Mexican Nationals Charged in TX Sex Trafficking Ring:  Seven Mexican nationals were convicted in Texas after admitting to enticing young girls and women from Mexico to be smuggled illegally into the U.S. across the porous southern border, and then using physical threats to force them to engage in prostitution in Houston-area bars.  Brandon Darby of Breitbart reports that an indictment against the leader, Gerardo Salazar, states that he operated a transnational sex trafficking ring with five associates, taking advantage of the open border to exploit Mexican women and young girls whom they lured with the hopes of finding work and a better life in the U.S.  The indictments against Salazar and his associates date back to 2005, the year Salazar fled to Mexico.  He was captured in 2010 and extradited to the U.S. in 2014.  He pleaded guilty to four charges of harboring illegal aliens for the purpose of prostitution.

CA Scraps Plan to Let Violent Inmates Fight Fires:  One day after it was first proposed, California corrections officials dropped a plan Tuesday that would have included inmates with violent backgrounds in the state's firefighting unit.  The AP reports that although inmates convicted of violent crimes such as assault and robbery will no longer be considered, the state still plans to expand the program to allow inmates who have up to seven years left to serve on their sentences rather than the current five.  California's inmate firefighting unit is the nation's oldest and largest, but its membership has been dwindling in recent years because lower-level offenders are being sent to county jails instead of state prisons.

Serial Killer Held in 4 OH Slayings:  An Ohio truck driver was indicted Tuesday on a multitude of charges including aggravated murder in the killings of one person in 1997 and three people this year.  CBS News reports that Robert Rembert was arrested last month after DNA evidence matched him with the rape and strangulation deaths of Rena Mae Payne in 1997 and Kimberly Hall in June of this year.  He is also charged with the shooting deaths of his cousin Jerry Rembert and another man, Morgan Nietzel, at his home in Cleveland one day prior to his September 21 arrest.  In 1998, Rembert was sentenced to six years after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the December 1997 fatal shooting of Dadren Lewis.  Rembert currently faces 10 counts of aggravated murder, as well as charges of kidnapping, rape, aggravated robbery, grand theft and gross abuse of a corpse.