Category Archives: Mexico

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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US halts appointments using migrant phone app at Texas border crossing

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Move follows reports of extortion by Mexican officials in Nuevo Laredo who threaten migrants with missing asylum appointments

The Biden administration has stopped taking mobile phone app appointments to admit asylum seekers at a Texas border crossing that connects to a notoriously dangerous Mexican city after advocates warned US authorities that migrants were being targeted there for extortion.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) gave no explanation for its decision to stop scheduling new appointments via the CBP One app for the crossing in Laredo, Texas.

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Mexico City mayor resigns in bid to become country’s first female president

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Claudia Sheinbaum will seek ruling party’s nomination to succeed Andrés Manuel López Obrador in election next year

Mexico City’s mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, has announced that she will step down this Friday to seek the ruling party’s presidential nomination, bidding to become the country’s first female leader in an election due to be held next year.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena) said on Sunday it would on6 September announce the winning candidate from its internal selection process. Sheinbaum is one of the favorites.

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Election of Delfina Gómez as governor of Mexico state signals decline of PRI

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The PRI – once the overwhelmingly dominant party of Mexico in the 20th century – is now a weak and also-ran political force

Mexico’s oldest party has lost control of the country’s most populous and influential state, in an election result that could signal the end of a powerful network that has dominated politics in the region for almost a century.

Alejandra del Moral Vela – the candidate for the incumbent Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which has governed the state of Mexico (Edomex) uninterrupted since 1929 – was beaten by eight points on Sunday, despite claiming victory during the vote count.

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Texas woman dies of infection linked to cosmetic surgery in Mexico

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Family says Lauren Brooke Robinson, who reportedly contracted fungal meningitis, began to feel ill months after February surgery

A Texas woman has died after contracting fungal meningitis in an outbreak that has been linked to a cosmetic procedure performed in Mexico.

Lauren Brooke Robinson, 29, died on Wednesday from a fungal meningitis infection after receiving cosmetic surgery in Mexico, the local TV news station KBMT reported.

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Fowl play: errant chicken delays Mexico City metro service

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The latest transit system mishap comes after a series of incidents that city officials have claimed were sabotage

Service was temporarily halted on one of Mexico City’s metro system this week after a chicken got loose on the tracks.

Video posted by the Metro on Tuesday showed maintenance personnel and civil defense officers in hard hats chasing the errant fowl around the tracks with brooms, gloves and a trash bag.

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Border crossings reportedly decrease after Title 42 rules scrapped

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US homeland security secretary defended strict new immigration measures as volunteers pitched in to help migrants stuck at border

Crossings at the US border with Mexico have dropped 50% after Title 42 restrictions ended at the end of Thursday and the Biden White House implemented an arguably tougher immigration policy, US homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden on Sunday told White House pool reporters that the border situation immediately after Title 42’s elimination was “much better than you all expected”. The president said he did not plan to visit the border “in the near term” because to do so at this stage “would just be disruptive”.

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US senator denounced as ‘profoundly ignorant man’ over remarks on Mexico

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John Kennedy’s comments about Mexicans ‘eating cat food’ came as he urged the US military to enter country to ‘stop the cartels’

Mexicans “would be eating cat food out of a can and living in a tent behind an Outback” Steakhouse restaurant if it were not for their nation’s proximity to the US, and their country should be invaded because of the presence of drug cartels there, the US senator John Neely Kennedy said.

The Louisiana Republican’s racist remarks drew a strong condemnation from Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, who called Kennedy “a profoundly ignorant man”. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, meanwhile, urged the 37 million Americans of Mexican descent – along with other Latinos in the US – “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future.

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Title 42: Biden officials press on with deportation plans and warn those crossing unlawfully face tougher consequences – as it happened

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Officials stress hardline approach as American Civil Liberties Union files lawsuit, saying new rules close off safe routes for people seeking asylum

In El Paso, the Texas city this home to one of the major crossing points from Mexico, the Associated Press reports on how the city’s faith leaders are navigating an influx of migrants that’s expected to grow in the days to come.

Here’s more from their story:

As changing policies, rampant misinformation and exasperated, fearful crowds converge in this desert city, faith leaders are striving to provide shelter and uplift.

Along with prayers, they are counseling migrants about the daunting challenges that await them on U.S. soil, with enormous backlogs in asylum hearings and the Biden administration’s newly announced measures that many consider stricter than the existing ones known as Title 42.

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US authorities ‘seeing large numbers of migrants at border’ before Title 42 expiration – as it happened

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Homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warns people against crossing border illegally in White House briefing

We’re a few minutes away from the daily White House press briefing, where homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas will appear ahead of the midnight expiration of Title 42, the rule put in place under Donald Trump that has allowed US authorities to turn away most asylum seekers over the past three years.

Immigration authorities and some communities at the border are bracing for a potential surge of new migrants once the measure expires, and Mayorkas is likely to use his appearance to warn people against trying to cross into the US illegally, and outline steps Washington will take to stem the flow. He may also be asked about the possibility Republicans will follow through on their threats to impeach him over the situation at the border.

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US-Mexico migration deal raises fears for struggling border cities

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Agreement designed to curb increase of people arriving into US marks dramatic precedent for two countries, experts say

An agreement between the United States and Mexico designed to curb the surge of migrants arriving at the US doorstep marks a dramatic new precedent in relations between the two countries, analysts said, warning that the deal could further overwhelm border cities already struggling to cope.

Under the agreement announced in a joint statement on Tuesday, Mexico will continue accepting migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua who are turned away from the US.

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US man, 79, beaten to death in Mexico while delivering donations to the poor

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Rudy Lazo, who immigrated to the US from El Salvador in the 1980s, would regularly deliver clothes, food and toys to Tijuana

A 79-year-old American man who transported clothes, food and toys into Mexico to donate to the poor was beaten to death during a delivery trip in Tijuana, family members and authorities said.

Rudy Lazo’s killing during an apparent robbery in mid-April happened a couple of months after the US state department warned Americans to avoid Mexico, citing elevated kidnapping and homicide risks in areas including Baja California, the state Tijuana is in.

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Mexico army ignored cartel warnings before mass student kidnapping, emails show

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Months before 43 Ayotzinapa students vanished, army was repeatedly warned of criminal gang presence

The Mexican military received nearly a dozen complaints about cartel activity in the region where 43 students were abducted in September 2014, emails hacked from the country’s defense ministry reveal, but the armed forces apparently did little to tackle organized crime in the area.

The students’ kidnapping and disappearance, which took place in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state, was one of the most horrific and high-profile human rights abuses in Mexico’s recent history, and remains unsolved despite years of protests and a relentless pursuit of justice by the students’ parents.

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Mexican navy seizes tequila bottles containing nearly 10 tons of liquid meth

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Intercepted over the weekend, the 11,520 bottles were bound for export before sniffer dogs alerted the authorities to the liquid

Mexican navy inspectors have intercepted 11,520 tequila bottles bound for export that actually contained nearly 10 tons of concentrated liquid meth.

In total, the bottles – intercepted over the weekend at the Pacific coast seaport of Manzanillo, contained approximately 8,640kgs (about 19,000lbs) of meth.

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