Latest news with #Saucedo
Winnipeg Free Press
6 days ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Mexico says 26 capos extradited to US were requested by Trump administration
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico sent 26 alleged cartel figures to face justice in the United States because the Trump administration requested them and Mexico did not want them to continue running their illicit businesses from Mexican prisons, officials said Wednesday. The mass transfer was not, however, part of wider negotiations as Mexico seeks to avoid higher tariffs threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump, they said. 'These transfers are not only a strategic measure to ensure public safety, but also reflect a firm determination to prevent these criminals from continuing to operate from within prisons and to break up their networks of influence,' Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said in a news conference on Wednesday. The 26 prisoners handed over to American authorities on Tuesday included figures aligned with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel among others. They were wanted by American authorities for their roles in drug trafficking and other crimes. It comes months after 29 other cartel leaders were sent to the U.S. in February. In the exchange, the U.S. Justice Department promised it would not seek the death penalty against any of the 55 people included in the two transfers, which experts say may help avoid any violent outburst by the cartels in response. Authorities said the operation involved nearly a thousand law enforcement officers, 90 vehicles and a dozen military aircraft. Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier Wednesday that the transfers were 'sovereign decisions,' but the move comes as the Mexican leader faces mounting pressure by the Trump administration to crack down on cartels and fentanyl production. García Harfuch also confirmed Wednesday that a U.S. government drone — non-military — was flying over central Mexico, but at the request of Mexican authorities as part of an ongoing investigation. So far, Sheinbaum has tried to show the Trump administration a greater willingness to pursue the cartels than her predecessor — a change that has been acknowledged by U.S. officials — and continued to slow migration to the U.S. border, in an effort to avoid the worst of Trump's tariff threats. Two weeks ago, the two leaders spoke and agreed to give their teams another 90 days to negotiate to avoid threatened 30% tariffs on imports from Mexico. 'Little by little, Mexico is following through with this demand by the Americans to deliver drug capos,' said Mexican security analyst David Saucedo. 'It's buying (the Mexican government) time.' Saucedo said the Mexican government has been able to avoid a burst of violence by cartels – a reaction often seen when capos are captured – in part, because Ovidio Guzmán, a son of infamous capo Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, showed it's possible to negotiate with U.S. prosecutors. Ovidio Guzmán pleaded guilty last month to drug trafficking and other charges and hopes for a lighter sentence in exchange for his cooperation. But Saucedo warned that if such mass prisoner transfers continue, the Latin American country is bound to see another outburst of violence in the future.
Canada Standard
12-07-2025
- Sport
- Canada Standard
Mariners recall LHP Tayler Saucedo
Field Level Media 12 Jul 2025, 01:35 GMT+10 (Photo credit: John Froschauer-Imagn Images) The Seattle Mariners recalled left-handed pitcher Tayler Saucedo on Friday, while right-handed pitcher Carlos Vargas was placed on paternity is the third trip to the big leagues for Saucedo this season, and his first since being optioned to Triple-A Tacoma on April 27. On May 3 he was placed on the minor league injured list with a left lat strain and was out of action until July 1. In 10 relief appearances this season at Triple-A Tacoma, Saucedo is 1-0 with a 3.38 ERA, four walks and six strikeouts in eight innings of work, including two appearances since returning from the lat strain. In four appearances with Seattle this season, he has a 9.82 ERA with three strikeouts in 3.2 innings. He posted a 3.49 ERA with 38 strikeouts in 38.2 innings across a career-best 53 outings last season. Saucedo, 32, has 142 career relief appearances in the major leagues with a 4.22 career ERA across five seasons -- two with Toronto and the last three with the Mariners. Vargas, 25, is 3-5 with a 3.43 ERA over 42 relief appearances (44.2 innings). He notched his first career win on April 11 against the Texas Rangers and also earned his first career save on May 6 against the Athletics. His previous major league experience came in 2023 with 4.3 innings of work over five games with the Arizona Diamondbacks. --Field Level Media
Miami Herald
11-07-2025
- General
- Miami Herald
Helicopter trip finds endangered mammals thriving on Chile peak. ‘Hopeful sign'
In a remote part of southern Chile, a helicopter took off and approached an even more remote mountaintop. Conservationists watched out its windows and, to their amazement, saw the endangered mammal they were looking for standing 'right there.' That was just the beginning. Cabo Froward sits at the 'southernmost point' of South America; it's a rugged and largely unexplored region slated to become a national park, Rewilding Chile said in a July 9 Instagram post. As part of this process, research teams have been conducting biodiversity surveys of the area. 'About a year ago, during a forest restoration expedition carried out by boat, we had an unexpected encounter,' Cristián Saucedo, the organization's wildlife director, told McClatchy News. On the coast stood a huemul deer. Huemul deer, also known as South Andean deer, are an 'elusive' and 'discreet' mammal species known to inhabit 'the mountainous regions of southern Chile and Argentina,' the organization said. Due to habitat loss, hunting and competition from invasive animals, the species has lost 'more than 99%' of its population and is endangered with only about 1,500 surviving deer. Conservationists had long suspected huemul deer might live in Cabo Froward, but the team's 2024 sighting sparked new efforts to find these animals, Saucedo said via email. Initial search efforts identified some promising mountain valleys but reaching these sites on foot was 'extremely difficult,' Saucedo said. 'That's when we turned to helicopters.' In February, two teams of conservationists used helicopters to reach the remote peaks then spent three days surveying the area. 'As we approached the very first ridge, several huemuls appeared — as if they had been waiting for us,' Saucedo said. 'It was surprising … to see a huemul right there,' Miguel Lopetegui, a park ranger with the Chilean Forestry Service who participated in the trek, said in the organization's Instagram video, according to translated captions. 'This was our welcome, which left us very excited and energized.' The team eventually saw about 10 huemul deer and realized they'd discovered a 'previously unknown' population thriving on the remote peak, the organization said. Conservationists described the new population as 'a hopeful sign' for the endangered species. 'Our hope is to find additional groups of huemuls in other nearby mountain ranges,' Saucedo said. The team set up dozens of trail cameras and is planning a follow-up helicopter expedition. They are also continuing other monitoring and surveying efforts at Cabo Froward.
San Francisco Chronicle
05-06-2025
- Sport
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Bay Area's toughest trail race has a twist: A child just might win
Daniel Saucedo just ran up 700 feet of elevation on 'Cardiac,' the most carnage-filled section of the Bay Area's most carnage-filled trail, and he's smiling like a maniac. The 12-year-old jumped over logs, dodged obstacles, rolled his ankle and was almost certainly exposed to poison oak. His reward upon reaching the summit? Three more miles of brutal hill work. When it's over, the only question I can think to ask him is some variation of 'why?' 'It was tough, but that's where I learned to enjoy it,' Saucedo said, as upbeat as ever. 'To be comfortable in the uncomfortable.' A hundred miles from his home in San Juan Bautista, the pre-teen is here to train for one of the Bay Area's most storied sporting traditions. The Dipsea Race on Mount Tamalpais, which returns on Sunday, June 8, is known for its chaotic and grueling course, and many quirks. Over the 7.5 miles from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach, runners climb 688 steps in the first mile, navigate hills with names like 'Dynamite' and 'Insult,' and contemplate choose-your-own-adventure shortcuts that trade stability for potential speed. Entering its 114th year, the Dipsea is the nation's oldest cross country trail race, and a religion for Marin County runners. But to outsiders, there's one Dipsea oddity that stands out above all others: When the winner crosses the finish line this weekend, it's entirely possible it will be a child. Thanks to the Dipsea's byzantine and ever-shifting handicapping rules, a grade schooler can beat a competitive athlete in their prime. Unlike most races, where the elite or fastest competitors take off at the sound of the gun, the Dipsea assigns groups to launch from the Throckmorton Avenue starting line at one minute intervals in reverse order of assumed speed. A 7-year-old girl or a 74-year-old man gets a 25-minute head start. Men aged 20-25 are 'scratch' runners, who would have to pass most of the race's 1,500 competitors to win. The idea of a child breaking the tape in Stinson Beach isn't theoretical. Children have won the Dipsea 15 times in 113 races, and the field usually includes at least 100 kids. When I ran in 2023, more than 75 children finished ahead of me, including four 10-year-olds. But it's been 15 years since a kid took first place. Eight-year-old Reilly Johnson, the last child to win in 2010, was also the youngest champion ever. Now that field is expanding. The Dipsea Kidz program has been bringing Marin County elementary and middle school children to the trail for more than a decade. And this year, the race's 2023 winner, professional ultrarunner Paddy O'Leary, has recruited five more youngsters to compete and be featured in a crowdfunded documentary. His goal is to spread the trail race gospel and making distance running more accessible in places that don't have specialty running stores, established programs or a century-old race in their backyard. Among O'Leary's Dipsea Generations team are runners like Saucedo and Karina Arrizon Lopez, a senior at Mt. Eden High School in Hayward, who had never been to Mill Valley before this May training day. 'I thought, 'What am I getting myself into?'' Arrizon Lopez said after the run, looking tired but enthusiastic. '(Dipsea) is such a different scene to me. … In Hayward we don't see many people just running around.' Kids won Dipsea from the beginning. The first Dipsea Race in 1905, sponsored by Olympic Club members, included several marathoners who had won European or East Coast races. In the days before the race, the Chronicle covered each celebrity entrant as they arrived by train. But the victor that year was a 'gritty schoolboy,' 17-year-old Oakland High student J.S. Hassard, who took his 10-minute head start and outlasted runner up Cornelius Connelly — a speedy Irishman who didn't realize he was in second place until the last mile. 'When I got straightened out on the beach I saw someone running ahead of me and I could not understand it,' Connelly told the Chronicle. 'He was going like a cyclone. I don't know where that kid got his speed.' Over the years, other child legends have emerged on the trail. Mary Etta Boitano ran in 1968 at age 5, registering as M. Boitano to disguise her gender because women weren't officially allowed to enter until the 1970s. The tiny Boitano stepped on a hornet's nest near Muir Woods and was stung five times, yet still finished the race. And she came back. Boitano won the 1973 Dipsea at age 10, just ahead of her 11-year-old brother Michael, who won in 1971 and '72. Boitano went on to win the Bay to Breakers women's division at ages 11, 12 and 13, successes that made the front page of the Chronicle and helped fuel a Bay Area jogging boom. Now Mary Blanchard of Sonoma, she has run scores of Dipseas since, and will line up this weekend with the 62-year-old women and a 21 minute head start. 'Every year I tell myself, 'This is going to be my last year.' But for some reason I just keep coming back,' Blanchard said, laughing. 'I feel great support, like everyone is celebrating each other.' O'Leary said his first Dipsea in 2019 was sensory overload. Starting near the back of the pack, he was nervous about passing dozens of kids on the Dipsea's narrow trail, but came away inspired. 'It's a unique way of experiencing a sport, where all those boundaries are collapsed,' O'Leary said. 'You're all throwing down against each other.' But securing a place among the field can be tough, and the entry process has long favored locals in affluent Marin County. The race openly accepts 'bribes' for 100 of the 1,500 coveted spots, with the money going to charity, and until recently, many runners got an upper hand by bringing their entries directly to the local post office. Motivated by races like Gilroy's Mt. Madonna Challenge, which raises scholarship funds for young runners to pay for training and travel, last year O'Leary gathered a film crew for Dipsea Generations with a long-term plan to complement inclusive elements of the Dipsea Kidz project and get scores of children running the race from across the region. 'That inspired me to think of an idea like this,' O'Leary said, 'where we try to get kids from all over the Bay Area, they experience something special and spread the word to their (community).' With three weeks to go before race day, the five Dipsea Generations kids and their coaches gather at a parking lot near the Dipsea Trail to run a 6-mile loop with about 25 regulars from Dipsea Kidz. The newcomers get a sampler platter of the course — running through Muir Woods redwoods that convert fog into droplets for surprise rain showers, up wooden stairs and along a sunny ridge with Pacific views — and a chance to test their legs on the climbs. Nicole Amyx, who started running Dipsea when she was 11, and two more sure-footed members of the film crew are half Christopher Nolan, half Steve Prefontaine, darting ahead of the kids to get video on the trails. 'For me it has always seemed so normal,' said Amyx of the race's challenging route. 'It wasn't until I was old that I heard my friends say, 'That's insane. Who sprints up and over a mountain? Who runs a race on Mount Tam?'' Saucedo is undaunted. The middle schooler was discovered by running coach Jose Cruz at a Morgan Hill gym, where he saw a little kid in street clothes sprinting up a treadmill like Captain America. 'He had it at an incline and he's just charging up this thing,' Cruz said. 'I turned away, turned back, and he's still hauling up there. I liked him right away.' Arrizon Lopez was the only girl on the cross country team her freshman year at Mt. Eden, and helped recruit teammates for a program that now fields a full girls varsity squad. Coach Schuyler Hall sees Dipsea as another challenge for the runner who set personal records each year and this spring broke 6 minutes in a 1600-meter (1 mile) race. He also sees what she has to give back to the sport and her peers. 'When we run in the foothills above Garin (Regional Park), we can see the city of San Francisco in the distance, we can see Mt. Tam in the distance,' Hall said. 'But unless we come out on a dedicated spring break trip, so many of the kids in our school have never run in Golden Gate Park. They've never even been to the bridge.' Amyx, who is Mexican-American on her mother's side, points out that the greatest champion in Dipsea history was Sal Vasquez, a Mexican immigrant who won seven titles between 1982 and 1997. She says the Bay Area running scene is strongest when high-profile events draw from different communities. 'We predominately have seen white people in the sport,' Amyx said. 'In reality, it's becoming more open and welcome. But we always need more people of different backgrounds to set an example.' For Mary Blanchard, her childhood runs on the Dipsea launched a long journey of health. The former champion estimates she has run more than 175,000 miles in her lifetime, a tally that would be an impressive odometer reading on a Honda Civic. Meanwhile, the Dipsea is overdue for the next Mary Etta Boitano. Just one child — a 17-year-old boy — finished in the Top 35 last year, an honor referred to as 'black shirts' for the numbered tees awarded after the race. Four of the five Dipsea Generations youth will compete in the 'runners' section this weekend, starting the race later and hoping for a time that qualifies them for the more competitive invitational section next year. When they do, Hall said the kids have real advantages beyond the significant handicap. Arrizon Lopez is 4 foot 9 inches and low to the ground, benefiting from quick steps, a compact stride and better balance. 'If we can get her comfortable,' Hall said, 'she's going to be able to rip through a lot of this terrain in a way that somebody who's a foot plus taller than her is going to have to be a little bit more careful.' Saucedo, who has broken six-minute miles in a 5K race, said his goal is to 'have fun and finish.' Arrizon Lopez, who will run Dipsea two days after high school graduation, is focusing on just one runner: Schuyler Hall. 'My ultimate goal is to stay in front of my coach,' she said. O'Leary, Amyx and their crew have more ambitious hopes. They plan to finish the documentary and share it at local film festivals and schools, then expand the Dipsea Generations program. Perhaps by next June they'll have 15 or 20 child entries from all corners of the Bay Area. 'I love the Dipsea Race and everything about it,' O'Leary said. 'I want to continue to tell the world about it, but also the people in this area. We want to tell them that this race can be for them.'
Hindustan Times
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Arrests of Colombian ex-soldiers expose links to Mexican cartels
Ten Colombian former soldiers were among the suspects arrested after an improvised landmine killed six Mexican troops in a drug cartel heartland this week, authorities said Friday. Their capture shone a spotlight on the growing involvement of foreign ex-military personnel with Mexican drug traffickers. More than 40 explosive devices were seized along with other weapons in the western state of Michoacan, according to statements from the national and local governments. In total, 17 suspected members of a criminal group, including a dozen Colombians, were detained in the municipality of Los Reyes, authorities said. The blast late Tuesday destroyed the armored vehicle in which the Mexican troops were traveling, according to an internal military report seen by AFP. Military planes and helicopters were deployed to help the casualties, it said. The area is home to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, one of the country's most powerful drug trafficking groups. The disarmament of the FARC guerrilla group in 2017 and cuts to Colombia's military budget are part of the reason for the presence of foreign former soldiers in Mexico, independent security expert David Saucedo said. Some come directly from Colombia, "and others were mercenaries in Ukraine," he told AFP. For years, Colombian mercenaries, mostly retired military personnel, have fought in conflicts including in Afghanistan, Yemen and Iraq. In 2023, Colombian gunmen killed Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, while in 2021, Colombian hitmen assassinated Haitian president Jovenel Moise. Cartels are targeting former Colombian military personnel and guerrillas for their knowledge of explosives, Saucedo said. In October 2023, Michoacan security officials reported a "Colombian cell" dedicated to manufacturing explosives had been dismantled. The involvement of former Mexican and foreign military personnel with cartels is not new. Former members of an elite Mexican army unit founded the bloodthirsty Zetas cartel in the late 1990s and recruited deserters from the Guatemalan special forces. The recruitment of Colombians "is a reaction to the militarization process" that Mexico has been experiencing since the government launched a war on cartels in 2006, Saucedo said. Criminal groups in Michoacan have a history of planting improvised landmines and attacking security forces with explosive-laden drones. Several soldiers have been killed in similar explosions in the past. Criminal violence, most of it linked to drug trafficking, has claimed around 480,000 lives in Mexico since 2006 and left more than 120,000 people missing. US President Donald Trump has designated six Mexican drug trafficking groups as terrorist organizations, fueling speculation that he might order military strikes against them. str-ai/dr/aha
