US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano April 15 appointed former federal prosecutor Alan Bersin as assistant secretary for international affairs and special representative for border affairs. Bersin's duties will include improving relationships with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and international, state, and local communities, as well as leading efforts to lessen violence along the US-Mexican border to "help Mexico target illegal guns, drugs and cash."

On the eve of his Mexico trip, President Barack Obama moved to impose financial penalties on members of three Mexican drug cartels, officially designating the organizations as "kingpins." The president has the power to identify drug traffickers and their businesses for penalties under the 1999 Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. The White House identified three more Mexican drug operations that will carry the kingpin designation: the Sinaloa Cartel, Los Zetas and La Familia Michoacana. The move allows for US assets of the organizations to be frozen. (NYT, April 16)

Protesters gathered outside the Hotel Presidente Intercontinental in the swank Mexico City district of Polanco as US President Barack Obama arrived April 14 to deliver a letter demanding rights for immigrants in the United States. The letter calls for far-reaching immigration reform, an end to raids and deportation of undocumented migrants, and a halt to the border wall. It rejects a "bracero" or guest worker program, and also calls for a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mexican lawmakers opened a debate this week on the legalization of marijuana as part of a possible strategy to tackle the country's powerful drug cartels. Javier González Garza, leader of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) bloc in Congress, has come out in support of the proposed legalization measure, and said cannabis must be considered apart from drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

Manuel Rosales, mayor of Maracaibo, Venezuela's second largest city, is missing—in what the opposition is calling the latest instance in wave of persecution by the government of President Hugo Chávez. After Chávez vowed on national TV to have Rosales imprisoned, the government filed corruption charges against the 56-year-old mayor. Two weeks ago, Rosales dropped out of sight, and his supporters say he is in hiding. (Fox News, April 14)

Daniel Rendón Herrera AKA "Don Mario"—Colombia's most wanted and feared drug lord—was captured April 15 in Apartadó municipality, in the Urabá region of northern Antioquia department, near the Caribbean coast. According to local media reports, twenty to thirty of the kingpin's men were also arrested. The operation, involving some 300 agents, was headed by National Police commissioner Oscar Naranjo himself, who had secretly gone to the region to coordinate the raid.

The commander of a remnant faction of Peru's Shining Path guerilla movement pledged more attacks after their 11th deadly ambush this year. "We will fight militarily those who defend imperialism and the government, and they are the armed forces and the police," local guerilla leader "Comrade José"—identified as Victor Quispe Palomino—said in an audio statement sent to the media. His comments came five days after suspected guerillas killed 14 soldiers in two ambushes in Ayacucho region.

An April 13 NATO airstrike in eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province killed six civilians, including two children, and wounded 14 more, charged Zalmay Yousufzai, governor of Watapor district, saying that helicopters destroyed one house and damaged several others. NATO officials confirmed the raid, but said that only insurgents had been killed. (NYT, April 13)