NYT | An airplane belonging to the attorney general’s office crashed on Tuesday in central Mexico, killing all six people on board, the authorities said. The dead included the crew, two federal agents and a prosecutor who were returning to Mexico City from Zacatecas State after helping with the arrest of people suspected of being members of the Zetas, one of the country’s most violent gangs. The cause of the crash is under investigation. The plane, a Beechcraft King Air 300 built in 1985, had unspecified mechanical trouble Monday night, forcing it to return to Zacatecas and delaying the return of the group, the attorney general’s office said in a statement.

Pewglobal.org | On the eve of President Barack Obama’s visit to Mexico, the United States is enjoying a resurgence of good will among the Mexican public, with a clear majority favorably inclined toward their northern neighbor and more now expressing confidence in Obama. A national opinion survey of Mexico by the Pew Research Center, conducted March 4-17 among 1,000 adults, finds that roughly two-thirds (66%) of Mexicans have a favorable opinion of the U.S. – up from 56% a year ago and dramatically higher than it was following the passage of Arizona’s restrictive immigration law in 2010, when favorable Mexican attitudes toward the United States slipped to 44%.

CBS | A gun found at the scene of a shootout between a Mexican drug cartel and soldiers where a beauty queen died was part of the botched “Fast and Furious” operation, CBS News reports. Authorities had said that Maria Susana Flores Gamez was likely used as a human shield and that an automatic rifle had been found near her body after the Nov. 23 shootout.

NYT | Nearly three months after a sport utility vehicle carrying two C.I.A. employees was attacked south of here, divisions have emerged among the Mexican law enforcement agencies trying to determine the motive. In the past week, top officials at the federal prosecutor’s office and the federal police force have clashed over the case in an unusual public airing of differences by rival agencies, both of which have received American training to help fight the drug war.

Wired.com | The Mexican military is trying to dismantle an extensive network of radio antennas built and operated by the notorious Zeta drug cartel. But the authorities haven’t had much luck shutting Radio Zeta down. Not only is much of the equipment super-easy to replace. But the cartel has also apparently found some unwilling — and alarming — assistance by kidnapping and enslaving technicians to help build it.

Christian Science Monitor | Mexico to charge police officers in attack against CIA agents After an ambush that injured US CIA operatives, the Mexican government has indicated they are close to charging police officers, who they say may be corrupt. Mexico City. Mexico said on Wednesday it was close to charging police officers with deliberately targeting two US agents in an August attack that caused serious embarrassment to the Mexican government.

NYT | The Mexican Navy confirmed on Tuesday that it had killed Heriberto Lazcano, the founder and the principal leader of the Zetas, one of the most violent criminal gangs to terrorize the country in years. But in a striking twist, an armed group quickly stole the body, a state prosecutor said Tuesday, leaving authorities struggling to explain how such a major blow against Mexico’s criminal organizations could turn into an illustration of their persistent strength.

KVOA | A Border Patrol agent was shot to death Tuesday in Arizona near the U.S.-Mexico line, the first fatal shooting of an agent since a deadly 2010 firefight with Mexican bandits that spawned congressional probes of a botched government gun-smuggling investigation.The agent and a colleague were on patrol in the desert near Naco, Ariz., about 100 miles from Tucson, when shooting broke out shortly before 2 a.m., the Border Patrol said. The second agent was shot in the ankle and buttocks, and was airlifted to a hospital.

Fox News | For the first time, Mexican victims of crimes tied to the botched Operation Fast and Furious are being identified, including teenagers killed in a 2010 massacre.  A new report finds dozens of weapons recovered in Mexico have been connected with the ill-fated and ill-conceived anti-gunrunning program. While some Mexican authorities estimate 300 of their citizens have been injured or killed by Fast and Furious guns, little has been known about those weapons south of the U.S. border until now.

Wired.com | A disastrous plan by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to allow guns to “walk” into Mexico wasn’t the fault of a few misguided officials, a new investigation from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog finds. The gun-walking plan, known as Operation Fast and Furious, compromised the integrity of more than a dozen senior officials and three agencies. Attorney General Eric Holder has been cleared of allegations he knew about Fast and Furious. Many of his subordinates were not so fortunate.

NYT | The inmates were massed in the prison carpentry workshop when somebody gave the signal. Wedging themselves into a tunnel almost 10 feet below ground, 131 prisoners slid one by one along 23 feet to emerge at the base of the north watchtower. There they bound and gagged three guards, according to an account provided by prison administrators, cut through a wire fence and walked to freedom.

Alternet | Lars Schall: What has been your main motivation to spend 10 years of your life to the subject of the drug trade? Oliver Villar: The main motivation goes sometime back. I think it has to do firstly with my own experiences in growing up in working class suburbs in Sydney, Australia. It always has been an area that I found very curious and fascinating just to think about how rampant and persuasive drugs really are in our communities, and just by looking at it in more recent times how much worse the drug problem has become, not just in lower socio-economic areas, but everywhere.

Insight | A new academic investigation looks at understudied but important elements of Mexico’s security challenge: the factors that lead drug traffickers to exit the violent trade, and how to encourage more to follow suit. The study is called “Getting out of the Game: Desistance from Drug Trafficking,” and was written by Howard Campbell and Tobin Hansen, professors at the University of Texas El Paso and Oregon State University, respectively. Based on interviews with dozens of former drug traffickers in El Paso and neighboring Juarez, the authors sought to examine what keeps a given trafficker in a life of crime, providing insight into how to facilitate such a transition.

NYT | The two Americans who were wounded when gunmen fired on an American Embassy vehicle last week were Central Intelligence Agency employees sent as part of a multiagency effort to bolster Mexican efforts to fight drug traffickers, officials said on Tuesday. The two operatives, who were hurt on Friday, were participating in a training program that involved the Mexican Navy. They were traveling with a Mexican Navy captain in an embassy sport utility vehicle that had diplomatic license plates, heading toward a military shooting range 35 miles south of the capital when gunmen, some or all of them from the Federal Police, attacked the vehicle, Mexican officials have said.

Agence France-Presse | Deep in a bunker in Mexico City, police intelligence analysts monitor live images from street cameras, radars and drones in a vast effort to bring drug cartels to justice. But despite the creation of this state-of-the-art Intelligence Center three years ago, Mexican federal police have struggled to stem drug trafficking and reverse the ever-rising homicide rate in the country.