The Zapata Times 11/5/2014

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ORGANIZED CRIME

MEXICO VIOLENCE

Newest kingpin quickly caught

Killed in ambush

Fast fall of drug king shows Gulf Cartel’s decline

Tamaulipas security chief, wife shot in their car

By CÉSAR G. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES

A regional coordinator for public safety in Tamaulipas, with headquarters in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, has been gunned down along with his wife, Mexican authorities said late Monday.

Suspected gunmen investigating the inciallegedly opened fire dent.

Saturday on Gen. RiNiño and his wife cardo César Niño Vilwere gunned down larreal and his wife in while inside their 2002 the Vallecillo municiTsuru Nissan. They pality in Nuevo Leon. were traveling on the NIÑO His wife was not identiold Nuevo Laredofied. The attorney gen- VILLARREAL Monterrey highway, eral’s office in Nuevo Leon is otherwise known as Carrete-

ra Libre, when gunmen opened fired near kilometer marker 127, according to authorities.

They said the bodies and vehicle were not discovered until Sunday by passers-by, who notified authorities in

See KILLED PAGE 12A

By DANE SCHILLER HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Federal agents and South Texas police recently chased down the alleged new head of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel so quickly that his young, mustachioed face never even made it to a wanted poster.

Few people in law enforcement circles had heard of Juan Saenz Tamez until his capture was announced by prosecutors.

The arrest of the 23-year-old Saenz showed just how far one of Mexico’s longestrunning crime groups has fallen, and how splintered operations have become, for a syndicate that pushes tons of cocaine and other drugs into Texas.

The former lookout is believed to have taken charge of the fractured drug cartel, which considers Houston its territory, just four months ago and quickly ascended to the role once held by legendary, charismatic underworld bosses commanding legions of supporters.

“We have seen a shift in the command structure of the Gulf Cartel,” said Joseph Arabit, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Houston Division, which includes a territory from here to the border.

“The times of having a more experienced and dominant leader in place for 10 to 15 years have given way to a more fluid leadership arrangement that is now represented by a new generation of cartel members.”

Those younger leaders, Arabit said, don’t have the experience and maturity to lead the group and, just as critical, avoid capture.

His predecessors inspired borderland folk songs as they did billions of dollars in business and evaded authorities on both sides of the border.

The cartel, which began in the 1970s in the northern Mexican city of Matamoros, has been battered by years of infighting and battles with its rivals and with government security forces. The result, experts say, is an organization splintered into factions with no supreme commander.

Authorities said while the cartel has been damaged, it remains a major player and is moving massive amounts of cocaine.

The arrest is the result of an investigation that began four years ago as the DEA probed a group of Houston-based dealers, said Malcolm Bales, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas.

“They started looking at drug dealers from South Park, and this is where it took them,” Bales said. “They just sort of methodically worked their way through the

DISNEY MOVIES

DISNEY PRINCESSES

Photo by Disney/Matt Stroshane | AP

Disney characters Anna, left, and her sister Elsa, right, from the animated film “Frozen,” are seen with a young fan at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The trend in recent Disney movies is that the princess no longer needs a prince to experience true love.

Recent princesses no longer need a prince

By SANDY COHEN ASSOCIATED PRESS

L

OS ANGELES — A Disney princess no longer needs a prince to experience true love.

Sisterhood saves the day in “Frozen.” Motherly love breaks an

evil spell in “Maleficent.” A little girl’s love of her own life is a focus of Pixar’s next film, “Inside Out.” Where romance was once the goal of the cinematic princess (think “Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty”), Disney — long a key purveyor of princess ideology — is shifting its lens to-

ward independent female protagonists defined by broader criteria than how they relate to men.

Filmmakers, inspired by their daughters, hope the shift might change some real-life perspectives, too.

“All these Disney heroines, the

See PRINCESSES

PAGE 10A

See SAENZ TAMEZ PAGE 10A

MISSING COLLEGE STUDENTS

Mayor, wife linked to 43 missing students

By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEXICO CITY — The hunt for a fugitive ex-mayor and his wife accused of running their Mexican town as a narcofiefdom and ordering an attack that killed six people and left 43 college students missing ended Tuesday in a roughand-tumble neighborhood of Mexico City where they were hiding.

Mexico’s most-wanted couple, Jose Luis Abarca and his wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, were arrested in a predawn raid in Iztapalapa, a working-class neighborhood of the capital, Federal Police officials confirmed on Twitter. It was a far fall from their reign of wealth and power as the first couple of Iguala, a town in southern Guerrero state where the students from a teachers’ college went missing Sept. 26, allegedly at the hands of police and a drug cartel.

Photo by Alejandrino Gonzalez/file | AP

The mayor of the city of Iguala, Jose Luis Abarca, right, and his wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa were detained by federal police Tuesday. They are accused of ordering the Sept. 26 attacks on teachers’ college students that left six dead and 43 still missing.

Even as they were hauled off to the Attorney General’s organized crime unit to give their statements, the capture did nothing to answer the biggest mystery: Where are the students? Their disappearance, and the failure to make progress in the case, has ignited protests across the country and broadsided President Enrique Peña Nieto’s efforts to paint violence in Mexico as a thing of the past.

“News like this just makes you angrier,” said Mario Cesar Gonzalez, whose son, Cesar Manuel Gonzalez, is among the missing students. “I wish they would put the same intelligence services and effort into finding the students. The ineptitude is staggering.”

Authorities have uncovered mass graves and the remains of 38 people, but none has been identified as the missing

See STUDENTS

PAGE 12A

PAGE 2A

Zin brief CALENDAR

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2014

AROUND TEXAS

TODAY IN HISTORY

THURSDAY, NOV. 6

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Rummage Sale--Fellowship Hall, First United Methodist Church; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Public invited; no admission fee.

Fall Recital (poetry and music) TAMIU Spanish Club XXI Century from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Student Center 236 TAMIU. Students will read and perform poetry from Spanish speaking poets. The event is free and open to the public.

Today is Wednesday, Nov. 5, the 309th day of 2014. There are 56 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History: On Nov. 5, 1914, Britain and France declared war against the Ottoman Empire; Britain also annexed Cyprus.

On this date: In 1605, the “Gunpowder Plot” failed as Guy Fawkes was seized before he could blow up the English Parliament.

In 1872, suffragist Susan B. Anthony defied the law by attempting to cast a vote for President Ulysses S. Grant.

(Anthony was convicted by a judge and fined $100, but she never paid the fine.)

In 1912, Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected president, defeating Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt, incumbent Republican William Howard Taft and Socialist Eugene V. Debs.

In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term in office as he defeated Republican challenger Wendell L. Willkie.

In 1964, NASA launched Mariner 3, which was supposed to fly by Mars, but the spacecraft failed to reach its destination.

In 1974, Democrat Ella T. Grasso was elected governor of Connecticut, becoming the first woman to win a gubernatorial office without succeeding her husband.

In 1994, former President Ronald Reagan disclosed he had Alzheimer’s disease.

Ten years ago: The Kremlin announced that Russia had given final approval to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

Five years ago: A shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas left 13 people dead; Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was later convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

One year ago: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford acknowledged for the first time that he had smoked crack “probably a year ago” when he was in a “drunken stupor,” but he refused to resign despite immense pressure to step aside as leader of Canada’s largest city.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Chris Robinson is 76. Actress Elke Sommer is 74. Singer Art Garfunkel is 73. Actor-playwright Sam Shepard is 71.

Singer Peter Noone is 67. TV personality Kris Jenner is 59.

Actor Nestor Serrano is 59.

Singer Bryan Adams is 55. Actress Tilda Swinton is 54. Actor Michael Gaston is 52. Actress Tatum O’Neal is 51. Actress Andrea McArdle is 51.

Rock singer Angelo Moore (Fishbone) is 49. Actress Judy Reyes is 47. Actor Seth Gilliam (TV: “Teen Wolf ”) is 46. Rock musician Mark Hunter (James) is 46. Actor Sam Rockwell is 46. Country singers Jennifer and Heather Kinley (The Kinleys) are 44. Actor Corin Nemec is 43. Rock musician Jonny (cq) Greenwood (Radiohead) is 43. Country singer-musician Ryan Adams is 40. Actor Sam Page is 38.

Actor Jeremy Lelliott is 32.

Actress Annet Mahendru (MAH’-hehn-droo) (TV: “The Americans”) is 29. Rock musician Kevin Jonas (The Jonas Brothers) is 27. Actor Landon Gimenez (TV: “Resurrection”) is 11.

Thought for Today: “The line of least resistance was always the most difficult line in the long run.” — Peter Cheyney, English author (1896-1951).

FRIDAY, NOV. 7 9th annual Wish Radio-thon. 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mall del Norte. For more information call 235-0673.

Rummage Sale at Fellowship Hall, First United Methodist Church; 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Public invited; no admission fee.

SATURDAY, NOV. 8 Rummage Sale at Fellowship Hall, First United Methodist Church; 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Public invited; no admission fee.

1st Annual Community Remembrance Ceremony. From 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. For more information please contact Jaqueline Vasquez at (956) 7183000 or jvasquez@altushospicecare.com.

Photo by Michael Minasi/The Courier | AP

Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson arrives at the courthouse with his wife Ashley Brown Peterson, right, for an appearance Tuesday in Conroe, Texas. A judge presiding over Adrian Peterson’s child abuse case may consider whether the Vikings star should be arrested for allegedly smoking marijuana while out on bond.

Peterson pleas no contest ASSOCIATED PRESS

MONDAY, NOV. 10 Laredo Soups monthly microfinance dinner. 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Holding Institute, 1102 Sta Maria Ave. To learn more or to apply for funding contact Tatiana Friar at tfriar@gmail.com or 771-9671.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 12 Deportation law and the New American Diaspora. 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. TAMIU Student Center Ballroom.

Contact Amy Palacios cswht@tamiu.edu or go to freetrade.tamiu.edu/ whtc_services/whtc_speaker_series.asp.

Planetarium movies. From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. TAMIU Lamar Bruni Vergara Science Center Planetarium. Claudia Herrera at claudia.Herrera@tamiu.edu or go to www.tamiu.edu/planetarium for more information.

THURSDAY, NOV. 13 Rio pachanga. From 12 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The Max Mandel Municipal Golf Course. Contact Alberto Sandoval at alberto@rgisc.org or to register, contact the Max Pro Shop at 726-2000.

For questions, call Ruben Soto at 3370435.

SATURDAY, NOV.15 Football tailgate cook off. 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at El Metro Park & Ride (by Hillside). Contact LULAC Council 14 at lulac14@yahoo.com or call 286-9055.

Registration is now in progress for the 35th Guajolote 10K Race. Register at Hamilton Trophies (1320 Garden), Hamilton Jewelry (607 Flores), or on-line at www.raceit.com, Guajolote 10K Race. For information, call (956) 724-9990 or (956) 722-9463.

Planetarium movies. From 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. TAMIU Lamar Bruni Vergara Science Center Planetarium. Contact Claudia Herrera at claudian.herrera@tamiu.edu or go to www.tamiu.edu/planetarium.

TUESDAY, NOV. 18 Planetarium movies. From 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. TAMIU Lamar Bruni Vergara Science Building. Contact Claudia Herrera at clauda.herrera@tamiu.edu or visit the website www.tamiu.edu/planetarium. Monday,

MONDAY NOV. 24 Monthly meeting of Laredo Parkinson’s Disease Support Group. 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Laredo Medical Center, Tower B, First Floor Community Center. Patients, caregivers and family members invited. Free info pamphlets available in Spanish and English. Call Richard Renner (English) at 645-8649 or Juan Gonzalez (Spanish) at 2370666.

Planetarium movies at TAMIU. From 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. TAMIU Lamar Bruni Vergara Science Center Planetarium. Contact Claudia Herrera at claudia.herrera@tamiu.edu or go to the website tamiu.edu/planetarium.

SATURDAY, NOV. 22 Planetarium movies. From 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. TAMIU Lamar Bruni Vergara Science Center Planetarium.Contact Claudia Herrera at claudia.herrera@tamiu.edu or www.tamiu.edu/planetarium.

CONROE, Texas — Adrian Peterson says he’s “anxious” to continue his relationship with his son after reaching a plea agreement in his child abuse case.

The Minnesota Vikings star told reporters outside the Texas courthouse where his case was resolved Tuesday that he regrets what happened to his 4-year-old son and takes “full responsibility” for his actions.

He was not allowed to be near his son while the case was pending. The plea agreement will allow him to have contact with the boy.

Peterson pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of reckless assault for using a wooden switch to discipline his son earlier this year in suburban Houston. He received what is essentially probation, was fined

$4,000 and must complete parenting classes and perform 80 hours of community service.

The National Football League said there is no immediate timetable for the former Most Valuable Players return to the field.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is the only person who can reinstate Peterson.

League spokesman Brian McCarthy said today in a statement that the league would review the court documents if a settlement is reached.

“We cannot speculate on a timetable for a decision,” McCarthy said. He didnt answer a question about whether Peterson could be subject to additional discipline once reinstated by Goodell.

The NFL could suspend Peterson without pay under the personal conduct policy once he is reinstated, according to Paul Haagen, a professor at Duke University School of Law.

1 slain, at least 5 sought after Beaumont gunfire

Off-duty West Texas constable dies after fight

Sheriff: Texas man killed in tractor accident

BEAUMONT — Police are seeking at least five suspects after an argument and gunfire at a Southeast Texas apartment left one man dead. Officers responding to a report of a possible shooting found 28-year-old Chad Slaughter dead at the residence.

Police are trying to determine whether the suspects knew Slaughter.

EL PASO — A Fort Bliss soldier has been charged with capital murder after an off-duty constable working security at a Halloween haunted house died following a fight. El Paso County jail records show 19-year-old Devon Huerta-Person was being held Monday on $5 million bond.

White on Friday night was working security at a site decorated as a Halloween haunted house. White was punched in the face, fell, was bleeding and became unresponsive. The 45-yearold constable died at a hospital.

TARKINGTON PRAIRIE — Authorities say a 65-year-old southeast Texas man has died after accidentally driving his tractor over a pipe that flew into the air and hit him in the head.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Milwaukee jaguar sent to Texas zoo to meet mate SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio Zoo officials plan to mate two jaguars to boost the population of the endangered species.

A 1-year-old male jaguar named B’alam from the Milwaukee County Zoo in Wisconsin was shipped to San Antonio last week. His potential mate, a 1year-old female named Arizona, should arrive in December from the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.

Official: Texas teacher throws shoe at student SAN ANTONIO — A San Antonio elementary school teacher has been placed on administrative leave after school officials say she threw her tennis shoe at a student. She was allegedly frustrated because the child wasn’t paying attention.

Waco man charged in death of ailing wife, 77 WACO — A Central Texas man faces a murder charge after police say he shot and killed his ailing 77-year-old wife at their home.

Police say the warrant stems from Monday morning’s fatal shooting of 77-year-old Jean Carol Adams. Officer Steve Anderson says the woman had leukemia and was under hospice care.

Waco police did not immediately provide additional details Tuesday.

— Compiled from AP reports

AROUND THE NATION Circus cited for stunt that went awry PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Federal workplace safety regulators are blaming Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for a hairhanging stunt that seriously injured eight acrobats in Rhode Island.

The acrobats were injured May 4 when the clip attached to the apparatus that held them aloft snapped. They fell 15 feet to the floor.

Most were severely injured, and some were unable to walk as of June.

Police: Ohio girl, 3, shot by 4-year-old brother LORAIN, Ohio — Police say a 3-year-old Ohio girl is in critical condition after being shot in the head by her 4-year-old brother, who found a gun in a dresser.

The shooting occurred around 10 a.m. Sunday in Lorain, about

CONTACT US Publisher, William B. Green........................728-2501 Account Executive, Dora Martinez ...... (956) 765-5113 General Manager, Adriana Devally ...............728-2510 Adv. Billing Inquiries ................................. 728-2531 Circulation Director ................................. 728-2559 MIS Director, Michael Castillo.................... 728-2505 Managing Editor, Nick Georgiou ................. 728-2565 Sports Editor, Zach Davis ..........................728-2578 Spanish Editor, Melva Lavin-Castillo............ 728-2569 Photot by Rosa Viveiros | AP file

First responders work at the center ring after a platform collapsed during an aerial hair-hanging stunt at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, in Providence, R.I. on May 4.

30 miles west of Cleveland. Police say the two children were playing alone in a bedroom when the boy found a loaded .40-caliber handgun.

A police report says the father of the 3-year-old girl was holding her in his arms when officers ar-

rived. The report says the 4-yearold boy was crying and that he repeatedly told an officer he was sorry.

Lorain police say the investigation will be turned over to the county’s prosecutor’s office. — Compiled from AP reports

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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2014

THE ZAPATA TIMES 3A

Rights group checks killings

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN ASSOCIATED PRESS

MATAMOROS, Mexico — Mexican human rights investigators on Tuesday interviewed employees at an import car lot where the parents of three young Americans shot to death in Mexico say they found their vehicles.

Inside a tall iron gate, a team of five from the National Human Rights Commission was seen conducting interviews and taking photographs at the property in downtown Matamoros.

The Alpha car import business is owned by Luis Alfredo Biasi, social welfare secretary for the city of Matamoros.

Before their bodies and that of a friend were found last Wednesday outside the city, Erica, Alex and Jose Angel Alvarado Rivera, siblings from Progreso, Texas, had not been seen since Oct. 13 when they were at a taco restaurant near the Los Indios international bridge on the Texas-Mexico border.

Their parents have said witnesses told them that armed men wearing uniforms belonging to a special Matamoros police unit called “Grupo Hercules” and possibly marines took the three young people away along with Erica’s boyfriend, Jose Guadalupe Castañeda Benitez.

Pedro Alvarado, the siblings’ father, said he found Erica’s Jeep Cherokee and Alex’s Tahoe at the Alpha lot following their disappearance.

After investigators departed the car lot Tuesday, the manager said he had given a statement to authorities and declined to say more. He insisted that his name not be used, saying he feared reprisals. The investigators also declined to comment on the case because it remained under investigation and asked that their names not be used for security reasons.

Later Tuesday, the National Human Rights Commission released a statement saying it had started investigating the siblings’ disappearances in October and is now looking into their homicides as well.

The restaurant where they were last seen, La Curva Texas, is in a simple wood frame

Ceremony planned for Nov. 11 SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

A wreath-laying ceremony in honor of Veterans Day is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 11, at the Zapata County Courthouse, 200 East 7th Ave. The event is scheduled to end at 9:15 a.m.

A reception is scheduled to take place after the ceremony at the Zapata Middle School library, 207 East 17th Ave. The event is sponsored by Zapata County and Zapata County Independent School District.

Village defenders reburied

By E. FRANKLIN BRICEÑO ASSOCIATED PRESS Photo by Christopher Sherman | AP

Investigators from the Mexican National Human Rights Commission arrive at the Alpha import car lot in Matamoros, Mexico on Tuesday, as part of an investigation into the deaths of three young Americans. building and is known for its grilled meat tacos. It sits under an overpass in the median of the highway connecting Matamoros and Reynosa two miles from the U.S. border.

Raquel Alvarado, mother of the dead siblings, has quoted witnesses as giving this account of their disappearance: Erica Alvarado and Castañeda were eating at the restaurant around midday Oct. 13. Erica had asked her brothers to bring her Jeep there so all three could return together to Progreso, and when the brothers arrived they found armed men pushing and beating their sister and Castañeda. After the brothers intervened all four were taken away.

The mother said the sibling’s father, her former husband,

confronted someone at the car lot after finding both vehicles there. He was allowed to drive the Tahoe home and the Jeep was towed to his home in the nearby Mexican town of El Control. She said it was a member of Hercules who gave her ex-husband the key to the Jeep.

On Oct. 14, Pedro Alvarado went to the offices of the state human rights commission in Matamoros to report his children as missing, said Jose Javier Saldaña Badillo, the state commission’s regional delegate.

On Oct. 15, Saldaña passed Alvarado’s complaint to the national commission because at that time Alvarado had said marines or soldiers or some combination of both had taken the four away.

“When he came to us he in-

dicated that it had been members of the Mexican army or the marines, but he didn’t say it was Grupo Hercules,” Saldaña said. He speculated that so soon after the disappearances, Alvarado hadn’t found the witness who told him it was Hercules.

Saldaña said the team from the National Human Rights Commission began interviewing people in the area on Monday.

Mayor Leticia Salazar and Biasi, the city official who owns the car lot, were in El Control for an event Oct. 13 shortly before the Alvarado siblings and Castañeda were taken from the restaurant. Neither has responded to requests from The Associated Press for an interview.

HUALLHUA, Peru — It was the second burial for the three members of the citizen self-defense force from this remote Andean village, who officials say died so that others might live.

The men were slain on June 14, 1990, investigators say, defending the 100 people who then inhabited Huallhua from an attack by Shining Path rebels with the only weapons at their disposal — rocks.

The villagers escaped, and the bodies of the three men, their throats slit and their skulls crushed, were promptly buried by grateful neighbors to save them from feral dogs.

Hundreds of such cases, most until now barely registered, are coming to light as forensic anthropologists methodically unearth victims of Peru’s 1980-2000 dirty war, absent government fanfare.

The Huallhua men’s remains were exhumed last year and positively identified.

PAGE 4A

Zopinion

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2014

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SEND YOUR SIGNED LETTER TO EDITORIAL@LMTONLINE.COM

COLUMN

OTHER VIEWS

Dividing the church, state, candidates HOUSTON — I got some good, anticipated reader input about a recent column detailing my Sunday on the campaign trail with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis. Thanks. Several readers raised concerns about her campaign appearance at a Dallas church So on the next Sunday I tagged along as Davis campaigned at six Houston-area churches.

Church and state and politics can be an unholy intersection.

Reader George Martinez of Round Rock, in a letter to the editor, accurately noted my previously stated concerns about church-state issues like prayers at legislative sessions. “(Davis) spoke in front of the congregation,” Martinez noted, “and the pastor even blessed her. Herman doesn’t seem to be bothered by this event despite its apparent blurring of his vaunted concern for the separation of church and state.”

I’m for separation of church and state. But, with an important caveat I’ll detail below, I don’t believe in separation of church and politics. Religious beliefs should impact votes.

I’ve seen many candidates in many churches — mini, medium, mega, black, brown, white, blended — on many Sunday mornings. Sometimes it’s just a candidate being recognized from the pulpit.

Sometimes it’s a full-blown campaign rally and endorsement from the pulpit.

Davis’ recent church appearances had some of both of those.

I’ve not made similar campaign swings with GOP gubernatorial nominee Greg Abbott, who also has support in some faith communities. His spokeswoman Amelia Chasse says he has been to “numerous churches throughout the campaign” but “has not given political speeches or received endorsements during church services he has attended.”

“The Abbotts attend church to participate in worship and do not campaign or give campaign speeches during church services,” she told me.

If you have evidence otherwise, I’d like to hear it.

I’m OK with churches doing politics, but they should put their money where their politics is and forgo their tax-exempt status. The IRS is pretty clear about this: Don’t do politics on the dime of folks who have to pay more in taxes because you’re exempt.

On Sunday Oct. 19 at St. Paul United Methodist Church in downtown Dallas, Pastor Richie Butler’s invited Davis ’to bring greetings to the St. Paul family.”

“It is our moment.” Davis said in conclusion, “and on Nov. 4 we are going to make this happen with your blessings and your support.”

The reaction was enthusiastic as the pastor and the politician embraced.

Butler then, “in full disclosure,” said he had prayed about whether to allow Davis to speak and decided to do so because her story “may speak to somebody’s life.”

“We want to encourage her and just ask God’s blessing to be upon her as she continues to move forward. And we want to be supportive and we want to

“

KEN HERMAN

go out and vote, early voting starts tomorrow,” he said, drawing amens.

The IRS says tax-exempt churches “are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. ... Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of taxexempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.”

Churches can engage in “certain voter education activities — including presenting public forums and publishing voter education guides — conducted in a nonpartisan manner.”

Did Butler cross the line? Close call, perhaps.

And some of what I saw the following Sunday came even closer to the line, if not clearly crossing it.

At Cross Roads Community Church in Pearland, Pastor Christopher Hartwell recognized Davis as “our next governor of the great state of Texas.” Endorsement? Prediction? Delusion?

Davis, as with every stop this day, was enthusiastically received as she gave her church-version campaign speech. Afterward, Hartwell put his right arm around her and said “we can prophetically say Gov. Wendy Davis.”

In downtown Houston at St. John’s United Methodist Church, Pastor Rudy Rasmus, standing at Davis’ side, similarly nodded support at key points in her speech. At Galilee Missionary Baptist Church, Pastor Edwin A. Davis turned the church over to U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, DHouston, who referred to “Gov. Wendy Davis.”

After Davis spoke, Lee said, “If I can clarify we are civic minded here and so your pastor’s not in partisan politics,” she said.

Lee introduced candidates and urged congregants to “vote the straight Democratic ticket.”

Pastor Davis returned to his pulpit and noted this was Wendy Davis’ second visit to this church “and that says a lot. God bless you and may God keep you in our prayer. Hopefully, I won’t get no subpoenas about today.”

That was a reference to recent subpoenas, subsequently withdrawn, issued by the city of Houston to pastors who backed an effort to repeal a city provision banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.

At Houston’s New Life Tabernacle Church of God, Pastor Carl Davis told congregants that Abbott also has been invited to speak.

“No one has come at this time,” he said. “Don’t know why.” After Wendy Davis spoke, Pastor Davis offered what sounded like a qualified endorsement.

The last church stop was Houston’s Community of Faith, where Bishop James W.E. Dixon II introduced “our illustrious, amen, Sen. Wendy Davis.”

“We want to see her become the governor in just a couple of weeks,” he said.

Politics from the pulpit?

Fine with me. But houses of worship that choose to go that route should pay taxes just like folks who get involved in politics.

COMMENTARY

IS battle will last for years

By WALTER PINCUS THE WASHINGTON POST

Americans still don’t seem to get that the fight against the so-called Islamic State has just begun and will last for years.

They must also realize that U.S. military power won’t decide the issue.

“It’s a three- to fouryear effort, because that’s what it’s going to take to get the indigenous forces prepared and to do this,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the U.S. Army’s chief of staff, told CNN on Wednesday.

“It’s just the beginning.” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said at a Thursday news conference. “This is a long-term effort.”

The next day, Rear Adm. John Kirby, Pentagon spokesman, told reporters, “You can’t judge the complete success of the campaign after . . . just three months ‘of U.S. and coalition forces bombing’.”

“It’s going to take some time,” he added, repeating President Barack Obama’s warning on Sept. 11, when he announced the Islamic State would be hit in Syria as well as in Iraq.

No matter. The message hasn’t registered.

The Defense Department is certainly preparing for a long fight.

For example, on Oct. 24 the Air Combat Command of the U.S. Air Force issued a notice to potential contractors that it plans a follow-on contract that could run for eight years, starting in October 2016, to operate, maintain and support Air Force Central

Command’s major war reserve materiel facilities in Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

DynCorp won the current contract in 2008. The new contract could go through 2024.

The sites hold prepositioned equipment for the U.S. Air Force and Army.

Here’s just a few items: Mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPs).

Medical contingency hospitals for expeditionary medical support.

Basic expeditionary airfield resources — facilities and equipment that could house 3,300 airmen and 72 fighter aircraft at expeditionary locations.

The contract proposal includes a section titled, “Munitions Contingency Operations at Al Udeid,” an air base in Qatar. It says that during “contingencies” the base will be a “munitions hub,” also utilizing facilities at “Falcon 78,” an ammunition storage area.

Another section of the proposal, “Employment in Time of War Plan,” requires the contractor to develop “a supplemental compensation and protection plan to retain a workforce capable of sustaining preparation and outload operations . . . in the event WRM ‘war reserve materiel’ sites come under attack by hostile fire.”

The current contract runs upwards of $70 million a year, plus some additional costs.

That’s just for the Air Force.

The United States spent more than 4,000 U.S. lives

and $800 billion in Iraq, fighting and trying over 11 years to rebuild that country after the ill-conceived 2003 invasion.

For almost eight of those years, we had more than 70,000 U.S. troops there. The effort did not result in a Baghdad government that had the support of the nation’s ethnic and religious elements.

Americans should have learned from that experience. And from Vietnam 40 years ago.

Obama has.

Iraqi boots on the ground are the only ones that can defeat the Islamic State in Iraq. But that also requires a political settlement among Shiite, Sunni, Kurd and other ethnic and religious groups that make up what is an artificial nation assembled decades ago by Western European governments.

Obama must remain firm in keeping U.S. military advisers in Iraq at division or brigade headquarters and not at lower tactical levels, where they could be directing smallunit operations, for example.

That was the slippery slope in Vietnam, then Iraq and Afghanistan. If Iraqi forces aided by U.S. advisers don’t turn the tide, it would be a longterm mistake to send in U.S. combat troops. The result would be permanent U.S. occupation — or leaving, as we did in December 2011.

So far, Obama has leveraged limited military support to try to jump-start a tone of governmental inclusion.

Obama delayed instituting U.S. bombing of Islamic State units until the Baghdad leadership changed, with former Prime Minister Nouri alMaliki giving way to Prime Minister Haider alAbadi.

Now the United States may be delaying the dispatch of U.S. assist-and-advise teams to headquarters in the Anbar area that’s threatened by Islamic State forces until, as Kirby put it, there is “increased collaboration between Iraqi security forces and Sunni tribesmen” in that area.

The U.S. long-term plan calls for the reestablishment of an Iraqi national guard system as a way to bring Sunni, Shiite, Kurd and local militias into the Iraq security system, leaving the mostly-Shiite Iraqi army to protect the borders.

However, as Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday, that step requires the Iraqi government to pass a law to establish the guard system, and that will push implementation to next year.

Odierno summed it up this way: “The long-term war against ‘the Islamic State’ needs to be fought by the indigenous capability there. It needs to be fought by Iraqis. It needs to be fought by Syrians. It needs to be fought by other Arabs, because it’s their country and they need to win that back.”

He’s right, and Americans must understand and accept our limitations in this fight.

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CLASSIC DOONESBURY | GARRY TRUDEAU

State

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2014

THE ZAPATA TIMES 5A

Only those at high-risk of Ebola to be quarantined ASSOCIATED PRESS

AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday that health-care workers and other residents returning from West Africa won’t be quarantined in Texas if they have no symptoms of Ebola and aren’t considered high risk, as suggested by a task force he assembled to advise Texas on its response to the deadly virus.

Individuals could be considered high risk if, for example, they have been exposed to the blood or body fluids of a Ebola victim showing symptoms while wearing no protective gear. Those in that category would be instructed to stay at home while they are monitored for 21 days with twice daily temperature checks.

Perry said he directed the Texas Department of State Health Services to

begin implementing the task force’s guidelines.

Texas Health Commissioner Dr. David Lakey said the recommendations are “based on science and on doing what’s right for the people of Texas and for the health care workers who travel abroad to fight this disease.”

Perry created the Texas Task Force on Infectious Disease Preparedness and Response after the state became the first in the U.S. where a case of Ebola was diagnosed. The patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, had traveled from Liberia to Texas and died at a Dallas hospital Oct. 8.

Two nurses who treated Duncan contracted Ebola and hospitalized, and later declared virus-free.

About 350 people in Texas have been or are being monitored after coming in contact with those three patients, disease speci-

mens or potentially contaminated surfaces. That number also includes Texans who flew on a plane with one of the nurses.

As of Tuesday, about 45 people were still being monitored in Texas for Ebola. The last day of monitoring in the state in connection to those three cases will be Friday.

The task force’s guidelines for health care workers and others returning to Texas from Ebola-ravaged areas in West Africa recommend four risk levels for those with no symptoms: high risk, some risk, low risk and no-identifiable risk. Anyone returning with symptoms would be immediately isolated.

The some-risk category could include those who had direct contact with a symptomatic Ebola patient while wearing protective gear. In addition to

the temperature checks, those people will be instructed to avoid public transportation and large gatherings during their monitoring period. Health care workers aren’t allowed to care for patients.

Low risk includes having brief direct contact with an infected person before to the individual displayed symptoms.

Those people will just need to have temperature checks twice a day.

No monitoring will be required for those in the no-identifiable risk category, which includes contact with a person showing no symptoms who had contact with an Ebola patient.

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines for those returning from West Africa, and various states have put in place their own guidelines.

Funeral set for deputy killed in traffic crash ASSOCIATED PRESS

HOUSTON — About 2,000 mourners gathered to remember a Harris County sheriff ’s deputy killed in a crash with a driver later charged in a drug case.

The Tuesday funeral for Deputy Jesse “Trey” Valdez III was held at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in downtown Houston. Among those in attendance were U.S. Reps. Ted Poe and Sheila Jackson Lee, state Sen. Sylvia Garcia, Judge Ed Emmett and District Attorney Devon Anderson.

“Today is a solemn day, there are no words we can offer to a grieving family,” Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia said before the funeral. “The

outpouring (of support) the sheriff ’s office and Valdez’s family has received has enabled us to take a bit off the edge of these unfortunate circumstances.”

Valdez, 32, was a single father who worked the night shift so he could be at home more with his 10-year-old son.

He died Oct. 29. Investigators said a woman driving an SUV crossed into oncoming traffic and hit his patrol car.

Online records for Harris County Sheriff ’s Office show Kelly Joe Ivey was being held Tuesday without bond on charges of possession of a controlled substance and a motion to revoke parole. An attorney wasn’t listed.

Prosecutors said Ivey was released from prison last month after serving time for drug possession. She could face first-degree felony charges, including intoxication manslaughter of a peace officer, prosecutors said last week.

Garcia said Valdez’s death is a reminder of risks law enforcement and first responders face in their jobs each day.

“This has been beyond difficult,” he said. “We try to find understanding in what all this means. Simply put, we’re in it together. Everyone shares a responsibility to keep the community safe.”

Valdez will be laid to rest at Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery in Houston.

Photo by Jack Plunkett | AP file

Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell, Inc., addresses the fifth annual Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network meeting in Austin.

Dell CEO is happy with progress ASSOCIATED PRESS

AUSTIN, Texas — The founder and CEO of Dell Inc. said he’s been pleased with the state of his company since it went private last fall, ending its 25-year run as a publicly traded business.

In an interview with the Austin AmericanStatesman, Michael Dell spoke about his company, competitors, layoffs and goals.

Since going private, the computer company has downsized its number of employees, but hasn’t said how many layoffs there have been.

It’s still the largest private employer in the Austin area, with about 14,000 workers in central Texas. About 100,000 people work for Dell Inc. around the world.

Dell said that they have been hiring workers in some departments, like sales, but letting em-

ployees leave through a voluntary separation program in other areas “where you need less people.”

“And so we’re just doing the normal things,” he said. “There’s nothing significantly different from what we’ve been doing in the past.”

The company has been doing well since it went private, with shares in servers and networking increasing and the number of PC unit shipments also increasing, Dell said. The business has been able to accomplish all of the “things that we talked about doing,” including investing in research and development and growing its software and services business.

One of the company’s main competitors, Hewlett-Packard Co., recently announced that it was dividing into two companies, which Dell said wasn’t “something we would have done.”

Nation

6A THE ZAPATA TIMES

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2014

Mom accused of tossing 6-year-old son off bridge

By JEFF BARNARD ASSOCIATED PRESS

Photo by Mindy Schauer/Orange County Register | AP

JC Martinez of Orange, Calif., is emotional as she delivers three sunflowers Monday to the site where twins Lexi and Lexandra Perez Huerta and Andrea Gonzalez died after being stuck in a crosswalk.

Man charged in hit-run deaths of 3 ASSOCIATED PRESS

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Prosecutors filed charges Tuesday against a driver accused of fleeing in his SUV after fatally striking three Southern California teenage girls as they were trick-or-treating on Halloween.

Jaquinn Bell, 31, was expected to be arraigned on three felony counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, one felony count of hit-and-run with permanent injury or death and one misdemeanor count of driving on a suspended license, the Orange County district attorney’s office said.

Prosecutors planned to ask that Bell, who recently pleaded guilty to a separate hit-and-run, be held on $1 million bail. If convicted, he faces up to 17 years in state prison.

The complaint also included sentencing enhancement allegations of personally inflicting great bodily injury and fleeing the scene after committing a vehicular manslaughter.

The victims of the Halloween night crash in the city of Santa Ana were twin sisters Lexi and Lexandra Perez and a friend, Andrea

Gonzalez, all 13 years old.

Police said the girls were crossing a street in a marked crosswalk when they were struck by a black Honda SUV that left the scene without stopping.

Authorities believe Bell fled with his two teenage children after ditching the damaged car in a nearby parking lot. He was arrested Sunday at a motel in the city of Stanton.

Bell pleaded guilty in August to misdemeanor counts of child abuse, driving under the influence and hit-and-run with property damage, online court records show. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail, three years’ probation, and alcohol- and child-abuse treatment programs, a court spokeswoman said.

He has prior convictions for reckless driving, spousal injury and violation of a protective order, records show.

Trick-or-treaters were also injured and killed in collisions in New York, Florida, Washington state and the nearby Orange County city of Irvine, where 65year-old John Alcorn died after he was struck by a car. His 4-year-old son was in critical but stable condition.

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A woman who appealed for money online to help care for her autistic son and disabled husband has been accused of throwing her 6-year-old boy to his death off an historic bridge on the Oregon coast.

Police said Jillian Meredith McCabe, 34, called 911 from the bridge in Newport as darkness fell Monday to report what she had done and waited until police arrived.

“I just threw my son over the Yaquina Bay Bridge,” McCabe told the dispatcher, according to a probable cause affidavit filed Tuesday in Lincoln County Circuit Court.

She described her son, London Grey McCabe, and the clothes he was wearing, saying he was in the water and gone. Later that night, a body was reported in the water at a bayside resort about a mile from the bridge, and police said they confirmed it was the kindergartener.

“It’s a great tragedy,” said the boy’s great aunt, Tanya McCabe.

Andrew McCabe confirmed Tuesday that his sister-in-law had written an appeal on YouCaring.com, a crowdfunding website. In it she described caring for her autistic son and her husband, Matt, who has been unable to work since developing multiple sclerosis and a mass on his brain stem.

The appeal ended eight months ago, after raising $6,831 toward a goal of $50,000.

“If you are a praying person, pray for us,” Jillian McCabe wrote. “I love my husband and he has taken care of myself and my son for years and

Photo by Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian | AP

This photo shows the Yaquina Bay Bridge. A woman who appealed for money online to help care for her autistic son has been accused of throwing her 6-year-old to his death off the bridge on Monday. years and now it’s time for me to take the helm. I am scared and I am reaching out.”

Andrew McCabe also confirmed that Jillian McCabe had posted YouTube videos, one showing her husband in a hospital bed and their son pushing a button to raise and lower it.

Another shows her son sitting in a hammock, smiling with a cup of juice and engrossed in an iPad. When she asks if he is happy, he says nothing.

When she tells him to say “help” if he wants a push in the hammock, he says, “help.” Still another video shows the boy holding a stuffed toy lion and throwing coins in an indoor fountain to make a wish.

Jillian McCabe was expected to be arraigned Tuesday on charges of

murder, aggravated murder and manslaughter.

She has not yet had a court appearance or lawyer assigned for her defense. The aggravated murder charge, which carries a potential death penalty, was filed because the boy was under 14 years old.

Police said she was from Seal Rock, south of Newport, but Andrew McCabe said they had lived in Hood River. He said his brother had a business doing email campaigns until he became disabled.

Police are asking anyone who saw the woman and child on the bridge to call detectives.

In the affidavit, a police officer writes that Jillian McCabe was still talking on her cellphone when a sheriff ’s deputy walked up to her on the bridge.

Woman gets 16 years for running fake university

By SUDHIN THANAWALA ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco Bay Area woman was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison for running what prosecutors said was a sham university that served as a front for an immigration scam.

Susan Xiao-Ping Su, founder and president of the phony Tri-Valley University in Pleasanton, was accused of charging hundreds of foreigners, mostly Indian nationals, tuition and other payments for visa-related documents that allowed them to live and work in the U.S. while she purported that they were here legally to study. She made more than $5.6 million and used the money to buy commercial real estate, a Mercedes Benz and multiple homes, including one at a golf

club, federal prosecutors said Monday.

U.S. District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar sentenced Su, 44, on Friday after she was convicted in March of visa fraud and other charges. She was also ordered to forfeit $5.6 million and pay more than $900,000 in restitution to two companies that processed payments from students, authorities said. Su’s attorney, John Jordan, said he has filed a notice of appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Student visas are intended to give people from around the world a chance to come to this country to enrich themselves with the vast learning opportunities available here,” Tatum King, acting special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations, San Francisco, said in a statement. “But in this case, the defendant was interested in a

different kind of enrichment, her own.”

Most of the students appeared to know they were taking part in a fraudulent scheme, said Mitchell Rose, a supervisory special agent with Homeland Security Investigations in San Francisco.

They received visa-related documents in exchange for about $2,700 a semester, Rose said.

Many of them left the country on their own after the school was raided in 2011, while others applied to regain their student status.

The Tri-Valley case is not unique in the Bay Area. Jerry Wang, the chief executive officer of Herguan University and the University of EastWest Medicine in Sunnyvale, is also facing visa fraud charges in connection with what authorities say is a similar scheme. He has pleaded

not guilty and is scheduled to go on trial next month.

In the Tri-Valley case, employees testified that the school had no graduation and admission requirements, and that Su, of Pleasanton, instructed her staff to fabricate transcripts and other documents. Some professors said Su used their names, though they did not teach at Tri-Valley or have any connection to the school.

Tri-Valley described itself as a “Christian higher education institution” that provided higher education in engineering, business and ministry, according to court documents.

But Rose said investigators found purported classes were non-existent or had technical problems. Attendance at legitimate online classes was sparse, but the students obtained high grades nonetheless.

Gunshots hit mosque, no injuries ASSOCIATED PRESS

COACHELLA, Calif. — No one was hurt when gunfire struck a mosque in the desert city of Coachella before dawn Tuesday, authorities in Southern California said.

A report of shots fired was received at 5:01 a.m., and responding officers determined that several shots struck the Islamic Society of the Coachella Valley building and a vehicle, the Riverside County Sheriff ’s Department said. The building was occupied, but nobody was injured.

The shooting in the city about 25 miles southeast of Palm Springs was being investigated as a possible hate crime, a Sheriff ’s Department statement said.

A regional office of the

Photo by Colin Atagi/The Desert Sun | AP

A police car sits in front of the Islamic Center of Coachella Valley on Tuesday. California authorities say a mosque was struck by gunfire.

Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a statement calling for an FBI investigation.

“Any time shots are fired

at a house of worship, the FBI should offer its resources to local authorities to help determine whether or not there was a bias mo-

tive for the attack,” CAIRLA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said.

The shooting is under review, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

“The fact that this is a place of worship, we would reach out to determine if investigation is warranted at the federal level,” she said.

Last month in New Mexico, someone hurled a Molotov cocktail at the wall of an unoccupied Albuquerque mosque. No one was hurt, and no suspects were identified. Community members held a peace walk a few days later to support the mosque.

CAIR also said a threatening letter containing an unknown substance was recently mailed to a mosque in San Diego.

Another officer says he saw a woman matching Jillian McCabe’s description carrying a boy matching London’s description on the bridge shortly after 6 p.m., and thought it odd because the boy was, “too big to be carried,” according to the affidavit.

The Yaquina Bay arched bridge, one of the most famous on the Oregon coast, opened in 1936.

It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It carries traffic for U.S. Highway 101 and rises more than 100 feet above the water.

In 2009, a woman tossed her two young children off a bridge in Portland, killing her 4-year-old son.

A daughter, then 7 years old, survived. Amanda Stott-Smith was sentenced in 2010 to at least 35 years in prison.

Anti-abortion laws blocked

By JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS ASSOCIATED PRESS

TULSA, Okla. — The Oklahoma Supreme Court blocked two new laws aimed at limiting access to abortions on Tuesday, putting both on hold until lawsuits challenging their constitutionality have been settled.

Both laws, approved by the Legislature earlier this year, had taken effect Saturday. One required abortion providers to have a physician with admitting privileges at a nearby hospital present when abortions are performed. The other prohibited off-label uses of abortion-inducing drugs by requiring doctors to administer them only in accordance with U.S. Food and Drug Administration protocols.

Abortion-rights supporters welcomed the delay Tuesday.

“Today the Oklahoma Supreme Court handed the women of Oklahoma a crucial victory by protecting their constitutional rights and restoring critical options for those seeking safe and legal abortion services,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is supporting efforts to fight the laws.

“Time and time again, courts are seeing that the true motive behind these underhanded and baseless restrictions is to push essential reproductive health care services out of reach for as many women as possible,” she said.

A message seeking comment from Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt was not immediately returned. A spokesman for Gov. Mary Fallin said the governor was on the road on Election Day and was unsure if she could be reached for comment.

The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit in October on behalf of an Oklahoma doctor who performs nearly half the state’s abortions, seeking to block the law requiring admitting privileges law.

The physician, Dr. Larry Burns, said he had applied for admitting privileges at 16 nearby hospitals but had yet to get approval from any facility.

When Burns filed his lawsuit in October, Fallin — who signed the legislation into law in May— said she believed abortion was wrong and that she had been “proud to work with lawmakers in both parties to support legislation that protects the health and lives of both mothers and their unborn children.”

Entertainment

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2014

THE ZAPATA TIMES 7A

3 new shows learn they have no future

By DAVID BAUDER ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — Television viewers proved to not have much interest in seeing Kate Walsh as a misbehaving judge, a manufactured Utopian society created for the cameras or the “How I Met Your Mother” love interest portraying a lawyer in love.

All are television concepts that viewers have rejected. The actors and creators learned within the past week that their programs have no future, joining ABC’s “Manhattan Love Story,” the first program canceled this fall.

Fox’s “Utopia” was perhaps that network’s biggest disappointment. Fox scheduled the reality series for two nights a week this fall, but quickly cut that back to only Fridays when it got off to a slow start. When the Nielsen company reported that this past Friday’s episode reached a paltry 1.5 million viewers, Fox pulled the plug.

The online part of the show stopped on Sunday.

NBC’s comedies “Bad Judge” and “A-to-Z,” which stars Cristin Milioti, remain on the air, but the network announced it will stop making new episodes when the

Photo by Trae Patton/NBC | AP

This image released by NBC shows Ben Feldman, left, and Cristin Milioti in a scene from "A TO Z," which premiered Oct. 2.

NBC announced that they will stop making new episodes, but will remain on air until January. initial order ends, so the programs will limp along until January.

With Thursday night football’s run on CBS ending, the network rearranged its schedule, returning “The Big Bang Theory” to Thursdays. TV’s most popular comedy grabbed 16.2 million viewers in its

return. The new comedy “The McCarthys” premiered on CBS later that night to half that audience.

Fox’s telecast of the gripping finale of the San Francisco-Kansas City World Series was the mostwatched prime-time show last week, Nielsen said.

Paul Simon will work with critic for his bio

By HILLEL ITALIE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK — After decades of telling his story through music, Paul Simon is ready to rely on words alone.

The celebrated singersongwriter has agreed to cooperate with author and music critic Robert Hilburn for a planned biography. Simon & Schuster, winner of a recent six-publisher auction, announced the acquisition Tuesday and told The Associated Press that the book was still untitled and did not yet have a release date. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Hilburn’s previous books

include the memoir “Corn Flakes With John Lennon and Other Tales from a Rock ‘n’ Roll Life” and a biography of Johnny Cash.

Publishers have long been anxious for a book from Simon, among the world’s most popular, introspective and articulate musicians.

“I thought seriously about writing my own memoir, but I’d rather devote my time to making music, which continues to hold my full attention,” Simon explained in a statement issued through his publisher. “I’m confident Robert Hilburn will write an insightful book. I enjoyed and admired his biography of Johnny Cash and I think he’ll tell my

story well.”

Hilburn has known Simon since the 1970s and said in a statement that the biography would “be a gripping, inspiring portrait of an artist, including the toughness and heart it requires to avoid giving in to the many factor — from rejection to self-doubt to writer’s block and complacency — that have derailed so many pop artists.”

The 73-year-old Simon has been famous for nearly half a century, since he and Art Garfunkel broke through with the folk-rock hit “The Sound of Silence.”

Simon’s many classics include “Mrs. Robinson” and“Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

CBS won the week in prime time, averaging 10.8 million viewers. Fox averaged 8.1 million, and won among viewers aged 18 to 49.

NBC had 7.6 million, ABC had 6.7 million, Univision had 2.7 million, the CW had 1.7 million, ION Television had 1.1 million and Tele-

mundo had 1 million.

Led by its “Monday Night Football” matchup of Dallas and Washington, ESPN averaged 5.02 million viewers in prime time, making it the most popular cable network. AMC had 1.9 million, Fox News Channel had 1.64 million, USA had 1.6 million and Discovery had 1.58 million.

NBC’s “Nightly News” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 8.7 million viewers. ABC’s “World News” was second with 8.1 million and the “CBS Evening News” had 6.7 million viewers.

For the week of Oct. 27-Nov. 2, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: World Series Game 7: San Francisco vs. Kansas City, Fox, 23.52 million; NFL Football: Dallas vs. Washington, ESPN, 18.81 million; NFL Football: Baltimore vs. Pittsburgh, NBC, 18.6 million; “60 Minutes,” CBS, 17.8 million; “NCIS,” CBS, 17.53 million; “The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 16.25 million; “NCIS: New Orleans,” CBS, 16.09 million; “The Walking Dead,” AMC, 14.52 million; “Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick,” NBC, 13.94 million; World Series Game 6: San Francisco vs. Kansas City, Fox, 13.37 million.

PÁGINA 8A

Zfrontera

Ribereña en Breve AGRESIÓN El lunes, alrededor de las 7 a.m., civiles armados agredieron a elementos del Ejército Mexicano, en la carretera Valle Hermoso-Empalme, a la altura de la Brecha 122, Kilómetro 71, en Valle Hermoso, Tamaulipas. Como resultado, militares repelieron la agresión, muriendo tres sospechosos.

En un comunicado de prensa, se explica que militares realizaban recorrido de patrullaje cuando fueron atacados por los civiles armados que se desplazaban en varios vehículos.

Los cuerpos de dos agresores quedaron dentro de una camioneta pick up Chevrolet Silverado, de reciente modelo, sin placas de circulación. Un tercer sospechoso quedó sobre la carretera.

Fueron aseguradas tres armas largas de alto poder, 13 cargadores abastecidos, cartuchos útiles de diversos calibres, dos fornituras y un pantalón camuflajeado.

El sábado, en Reynosa, México, elementos de la Policía Estatal Acreditable y de la Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional rescataron a 17 personas migrantes que estaban privadas de su libertad.

El rescate de los migrantes se logró en la Colonia Vicente Guerrero. Juan Carlos Ramírez Mondragón fue detenido como probable responsable del ilícito. Según declaraciones, Ramírez dijo laborar para un grupo delincuencial que opera en Reynosa.

Los migrantes liberados, ocho mujeres y nueve hombres, provenientes de El Salvador, Guatemala y Honduras, fueron puestos a disposición de las autoridades de la Procuraduría General de la República y del Instituto Nacional de Migración para su atención correspondiente.

MIÉRCOLES 5 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2014

VIOLENCIA

Abaten a general POR CÉSAR G. RODRÍGUEZ TIEMPO DE ZAPATA

Un coordinador regional para seguridad pública en Tamaulipas, con oficinas centrales en Nuevo Laredo, México, fue abatido junto con su esposa, dijeron autoridades mexicanas el lunes por la noche.

Sicarios sospechosos supuestamente dispararon el sábado sobre el General Ricardo César Niño Villarreal y su esposa, en la municipalidad de Vallecillo, Nuevo León.

El nombre de la esposa no fue revelado. La oficina del procurador general en Nuevo León se encuentra investigando el incidente.

Niño y su esposa fueron neral, el lunes, después de abatidos mientras viajaconfirmar la identidad de Niban en su Nissan Tsuru, ño. modelo 2002. Ellos viaja“El (gobierno) de Tamauliban por la antigua carretepas condena y lamenta prora Nuevo Laredo-Montefundamente el fallecimiento rrey, también conocida codel General Ricardo César NIÑO mo Carretera Libre, Niño Villarreal y su esposa”, cuando los sicarios empeindica un comunicado de zaron a dispararles cerca del kiló- prensa emitido por las autoridametro 127, de acuerdo a las autori- des de Tamaulipas el lunes por la dades. noche.

Ellos dijeron que los cuerpos y Niño había sido mencionado en el vehículo fueron descubiertos varias “narcomantas”, o mensajes hasta el domingo cuando viajeros emitidos por carteles del narconotificaron a las autoridades en tráfico, colocadas en lugares púNuevo León. Autoridades enton- blicos en Nuevo Laredo. Los mences informaron a oficiales en Ta- sajes acusaban a Niño de aceptar maulipas acerca del deceso del ge- dinero del crimen organizado.

TAMAULIPAS

DEPORTES

PRIMER LUGAR

Foto de cortesía | Gobierno de Nuevo Laredo

La Olimpiada Infantil y Juvenil 2015 en la disciplina de Karate-Do, a nivel Tamaulipas, se desarrolló del 24 al 26 de octubre en el Gimnasio Polideportivo de Tampico, México, donde el grupo de Nuevo Laredo, México, conquistó el primer lugar.

Destacan en Karate a nivel Tamaulipas TIEMPO DE ZAPATA

SEMINARIO DE FOTOGRAFÍA El sábado 15 de noviembre se impartirá un Seminario de Fotografía gratuito, organizado por la Ciudad de Roma.

El evento se llevará a acabo en Roma Birding Center, y será impartido por Los Santitos Photography.

Durante el seminario se impartirán y explicarán herramientas necesarias para capturar buenas imágenes. No se necesita una cámara profesional para acudir al seminario. El evento es abierto al público y a los fotógrafos entusiastas.

Para asegurar su lugar puede llamar al (956) 500.0373.

E

l grupo de representantes de Nuevo Laredo, México, logró el primer lugar en la etapa Tamaulipas de la Olimpiada Infantil y Juvenil 2015 en la disciplina de Karate-Do, y con esto el trofeo “CONADE” de la Comisión Nacional de Cultura Física y Deporte.

La competencia se desarrolló del 24 al 26 de octubre en el Gimnasio Polideportivo de Tampico, Tamaulipas, México.

“Gracias al esfuerzo diario de todo el equipo, tanto de los muchachos como de nosotros los entrenadores, hicimos un buen papel, lo cual se ve reflejado en

los logros y las posiciones que nos trajimos”, dijo Tomás Rodríguez Zamora, entrenador de Karate-Do. Por Nuevo Laredo asistieron, Ana Karen Rodríguez Hernández, Yaneth Quiroz Castillo, Zugehin Gallardo Rivera, Magaly Uranga Balderas, César Ramos Hernández, Brenda Reyes Muro, Alondra Rivera Gallegos, Abraham Treviño Rangel, Christian Anaya Castro, Tania Ramos Hernández y Julio Treviño Rangel.

Rodríguez Hernández obtuvo el primer lugar en Kata y en Kumite.

“Las competencias fueron duras, pero ahí pudimos demostrar de lo que somos capaces”,

dijo ella. “Gracias a Dios nos trajimos buenos resultados y nos unió más como equipo y como deportistas, nos impulsó a seguir adelante”.

Dentro de la competencia estatal participaron deportistas procedentes de distintos municipios como Ciudad Victoria, Mante, Madero, San Fernando, Matamoros, Reynosa y Altamira.

Los ganadores del primero y segundo lugar de cada categoría, división y rama, integrarán la selección estatal que estará presente en el Campeonato Nacional Clasificatorio que definirá, a través del ranking, a los karatecas que estarán presentes en la Olimpiada Nacional 2015.

COLUMNA

DESFILE DE NAVIDAD La Cámara de Comercio del Condado de Zapata invita al Desfile de Navidad y Encendido de la Plaza del Condado, el jueves 4 de diciembre.

Se invita a empresas, iglesias, clubes, escuelas, organizaciones, y oficiales a participar durante el desfile. Se entregarán trofeos a los tres mejores carros alegóricos.

Los participantes empezarán a alinearse a las 5 p.m. del 4 de diciembre en calle Glenn y 17th Ave (detrás de Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church).

Para más información, comunicarse con Celia Baldes, del Zapata County Chamber of Commerce, al (956) 7654871.

Anuncian premios juventud 2014 TIEMPO DE ZAPATA

DECOMISO El sábado, elementos de la Policía Estatal Acreditable y de la Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional, aseguraron 123 kilogramos de marihuana durante un operativo llevado a cabo en el tramo carretero Rancherías-Comales de Camargo, México. Agentes encontraron ocultos entre los matorrales dos paquetes que contenían la droga.

Los sicarios sospechosos fueron tras Niño a inicios de octubre en Linares, Nuevo León. A las 7 p.m. del 9 de octubre, integrantes de un convoy protegiendo al general, escucharon disparos realizados en el área, de acuerdo a reportes.

Autoridades dijeron que rápidamente tomaron maniobras ofensivas mientras que fuerzas federales dijeron que vieron a personas que se escondieron en la maleza.

Nadie fue arrestado. Ése día, Niño se dirigía a Nuevo Laredo, desde Ciudad Victoria, de acuerdo a las autoridades de Tamaulipas.

(Localice a César G. Rodriguez en el 728-2568 o en cesar@lmtonline.com)

Chochas es platillo típico local POR RAÚL SINENCIO ESPECIAL PARA TIEMPO DE ZAPATA

Tamaulipa ha contribuido a la variedad de la cocina mexicana con platillos capaces de satisfacer exigentes paladares.

Entre los más típicos sobresalen las chochas, en distintas versiones gastronómicas.

Entre los platillos más típicos se encuentran las chochas, que son las flores de ciertas plantas silvestres, propias de tierras áridas o semiáridas. Poseen altos tallos y hojas puntiagudas en conjuntos. Integrantes de la fa-

milia de las Yucas (nombre científico), por lo menos tres variantes están presentes en parajes del suroeste y centro de Tamaulipas.

Las Yucas abundan en las áreas tamaulipecas, donde recibe denominaciones que hacen referencia a las palmas, que de acuerdo con científicos no tienen ninguna relación, prevalecen en buena medida las de palma de dátiles, palma pita o pita.

De ellas se utilizan distintas partes, además de la flor, se consumen al natural o en conserva los dátiles que produce. Las

hojas proporcionan asimismo fibras empleadas en la elaboración de canastas, sogas o cuerdas.

El uso de esta planta nos remonta a tiempos remotos, como se infiere en piezas fósiles y vestigios arqueológicos. Esto incluye a los pueblos originarios de Tamaulipas, sometidos al dominio hispano hasta mediados del siglo XVIII. El apelativo posibilita que ya entonces se degustaran las flores de la pita.

Al parecer, chochas proviene del idioma huasteco. “Tzatza” (léase chacha), que significa pitaha-

ya, quizás termine en chochas, extendiéndose a determinadas flores, de características semejantes.

Hay la posibilidad de que el platillo prehispánico pasara al virreinato, y de ahí a la época de la Independencia de México.

“Existen otras plantas silvestres de que usan a menudo los rancheros para variar los guisos en sus comidas, tales como la flor de pita”, señala Alejandro Prieto en 1873.

(Con permiso del autor, según fuer publicado por La Razón, Tampico, el 31 de octubre)

Un jurado calificador dio a conocer el nombre de dieciséis jóvenes del Estado de Tamaulipas que han sido nombrados Premio Estatal de la Juventud 2014, anunciaron autoridades tamaulipecas.

“Indudablemente este tipo de certámenes nos ayuda a identificar aquellos jóvenes que contribuyen en el fortalecimiento de la sociedad”, dijo Daniel Santos Flores, Director General del Instituto de la Juventud de Tamaulipas.

Los jóvenes participantes, originarios de Nuevo Laredo, México, San Fernando, Ciudad Victoria, Xicoténcatl, Altamira, Tampico, Madero y Matamoros, México, fueron evaluados y divididos en dos categorías.

Los ganadores de la categoría A, tendrán un premio en efectivo de 35.000 pesos, mientras que los ganadores de la categoría B, obtendrán 65.000 pesos. Los estímulos serán entregados durante una ceremonia con el Gobernador Egidio Torre Cantú, de acuerdo con un comunicado de prensa.

En Labor Social, categoría A resultó ganador Raúl García Romero de San Fernando, mientras que en la categoría B, de Nuevo Laredo, José Alfredo Leal Cárdenas fue nombrado ganador; en el área de Superación e Integración, la categoría A tuvo como ganadora a Mabel Alejandra Ramírez Lara del Mante, y en la categoría B a Juan Daniel Rodríguez Mascorro de Ciudad Victoria.

En el área de Logros Académicos, los galardonados serán Gustavo Ángel Pérez Puente de Altamira en la categoría A y en la categoría B Alan Díaz Manríquez de Ciudad Victoria.

Michel Yanely Dosal Hernández de Xicoténcatl, (categoría A) y Walton Román Estrada Aguillón (categoría B), son ganadores en el área de Protección al Ambiente, del municipio de Madero. En el área de Mérito Cívico Campeones Del Cobat 02 originarios de Matamoros y Julio César Hernández Rodríguez de Mante; En el área de Ingenio Emprendedor los ganadores fueron Delia Itzel López Dueñas de Victoria y Luis Fernando Romero Aros de Mante, en las categorías ay B, respectivamente.

Y en la fase de Expresiones Artísticas, la categoría A la ganó Kryztell Amairani Quevedo Saucedo, de Victoria, y en la categoría B, el ganador es José Arturo Vázquez Menchaca de Nuevo Laredo. El área de Derechos Humanos se acordó que Elizabeth Hernández Hernández de Tampico, como ganadora de la categoría A y Ulises Esquivel Herrera de Madero en la categoría B.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2014

ON THE WEB: THEZAPATATIMES.COM

Sports&Outdoors MLB: RANGERS

NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE: DALLAS COWBOYS

Darvish, Fielder return from DL

Romo travels to London, status unclear

ASSOCIATED PRESS

ARLINGTON, Texas — The Texas Rangers have reinstated nine players from the 60-day disabled list.

Ace pitcher Yu Darvish and first baseman Prince Fielder were among the players reinstated Monday, giving the Rangers a full 40-man roster. Both are expected to be ready for spring training.

Darvish’s last game was Aug. 9 before he was sidelined by elbow inflammation. Fielder, the slugger acquired last November, played in only 42 games after neck surgery.

Outfielder Shin-Soo Choo had operations late in the season for a bone spur in his left elbow and torn cartilage in his left ankle.

Also put back on the roster were lefthanders Matt Harrison and Martin Perez, right-handers Alexi Ogando and Tanner Scheppers, first baseman Mitch Moreland and infielder Jurickson Profar.

By SCHUYLER DIXON ASSOCIATED PRESS

IRVING — Tony Romo’s back was the top priority for the Dallas Cowboys on their long plane ride to London.

Even higher than the comfort of owner Jerry Jones’ wife.

“Gene will sit up in the bulkhead,” Jones joked a day before Monday’s flight. “Romo will lounge on the way over. You don’t think it’d be me, do you?”

Assuming Romo’s third back injury in 18 months makes it through the ninehour flight no worse for the wear, the next ques-

tion will be how much preparation time he can handle.

Romo missed practice all last week and watched Sunday while backup Brandon Weeden failed to get Dallas into the end zone until a 28-17 loss to Arizona was out of reach.

The Cowboys were

scheduled to land in London on Tuesday morning, hoping to get into their routine as much as possible ahead of Sunday’s game against Jacksonville.

So far this season, that plan has been meetings and a short walk-through Tuesday, and regular practices Wednesday through

Friday.

Romo has skipped Wednesday workouts since the regular season started after surgery for a herniated disk last December.

The latest injury is two fractures of small bones in the back, and others with the same injury have missed one game.

10A THE ZAPATA TIMES

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2014

IS accused of abusing captive Kurdish boys

By RYAN LUCAS ASSOCIATED PRESS

BEIRUT — Islamic State militants tortured and abused Kurdish children captured earlier this year near the northern Syrian town of Kobani, beating them with hoses and electric cables, an international rights group said Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch based its conclusions on interviews with several children who were among more than 150 Kurdish boys from Kobani abducted in late May as they were returning home after taking school exams in the city of Aleppo. It said around 50 of the Kurds escaped early in their captivity, while the rest were released in batches — the last coming on Oct. 29.

“Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, children have suffered the horrors of detention and torture, first by the Assad government and now by ISIS,” said Human Rights Watch’s Fred Abrahams.

“This evidence of torture and abuse of children by ISIS underlines why no one should support their criminal enterprise.”

Four of the children who were released told the New York-based rights group that they were held by the extremists in the northern Syrian town of Manbij.

They described frequent abuse at the hands of the militants, who used a hose and electric cable to administer beatings.

The boys, ages 14 to 16, said that some of the worst abuse was reserved for captives who had family members in the Kurdish militia known as the YPG, which has been locked in heavy fighting with Islamic State militants for control of Kobani since mid-September.

The children said the Islamic State group did not say why they were being released, other than that they

Photo by Vadim Ghirda | AP

Women wearing traditional Kurdish dress watch fighting on the outskirts of Kobani, on the Turkey-Syria border, Tuesday. had completed their religious training, the Human Rights Watch report said.

Islamic State militants have taken hundreds of Kurds captive over the past year as part of the group’s brutal campaign to take over predominantly Kurdish areas of northern and eastern Syria.

On Tuesday, the Britainbased Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the extremists had released dozens of Kurds taken captive in February. It was not immediately clear why the Islamic State group would release the captives now, nor whether a deal had been made with the Kurds for a prisoner exchange.

The fight over Kobani, meanwhile, has raged on, with the Islamic State group pressing its assault despite fierce resistance from the town’s Kurdish defenders and heavy U.S.-led airstrikes against the extremists. On Tuesday, clashes focused on the eastern and western sides of the town.

A militant video posted online Tuesday showed the aftermath of apparent U.S.led airstrikes, which saw a large plume of black smoke rise over a neighborhood in the town.

Iraqi Kurdish forces known as peshmerga have deployed to Kobani to help bolster their Syrian breth-

ren defending the town. So far, the peshmerga are only playing a support role, using their heavy weapons and mortars to provide cover to YPG militiamen, said the Iraqi fighter, who only gave his first name, Rebwar, because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

While much of the world’s attention has focused in on the town along the Syria-Turkey border since the Islamic State offensive there began some six weeks ago, France’s foreign minister urged the international coalition against the Islamic State to save the embattled city of Aleppo after attending to Kobani.

Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, has been carved into opposition- and government-held areas since mid-2012. In recent months, the rebel-controlled zone has come under increasing threat as it has been squeezed by President Bashar Assad’s forces as well as advancing Islamic State militants.

“Abandoning Aleppo would mean condemning 300,000 men, women and children to a terrible fate: either a murderous siege under the regime’s bombs or the terrorist barbarity of Daesh,” Laurent Fabius wrote in a column published Tuesday in the Washington Post.

SAENZ TAMEZ Continued from Page 1A chain of distribution.”

Given its size and proximity to the border, the Houston region has long had a key relationship with this cartel. Houston is a hub for its work smuggling drugs, guns and cash, and several of its members and associates have faced justice in the area.

Saenz was captured Oct. 9

by DEA agents and Edinburg police without a shot being fired. They closed in on him as he shopped with his family at an Academy sporting goods store. He tried briefly to flee in a new Jeep, but he quickly gave up, perhaps to spare his family from being harmed. “(He) was foolish enough to go shopping in Edinburg,” Bales said. “An informant reported that, and we scooped him up.”

Saenz was flown to Beaumont, where he had been indicted in September 2013 on charges of money laundering and conspiring to smuggle cocaine and marijuana through that region and on to Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

If history is an indicator, Saenz would have faced a tough road even if he had not been grabbed at the Academy.

The end hasn’t come well for the cartel’s many leaders and interim bosses over the past 25 years. Their reigns have become increasingly short, with Saenz’s being perhaps the shortest.

“It is what happens in war if your officers are getting decimated right in front of you,” said Larry Karson, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of HoustonDowntown. “It says their enemy, the government, is effectively decimating their upper ranks, which means the lower ranks don’t have the experience or wherewithal and get busted quicker.”

The cartel has had at least nine leaders since the early 1990s. Each has ended up dead or in prison in the U.S. or Mexico. Some have been killed by rivals or by

Associated Press

The recent arrest of the 23-year-old Juan Saenz Tamez showed just how far one of Mexico’s longest-running crime groups has fallen. the Mexican military, others betrayed by colleagues looking for ways to climb the ranks.

The cartel’s biggest boss, Juan Garcia Abrego, inherited leadership in the 1970s from his uncle, a longtime borderland smuggler of all manner of contraband. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Garcia took the cartel from being a gang of pot smugglers and car thieves to major cocaine traffickers, creating one of the strongest crime groups in the hemisphere.

Garcia was captured in Mexico in 1996 and shipped to Houston, where he was sentenced to life in prison.

Garcia recently turned 70 at the so-called Supermax prison in Colorado.

After Garcia’s fall, a hottempered Osiel Cardenas Guillen took command. He created the Zetas, a feared cartel security force consisting of former members of the Mexican military.

Cardenas gained infamy in 1999 by pointing a goldplated AK-47 at the heads of DEA and FBI agents temporarily caught in Matamoros. He became the subject

of a $5 million reward offered by the U.S. government.

He was captured during a massive gunbattle with the Mexican military. Cardenas in 2007 was shipped to Houston, where he was convicted, and now also sits in the Supermax.

With Cardenas locked away, the Zetas landed the greatest blow to the Gulf Cartel by breaking away and starting their own crime syndicate. The two groups are now bitter enemies.

With the fall of young Saenz, the job of cartel king is again open.

“There is no more Gulf Cartel that we would have traditionally thought of,” said Tristan Reed, a Mexico security analyst for Stratfor, a global intelligence and advisory firm based in Austin.

“What the Gulf Cartel is now is really the future of organized crime groups in Mexico,” he said. “It becomes more and more difficult to operate. It breaks up.

It decentralizes.”

Even so, Reed said, “You still have large amounts of drugs flowing into Texas.”

PRINCESSES princesses, they’re a product of their time,” said Linda Woolverton, who wrote “Maleficent,” released on DVD Tuesday.

“The princesses that were created in the 1940s and ‘50s, they were the best of what a woman should be then: You’re the good girl. You took abuse ... and through it all, you sang and were nice.

“But we’re not like that anymore. We kick ass now.”

Woolverton reflects that in her work, which includes screenplays for “Beauty and the Beast” and “Alice in Wonderland.” She thought of her love for her daughter when writing the twist on true-love’s kiss in “Maleficent,” she said.

“It’s different than any kind of romantic love,” she said, “and it would be more powerful in breaking a spell than any other kind of love.”

Don Hahn, an executive producer of “Maleficent,” said it would be “totally inappropriate” to have a modern Sleeping Beauty rescued by Prince Charming.

“We can’t put a movie on the screen where the protagonist is asleep through half the movie and only wakes up when a man wakes her up and tells her, ‘OK, you can start your life now,”’ he said. “I don’t want to tell my daughter that story.”

Jennifer Lee also was thinking of her daughter when writing and directing “Frozen.” She wanted to create characters they both could relate to, and felt the bond between sisters would be more accessible to a young girl than the lure of romantic love.

Lee also wanted to reflect the real girls she knows, which meant leaving familiar princess tropes behind.

Though Anna initially seeks a prince, she, like Elsa, is ultimately motivated by familial love.

The two lead characters

Continued from Page 1A

Where romance was once the goal of the cinematic princess, Disney is shifting its lens toward independent female protagonists defined by broader criteria. weren’t originally written as princesses, Lee said.

“We did it to add pressure to them,” she said.

“In Cinderella’s case, becoming a princess is the happily ever after. In our case, becoming a princess put the pressure on them because they’re responsible for an entire kingdom.”

Meanwhile, “Cinderella” is getting a face lift from Disney, with an updated, live-action version due out in 2015. The following year, the studio is releasing the animated “Moana,” centering on a female island adventurer.

Pixar’s “Inside Out” is set for release next summer.

Writer-director Pete Docter said his daughter inspired the Pixar movie, which tells the story of an adolescent girl growing up from the perspective of the emotions inside her head. The tale has nothing to do with her finding romance, he said.

“That’s not part of my daughter’s story,” he said.

“This story is about becoming and getting older.”

Hahn acknowledged some concern among producers about how Disney traditionalists might view these evolved princesses.

“We thought the purists, the Disney fans, what are they going to think? Because you’ve got to have your prince and all that,” he said. “But the idea is yeah, you can have your prince, but that’s a component of your life.”

Feminism pioneer Glo-

ria Steinem said such independent female characters can make a difference in real-life gender perceptions.

“If we can see it, we can be it,” she said. “If we don’t see it, we don’t know we can.”

It has paid off at the box office. “Frozen” has brought in more than $1.2 billion globally, making it the fifth highest grossing movie ever, according to box-office tracker Rentrak. “Maleficent” was a hit over the summer, with $750 million in worldwide ticket sales.

Lee hopes seeing independent girls on screen valued for strength and with goals beyond romance, will help real-life girls avoid the pressure of trying to meet an idealized female image.

“The more we create real characters that are flawed and messy, we won’t waste our time with all that stuff and we can just get on with living,” she said.

Woolverton expects more realistic and empowered female characters as more women find work as writers and directors.

“Naturally, women as artists are portraying themselves as protagonists,” she said. “The protagonist doesn’t stand behind anyone else. ... They lead on their own.”

Hahn believes seeing independent female characters benefits both girls and boys — “that you don’t have to be a man to be an engineer or a scientist and you don’t have to be a woman to be a great cook or raise children.”

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2014

THE ZAPATA TIMES 11A

RAUL SAENZ Raul Saenz, passed away on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014 at Falcon Lake Nursing Home in Zapata.

Mr. Saenz is preceded in death by his wife, Zoila Saenz.

Mr. Saenz is survived by his daughters, Rosa Nelda (Tomas, Jr.) Hinojosa, Blanca (Ramiro) Vela, Zoila (Manuel) Dominguez, Pepita (Jorge) Martinez; grandchildren, Carlos (Vanessa) Hinojosa, Mayra (Marco Antonio) Ramirez, Lucia (Hector) Garcia, Linda Jo (Roel, Jr.) Gonzalez, Laura Isela (Michael) Soler, Manuel, III (Jodie) Dominguez, Ricardo Javier Dominguez, Irma Araceli Martinez, and Jorge Luis Martinez Jr; nine great-grandchildren and by other family members and friends.

Visitation hours were held on Sunday, Nov. 2, 2014, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. with a rosary at 7 p.m. at Rose Garden Funeral Home.

The funeral procession departed on Monday, Nov.

U.S. stocks slip as oil prices drop

By STEVE ROTHWELL ASSOCIATED PRESS

3, 2014, at 9:30 a.m. for a 10 a.m. funeral Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. Committal services followed at Zapata County Cemetery.

Funeral arrangements were under the direction of Rose Garden Funeral Home Daniel A. Gonzalez, funeral director, 2102 N. U.S. Hwy. 83, Zapata.

Warner Bros. said to start cutting positions

NEW YORK — The ongoing slump in oil prices weighed on stocks again Tuesday, pushing energy companies to another day of big losses. Disappointing earnings outlooks from a range of companies, including Priceline and Michael Kors, also dragged down the market.

Oil has fallen sharply in recent weeks as global supplies rise while demand for fuel trails expectations.

The latest decline was prompted by reports that Saudi Arabia is cutting the price of oil that it supplies to the U.S. as it attempts to maintain its market share as U.S. production booms.

The drop in oil prices has hit energy stocks hard, driving them into negative territory for the year. It has also helped push the stock market back from the record levels that it reached last week.

“It’s a case of sell first, ask questions later, for anything oil-related,” said Quincy Krosby, a market strategist at Prudential Financial.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 5.71 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,012.10. The Nasdaq composite dropped 15.27 points, or 0.3 percent, to 4,623.64. The Dow Jones industrial average bucked the trend, edging up 17.60 points, or 0.1 percent, to 17,383.84.

While energy stocks are suffering, many analysts and investors predict that the U.S. economy will benefit in the long run from falling energy costs. Lower gas prices will put more money in consumers’ pockets, giving them more spending power.

Airlines were among the winners Tuesday. Fuel is their single largest operating cost and lower prices should mean higher profits if demand for air travel stays strong.

Delta Airlines surged $1.71, or 4.2 percent, to $42.32. United Continental, Jet Blue and Southwest Airlines also logged big gains.

Investors kept an eye on third quarter earnings reports as well.

Michael Kors fell the most in the S&P 500 index. The maker of luxury handbags, shoes and other accessories gave an outlook for the fourth quarter that disappointed investors.

The stock fell $6.57, or 8.4 percent, to $71.42.

Priceline also slumped. The online travel booking company dropped $100.82, or 8.4 percent, to $1,097.70 after it hinted that the weak economic backdrop in Europe would hurt its earnings in the current quarter. Priceline reported that its earnings rose 28 percent in the third quarter, but its outlook for the current quarter fell short of analysts’ projections.

Investors will also be following

the outcome of the midterm elections. Polling across the board gives Republicans well over a 50 percent chance of turning out at least six incumbent Senate Democrats or capturing seats left vacant by Democrat retirements. That outcome that would put the opposition in charge of both houses of Congress in the final two years of Obama’s second White House term.

Some strategists say that even if Republicans win both houses, it will likely have little impact on the direction of the stock market in coming months.

“The reality is that you’re still going to have a Democratic president, and very little is going to get done in the last two years of his term,” said David Lafferty, chief market strategist at Natixis Global Asset Management. “When elections really begin to matter is probably going to be in the next cycle.”

The news from overseas may also have discouraged buyers.

The European Union cut its already low economic growth forecasts further on Tuesday, indicating the recovery will remain sluggish amid problems for the biggest economies, particularly France and Germany. The official forecast for growth this year in the 18-country eurozone was cut to 0.8 percent from a prediction of 1.2 percent made in the spring.

By ANTHONY PALAZZO BLOOMBERG NEWS

Time Warner Inc. began cutting more than 1,000 jobs at its Warner Bros. film studio, according to a person familiar with the matter, as Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Bewkes presses a campaign to reduce costs.

The studio employed more than 8,000 people worldwide before the firings, said the person, who asked not to be named because the figures aren’t public. That suggests reductions in the range of 12 percent to 13 percent at the Burbank, Californiabased entertainment unit.

The move furthers Bewkes’ efforts to pare costs since turning down Rupert Murdoch’s $75 billion offer for Time Warner, saying the company could do do better on its own. Last month, the company’s HBO cable channel let go about 7 percent of its 2,400 employees, and Turner Broadcasting said it would eliminate about 10 percent of its global workforce.

“We at Warner Bros. have committed to reducing costs across the company in order to meet our longterm financial targets, and that includes cutting staff,” Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara said in a memo to staff today. “These changes are challenging, but we believe they will allow us to reallocate resources and position the company for growth and stability in the years ahead.”

Bloomberg News reported in September that Warner Bros. planned to cut staff and reduce costs.

Separately, Turner said today it hired Kevin Reilly, former entertainment chairman at Fox Broadcasting, as president of TBS and TNT, and chief creative officer of Turner Entertainment.

Time Warner reports second-quarter results tomorrow. The company, based in New York, fell 4.8 percent to $74.97 today in New York. The shares remain 12 percent below the offer from Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Inc., which valued the company at $85 a share.

Photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez | AP file

A man walks past a Google sign at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. on June 5. Google announced price cuts to its cloud computing services.

Google cuts cloud prices

By BRIAN WOMACK BLOOMBERG NEWS

Google Inc. unveiled price cuts for its cloud-based computing services, as the company seeks to attract business customers from Amazon.com Inc. and other rivals.

The Mountain View, Californiabased company is reducing the cost of some features, including some storage, database and networking options, by 23 percent to 79 percent, it said today at Google Cloud Platform Live, a conference for developers in San Francisco.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft Corp. have been lowering prices for

Web-based services this year as they compete for customers in a market that was worth more than $45 billion last year, according to researcher IDC. Google last month said it was cutting prices by about 10 percent on some of its cloud products. The reductions were driven by declining hardware costs and greater efficiency at the search provider’s data centers, the company said.

“We’re going to do everything we can to unburden you,” Brian Stevens, Google vice president of product management, said at the event.

“We’ll continue to drive greater efficiencies and pass that cost sav-

ings on to you.”

Google also unveiled updates to other parts of its lineup, including new networking options for quickly accessing its cloud and a new service that uses a technology called containers, which give developers more flexibility as they build and ship applications.

This is the company’s third major cloud-services conference this year, underscoring the investment Google is making in the market.

Last month, Google acquired Firebase Inc., a provider of software tools, to help build a better platform for developing mobile applications.

12A THE ZAPATA TIMES

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2014

STUDENTS students. Besides Tuesday’s arrests, at least 56 other people have been taken into custody, and the Iguala police chief is also being sought.

Some hoped the couple’s detention would provide new leads.

“This was the missing piece. This arrest will help us find our kids,” Felipe de la Cruz, the father of one of the missing students, told Milenio television. “It was the government who took our kids.”

No shots were fired in Tuesday’s raid on three houses, including the one in which the couple was hiding, according to a federal official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

One of the houses was a run-down stucco structure with cracked and stained walls and men’s jeans hanging out to dry.

Before they fled, the couple ran Iguala like a fiefdom in cooperation with the local drug cartel, Guerreros Unidos. Abarca received up to

$220,000 every few weeks as bribe money and to pay off his corrupt police force, according to Attorney General Jose Murillo Karam, who gave a detailed account last month of the couple’s alleged collusion with organized crime.

The mayor’s wife was a major operator in the cartel, an offshoot of the Beltran Leyva gang, Murillo Karam said.

Two of her brothers were on former President Felipe Calderon’s most-wanted drug trafficker list until they were killed in 2009. A third brother, Salomon Pineda, was believed to run the territory in northern Guerrero state for the cartel.

Guerreros Unidos has increasingly turned to the lucrative practice of growing opium poppies and sending opium paste to be refined for heroin destined for the U.S. market, according to a federal official.

The students attended a radical rural teachers college with a history of carrying out

KILLED

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protests. They had gained the enmity of Abarca because of a previous demonstration in the town, Murillo Karam said. Abarca believed they planned to disrupt a speech by his wife, who aspired to succeed him as mayor, and ordered police to detain the students after they hijacked four buses to provide transportation to a coming protest.

Three students were shot dead in the confrontation and later three bystanders were killed in a separate attack.

Police then picked up the other students and took them to the nearby town of Cocula, Murillo Karam said. At some point they were loaded aboard a dump truck and taken — apparently still alive — to an area on the outskirts of Iguala where some mass graves have been found, he said.

In statements to the media soon after the disappearance, Abarca maintained that he spent the evening of Sept. 26 dining out, and that he ordered police to leave the stu-

dents alone.

Detained gang leader Sidronio Casarrubias told authorities one of his lieutenants told him the students were sympathizers of a rival gang, the attorney general said.

The search for the students has taken authorities to the hills above Iguala and to a gully near a trash dump in the neighboring city of Cocula, but still no remains have been identified.

With the wealth amassed from their drug dealings, Abarca and his wife owned jewelry stores and other properties believed bought with illicit funds, including a shopping mall that was vandalized in one of the many protests against the failure to solve the students’ disappearance.

Authorities said they ruled with fear. Pineda was overheard telling one of Abarca’s political rivals, “You don’t know who you’re messing with.” Two days later he turned up dead. Witnesses said Abarca himself did the killing.

Continued from Page 1A Nuevo Leon. Authorities there informed Tamaulipas officials about the general’s demise Monday after confirming the identity of Niño.

“The Tamaulipas (government) condemns and deeply regrets the passing of Gen. Ricardo César Niño Villarreal and his wife,” states a news release issued by Tamaulipas authorities late Monday.

Niño had been named in several “narcomantas,” or drug-cartel issued messages, placed in public places in Nuevo Laredo. The messages accused Niño of taking money from organized crime.

Suspected gunmen targeted Niño in early October in Linares, Nuevo Leon.

At 7 p.m. Oct. 9, members of a convoy safeguarding the general heard shots fired in the area, according to reports.

Authorities said they quickly took offensive maneuvers while federal forces said they saw people who absconded into the brushy area. No one was arrested. That day, Niño Villarreal was en route to Nuevo Laredo from Ciudad Victoria, according to Tamaulipas authorities.

(César G. Rodriguez may be reached at 728-2568 or cesar@lmtonline.com)