Jeff Dunsavage's Blog (589)

Interesting graphic on Wall Street Journal's site. Nearly 23,000 people have died from drug-related violence in Mexicp since 2006, according to government sources.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is helping the U.S. State Department in the search for a Colorado woman who disappeared while trekking through Nepal, according to this Associated Press article. It is great to see the U.S. government taking an active interest in a missing persons case for a change. The question in my mind is, why is this case the anomaly? What does it take to get State…

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But will they be armed? How will they respond to what they detect? Is this a show or real action?

Sundance Resources says there is still no sign of the aircraft carrying 6 of its executives that disappeared en route to the Republic of Congo, according to this article in The Wall Street Journal.

Part of the Arizona-Mexico border has become so ungovernable that 3,500 acres of U.S. soil have been closed to U.S. citizens due to increased violence at the border, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says. According to Fox News, the closed-off area includes part of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge The refuge had been adversely affected by the increase in drug…

Maximo Altez, Joran van der Sloot's Peruvian attorney, says that since taking the case he has received numerous calls and e-mails from angry citizens, according to CNN. "I've received threats, many threatening e-mails," Altez, 54, said in announcing his decision not to represent the Dutchman who is accused of killing 22-year-old Stephany Flores and has been connected to the disappearance of Natalee Holloway five…

Workers at several oil and gas installations belonging to state-run Petróleos Mexicanos have been abducted by presumed members of drug cartels in the past few weeks, company officials told the Wall Street Journal.

"Black-market smuggling of oil and gas products in Mexico is a big business," the WSJ article says. "Analysts say Pemex loses close to $1 billion…

The family of a Perth woman missing in South America is holding out hope she will be found alive, according to this ABC News article. Millie Johnston, 25, was on a waterfall tour six days ago when the buggy she was in ran off the road in the mountainous region of Banos in Ecuador. Authorities have found the body of a British man who was also in the buggy. Ms Johnston's parents, who live in the Perth suburb…

Read CNN article Not sure what that means in terms of sentencing if he's found guilty. Apparently "aggravated robbery" carries a heavier maximum sentence than homicide. Maybe "aggravated homicide" evens things up. We'll see. Van der Sloot also says he knows where Natalee's body is but will only talk with Aruban officials. Guess he's looking to call in some favors on behalf of his late…

The Board of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, meeting in Düsseldorf, Germany, on 7 June 2010, called on the President of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo, to decisively act to resolve the murders of journalists in the country. Six journalists have been killed in Honduras in just ovfer a month, making the small Central American country one of the…

Call me obsessive. I don't care. Five years ago, the Natalee Holloway disappearance was, in my mind, just another media feeding frenzy masquerading as journalism. Now I ask: for all the attention the case got, how much interest did the U.S. government take in the plight of a missing (likely murdered) U.S. citizen and her family?

Five years since, and families of the missing are still left on their own to invent the wheel when a loved one disappears outside their country's borders. It…

Looking considerably less cool than he did in Aruba or when he was caught on videotape bragging about disposing of Natalee Holloway's body, Joran van der Sloot was paraded before an auditorium full of reporters, according to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

"Moist-eyed and looking stunned... and wearing a green bulletproof vest, his hands cuffed behind him, the 22-year-old Dutchman…