Mexican security forces were on Wednesday searching for a newly elected congresswoman who was kidnapped at gunpoint by armed men on a highway in the central state of Hidalgo.

Norma Azucena Rodríguez Zamora, 32, was travelling with her driver and assistant when at least two gunmen opened fire on her vehicle, causing it to flip over and injuring the two staff members.

The men then dragged out the congresswoman and forced her into their car, reported to be a black VW Bora.

Members of Ms Rodríguez’s party, the Left-wing PRD, demanded authorities do everything in their power to find her alive.

The politician was due to take office on September 1 as a congresswoman for the neighbouring state of Veracruz, a hotbed of drug cartel activity that has suffered some of the worst violence in the country in recent years.

Tuesday's ambush took place on the same highway where a mayor from the nearby state of Puebla, Genaro Negrete Urbano, was kidnapped in July. He was later shot dead, his body found earlier this month. </s> Aug. 15 (UPI) -- Armed men kidnapped a newly elected congresswoman Wednesday after forcing her vehicle to crash on a highway in Hidalgo state, Mexican security forces said.

Norma Azucena Rodríguez Zamora, 32, was riding in her car with her driver and assistant when the gunmen opened fire. The car flipped over and crashed, injuring Rodríguez's companions.

BBC reported the gunmen pulled Rodríguez from the wreckage of her vehicle and forced her into their vehicle, which Britain's The Telegraph said was a black Volkswagen Bora.

Members of Rodríguez's party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, called on security officials to quickly find her alive.

Rodríguez was elected July 1 to represent the state of Veracruz in Mexico's lower house of Congress. She was due to take her seat Sept. 1. </s> Image copyright Facebook/Rodriguez Image caption The 32-year-old was a mayor before successfully running for Congress

A newly elected Mexican Congresswoman, Norma Azucena Rodríguez Zamora, has been kidnapped at gunpoint on a highway in central Hidalgo state.

Two men shot at Ms Rodríguez's car, injuring an assistant and the driver and causing the vehicle to flip over.

The gunmen pulled Ms Rodríguez from the car and forced her into their vehicle.

The kidnapping comes little more than a month after the mayor of the town of Naupan was seized and killed in the same area.

Ms Rodríguez was elected on 1 July to represent eastern Veracruz state in the lower house of Congress for the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD).

The 32-year-old was due to take up office on 1 September. The state she will represent is one of the most violent in Mexico.

Before running for Congress, Ms Rodríguez served as mayor of the town of Tihuatlán in Veracruz.

Her kidnapping happened as she was travelling along a highway in neighbouring Hidalgo, the same on which the mayor of Naupan, Genaro Negrete Urbano, had been kidnapped last month.

Mr Negrete's body was found earlier this month. He had been shot dead.

The motive for his killing is not known but local politicians often become targets for criminal gangs if they are seen to interfere with the gang's business.

The campaign for the 2018 general election saw a spike in violence against political candidates.

Members of Ms Rodríguez's party have demanded that she be released safe and sound. </s> PACHUCA, Mexico: An incoming member of Mexico's Congress was kidnapped at gunpoint on Tuesday (Aug 14), an official said, the latest violent episode surrounding the Jul 1 elections, the bloodiest in the country's history.

Azucena Rodriguez Zamora, who was elected to the lower house of Congress for the eastern state of Veracruz, was driving on a highway in the neighboring state of Hidalgo when gunmen in another car opened fire on her vehicle, said a police source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The car flipped over, injuring two people who were traveling with Rodriguez.

The gunmen then pulled her from the car and abducted her, said the source.

It is the second such kidnapping in Hidalgo in recent days.

On Aug 6, the mayor of the town of Naupan, in Puebla state, was found dead after being abducted at gunpoint on a Hidalgo highway.

At least 152 politicians were murdered in the run-up to Mexico's elections, according to the consulting firm Etellekt.

The murders - mostly of local-level politicians, the most frequent targets for Mexico's powerful drug cartels - were recorded between September, when candidate registration opened, and election day.

It is by far the most violent election on record in Mexico.

The country also registered a record number of murders across the board last year: 28,711.

And the record is on track to be broken again in 2018.

Mexico has been hit by a wave of violence since the government deployed the army to fight drug trafficking in 2006.

Since then, more than 200,000 people have been murdered. Another 30,000 are missing. </s> GUADALAJARA, Mexico: Mexican authorities have arrested the wife of the leader of one of the country’s most powerful drug cartels, Jalisco New Generation, in the city of Guadalajara, local media reported.

Rosalinda Gonzalez Valencia, the wife of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias "El Mencho," was taken into custody without incident on Saturday night by Mexican navy agents in an affluent residential neighborhood, the newspaper Reforma said.

There was no immediate official confirmation of the arrest although the Interior Ministry called a news conference for Sunday that was expected to provide details on the development. Officials cited by Reforma said Gonzalez, who was flown by helicopter to Mexico City after her arrest, managed the cartel’s finances. Sources in the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said security forces, civil defense and emergency medical services were put on alert in case of attacks by the cartel.

Mexican troops were deployed to guard approaches to the city, Mexico’s second largest. On Monday, Guadalajara was shaken by the attempted assassination of Jalisco Labour Secretary Luis Najera, a former state prosecutor who was attacked by armed men in a restaurant in central Guadalajara.

Assailants torched a passenger bus after the attack, killing an eight-month-old baby. Najera suffered only minor injuries in the attack, but seven other people were more seriously wounded. One of the attackers was killed. </s> Indigenous presidential independent pre-candidate Maria de Jesus Patricio, 'Marichuy' smiles in a meeting with university students in Mexico City, Mexico February 12, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The first indigenous woman to run for the Mexican presidency was injured and at least one other person killed when a van in which she was traveling was involved in an accident in western Baja California state on Wednesday, campaign social media said.

Maria de Jesus Patricio, running as an independent candidate for president in the July election, suffered a fractured forearm in the accident, according to Carlos Godinez, a state emergency services official.

The person killed, one of 11 in the van, was not identified.

Patricio, known by the nickname Marichuy, previously served as the spokeswoman for the National Indigenous Congress, or CNI, the political arm of the Zapatista National Liberation Army.

“Our spokeswoman Marichuy and councilor Lucero Islava were injured,” the CNI said on its Facebook page without providing further details about the accident.

Independent presidential aspirants have until this weekend to gather some 866,000 voter signatures in at least 17 Mexican states to appear on the July ballot.

A traditional healer and native Nahua speaker, Patricio has not yet met the signature requirement. </s> Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno on Friday confirmed that three press workers kidnapped along the conflictive border with Colombia had been killed, opening the door to a military strike against their captors.

Moreno spoke after a 12-hour deadline ended with the captors failing to demonstrate the hostages were still alive.

“Despite our best efforts, we’ve confirmed that these criminals never had the intention of handing them back safe and sound,” Moreno said.

He said elite troops would soon be deployed to the northern border area where the employees of El Comercio newspaper were last seen nearly three weeks ago while investigating a rise in drug-fueled violence. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos dispatched his top military advisers to Quito to assist in the military planning.

Moreno also offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Walter Arizala, better known by his alias Guacho, the leader of a holdout group of guerrillas from the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.

Fears that the kidnapping had ended in tragedy emerged Thursday when a Colombian TV network said it had received gruesome photos purporting to show the bodies of the three men.

However forensic experts in both countries were unable to confirm the authenticity of the images, exasperating press groups and family members who say the government had been taking the incident too lightly.

Moreno on Thursday night rushed back from a regional summit in Peru to deal with a crisis that has shaken Ecuadoreans’ long held self-identity as a tiny, peaceful nation insulated from the drug-fueled violence raging across its border. In a late-night press conference, he said there was an “enormous possibility” the deaths were real and on Friday said authorities had obtained new, unspecified information that confirmed the three men had been killed.

As Moreno spoke, dozens of colleagues and friends of reporter Javier Ortega, photographer Paul Rivas and their driver Efrain Segarra gathered in mourning in a plaza outside the presidential palace under the slogan “Three Are Missing,” the same one that has featured in candlelight vigils held almost every night since their disappearance.

Both the Ecuadorean and Colombian governments have tried to limit the fallout from the kidnapping, with officials in both countries denying the men were being held inside their territory and even squabbling over Guacho’s supposed nationality.

Earlier this week, authorities dismissed as fake a statement signed by the captors claiming the journalists were killed during a military raid co-ordinated by the two governments.

“We condemn the actions of the Colombian and Ecuadorean governments and their lack of seriousness in protecting the reporters’ lives,” Colombia’s Foundation for Press Freedom said in a statement Thursday.

Moreno’s promise of a “devastating” military response was seen by many as a tacit acknowledgement that both governments had been too restrained.

“When there is co-operation between the two countries the criminal will always fall,” Santos said from the Summit of the Americas in Peru, promising to work closely with Moreno on a military campaign.

In a proof-of-life video released earlier this month, the three men identified their captors as members of the Oliver Sinisterra Front, a group of a few dozen combatants that authorities say is led by Guacho, a former FARC rebel. The group is believed responsible for recent deadly attacks in northern Ecuador against military targets.

Moreno announced last month that he was sending 12,000 soldiers and police to combat drug gangs and boost security along the border. That represents about 10 per cent of the small nation’s police officers and troops.

Ecuador is a major transit zone for Colombian-produced cocaine, with small boats carrying the drugs from the South American nation’s Pacific shore to Central America and on to the United States. </s> The wife of one of Mexico’s most wanted drug lords has been arrested, Mexican government officials said.

Rosalinda Gonzalez Valencia was detained in the Guadalajara suburb of Zapopon in the Western state of Jalisco Saturday, according to Sky News and other news outlets.

Garcia's husband Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, heads the New Generation Jalisco Cartel, which along with the Sinaloa Cartel, is blamed for most of the U.S.'s illicit heroin market, Sky News reported.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Chicago said in March that Oseguera was their "top target" following the arrest and extradition of drug cartel leaer Joaquin Guzman, known as "El Chapo."

“Through extreme violence, corruption,and extortion, (the Jalisco Cartel) has increased its presence in Mexico, engaging in turf battles throughout the country and steadily expanding their territory and control,” the State Department said.

Gonzalez is accused of managing the cartel's finances, a role previously held by her brother Abigael, who was arrested by Mexican authorities in 2015.

Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete declined to speculate Sunday on whether government agents were close to detaining the cartel leader. But he said he hopes to soon have news.

"I once heard that they arrived at a place and that he had just left because the coffee was still steaming," Navarrete said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. </s> Mexican authorities have arrested the wife of the leader of Jalisco New Generation, one of the country's fiercest drug cartels, as well as a top lieutenant for the organization, setting the western state of Jalisco on high-alert for possible reprisals.

Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete said at a Sunday press conference that marines took into custody Rosalinda Gonzalez Valencia, the wife of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as "El Mencho," the night before in the city of Zapopan. Gonzalez is accused of managing the cartel's finances.

At the same location, the marines also captured Gerardo Botello Rosales, aka "El Cachas," who is believed to run the cartel's operations in the states of Guanajuato and Michoacan. Botello is accused of homicide, kidnapping and extortion. He has an outstanding order for extradition from the state of Oregon for a 2002 homicide, Navarrete said.

Saturday's arrests are part of the "siege" on El Mencho, said Alejandro Hope, a Mexican security expert. "They have been hunting him with greater intensity since the end of last year."

Navarrete declined to speculate on whether government agents were close to detaining the cartel leader. But he said he hopes to soon have news.

"I once heard that they arrived at a place and that he had just left because the coffee was still steaming," said Navarrete.

Jalisco New Generation has a reputation for battling with government agents. Navarrete said he anticipates a "violent reaction" from the cartel, adding that government officials have taken precautions to prevent or respond to possible aggressions.

The cartel brazenly shot down a Mexican military helicopter with a rocket launcher in 2015, prompting Mexican officials to declare an all-out offensive against the criminal group. Tensions spiked again this past February, after the cartel allegedly abducted and murdered two federal agents in the Pacific state of Nayarit.

Jalisco state Gov. Aristoteles Sandoval said earlier Sunday that the state is "calm" amid stepped-up security.

Jalisco New Generation is believed to primarily traffic methamphetamine while also selling cocaine, heroin and marijuana. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency said in its October 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment report that the organization has distribution hubs for illicit substances in Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta.
Norma Azucena Rodríguez Zamora, a recently elected member of the Congress of Mexico, is kidnapped by gunmen in Hidalgo State.