With the help of Global Ties U.S. and the San Antonio Council for International Visitors, the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs is funding the Police Professionalization Exchange Program for Mexico — a program that will train 3,800 police officials from Mexico in U.S. law enforcement policies and police tactics. [...] Police officials from Mexico are undergoing training to learn the best U.S. law enforcement practices to take back home.

The war on drugs hurts America's soft power credibility, diminishing our negotiating position, influence and world standing at a time when we need it more than ever.

Townspeople gathered at dusk in the central square of this city of ranches and lemon groves, planning to pick a committee to support and oversee the activities of a recently arrived self-defense group here. The vigilantes gained acceptance when they recently ran off a cartel accused of everything from extracting extortion payments to making people it didn’t like in the community disappear.

The 50-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), once considered the best-funded insurgency in the world, is at its smallest and most vulnerable state in decades, due in part to a CIA covert action program that has helped Colombian forces kill at least two dozen rebel leaders, according to interviews with more than 30 former and current U.S. and Colombian officials.

Nicaragua has authorized the militaries of the United States and Russia to undertake drug interdiction in Caribbean waters successfully claimed from Colombia in the International Court of Justice last year, in a move likely spurred by political motivations.

Russian counternarcotics agents teamed up with U.S. and Afghan forces in an unprecedented joint raid that destroyed nearly $56 million worth of heroin near the Pakistani border, officials said Friday.