Your avocado fix keeps this Mexican town cartel-free

Americans get 80 percent of their avocados from Mexico, and most of those come from a small farming community in Michoacan state. Much of the region is infested with cartel violence, and the avocado farmers were targeted too – but they've banded together and formed their own police force.

Fantastic Studio/Getty Images A new report says America’s local police and its national intelligence agencies are intertwining in creepy, secretive ways Human Rights Watch says the FBI, ICE, ATF and other agencies are feeding information — some of which was obtained in possibly unconstitutional ways, including warrantless searches — to local law enforcement. Those departments then come up with some other way to claim they got the leads — a minor traffic stop leading to a search, for instance. Judges, lawyers and jurors are left in the dark about possible rights violations. SPL/Science Source Meet some of the brain cells that turn you into an anxious mess Research showed these hippocampus neurons lit up when mice were led into open spaces. (Mice hate that.) Suppressing the reaction made the rodents more comfortable with exploring the areas. Scientists think, in combination with other recent research, the discovery could lead to new treatments. Which is good, one of the study’s authors says — the current ones aren’t great. Carrie Kahn/NPR Mexico’s avocado capital is a safe haven in bloody Michoacan state Americans on average now eat 7 pounds of avocados every year, and a healthy chunk of that will be delivered via chip on Super Bowl Sunday. For Tancitaro, Mexico, that was first a blessing, bringing wealth, but then a curse, drawing the attention of drug cartels on the hunt for protection money. But instead of buying off the cartels, the farmers bought their own police force. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images Left Shark speaks: The man in the meme-able suit says that, yes, he meant to look that goofy at the Super Bowl Bryan Gaw, a longtime dancer in Katy Perry’s touring ensemble, says he was given a lot of leeway in his halftime show choreography, so he created a character: an underdog everyshark. "I'm in a 7-foot blue shark costume," he said. "There's no cool in that." AP ‘It felt like that was something that my group could have done’: One man’s very personal look at the Heaven's Gate suicides The incident, which left 39 identically dressed cult members dead in a California mansion, triggered something in WNYC’s Glynn Washington. He examines it in-depth in a new podcast. "The more that you get into someone's stories, the less they become an other," he says. That was important to Washington because he grew up in apocalyptic religion too. "If the founder of my group had said to drink some Kool-Aid, 70 percent of us would have downed it in an instant." You received this message because you're subscribed to our Best of NPR emails. |  Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy | NPR 1111 N. CAPITOL ST. NE WASHINGTON DC 20002