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We are working on supporting Puerto Rico; we will have a solution soon. Thank you for your patience. motionx is committed to constant improvement. ...
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The Associated Press
Raid targets Puerto Rico drug gang
The Associated Press
BAYAMON, Puerto Rico — Some 500 law officers swarmed into a public housing project Friday to dismantle a trafficking ring allegedly run by Puerto Rico's top ...
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Jacksonville adds Puerto Rican sister city
Bizjournals.com
Mayor John Peyton, left, and Jorge Santini, mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, sign a sister city agreement Friday. The City of Jacksonville added its eight ...
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Walgreen same-store sales rise 5.3 pct. in Sept.
BusinessWeek
... comparable stores increased 12 percent. As of Sept. 30, Walgreen operated 7543 locations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
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Big US raid targets trafficking network of Puerto Rico's alleged ...
By MIKE MELIA
Some 500 law officers swarmed into a public housing project and other sites Friday to dismantle a trafficking ring allegedly run by the island's top drug suspect, a man described as an aspiring Robin Hood and a patron to reggaeton ...
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Benicio Del Toro Urges Halt To Monkey-Breeding Facility In Puerto ...
By Michael d'Estries
Obviously, this isn't sitting well with PETA and they've enlisted the help of Benicio Del Toro to write a letter to Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuno urging for a halt to the facility. “I am disappointed to learn from my friends at PETA ...
ecorazzi.com :: the latest in... - http://www.ecorazzi.com/
LaN / Live Architecture Network » Archive » LaN WORKSHP @ San Juan ...
By monika
San Juan, Puerto Rico November 2-6 2009. Description: LaN invites professionals and students alike to attend a 5 day workshop covering Digital Fabrication in Architecture: from intro to advanced. Workshop will instruct on the use of ...
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Puerto Rico: A Crisis with Many Names « Racism
By trakkrz-admin
This has been a very difficult week in Puerto Rico: governor Luis Fortuño layed-off nearly 17000 government employees. In total this year, the recently elected government has laid off around 25000 public employees. ...
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Federal Bureau of Investigation - The San Juan Division ...
28, 2009, a federal grand jury in the District of Puerto Rico issued a seven-count superseding indictment, charging 65 defendants with federal drug trafficking offenses. This morning, 500 federal and state law enforcement agents from ...
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Raid targets Puerto Rico drug gang Yahoo News
Some 500 law officers swarmed into a public housing project and other sites Friday to dismantle a trafficking ring allegedly run by the island's top drug ...
Del Toro urges Puerto Rico to nix monkey facility Yahoo News
Benicio del Toro is asking Puerto Rico to halt a planned monkey-breeding facility, arguing the primates would suffer.

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Puerto Rico and other territories left out of healthcare reform - TheHill.com

Puerto Rico and other territories left out of healthcare reform - TheHill.com

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Mensaje Especial del Gobernador de Puerto Rico

Mensaje Especial del Gobernador de Puerto Rico

US struggles to keep up in Puerto Rico's drug war

By MIKE MELIA (AP) – 8 hours ago

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — With a stucco mansion in the hills outside San Juan and four luxury cars, including a Corvette, Wilfredo Rodriguez lived well for a part-time worker on an airport ground crew.

U.S. prosecutors say Rodriguez, who wrapped cargo in plastic for American Airlines, built his fortune over the last decade by smuggling drugs aboard commercial flights — one small slice of the hundreds of tons of South American cocaine that flow through Puerto Rico to the U.S. mainland each year.

His arrest last week highlights the challenges for law enforcement authorities on this U.S. Caribbean territory, as traffickers flood the island with drug money and make it one of the most violent places under the American flag.

"It's hard to keep up," U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez said in an interview. "These people make a lot of money and they reinvest their profits in their business and they have the most sophisticated equipment, the most sophisticated methods."

While most of the drugs reaching the United States arrive through the southwest border, an estimated 30 percent come through the Caribbean — and of all the islands, authorities say, Puerto Rico is easily the biggest transshipment point. As American soil, it is attractive because drugs leaving here do not have to clear customs to reach the U.S. market.

At least 1,430 metric tons of cocaine reached the island last year, according to the Key West, Florida-based Joint Interagency Task Force South, which coordinates the tracking of drug shipments in the region. The drugs, which have come at similar levels for years, are often spirited ashore Puerto Rico's 300-mile (480-kilometer) coastline in boats from neighboring islands.

U.S. authorities say Colombian organizations oversee most of the smuggling into and through the island with help from Dominican and Puerto Rican traffickers.

The middlemen's profits sustain a thriving underground economy.

Wilfredo Rodriguez, who allegedly contracted his smuggling services to multiple cocaine traffickers, lived in the biggest home by far in his quiet neighborhood in Morovis, a town southwest of San Juan. U.S. authorities have seized the two-story, beige home as well as a nearby apartment complex that belonged to Rodriguez. Neighbors said Rodriguez, who told them he owned a roofing company, was constantly expanding the house on a street named Happiness Way.

Now he is in federal custody on charges that he recruited other American Airlines employees to an operation that smuggled more than 9,000 kilograms (19,840 pounds) of cocaine to cities on the U.S. east coast. His lawyer says he is innocent of charges that could send him to prison for life.

While many of the suspected drug kingpins and money launderers live in peaceful, gated communities, the people who suffer most from Puerto Rico's drug war live in the island's housing projects — many of them vast concrete complexes, gated off from surrounding communities, that traffickers control as personal fortresses.

From inside the projects, traffickers distribute cocaine and heroin that stay on the island, often as payment from Colombian crime syndicates in exchange for sending the rest on to the U.S. mainland. About a third of the drugs that reach Puerto Rico remain on the island, officials say.

Rodriguez, the top prosecutor, said there is at least one distribution point — or "punto" — in each of the island's 240 housing projects.

In the largest housing project in Puerto Rico, two blocks south of a popular San Juan beach, community leader Ana Guzman says she hears gunshots on a near daily basis. The Llorens Torres project is one of many where authorities say traffickers use violence to control their turf. But Guzman hesitates to blame the young gang leaders. It's the only life they know.

"Most of them got into this because somebody killed their father," she said.

Puerto Rico's police chief Jose Figueroa Sancha said the traffickers increasingly are using minors to distribute drugs inside the housing projects because when caught, they face less harsh sentences.

"We're seeing a generation whose only life is being at the drug point," he said.

Violence is also increasing. There have been 619 killings so far this year, an increase of 8 percent from last year when Puerto Rico had its bloodiest year in a decade. The island of 4 million people has long had a high murder rate compared with the U.S. mainland, and most homicides are blamed on the drug trade.

For U.S. authorities, the surge in violence is a sign they are having at least some success.

"If we arrest somebody here I know there's going to be somebody who's going to want to come and control this point," Rodriguez said. "That's the reason for all the violence. They're fighting for drug turf."

Over the last three years, special strike forces involving federal agencies and police have arrested more than 1,000 drug suspects, sweeping up dozens at a time inside housing projects. The U.S. also increased seizures of cocaine at sea near Puerto Rico by nearly 80 percent to 14,640 kilograms (32,275 pounds) last year, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center.

A big obstacle is finding witnesses to come forward. In many cases people fear retribution. But on an island where the lyrics of reggaeton artists bred in housing projects have glamorized an underworld of drugs and violence, authorities say others stay silent out of misguided loyalty.

"We believe the community has to start doing their share of supporting law enforcement and being more optimistic about the prospects of our law enforcement efforts," Rodriguez said. "They need to report the crimes, come and testify, and everybody needs to chip in because it's an island-wide crime."

Associated Press writer Jill Laster contributed to this report from Morovis.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Cool Salsa dancing scene from the film My Puerto Rico