Authorities say they have busted up a drug trafficking cell in Tempe that, in adddition to being linked to the Sinaloa Cartel from Mexico, has received shipments of drugs from South and Central America, only to have domestic traffickers distribute the drugs to all corners of the nation.

MEXICO CITY - President Felipe Calderon's war on drug trafficking has led to his own doorstep, with the arrest of a dozen high-ranking officials with alleged ties to Mexico's most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa Cartel.

GUADALAJARA, Mexico - A Mexican beauty queen arrested in a truck filled with weapons was dating a suspected leader in the powerful Juarez drug cartel, police said Wednesday.

A man has pleaded no contest to a murder charge in the beheading of a man in Arizona who police say had stolen drugs from a Mexican drug cartel.

Minutes after the beheading of a 38-year-old Chandler man inside a small apartment at the Chandler Oasis apartments last October, Norma Alvarado told police she knew she lived in a bad neighborhood.

The Sinaloa cartel — that’s the biggest and baddest of the drug cartels. It has tentacles nationwide but are deepest in Arizona. Those words were spoken by U.S. Drug Enforcement Acting Special Agent in Charge for Arizona Doug Coleman at a Dec. 19 news conference at the Tempe Police Department announcing a 15-month investigation resulting in 203 arrests and the seizure of $7.8 million in cash, 650 pounds of marijuana, 435 pounds of methamphetamine, 123 pounds of cocaine and 4.5 pounds of heroin.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives and Mesa and Gilbert police Thursday arrested nine men throughout Mesa and Gilbert accused of selling firearms to a violent Mexican drug cartel, according to the ATF.

A man was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday for his murder conviction in the beheading of a man in Arizona who police say had stolen drugs from a Mexican drug cartel.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico accused its former drug czar Friday of taking $450,000 from a cartel he was supposed to destroy, going public with a scandal that deals a serious blow to the country's U.S.-backed drug war.

Which one would be more hypocritical:

“We’ve cut off the head of the snake. This definitely makes it a lot harder for our children and residents to get drugs. We can go out all day and arrest people with marijuana or a sixteenth of an ounce of meth. Or we can go out and do an investigation like this for six months and affect thousands of people.” -- Tempe police Lt. Noah Johnson, East Valley Tribune story Tempe part of major drug bust connected to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, July 6, 2012

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico's army has uncovered a 755-foot (230-meter) tunnel running under the Sonora-Arizona border that was used to smuggle drugs into the United States.

AUSTIN, Texas - Escalating violence by drug cartels and deteriorating security in Mexico will make this the most deadly year yet for that nation's drug-related crime, and the violence is spilling into the United States, according to a report released Wednesday for a state panel.

“We support the Arab revolutions in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria but not Bahrain or Palestine. Obama looks like a fool to the world, pulling out of UNESCO, the UN Program for abused and starving children, just because Palestine was elected to join. ‘Collective Punishment’ like this harkens back to the Nazi and Soviet Union actions. Ask yourself how can Palestine negotiate it’s national borders with Israel if it has no national borders because it is not a nation? How many more wars and conflicts does the United States have to engage in because Israel won’t let Palestine become a nation?”

What began as an ordinary traffic stop in Tempe instead turned into a 15-month drug trafficking investigation and the arrest of 203 suspects linked to the notorious Sinaloa cartel.