Daily News Channel
This is how Mexican investigators believe gangsters murdered business student Juan Francisco Sicilia: Two of his friends had been assaulted in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City, by a pair of policemen moonlighting as muggers for the Pacfico Sur drug cartel. The friends reported the criminal cops, who panicked and asked their mafia bosses for help.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s carefully cultivated image as a modest leader with reformist leanings, close to his people and understanding of their concerns, has taken a severe beating after a month of brutal security measures against a burgeoning civil protest movement for greater freedoms that has slowly stretched across the country. The tall, trim, blue-eyed father of three has responded to the uprising in his country, the greatest challenge to his 11-year rule, with a characteristic mix of soft and hard measures, promising reform while also unleashing his security forces on the streets to crush dissent