Enlargephoto illustration by: Todd WisemanTexas earned a D+ for state integrity, tying with six other states for 27th place, according to a study released Monday by a group of public watchdog agencies.Texas scored 68 percent, along with Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Montana and West Virginia. “This study shows it’s time to unshackle Texas’ ethics watchdog and give it some teeth,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of Public Citizen Texas, a watchdog group.The national report, compiled by the Center for Public Integrity, Public Radio International and Global Integrity, used local reporters in all 50 states to review the laws and practices related to transparency, accountability and anti-corruption mechanisms.The report compared laws and practices in individual states against 330 “corruption risk indicators” and applied them to 14 categories ... Continue reading →

Already a convicted petty thief, Mildred Fedd had pressing bills to pay: parking tickets, a faulty sewage system, house payments and the impound lot holding her truck hostage. So she turned to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs and promised - for a small fee - to watch over an 82-year-old disabled veteran. With his $5,000, she agreed to buy him a burial plot. Instead, the Houston caregiver paid her own bills - and got caught only after she had spent all his money and went back for more, Harris County records show. The Veterans Affairs' Inspector General has repeatedly warned about a plague of fraud and theft in a national program that appoints family members and VA-approved fiduciaries to protect a whopping $3 billion ... Continue reading →

Tomas Munita for The New York Times Honduran soldiers at Forward Operating Base Mocoron, one of three outposts from which cocaine trafficking is being combated. More Photos » FORWARD OPERATING BASE MOCORON, Honduras — The United States military has brought lessons from the past decade of conflict to the drug war being fought in the wilderness of Miskito Indian country, constructing this remote base camp with little public notice but with the support of the Honduran government. It is one of three new forward bases here — one in the rain forest, one on the savanna and one along the coast — each in a crucial location to interdict smugglers moving cocaine toward the United States from South America. Honduras is the latest focal point ... Continue reading →

Javier Belmontes towers tall in his popular YouTube music video, sporting a blazing white suit and belting out his version of a heartbreaking, midlife-crisis tale of a Houston man who loses it all for the cantina-induced love of a bewitching Latina. "She was a Salvadoran from the barrio of Magnolia," the 46-year-old sings in Spanish of the object of his infatuation, a much younger woman in a tight psychedelic minidress striding through a dimly lit bar toward a pulsing jukebox. He loves her; she dumps him; he drinks too many cervezas, gets collared by the cops and loses everything. Life appears to be imitating art for the Houston-based cantina crooner, local radio show host and bar owner - the object of his true ill-fated romance ... Continue reading →

Journalists and students protest the murder of Mexican journalist Regina Martinez, in Xalapa, Veracruz State, Mexico, on April 29, 2012. Martinez was founded dead in her house April 28, with signs of strangulation. More than 40,000 people have been killed in rising drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed soldiers and federal police to take on organized crime. (AFP PHOTO/SERGIO HERNANDEZ SERGIO HERNANDEZ/AFP/GettyImages) Proceso magazine’s Regina Martinez was found dead in her Veracruz, Mexico home over the weekend, apparently beaten and strangled. It is too soon to know who killed her or why, but her death was brutal and she was known for reporting on crime and drug trafficking in a state that like other parts of Mexico has been ... Continue reading →

CHAPALA, MEXICO - Mexico's violence came crashing into the retirement dream of Houston's Lorraine Kulig and hundreds of other Americans last fall when gangsters shot it out and set off a bomb in this usually bucolic town on the shore of the nation's largest lake. "We all know this is a gang problem. We have no connection with drugs," said Kulig, 55, who retired to the quaint small city of Chapala three years ago with her husband Michael and now helps run the Lone Star Club, a monthly gathering of Texans living in the area. "But we can be caught in the crossfire." And not just crossfire. In the neighboring town of Ajijic, where foreigners have been settling for decades, 69-year-old American Chris Kahr was ... Continue reading →

Federal agents with search warrants seized hundreds of patient records from a Houston psychiatric hospital and its two mental health clinics Thursday, part of an escalating Medicare fraud investigation into financial exploitation and care of the mentally ill as detailed last year by the Houston Chronicle.The files, belonging to patients who attend counseling sessions at Westbury Community Hospital and its clinics in southwest Houston and Baytown were boxed up and loaded into trucks in a pre-dawn swoop by the FBI and investigators from the Texas Attorney General's office. Sources familiar with the investigation told the Chronicle the probe into Westbury is centered on the care of patients as well as whether personal care home owners were paid by hospital or clinic workers to recruit residents ... Continue reading →

The Department of State has issued this Travel Warning to inform U.S. citizens about the security situation in Mexico. General information on the overall security situation is provided immediately below. For information on security conditions in specific regions of Mexico, which can vary, travelers should reference the state-by-state assessments further below. This Travel Warning supersedes the Travel Warning for Mexico dated April 22, 2011 to consolidate and update information about the security situation and to advise the public of additional restrictions on the travel of U.S. government (USG) personnel. General Conditions: Millions of U.S. citizens safely visit Mexico each year for study, tourism, and business, including more than 150,000 who cross the border every day. The Mexican government makes a considerable effort to protect U.S. ... Continue reading →

WASHINGTON — After a five-month delay, the Senate voted Thursday to confirm two non-controversial presidential nominees to fill federal judgeships in Texas, including a vacancy in Galveston. The state still has four judicial openings. "The confirmation of these two individuals was long overdue," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin. "While this process took far too long and there remain too many unfilled judicial vacancies in Texas, this vote represents modest progress." Held up by protest Gregg Costa of Houston, who will fill the Galveston seat, and David Guaderrama of El Paso were nominated by President Obama in September and were approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in December. But the president's recess appointment of a consumer watchdog sparked a Republican protest that blocked Senate confirmation of ... Continue reading →

The former executive gave names, dates and bribe amounts. He knew so much, he explained, because for years he had been the lawyer in charge of obtaining construction permits for Wal-Mart de Mexico. Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery. They found a paper trail of hundreds of suspect payments totaling more than $24 million. They also found documents showing that Wal-Mart de Mexico’s top executives not only knew about the payments, but had taken steps to conceal them from Wal-Mart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. In a confidential report to his superiors, Wal-Mart’s lead investigator, a former F.B.I. special agent, summed up their initial findings this way: “There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA ... Continue reading →