacre of 17 people last week, prosecutors said Sunday.

After carrying out the killings the inmates would return to their cells, the Attorney General's Office said in a revelation that was shocking even for a country wearied by years of drug violence and corruption.

"According to witnesses, the inmates were allowed to leave with authorization of the prison director ... to carry out instructions for revenge attacks using official vehicles and using guards' weapons for executions," office spokesman Ricardo Najera said at a news conference.

The director of the prison in Gomez Palacio in Durango state and three other officials were placed under a form of house arrest pending further investigation. No charges have yet been filed.

Prosecutors said the prison-based hit squad is suspected in three mass shootings, including the July 18 attack on a party in the city of Torreon, which is near Gomez Palacio. In that incident, gunmen fired indiscriminately into a crowd of mainly young people in a rented hall, killing 17 people, including women.

Police found more than 120 bullet casings at the scene, and Najera said tests matched those casings to four assault rifles assigned to guards at the prison.

Mexico incarcerates less than 2% of the criminals it arrests, and even then this news is troublesome in that the revolving door justice is not only working, but there are elements in the prison system that are actively aiding and abetting further criminal activities.

Car Bomb Signals Deadly Intensification of Mexican Drug War

The long simmering drug war in Mexico along the Mexico-US border intensified yesterday as a car bomb detonated in a trap for Mexican police.

A drug cartel has used a car bomb for the first time in Mexico's decades-long fight against traffickers, setting a deadly trap against federal police in a city across the border from Texas, the mayor of Ciudad Juarez said Friday.

Mayor Jose Reyes said federal police have confirmed to him that a car bomb was used in the attack that killed three people Thursday.

It was the first time a drug cartel has used a bomb to attack Mexican security forces, marking an escalation in a raging drug war that already is extremely deadly: On Friday alone, a dozen people were killed and 21 wounded in a series of gun battles between soldiers and cartel gunmen in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, the federal Interior Department said.

Mexico is in the throes of an actual war where the drug cartels are outgunning and outmanning the federal authorities. With the use of the car bomb, it's yet another tactic that the Mexican authorities have to worry about and defend against.

Good News On Swine Flu Outbreak Despite Biden Gaffes

Vice President Joe Biden is warning that people should avoid taking subways, trains, and planes. It's easy to tell everyone to get to work on their own when they don't have a personal chauffeur, which in Biden's case is the United States Secret Service. For everyone else, you're on your own.

Of course, Biden shows his utter ignorance on health issues, which shouldn't be all that unexpected. It also runs contrary to what President Obama and various US health officials have said. There are so many people out there talking about the swine flu that don't have the slightest bit of understanding or knowledge - or worse, know just a little bit and then make dangerous leaps in logic to conclude as Biden has, that people should avoid taking subways and planes.

Of course, the Vice President's staff was quick (but not quick enough) to issue a clarification.

The advice he is giving family members is the same advice the administration is giving to all Americans: that they should avoid unnecessary air travel to and from Mexico.

If they are sick, they should avoid airplanes and other confined public spaces, such as subways. This is the advice the Vice President has given family members who are traveling by commercial airline this week. As the President said just last night, every American should take the same steps you would take to prevent any other flu: keep your hands washed; cover your mouth when you cough; stay home from work if you’re sick; and keep your children home from school if they’re sick.”

Not to minimize the potential hazards associated with the swine flu, but why aren't people more concerned with the garden variety flu that kills 36,000 Americans every single year while sickening anywhere from 5-20% of the nation?

Those figures are from the Centers for Disease Control, which is part of the US government. You'd think that Biden would know that information, or one of his staffers was briefed on the situation.

In fact, you'd think that Biden would have been briefed that scientists think that the swine flu as it is currently configured is a relatively mild strain of flu.

As the World Health Organization raised its infectious disease alert level Wednesday and health officials confirmed the first death linked to swine flu inside U.S. borders, scientists studying the virus are coming to the consensus that this hybrid strain of influenza -- at least in its current form -- isn't shaping up to be as fatal as the strains that caused some previous pandemics.

In fact, the current outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which emerged in San Diego and southern Mexico late last month, may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare.

Thus far, we've got a handful of swine flu cases relatively speaking with the overwhelming number of cases in New York City as a result of a school trip to Cancun, Mexico. There was one fatality, which was a Mexican toddler who was in the US with her family and apparently seeking care here.

Taken together, that's good news. It also reinforces the point I have been making for the last few days about how getting the flu vaccine may do more to prevent deaths or complications from the annual flu. The hysterics in the media about the swine flu may bring attention to that form, but it's the regular flu that still does the damage around the world annually.

The same precautions apply to all kinds of flu - good hygiene is a plus, and staying home when you're sick so as not to infect anyone else helps limit the spread.

Thus far, this version of the flu doesn't appear to have a higher mortality rate in the US than other flus (Mexico's health care system isn't exactly looking all that impressive if you go by the claims that 150+ have died of swine flu, but the WHO claims there are less than a dozen confirmed fatalities from the swine flu). The Mexican authorities are also doing more to limit public events to limit the spread, as they are at the epicenter of the outbreak. Google has updated and expanded its flu tracking services, to improve Mexico's ability to track the incidences.


It's good to keep this in perspective and to maintain a health respect for the potential harm that the swine flu can bring. Needless hysterics and blatherings from politicians who don't know when to keep their mouths shut only further obfuscate the facts and important information that people should take away from the health situation.

Swine Flu Update: WHO Raises Global Alert Level

Today, we learn that the US has seen the first fatality from the swine flu. It was apparently a 23-month-old Mexican girl who came to the US with her family on a trip. To keep this in perspective, the garden-variety flu that everyone seems to ignore kills 36,000 annually while sickening anywhere from 5 to 20% of the US population.

Swine flu has yet to approach those figures yet, but it bears watching. Caution is the name of the game. Thus far, nearly 2,500 cases were reported in Mexico, with 159 fatalities.

Confirmed U.S. cases, by state: 45 in New York, 11 in California, six in Texas, two in Kansas and one each in Indiana and Ohio, according to CDC and states.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration issues emergency guidance allowing certain antiviral drugs to be used in broader range of population if needed. Public health emergency declared and roughly 12 million doses of Tamiflu from federal stockpile to be delivered to states.

Cuba bans flights to and from Mexico; Argentina suspends flights from Mexico; U.S., European Union, other countries discourage nonessential travel there. Arriving travelers questioned at Mexico's U.S. border and world airports. Cruise lines avoid Mexico ports.

Mexico suspends all schools until May 6. In U.S., some schools closed in New York City, Texas, California, South Carolina, Connecticut and Ohio.

Egypt ordering the slaughtering of entire herds of pigs isn't likely to stop the spread of the disease, especially given that the disease is now being transmitted between people. It was only the initial incidences that included transmission between pigs and people.

France is hoping to get the EU to cancel all flights to Mexico. I think the time for such measures has passed as we're seeing cases pop up all over the world, including in Germany.

Meanwhile, President Obama is basically reinforcing what has already happened in the NYC metro area. He's said that schools where outbreaks have been reported should be shuttered. That's already happened with St. Francis Prep, and it may happen with a nearby school that has seen several cases.

The CDC and health departments across the country have protocols for dealing with communicable disease outbreaks like flu, and they should be followed. There's no reason to panic unnecessarily. While the Obama Administration will take the credit for the response to the outbreak (which still suffered problems from delays in obtaining information from Mexico over the growing epidemic there), once the CDC and other health organizations received that information, they were able to plan and prepare because of the groundwork laid by the Bush Administration, who spent billions preparing for this eventuality.

However, timely and accurate information should be passed on to the public.

What is thus far a most curious situation is that virtually all of the fatalities are in Mexico. That's a question epidemiologists will have to sort out. Is it a comparatively less comprehensive health care system? Access to health care? Or is the particular strain in Mexico more deadly than the version seen elsewhere? It could be a combination of factors.

UPDATE:
Two more schools have closed in Brooklyn:

Two more New York City schools will be shuttered after students came down with confirmed cases of swine flu, an official said Wednesday.

St. Brigid's School and Good Shepherd School, both in Brooklyn, each had at least one child sickened by the virus and will be closed for the rest of the week, a diocese official told the Daily News.

That brings the number of schools in the city closed as a swine flu precaution to four, putting already anxious parents further on edge.

I expect more closures in the NYC metro area as clusters break out in different parts of the city. It would be interesting to see the connections between the various schools and whether there's some common thread. That's likely to come much later. For now, health experts are trying to limit the spread, and the closures reduce the chances that the cases will spread beyond the immediate families of those already sickened.

UPDATE:
A WHO official says that only seven deaths can be attributed to swine flu, not the widely circulated 152. All the fatalities are in Mexico. They also say that there's been only 79 confirmed cases worldwide. Well, don't that beat all when you've got various agencies not talking to each other and getting information from different sources and using different measures to describe the situation.

Compare that with the US CDC, which notes that there are 94 confirmed cases in the United States.

UPDATE:
The WHO has raised the global alert level to 5 out of a possible 6.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan declared the phase 5 alert after consulting with flu experts from around the world. The decision could lead the global body to recommend additional measures to combat the outbreak, including for vaccine manufacturers to switch production from seasonal flu vaccines to a pandemic vaccine.

"All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans," Chan told reporters in Geneva. "It really is all of humanity that is under threat in a pandemic."

A phase 5 alert means there is sustained transmission among people in at least two countries. Once the virus shows effective transmission in two different regions of the world a full pandemic outbreak would be declared.

WHO has confirmed human cases of swine flu in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Britain, Israel, New Zealand and Spain. Mexico and the U.S. have reported deaths.

Swine Flu Cases Swell

New York City likely has hundreds of cases that have gone uncounted so far, according to NYC Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden. Several of those cases are at a public school not far from St. Francis Prep, which was closed to disinfect the facility after several dozen students came down with the illness after going on spring break in Cancun, Mexico.

Los Angeles suspects that swine flu may be responsible for two deaths there.

Seven countries are now confirmed as having swine flu.

Twenty fatalities have been confirmed in Mexico, and the number of deaths considered likely to have been caused by the flu rose to 152, up from 149 on Monday, according to Mexico’s health minister. The number of people believed to be infected surpassed 1,600.

In the United States, the number of infections stood at 50. Preliminary tests by health officials in New Jersey had identified five “probable” cases — four people who were recently in Mexico and one who had been in California, The Associated Press reported.

Other cases have been reported in Ohio, Kansas, Texas and California. Most of the cases were concentrated in New York, at a high school in Queens where a group of students had recently traveled to Mexico. At least 28 students at the school tested positive, and another 17 were suspected of having the flu, with testing under way. Investigators were also examining between 10 and 15 possible new cases in three counties in upstate New York, all involving people who had recently traveled to Mexico or the southwest United States.

“All of our cases continue to be mild, with spontaneous recovery,” said Richard F. Daines, the New York state health commissioner.In Mexico, state health authorities looking for the initial source of the outbreak toured a million-pig hog farm in Perote, in Veracruz State. The plant is half-owned by Smithfield Foods, an American company and the world’s largest pork producer.

Mexico’s first known swine flu case, which was later confirmed, was from Perote, according to Health Minister José Ángel Córdova. The case involved a 5-year-old boy who recovered.

The part in bold is important to keep in mind. While this is a public health emergency, it's important to keep perspective over the illness and that most of those who are getting sick at present are recovering on their own. The situation becomes far more problematic if the mortality rate increases or the number of cases swells exponentially.

Businesses are being affected all over the place, although the effects are nowhere near as bad as during the 1918 outbreak. Thus far, the worst hit areas economically are the businesses in and around Mexico, and the tourist industry is taking a hit as well. Carnival Cruises has canceled all Mexico port of calls until further notice.

Meanwhile, President Obama has called for another $1.5 billion to spend on swine flu prevention. Slate points out that Mexico's response isn't exactly impressive and the slow response may have allowed additional people to be exposed to the disease.

New influenza cases started appearing in Mexico City on March 18. The first death occurred April 12. But the government dragged its feet, hoping that this was an isolated case. As deaths mounted over the following days, the Calderón administration refused to take decisive action.

It wasn't until half a dozen cases were discovered in the United States that the Mexican authorities sent mucus samples to Canadian and U.S. laboratories for testing. The lab results immediately sent alarm throughout Mexico and the world. But almost a month had been lost.

A more fundamental cause of the late response is the terrible state of Mexico's public health system. Due to years of neglect by the government, the poorest patients normally need to wait for hours or even days to see a doctor. Medicines are scarce. The largest network of public hospitals recently won an "award" as the government agency with the most useless red tape.

A large percentage of the poorest Mexicans therefore do not even bother to go to the doctor when they feel sick. It is more effective to self-prescribe antibiotics or anti-virals, which are easily available over the counter at pharmacies. This leads to serious problems with early detection of new diseases. To make matters worse, Mexican labs do not have the profiling data needed to detect many new viruses.

These kinds of situations bring out the worst in politicians, and this is quite the doozy from Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), who doesn't quite get the science behind influenza or know her history well.

That's okay, because the stupidity is bipartisan.

Swine Flu Disconnect

The media continues churning out stories about swine flu and the hype appears to be outpacing what we know about the disease, let alone just how dangerous it is. You're still more likely to die of the regular flu than you are of the swine flu (36,000 fatalities in the US annually vs 81 in Mexico among 1,000+ reported cases). It seems every local station and news outlet in New York City has some expert on warning about just how dangerous swine flu might be and the precautions that one should take.

The precautions are all sensible, but one has to wonder why people don't take flu shots more seriously. The regular run of the mill flu hits millions of people annually (5-20% of the nation, depending on the severity of the season) and it kills roughly 36,000 people in the US every year. You'd think that those kinds of numbers would get people to take flu shots more seriously, but it hasn't.

Maybe the swine flu, which sounds pretty bad, will get people to take flu vaccination more seriously, but I doubt it.

What the swine flu outbreak has done is show that the US still needs to work on its national handling of such outbreaks. The Obama Administration still lacks a Health and Human Services Secretary along with several key posts at HHS. The Administration says that those empty posts aren't getting in the way of the response, but US health officials were in the dark about what was happening in Mexico for two weeks.

The delayed communication occurred as epidemiologists in Southern California were investigating milder cases of the illness that turned out to be caused by the same strain of swine flu as the one in Mexico.

In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the more recent emergence of H5N1 bird flu in Asia, national and local health authorities have done extensive planning for disease outbreaks that could lead to global epidemics, or pandemics. Open and frequent communication between countries and agencies has been a hallmark of that work.

Whether delayed communication among the countries has had a practical consequence is unknown. However, it seems that U.S. public health officials are still largely in the dark about what's happening in Mexico two weeks after the outbreak was recognized.

Asked at a news conference yesterday whether the number of swine flu cases found daily in Mexico is increasing -- a key determinant in understanding whether an epidemic is spreading -- Anne Schuchat, an interim deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, "I do not know the answer to those questions."

As of yesterday, U.S. officials had reported 11 domestic cases, none fatal. Last night, Mexican health officials reported more than 1,300 suspected cases and 81 deaths "probably linked to the virus."

We're learning that the first fatality in Mexico was a 39-year-old woman who died April 12 of severe viral pneumonia in San Luis Potosi, which is located in central Mexico. Epidemiologists then uncovered additional cases, including several fatalities, that involved unusual respiratory ailments.

UPDATE:
Europe has now issued warnings for travel to the US based on the swine flu outbreak and to postpone unnecessary travel to the US. The CDC says that the move was unwarranted.

Meanwhile, the US stock markets are dropping on concerns relating to the swine flu. Not surprisingly, drug stocks are up.

UPDATE:
The number of cases of swine flu in NYC has increased to 28, as a result of more cases diagnosed at St. Francis Prep School, where many students went to Cancun on spring break.

UPDATE:
Meanwhile, the suspected death toll in Mexico is now 149. Mexican officials have closed schools through May 6, which should help reduce the spread of the flu through direct contact in public places.

He says 1,995 have been hospitalized with serious cases of pneumonia since the first case of swine flu was reported on April 13. The government does not yet know how many were swine flu. Of those hospitalized, 1,070 have already been released.
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Cordova says school at all levels nationwide are suspended until May 6. Schools had already been suspended in Mexico City and five of Mexico's 32 states.

The school closer is part of the government's effort to stem the spread of a deadly strain of swine flu. Earlier Monday, the work week began with pleas to stay home if they have any symptoms of the virus believed to have sickened nearly 2,000.

Officials already canceled hundreds of public events. But as the number of suspected cases and deaths rose again — and millions returning to work — they looked to other measures to control the outbreak.

Labor Secretary Javier Lozano Alarcon said employers should isolate anyone showing up for work with fever, cough, sore throat or other signs of the flu.

Photos of the Day

 

 

It's a pelican briefly enjoying the sun before resuming the hunt for food on Cozumel, Mexico and an iguana basking in the glorious sun at the magnificent Mayan ruins of Tulum.

These are just the first few photos from our Caribbean cruise. More will be posted over coming weeks.

Mexico's War Against Drug Cartels Deadly Toll

The death toll from Mexico's ongoing war against drug cartels and corruption continues rising, and the deaths are becoming higher profile figures, including police chiefs and other leading officials.

So, how does the New York Times cover this? They think that the war shouldn't be fought. The title gives it away: Mexico’s War Against Drugs Kills Its Police.

Top security officials who were once thought untouchable have been gunned down in Mexico City, four in the last month alone. Drug dealers killed another seven federal agents this year in retaliation for drug busts in border towns. Others have died in shootouts.

Drug traffickers have killed at least 170 local police officers as well, among them at least a score of municipal police commanders, since Mr. Calderón took office. Some were believed to have been corrupt officers who had sold out to drug gangs and were killed by rival gangsters, investigators say. Others were killed for doing their jobs.

The president has vowed to stay the course, portraying the violence among gangs and attacks on the police as a sign of success rather than failure. The government has smashed the cartels, he says, forcing a war among the splinter groups. The killing of Commissioner Millán, he has said, was “a desperate act to weaken the federal police.”

“What it signifies is a strategy of some criminal organizations who seek to terrorize society and paralyze the government,” he said last week. “The question is, should we persevere and go forward or simply hide in our offices and duck our heads. No way is the Mexican government going to back down in such a fight.”

The violence between drug cartels that Mr. Calderón has sought to end has only worsened over the past year and a half. The death toll has jumped 47 percent to 1,378 this year, prosecutors say. All told, 4,125 people have been killed in drug violence since Mr. Calderón took office.

But the steady drumbeat of police killings has caused more shock here. On Wednesday, for instance, the second in command of the police in Morelos State and his driver were found dead in the trunk of a car. A placard on the bodies warned against joining the Sinaloa Cartel.

Several terrified local police chiefs have resigned, the most recent being Guillermo Prieto, the chief in Ciudad Juárez, who stepped down last week after his second in command was killed a few days earlier.

“It is not just happening in Ciudad Juárez,” Mayor José Reyes Ferriz, said at the funeral for the deputy commander, Juan Antonio Roman García. “It’s happening in Nuevo Laredo, in Tijuana, in this entire region. They are attacking top commanders to destabilize the police.”

One reason for the surge in violence is that Mr. Calderón and his public security minister, Genaro García Luna, have upset longstanding arrangements between the police and drug traffickers at every level of government, several experts on crime in Mexico said.

The official government of Mexico is trying to take down the drug cartels, and the Times instead thinks that the Mexican government is killing its police? The Calderon government wants accountability and wants to eliminate graft and corruption, which have been holding back development in Mexico for generations, and yet the idea of going after the drug cartels is an anathema to the Times, despite the carnage wrought on society worldwide as a result of drug trafficking.

This is yet another symptom of the warped worldview pervasive at the Times.

Drawing the Line

After dealing with hundreds of attacks by Mexican thugs across the US/Mexico border, US border control agents have finally had enough and begun to go after these thugs using tear gas.

The Border Patrol says its agents were attacked nearly 1,000 times during a one-year period along the Mexican border, typically by assailants hurling rocks, bottles and bricks. Now the agency is responding with tear gas and powerful, pepper-spray weapons, including firing into Mexico.

The counteroffensive has drawn complaints that innocent families are being caught in the crossfire.

"A neighbor shouted, 'Stop it! There are children living here," said Esther Arias Medina, 41, who on Wednesday fled her Tijuana, Mexico, shanty with her 3-week-old grandson after the infant began coughing from smoke that seeped through the walls.

That's gotten some Mexicans quite annoyed.

Sorry, but that's a tiny violin playing for them.

Some of these same Mexicans have no problem with the thugs using those people as cover for their illegal operations and illegal border crossings into the United States.

Jules Crittenden offers his take, and Michelle Malkin notes that Congress has again gutted the border fence funding. Nice. Combine that with the fact that Congress can't figure out how to provide enough personnel for issuing passports as per federal law, then you begin to scratch the surface of what a mess border control really is.

Felix The Cat Five Slams Central America

Hurricane Felix roared ashore this morning as a category five storm with winds in excess of 150 mph. It's a very dangerous storm and is expected to dump a foot of rain on parts of Central America, including Honduras, Belize, and Mexico, before curling into the American Southwest as a tropical depression bringing winds and heavy rains.

Hurricane Felix roared ashore early Tuesday as a fearsome Category 5 storm - the first time in recorded history that two top-scale storms have made landfall in the same season. The storm hit near the swampy Nicaragua-Honduras border, home to thousands of stranded Miskito Indians dependent on canoes to make their way to safety.

Felix was the first of two major storms expected to make landfall on Tuesday: Off Mexico's Pacific coast, Hurricane Henriette churned toward the upscale resort of Cabo San Lucas, popular with Hollywood stars and sea fishing enthusiasts.

On the Nicaraguan coast, 2,000 people were evacuated before the hurricane blew roofs off homes, blocked roads and knocked out telephone service, said Nicaragua's Civil Defense chief, Rogelio Flores.

Yucatan Slammed, Mainland Mexico Next Target For Dean

Hurricane Dean, which was briefly a Category 5 storm, is now a Category 2 storm, with winds of about 105 mph as it pounds the Yucatan Peninsula before heading into mainland Mexico.

The storm downed trees and cut power, but the damage wasn't as catastrophic as it could have been. Mexico and the Yucatan, including Belize, appear to have been very lucky through all this.

Downed power lines and damaged buildings were reported in Mexico and northern Belize, but no casualties.

Streets were flooded outside a hotel in Chetumal, just south of where Dean's center made landfall around 4:30 a.m. (5:30 a.m. ET) with maximum sustained winds of 165 mph (266 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center.

Two hotel workers tried to clear a clogged street drain with a garden rake in an effort to relieve the flooded streets.

The storm's eye passed just south of the resort areas of Cozumel and Cancun, striking a rural and sparsely populated area near Chetumal, the capital of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

At 10 a.m. (11 a.m. ET), the weakened hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (165 kph) and was 90 miles (150 km) west-northwest of Chetumal, according to the hurricane center. It was moving west at 20 mph (32 kph).

The storm is expected to lose more strength as it passes across the Yucatan, before re-emerging in the Gulf of Mexico. It is forecast to strengthen again and hit central Mexico Wednesday with winds around 100 mph (161 kph).

The area where the hurricane came ashore at its most violent was a sparsely populated area that had been evacuated in anticipation of the hurricane's landfall. Brendan Loy and his co-bloggers note that Costa Maya, the popular cruise ship port/destination, likely suffered major damage. We'll know more as reports begin to come out of the stricken areas.

UPDATE:
Cleanup continues in areas affected by Dean. Cancun was largely spared, and Jamaica is cleaning up the mess. For Jamaicans, the resort destinations of Kingston, Ocho Rios, and Negril suffered only minor damage as they were well North of Dean's most furious winds and rains. That's especially important for a country that is reliant upon the tourist industry for its income.

In Jamaica, where Dean paralleled the southern coast Sunday, about 10,000 tourists remained on the island. There was heavy flooding and road damage, and the country was placed under a state of emergency. Cruise ships canceled their Jamaica calls this week, except for Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas, which will dock in Montego Bay Wednesday.

But Monday, tourism officials reported "minimal damage" to the north coast's popular resort areas, including Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Negril. Commercial flights resumed Monday to Montego Bay and Tuesday to the capital, Kingston. The website for Jamaica's SuperClubs resorts said its properties would accept guests as soon as airports reopened, though it was waiving change fees for arrivals scheduled through Aug. 24. At Half Moon Montego Bay, officials said damage was limited to fallen trees, limbs and debris and the resort remained open.

Dean's eye passed about 100 miles south of the Caymans, and the islands were spared hurricane-force winds, which extended outward up to 60 miles from the center. Officials reported no damage to buildings; police lifted a mandatory curfew Monday afternoon and the airport on Grand Cayman was scheduled to reopen Tuesday morning.

In Martinique, where Dean passed just south of the island as a Category 2 storm early Friday, two deaths were attributed to the hurricane and authorities estimate repairing the island's infrastructure will cost at least $200 million. The international airport reopened Saturday and tourism officials said all of the island's 160 hotels and resorts remain open, but Club Med said guests due to arrive at its Buccaneer's Creek resort before Aug. 26 would be given alternate dates or resort options because many island areas lacked electricity and other services.

Jamaica in the Crosshairs

Hurricane Dean is in the process of making a direct hit on the island nation of Jamaica before slamming into the Cayman Islands. The storm is a very strong Category 4, with winds of 150 mph. The current position is here.

The Hurricane Hunters have noted that Dean has the potential to make Category 5, with winds in excess of 155 mph after it crosses Jamaica. The storm is expected to hit Jamaica with strong winds of about 150 mph, and will slam the country with heavy rains, storm surge, and damaging winds.

The various models are all converging on a track that puts the storm over the Yucatan Peninsula before slamming into Northern Mexico. Again, note that there are several outliers, but the divergence between tracks comes only after hitting the Yucatan. While those who are living along the Gulf Coast can breathe a sigh of relief, those living along the Mexican coast and even up into the Brownsville and Houston area need to remain alert to the changing forecasts and prepare for a potential landfall as a strong hurricane.

Coast Guard Makes Biggest Bust In U.S. History

The price of coke just got VERY expensive.

March 21, 2007 — - At nearly 20 tons, it's the largest maritime cocaine bust in U.S. history. The U.S. Coast Guard announced today that it seized 42,845 pounds of the drug from the Gatun, a Panamanian ship. Two of the Coast Guard's cutters approached the ship Sunday after a patrol plane spotted the vessel about 20 miles southwest of the Panamanian coast.

Drug Enforcement Administration administrator Karen Tandy pointed out that usually drug traffickers store their caches in secret compartments or conceal them with other legitimate cargo, but this shipment wasn't exactly hidden.

"They simply loaded these bales of cocaine into cargo containers on the top of the deck of this freighter. They were hiding in plain sight on the main deck."

Charley Diaz captains of one of the Coast Guard ships that closed in on the Gatun. He said the Gatun's crew did not resist but appeared nervous as the Coast Guard approached the crew's vessel. Diaz acknowledged the Panamanian ship was carrying some legal cargo, but that the "bales [of cocaine] were just piled high" in containers on the ship's deck, "almost up to the ceiling," Diaz described. "To think that any one of those containers, any two containers, can hold this much drugs is eye-opening."

Hitting Drug Traffickers 'Where It Hurts'

Tandy estimated the haul of cocaine could have sold on the street for about $600 million. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said, "Through collaboration, we've been able to strengthen our counternarcotics efforts, and to send a strong message to drug traffickers where it hurts -- in their pocket."

Cash, Drugs and Cartels

This bust blows past the old record of 30,109 pounds, seized from a ship in September 2004.

And the Coast Guard raid comes on the heels of a record-breaking cash seizure by the DEA last week. In cooperation with Mexican officials, that agency confiscated $205 million from chemical brokers who had provided Mexican cartels with the supplies to make methamphetamine.

In January, the DEA announced the extradition of 15 suspects tied to four Mexican drug cartels.

"That makes three big strikes in less than two months against the once untouchable and feared Mexican drug cartels that are responsible for so much of the drug supply in the United States," said Tandy.

Well congrats to the Coast Guard and the DEA. It boggles my mind, although it shouldn't, that there is that much demand for 20 tons of cocaine. 20 tons of something that is sold in grams. I am assuming that is 20 tons uncut. The amount is just mind blowing (literally.)