She lived a double life. At the border crossing, she was Agent Garnica, a veteran law enforcement officer. In the shadows, she was “La Estrella,” the star, a brassy looker who helped drug cartels make a mockery of the U.S. border.

Martha Garnica devised secret codes, passed stacks of cash through car windows and sketched out a map for smugglers to safely haul drugs and undocumented workers across the border. For that she was richly rewarded; she lived in a spacious house with a built-in pool, owned two Hummers and vacationed in Europe.

For years, until an intricate sting operation brought her down in late 2009, Garnica embodied the seldom-discussed role of the United States in the trafficking trade….

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After two Mexican cardinals were criticized for speaking out against the legalization of same-sex “marriage,” the rest of the bishops in that country rose to the defense of free speech.

Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, archbishop of Mexico City, and Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, archbishop of Guadalajara, were accused of “intolerance” for having spoken out against same-sex “marriage” and adoptions by homosexual couples.

In response, the Conference of the Mexican Episcopate published a communiqué Tuesday, stating, “We lament that on expressing these concepts in public opinion, there are those who recriminate and threaten, warning of intolerance, when tolerance is the possibility that we all express our opinion and positions.”

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Frederick Loos was cussing like a sailor the other night, which was surprising given that he is a Roman Catholic priest and his foul-mouthed discourse was delivered from the pulpit to hundreds of faithful gathered before him.

He spoke of God, the need to serve him and how he can transform lives. But interspersed in his sermon was the most colorful of street Spanish, which brought smiles to the faces of many of the gang members, addicts and other young people pressed in tight to listen.

“When you go to China you have to speak Chinese,” the priest explained afterward, slipping out of his vestments. “If you’re speaking to kids you use their idioms. I don’t think God is offended if it brings them closer to him.”

Those enmeshed in Mexico’s thriving drug culture ”” users and traffickers alike ”” have an unusual relationship with the church. Sniffing glue and making the sign of the cross might not appear to go together any more than killing and the catechism. But for many believers in modern-day Mexico they do.

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The Anglican Church of Mexico, which was part of the Episcopal Church until 1995, has become the first province to adopt the Anglican Covenant.

The province adopted the Covenant during its sixth General Synod, which met June 11-12 in Mexico City.

“We are delighted to hear that Mexico has agreed to adopt the Covenant,” said the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion. “Provinces were asked to take their time to seriously consider this document, and we are glad to hear from recent synods that they are doing just that.”

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Two goals by Carlos Tevez – one hugely-controversial and the other a wonderful strike – sent Argentina through to the World Cup quarter-finals with a 3-1 victory over Mexico.

The offside rule states there should be two players between the striker and the goal – there was not even one when Lionel Messi’s ball found Tevez’s head, and then the net to put Diego Maradona’s side in front.

Mexico went into meltdown and a defensive howler by Ricardo Osorio allowed Gonzalo Higuain to make it 2-0. It was Tevez who sewed the match up in brilliant fashion – and legitimately this time – early in the second half with Mexico left only to savour a stunning reply by Manchester United’s new signing Javier Hernandez.

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Two second-half goals gave Mexico their first ever victory over France to leave El Tri well-placed to make the last 16 and the 2006 runners-up on the verge of elimination.

Mexico were the brighter of the two throughout but were unable to take any of their chances until just after the hour, when substitute Javier Hernandez broke the offside trap and rounded keeper Hugo Lloris before slotting home.

Another Mexican substitute, the 37-year-old Cuauhtemoc Blanco, sealed the victory from the penalty spot after a third replacement, Pablo Barrera, had been felled in the box.

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The U.S. is giving $1.3 billion in military and judicial aid to Mexico to help Calderon’s battle against the drug mafias. Mexico’s drug cartels are the major foreign supplier of marijuana and methamphetamines to the United States, and Mexico is a main conduit for cocaine coming mainly from Colombia.

An NPR News investigation in Ciudad Juarez ”” ground zero of Calderon’s cartel war ”” finds strong evidence that Mexico’s drug fight is rigged, according to court testimony, current and former law enforcement officials, and an NPR analysis of cartel arrests.

In that border city, federal forces appear to be favoring one cartel, the Sinaloa (named after the coastal state in northwestern Mexico), which the U.S. Justice Department calls one of the largest organized crime syndicates in the world.

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Almost 19,000 people have been killed in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón came to power in late 2006 with a pledge to throw in as many troops as needed to rid Mexico of its drug problem and end the reign of terror of its ruthless drug cartels.

This weekend the death toll grew by three. Gunmen in the city of Ciudad Juárez, which lies just over the border from El Paso, Texas, killed two Americans and a Mexican linked to the local US consulate. The killings have lifted the havoc on America’s doorstep on to a new plane.

Publicly, President Barack Obama announced that he was “outraged” by these increasingly indiscriminate slayings. Privately the White House must now be frantically recalibrating its response to the crisis in Mexico. What it has been treating largely as a more or less domestic headache of drug trafficking and illegal immigration (aggravated by sporadic gunfights spilling across the border into California and Texas), has now assumed the shape, significance and seriousness of a new kind of foreign policy problem.

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Almost 19,000 people have been killed in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón came to power in late 2006 with a pledge to throw in as many troops as needed to rid Mexico of its drug problem and end the reign of terror of its ruthless drug cartels.

This weekend the death toll grew by three. Gunmen in the city of Ciudad Juárez, which lies just over the border from El Paso, Texas, killed two Americans and a Mexican linked to the local US consulate. The killings have lifted the havoc on America’s doorstep on to a new plane.

Publicly, President Barack Obama announced that he was “outraged” by these increasingly indiscriminate slayings. Privately the White House must now be frantically recalibrating its response to the crisis in Mexico. What it has been treating largely as a more or less domestic headache of drug trafficking and illegal immigration (aggravated by sporadic gunfights spilling across the border into California and Texas), has now assumed the shape, significance and seriousness of a new kind of foreign policy problem.

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Gunmen shoot a priest and two seminary students in the back. Federal police storm a Mass to capture a suspected drug kingpin. Priests pray with the families of murdered men, then face killers in the confessional.

Mexico’s Roman Catholic clergy, increasingly caught in the middle of the nation’s drug war, are meeting this week to draft a strategy for coping with the violence, aided by advice from colleagues who faced similar threats in Colombia and Italy.

“We have become hostages in these violent confrontations between the drug cartels living among us,” said Archbishop Felipe Aguirre, who works in Acapulco, located in Guerrero state where the priest and seminary students were killed in June.

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…when Pope Benedict XVI visits Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories starting on Friday, the world may be excused for holding its breath. In his four years on the job, this pope has not always demonstrated a deft symbolic touch. If he simply manages to get back to Rome without starting a war, some might declare the trip a success.

Yet Benedict can, and should, do much more. Granted, the pope is not a politician, and this trip is more a pilgrimage than a diplomatic mission. Nonetheless, Benedict can make a unique contribution to the peace process at a moment when it obviously needs the help.

The reason for this is that popes enjoy a tremendous advantage over Western politicians in engaging the Middle East. This is the realm of “theopolitics,” where religious convictions always shape policy choices. A pope can engage those convictions in a way that secular trouble-shooters like former Senator George Mitchell, President Obama’s envoy to the Middle East, never could.

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Watch it all–very sobering.

The parallels between Pakistan and Mexico are strong enough that the U.S. military singled them out recently as the two countries where there is a risk the government could suffer a swift and catastrophic collapse, becoming a failed state.

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