Category Archives: Mexico

Mexico: outrage as Amlo suggests critics guilty of ‘gender-based violence’ against him

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Offhand remarks by Mexican president prompt condemnation in country with soaring levels of violence against women

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mexican president, has sparked ridicule and outrage after suggesting during a news conference that criticism leveled against him could be considered a form of gender-based violence.

The comments on Wednesday touched a nerve in Mexico, where the government of López Obrador has been unable to tackle soaring levels of violence against women, and where a resurgent feminist movement has become a thorn in the president’s side.

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Body caught in Rio Grande floating barrier, says Mexico

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Texas government installed barrier to deter migrants – Mexican and US governments want it removed as dangerous and illegal

A body has been found stuck in a floating barrier installed by Texas authorities in the Rio Grande river on the US border, Mexico’s foreign ministry has said

Authorities were working to identify the body found in the river and determine the cause of death, said Mexico’s foreign ministry, as it reiterated safety concerns.

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Mexican city of Chihuahua bans misogynist lyrics in live music venues

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Fines of up to £55,000 could be imposed on musicians who sing songs deemed to promote violence against women

Authorities in the north-western Mexican state of Chihuahua have banned artists from singing misogynist lyrics in live music venues.

Chihuahua, the capital city of the state, which borders the US, has passed a measure to prohibit musicians from performing songs that promote violence against women.

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Mexican security forces were complicit in kidnapping of 43 student teachers, report reveals

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Report finds army, navy, police and intelligence agencies knew, minute by minute, where the student teachers were

Mexican security forces at local, state and federal level were complicit in the 2014 abduction of 43 student teachers and concealed documents which showed where some of them were taken, a report prepared by an independent investigatory panel has concluded.

The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) tasked with investigating the case said in their findings that the Army, Navy, police and intelligence agencies knew, minute by minute, where the students were.

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Mexico steps up rain-making project amid intense heatwave and drought

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Government claims 98% success rate for cloud seeding but critics urge improving irrigation and water supply systems

Amid a historic heatwave and months of drought, Mexico’s government has launched the latest phase of a cloud seeding project it hopes will increase rainfall.

The project, which began in July, involves planes flying into clouds to release silver iodide particles which then, in theory, will attract additional water droplets and increase rain or snowfall.

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Mexico: IEDs kill four police officers and two civilians in ‘brutal’ cartel ambush

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Another 14 wounded after seven improvised devices set off in attack by organized crime group in Tlajomulco, Jalisco state

Four police officers and two civilians have been killed by bombs planted in a road in western Mexico that officials said were an ambush set by a drug cartel.

The attack late on Tuesday appeared to mark the first time that Mexican criminals have successfully targeted law-enforcement personnel with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in the latest example of the brazen military challenge posed by organized crime groups in the country.

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California man charged with femicide in deaths of three women in Mexico

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Mexican authorities will seek to extradite Bryant Rivera of the Los Angeles area for the death of Angela Carolina Acosta Flores

US authorities have arrested a California man accused of killing three women in the Mexican border city of Tijuana and crossing back and forth across the international line after each of the deaths, which occurred over the course of nearly a year starting in 2021.

According to US court records, 30-year-old Bryant Rivera, a resident of the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, was arrested on 6 July on a femicide charge in the strangulation death of Angela Carolina Acosta Flores, whose body was found in a hotel room in Tijuana on 25 January 2022.

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Six dead as tourist helicopter crashes in Everest region of Nepal

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Nepali pilot and five Mexican passengers killed after aircraft crashes soon after takeoff near Lukla

All six people onboard a tourist helicopter in Nepal have been killed after it crashed soon after takeoff in the Everest region.

The Manang Air flight was heading for the capital, Kathmandu, from near Lukla, a gateway for climbing expeditions to the world’s highest peak, with five Mexican tourists – two men and three women – and a Nepali pilot onboard.

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Mexico: body of missing journalist found in Nayarit state

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La Jornada said the body of Luis Martín Sánchez Iñiguez was found on the outskirts of Tepic, capital of the coastal state

A journalist from Mexican national newspaper La Jornada has been found dead in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, the publication has said.

La Jornada reported on Saturday the body of Luis Martín Sánchez Iñiguez was found on the outskirts of the state capital, Tepic.

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Grey whales seen seeking human help to remove parasites

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Captain of tourist boat from Baja California, Mexico, says grey whales return repeatedly for ‘grooming’

Grey whales have learned to approach whale-watching boats to have parasites removed by human beings, it has been claimed.

Video footage documenting the behaviour in the Ojo de Liebre lagoon, off the coast of Baja California, Mexico, shows a grey whale having whale lice picked off its head by the captain of a small boat. “I have done it repeatedly with the same whale and others,” Paco Jimenez Franco told a US news site. “It is very exciting for me.”

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Drug agency chief calls on China and Mexico to help stem US fentanyl crisis

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The majority of the extremely powerful illegal opioid entering the US is manufactured in Mexico using Chinese precursors

Drug Enforcement Administration administrator Anne Milgram has called for further cooperation from China and Mexico in the fight against the US’s fentanyl crisis.

In an interview with Chuck Todd, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, on Sunday, Milgram said that despite the DEA standing “ready to work with anyone who will work with us”, the US has “not had the cooperation that we want to have” from China, adding that the Mexican government also “needs to do more”.

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Sriracha lovers feel the heat as hot sauce shortage continues

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Drought in Mexico and depleting water supply in the Colorado River has led to a scarcity in red jalapeños, the key ingredient

Sriracha lovers everywhere are feeling the not so pleasant sting of the beloved hot sauce shortage, now in its second year. Drought in Mexico has resulted in a scarcity of chilli peppers – in particular, red jalapeños, the raw material of sriracha – leading Huy Fong Foods, the California-based maker of the iconic condiment, to scale back production.

“It is a challenging crop to grow,” said Stephanie Walker, a plant scientist at the New Mexico State University, who serves on the advisory board of the Chile Pepper Institute. “Jalapeños are really labor intensive, requiring people to de-stem them by hand before they go for processing.”

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US program is leaving asylum seekers stranded in Mexico, advocates say

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Border agents promise better chance of asylum for those agreeing to go to Mexico and apply there, then strands them with no access

Border agents are promising some Venezuelan asylum seekers a greater chance to stay in the US if they agree to first return to Mexico and make appointments to re-enter from there – or otherwise be deported – but then the migrants are flown to the Mexican interior and stranded there without any way to access the US asylum system, immigration advocates have warned.

People report being pressured by American federal agents into signing up for the arrangement, called “voluntary return” which involves a choice between going back across the US-Mexico border or to the countries they originally fled, with the US government employing a kind of stick and carrot approach, as they seek to deal with fewer people in the US immigration system. The “stick” is being threatened with deportation and related consequences such as a five-year ban on returning to the US, unless they agree to leave – before they go through the interview that screens for a credible fear of going home. And the “carrot” is asylum seekers being told they will have a better chance of being granted refuge if they try again through a specific Biden administration-approved process from another country.

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Hipólito Mora, vigilante crusader against Mexico’s drug cartels, killed in ambush

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One of the leaders of the violence-scarred country’s ‘self-defense’ movement was cut down in rural Michoacán

One of the founders of Mexico’s “self-defense” movement, the lime farmer turned vigilante crusader Hipólito Mora, has been murdered in an ambush – the latest macabre chapter in the country’s unabating crime conflict.

Guillermo Valencia, a politician from the violence-stricken state of Michoacán, where Mora helped launch a rural revolt against narco-traffickers 10 years ago, announced the news on Twitter.

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Many people in Mexico without power as deadly heat leads to strain on grid

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Climate change has made high temperatures more common in the country, which has already surpassed peak energy demand of 2022

When Raquel Rubio’s 13-month baby developed a 102F fever last week, she rushed to the doctor. Her son, Liam, had been in Rubio’s apartment without air conditioning for several hours; Nuevo León, the Mexican state where she lives, had reached 109F that day.

The doctor confirmed Rubio’s suspicions that the heat was driving her son’s temperature, and instructed her to bathe Liam and keep him hydrated. But Rubio couldn’t go back home; she had been dealing with power shortages for the past two weeks and didn’t want to take her son back into the blistering heat.

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Mexico police station attacked as search continues for 14 missing employees

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Assailants threw explosives at police station in state of Chiapas, following abduction of employees at gunpoint on highway

Assailants have thrown explosives at a police station in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas, as a massive search continued on Wednesday for 14 police employees abducted at gunpoint on a local highway.

The attacks highlight a new turf battle between cartels for control of drug and immigrant trafficking in the state, which borders Guatemala.

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Current heatwave across US south made five times more likely by climate crisis

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Latest ‘heat dome’ event over Texas and Louisiana, plus much of Mexico, driven by human-cause climate change, scientists find

The record heatwave roiling parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mexico was made at least five times more likely due to human-caused climate change, scientists have found, marking the latest in a series of recent extreme “heat dome” events that have scorched various parts of the world.

A stubborn ridge of high pressure has settled over Mexico and a broad swath of the southern US over the past three weeks, pushing the heat index, a combination of temperature and humidity, to above 48C (120F) in some places.

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Weather tracker: extreme heat to spread across southern US and Mexico

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Record temperatures will continue to put stress on power grids with blackouts reported in some areas

Extreme and prolonged heat looks set to continue across the southern states of the US and Mexico through this week. This heatwave, which has already brought record temperatures across Texas through the past two weeks, will extend into states such as Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and Louisiana over the coming days.

At least 50 million people have been placed under extreme heat advisories as temperatures are forecast to soar at least 5-10C above the climatological average, with daily maximum temperatures reaching 40-45C (104-113F). San Angelo airport in Texas has already recorded two consecutive days where the temperature hit 45.6C (114F), which surpasses its highest ever temperature by three degrees.

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Weather tracker: China issues heatstroke alert amid historic heatwave

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Tianjin reports all-time record of 41.4C, while Texas and Mexico break numerous temperature records

Parts of north-east China are in the grip of a historic heatwave, with hundreds of weather stations reporting record highs for the month of June. On 22 June the capital Beijing observed a temperature of 41.1C (106F), a record high for the month, and the first time a temperature higher than 40C had been observed since 2014. On the same date, the city of Tianjin reported 41.4C, a new all-time record for any month. Additionally, Dagang had its hottest day on record, with a temperature of 41.8C.

The national weather bureau in China issued an alert for heatstroke last week, almost two weeks earlier than is typical from previous years. Authorities have advised people to suspend outdoor work during the middle part of the day, when the temperatures are at their highest. The high temperatures have also led to increased pressure on the power grid, with a more than 20% increase in demand reported in Tianjin on 15 June compared with last year. Temperatures in north-east China will remain on the extreme side over the coming week, with highs of 40-42C forecast each day in places. The all-time Beijing temperature of 41.9C could be seriously under threat.

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Two Americans found dead at Mexico resort died from inhaling toxic gas

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Workers at luxury hotel where John Heathco and Abby Lutz died report managers had disabled carbon monoxide alarms

Two Americans whose bodies were found in their room at a resort in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur on 13 June died from inhaling toxic gas, according to officials’ preliminary findings.

The couple – identified as 41-year-old John Heathco and 28-year-old Abby Lutz, of California – had reportedly been dead between 10 and 11 hours before being discovered in their room at the oceanfront Hyatt Rancho Pescadero Hotel in El Pescadero, Mexico. The cause of death was ruled as intoxication of an unspecified gas substance that local officials as of Saturday were still working to determine.

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