TUCSON – The body of a man who had been decapitated was found on the side of a roadway in a rural area west of Tucson.

Friday morning about 11 a.m., deputies were dispatched to the 2300 block of North Reservation Road and West Mile Wide Road on reports of a homicide.

They found a deceased adult male laying on the side of the road, and he was headless. The victim’s head was not located with the body.

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The Mexican army announced Sunday that it had captured the head of security for Sinaloa drug cartel head Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, one of the world’s most wanted men.

The suspect, who was not identified by name, was captured in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan and will be presented to the media Monday morning, the army said.

Guzman, Mexico’s top drug lord, is one of the world’s richest men, and has eluded authorities by moving around and hiding since his 2001 escape from prison in a laundry truck.

The army said the man they had arrested also ran cartel activities in Durango and southern Chihuahua state, and was responsible for carrying out secret burials of cartel victims, kidnapping, extortion and arson. They did not say if the arrest moved the military closer to capturing Guzman, an arrest that would be seen as a major victory for the government of President Felipe Calderon.

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WHITERIVER – Blackened, rusted and bent, a barbed wire fence snakes along the boundary of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation and the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests in eastern Arizona’s White Mountains.

To the east, a sea of black rolls with the land as trees resemble burnt matchsticks. The national forest stand is dense with young trees. Most won’t survive.

To the west, on tribal land, the trees are spread farther apart, with blackened dirt hidden by growth of wild strawberries and forest grasses. The trees on this side of the fence, for the most part, will live.

It was along this line that fire ecologists and forest managers say the westward expansion of the Wallow Fire, the largest in Arizona’s history, slowed and eventually stopped.

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Soldiers are hunting a 12-year-old suspected drug gang assassin accused of helping wage a gruesome turf war in central Mexico.

The boy, known as ‘El Ponchis’, is believed to be working for the South Pacific cartel in Morelos state, outside Mexico City, and is one of a group of teenagers who have already committed “terrible acts”, Morelos State Prosecutor Pedro Luis Benitez told local radio.

“These minors are not yet fully developed, so it is easy to influence them, give them a gun, pretending it is plastic, that it is a game.”

Benitez did not name the boy or give more details, but when asked directly about the teenage hitmen he said: “They’re persuaded to carry out terrible acts. They don’t realise what they are doing.”

Mexican daily La Razon said the boy is being paid $3,000 for each murder and is under the command of a little-known drug lord who heads the South Pacific cartel fighting the Beltran Leyva and La Familia gangs for control in southwestern Mexico.

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