Attorney General Eric Holder has asked the Justice Department inspector general to take another look at the efforts of U.S. agents who hunt gun traffickers along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Seeking to repair damaged relations, President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon agreed Thursday to deepen their cooperation in combating drug violence and declared a breakthrough in efforts to end a long-standing dispute over cross-border trucking.

The sun won’t come up for another few hours, but Miguel Gonzalez’s day began not long after midnight, when he made his lunch and then made his way to the port of entry here with other residents of San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora.

A police report, citing Border Patrol intelligence, states that Martin Alejandro Cota-Monroy stole 400 pounds of marijuana and some meth from the PEI-Estatales/El Chapo drug trafficking organization, shortly before he was bludgeoned, stabbed and then decapitated in a suburban Phoenix apartment last October — a gruesome killing that police say was meant to send a message that anyone who betrays the traffickers will get the same treatment.

The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community has come out in opposition to another tribe's proposed casino in the Glendale area.

This is one of a series of biographical sketches Cronkite News Service is producing about new members of the Arizona State Legislature. Each follows this format and includes a mugshot and video.

The chief of the U.S. Border Patrol says that his agency must understand the capabilities and vulnerabilities of violent smuggling organizations to have any hope of dismantling them.

On the surface, the outcome of the Legislature’s voting looked like a defeat for the Center for Arizona Policy, a faith-based advocacy lobby that has been winning at the state Capitol for most of the last decade.

The U.S. agency that monitors gun sales has suffered a setback in its effort to increase scrutiny of the bulk sale of high-powered assault rifles in border state gun shops that are a chief source of weapons smuggling into Mexico.

In his campaign last summer to represent Arizona’s predominantly Hispanic 16th Legislative District, freshman Democrat Ruben Gallego spent a significant portion of his time talking to parents and meeting with school officials. The No. 1 concern he heard from parents, he says, was the effect of SB1070.