Four and one-half years of violent conflict between drug cartels and the government have brought unimaginable bloodshed to the people of Mexico, and now one of that nation’s most highly placed law enforcement officials is predicting that it may be as much as four more years before the violence will begin to subside.

An analysis of crime statistics provided by BorderlandBeat.com has found that violence just across the southern border of the United States is increasing at a terrifying rate. In fact, the murder rate in Ciudad Juarez increased 40 percent in February 2011 over the same month the previous year: A total of 229 people in the city were executed in just one month, up from 163 in the same time period in 2010.

Not content with terrorizing the Christian minorities that endeavor to survive under Islamic rule, Al-Qaeda is now targeting Coptic Christians who have left Egypt for lives in Europe and North America.

Even as the illegal immigration crisis continues and more states (including Texas) are considering Arizona-style legislation to counteract federal indifference to the influx across the United States’ southern border, a report just released provides new insights regarding the lawlessness which reigns in Mexico.

The Plurinational State of Bolivia is presenting a message to the world via the United Nations: Nature should have just as many rights as human beings do. Air has a right to be clean. Water has a right to be pure. And nature has “the right to balance.” Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN, Pablo Salon, will be presenting a treaty to the UN with the goal of codifying these sentiments into international law.

The horrific, premeditated massacre of nearly a dozen children at a school in Rio de Janeiro was the work of a Islamic extremist — but the English language press is either ignoring or concealing the alleged murderer’s religious beliefs.

The results of parliamentary elections in Egypt appear to indicate that the future of that nation will find it more closely aligned with the Islamist agenda. At the same time, another "moderate" Muslim nation, Turkey, seems to be moving in an increasingly radical direction.

In a decision likely to further alienate Western nations against the Iranian regime, a trial court in Iran has found Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani (left) guilty of apostasy and has sentenced him to death. Prior to his arrest in 2009, Nadarkhani had led a 400-person house church movement in Iran after his conversion from Islam. The court demanded on several occasions in late September of last year that the pastor renounce his Christian faith, or face possible execution for apostasy from Islam.

After initially claiming it would not execute a minister for converting from Islam to Christianity, the Iranian government is — in the words of one analyst — engaging in a “variety of tactics in an effort to neutralize a situation that has called into question its flaunted commitment to religious freedom.”

For Zubaida Bibi, a Christian woman working in a garment factory in the Korangi Industrial Area of Karachi, Pakistan, the workday on October 12 at Crescent Enterprises probably began like most. Her job as a custodian helped make it possible for her to care for her children. But before her shift was over, a Muslim worker at the factory attempted to rape her, and then slit her throat, leaving four orphans without a mother to care for them. And the case of Zubaida Bibi is far from unique: In Pakistan, the phenomena of Islamic men raping Christian women is becoming more common.