gangs

A senior member of the nation's largest organized crime syndicate was shot dead Wednesday in Hyogo Prefecture by a man armed with a submachine gun and a handgun amid a possible gang feud, police said. Keiichi Furukawa, 59, a high-ranking yakuza of the Yamaguchi-gumi group, ...

A set of revised organized crime ordinances went into effect on Oct. 1 in Roppongi, Kabukicho, Shibuya and 26 other designated special districts in Tokyo. Under the law, any individual or group in these districts who pays protection money to anti-social forces — crime syndicates, ...

Gunmen attacked a bus station in Mexico Monday, killing five people and wounding one in Cuernavaca, a picturesque colonial city popular with tourists, authorities said. The security commission for the state of Morelos, of which Cuernavaca is the capital, said the gunmen staged a "targeted" ...

The retrial of a Salvadoran woman convicted of aggravated homicide after having a stillbirth was scheduled to resume on Thursday, offering a possibility to overturn her 30-year sentence in a country that bans abortion in all circumstances. In February, the Supreme Court had ordered Evelyn ...

Houses with swimming pools and escape tunnels, a ranch surrounded by hectares of land and a luxury apartment with a grisly history were among the 27 properties Mexico had seized from drug traffickers and others were auctioned on Sunday. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ...

Membership in organized crime syndicates has been decreasing about 10 percent each year since 2011, according to National Police Agency statistics. The reasons for the decline in membership are complex but we should give credit to the police for using every means at their disposal ...

Police in Sao Paulo state shot and killed 11 assailants who were preparing to blow up automated bank teller machines simultaneously at two branches early on Thursday, authorities said. Sao Paulo state's Public Security Secretariat said in a statement that about 25 suspects were involved ...

Polls opened Sunday in El Salvador's presidential elections amid heavy security as voters look for change in a country beset by gang violence and widespread poverty. Nayib Bukele, the 37-year-old former mayor of San Salvador, is the front-runner in a race that could upend the ...

A special deployment of Brazilian troops was fanning out in the northern city of Fortaleza on Saturday with orders to stop days of violent attacks by criminal gangs against banks, buses and shops, officials said. By the end of the weekend, 300 soldiers should be ...