A Mexican cartel's quest to dominate the globe
A Los Angeles man vanishes, and the disappearance is linked to violent drug traffickers.
There's that investigation, plus other good reads you may want to hold onto for what could be a long trip home this Thanksgiving week, thanks to wild weather headed to the West Coast and beyond.
It's news to know on Monday.
Arlene Martinez writes In California, a daily roundup of stories from newsrooms across the Paste BN Network. Sign up here.
A Mexican drug cartel's deadly, growing reach
In 2014, a Los Angeles man desperate to pay off child support debt to reunite with his daughter agreed to transport 4 pounds of methamphetamine to Tacoma, Washington. Waiting on the other end, Oscar Macias had been promised, was work at a roofing company. Instead, he lost the shipment, and a month later he disappeared. Authorities say the deal was orchestrated by members of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación, a brutal cartel run by a man known as El Mencho. A nine-month investigation by the Louisville Courier Journal, a newsroom in the Paste BN Network, reveals how CJNG's reach has spread across the country in the past five years, overwhelming cities and small towns with massive amounts of drugs.
More from the investigation:
- Who is El Mencho? He's the most powerful drug kingpin you've never heard of.
- A ruthless Mexican drug lord’s empire is devastating families with its grip on small-town USA.
- ‘Right under your nose’: A Mexican cartel turned this rural area into a hidden cocaine hub.
- How a Mississippi trooper almost took down the world’s most powerful cartel boss.
- One mistake trapped a desperate dad in a Mexican drug cartel's web. Then he vanished.
The town with the slowest U.S. internet is in Calif.
It's located just hours from Silicon Valley, yet holds the distinction of having the slowest internet in all the United States. It is Newcastle, and its slow connectivity disadvantages residents in all kinds of ways, costing them job opportunities and making it difficult for students to compete. Slow speeds not just in Newcastle, but across the country, have been found to limit business growth and are associated with higher rates of unemployment. New tools, including tele-health options that save lives when doctors are sparse, and farming innovations that save money and resources, are largely unavailable. And it's harder to get live-saving updates during emergencies like wildfires.
Wild turkeys and apartments in the 'burbs
Wild turkeys are moving to Northern California 'burbs for some of the same reasons we move there: quiet, swimming pools and lives largely free of predators.
A record-setting sale for apartments in Ventura: “You’re not going to see (a complex) of this size come up for a long time.”
Ojai, a town known for hipsters and mysticism, gets its first apartments in over 10 years. Six whole units.
A break for the weather
Patience is a virtue, good things come to those who wait, absence makes the heart grow fonder: I hope you'll remember these things if you're traveling this holiday because the weather appears to be coming for us. Hurricane-force wind gusts may batter the coasts of Oregon and Northern California, bringing rain and possible delays in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the Weather Channel predicts. Dangerous driving conditions could develop as snow falls from California's Sierra Nevada into the Rockies. Throughout the country, wind, snow and rain could make travel difficult. Be safe out there. Or, stay in and watch Disney+.
And, courtesy of the New York Times, a California playlist to help you pass the time.
What else we're talking about
A Palm Springs woman found luck at a local liquor store in the form of a $750,000 scratch-off lottery ticket.
By scuba diving in the Channel Islands National Park, female veterans find relief from PTSD.
California will raise taxes on marijuana in January, a move that's shocked industry analysts who say the already-heavy levies keep consumers in the black market.
McDonald's agrees to pay $26 million to California workers for claims of failing to pay overtime and give required meal and rest breaks.
Nevada officials want California to help pay for an expansion of I-80 between Sparks and the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, even though the route is entirely in .... Nevada.
Frozen 2: In movie theaters now
I'll leave you this opinion piece about the sequel to Frozen, the smash Disney hit about a queen who has the power to turn anything to ice. Connecting California Columnist Joe Mathews argues Hans got a raw deal in the first movie; as it ends, he is tossed into a dungeon without trial when he was actually just trying to "slay a tyrant who effectively abdicated her throne during a national crisis." Frozen 2's plot isn't any better, Mathews writes, just "an imperial adventure about an enchanted forest and the royal sisters, who continue their undemocratic rule." I am now rethinking everything I once knew to be true about the original.
In California is a roundup of news compiled from across Paste BN Network newsrooms. Contributing: Associated Press, New York Times, Zócalo Public Square.