“Bulgarian police on Wednesday arrested 12 members of a powerful crime gang suspected of more than a decade of money laundering, racketeering, drug trafficking, bribery and tax fraud, the interior minister said.

Tsvetan Tsvetanov told state television he believed the group had in the past been protected by senior officials in the judiciary and previous governments, but did not give details.

‘It is a very well organized criminal group which … over the last ten years has managed to create this Octopus,’ Tsvetanov said. Police said more arrests were possible after the overnight swoop in the capital Sofia, dubbed Operation Octopus. “

(Source: Bulgaria smashes organized crime gang, arrests 12 – washingtonpost.com)

“More than 45 people have been killed in Tijuana since Saturday in grisly drug violence that appears to signal the end of a nearly yearlong truce between rival crime bosses, according to Mexican authorities.

At some crime scenes, attackers left behind threatening narco-messages, recalling the type of terror tactics used in gang warfare last year that claimed hundreds of lives.”