Nearby ports are closed and emergency shelters open as 10in of rain and dangerous surf are expected
Hurricane Orlene has made landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast near the tourist town of Mazatlán, with winds of more than 80mph (130km/h).
Electrical cables swayed and sent off showers of sparks in the town of El Rosario, about 40 miles (65km) south of Mazatlán, close to where the hurricane hit.
Continue reading...Figures likely to be an underestimate, says Global Witness, as land defenders are killed by hitmen, crime groups and governments
More than 1,700 murders of environmental activists were recorded over the past decade, an average of a killing nearly every two days, according to a new report.
Killed by hitmen, organised crime groups and their own governments, at least 1,733 land and environmental defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2021, figures from Global Witness show, with Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras the deadliest countries.
Continue reading...Michoacán state suffers another temblor, felt as far away as Colima, Jalisco and Guerrero states
A powerful magnitude 6.8 earthquake has struck Mexico, causing at least two deaths, damaging buildings and setting off landslides.
The earthquake struck at 1.19am on Thursday near the epicenter of a magnitude 7.6 quake that hit three days earlier in the western state of Michoacán. It was also blamed for two deaths.
Continue reading...Quake registered at 7.5 magnitude and struck off the coast of La Placita de Morelos on the anniversary of two devastating tremors
A magnitude 7.5 earthquake has struck western Mexico on the anniversary of two earlier devastating tremors, killing at least one person and causing flooding on the Pacific coast.
The quake hit at 1.05pm local time, striking near the town of La Placita de Morelos in the state of Michoacán at a depth of 15km.
Continue reading...Ex-officer was head of army base in Iguala when students were abducted in what a report called a ‘state crime’
Mexican authorities have arrested a retired general and two other members of the army for alleged links to the disappearance of 43 students in the south of the country in 2014.
The assistant public safety secretary, Ricardo Mejia, said that among those arrested was the former officer who commanded the army base in the Guerrero state city of Iguala in September 2014, when the students from a radical teachers’ college were abducted.
Continue reading...Madrid museum buys three hand-carved canoes from Zapatistas, with proceeds going to Open Arms NGO
Three exquisitely decorated canoes hand-carved in the jungles of southern Mexico and borne across the Atlantic on a ship tasked with a peaceful, symbolic – and cumbia-soundtracked – invasion of Spain could soon find a permanent mooring in the heart of Madrid.
More importantly, proceeds from the sale of the small boats could help save some of the tens of thousands of men, women and children who risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean each year.
Continue reading...New September temperature record reaches 107F or 41.7C in Salt Lake City, Utah
Through this week, the heatwave in the US has been continuing, allowing more September records to fall. Salt Lake City in Utah saw its September temperature record broken, with each day hotter than the last, until the current highest ever September temperature was recorded on Wednesday. The new September record is now 107F or 41.7C, which astonishingly is also tied as the all-time temperature record for Salt Lake City. It is extraordinary to record a tied record high temperature in meteorological autumn.
Farther south earlier this week, the tropical storm off the west coast of Mexico, previously Twelve-E, developed into a category 2 hurricane, bringing sustained winds of 100mph, and was named Hurricane Kay. The hurricane brought intense flooding all the way up the west coast of Mexico, from Oaxaca to Nayarit by Thursday 8 September. In the last 48 hours, Kay has weakened into a tropical storm, but continues to bring extreme rain in its path, across the Baja California Peninsula and up towards the US state of California.
Continue reading...A record heatwave added stress to the electrical grid and made firefighting difficult. Now a hurricane could bring flash floods
A collision of extreme weather events is bearing down on California as wildfires threaten communities, a record-setting heatwave is adding stress to the electrical grid, and moisture from a hurricane is expected to bring thunderstorms and flash floods.
Hurricane Kay, swirling off the coast of Mexico, is on its way north, bringing with it the chance of strong winds, severe rainstorms, and possibly dry lightning that could increase risks for new fire starts. It also could bring some welcome relief to the week of brutally hot weather.
Continue reading...Two books containing 17th-century works by pioneering feminist poet and nun saved from US auction and returned to Spain
Two precious and well-travelled books containing works by the Mexican nun, writer, composer, poet and proto-feminist Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz have been saved from auction in New York and returned to Spain, where they were printed almost three-and-a-half centuries ago.
Sister Juana, who was born in mid-17th century Mexico to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother of Spanish descent, possessed a thirst for knowledge and a mind that would eventually mark her out as one of the greatest figures of the Golden Age of Spanish literature.
Continue reading...Students were then turned over to commander of the local army base who ordered their killings
Six of the 43 Mexican students forcibly disappeared in 2014 were allegedly kept alive in a warehouse for days, and then turned over to the commander of the local army base who ordered their killings, the Mexican government official leading the Truth Commission said Friday.
The interior undersecretary, Alejandro Encinas, made the revelation with little fanfare during a lengthy defense of the commission’s report, first released a week earlier. At that time, despite declaring the disappearances a “state crime” and saying that the army watched it happen without intervening, Encinas made no mention of six students being turned over to Col José Rodríguez Pérez.
Continue reading...Fredid Román, who ran an online outlet focused on state-level politics, gunned down in his car in state capital
A local journalist who ran an online news program has been shot to death in southern Mexico, making him the 15th media worker killed so far this year nationwide.
Prosecutors in the southern state of Guerrero said on Monday that Fredid Román was gunned down in the state capital, Chilpancingo.
Continue reading...Jesús Murillo held on charges of forced disappearance, torture and obstruction of justice in notorious Guerrero case
Mexico’s former attorney general has been arrested in relation to the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, the most prominent individual held so far in the notorious case that has haunted the country ever since.
Jesús Murillo was arrested at his home in Mexico City home on Friday on charges of forced disappearance, torture and obstruction of justice in the abduction and disappearance of the student-teachers in the south-western state of Guerrero, now seen as a “state-sponsored crime”.
Continue reading...Brazen strikes by organised crime leaders have left bystanders killed as many question the president’s security policies
For Carlos Holguín it was supposed to be just another day of toil.
After leaving the factory where he works morning shifts in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, the 24-year-old began his nightly routine last Thursday as a food app delivery driver.
Continue reading...Body of Juan Arjón López, 14th journalist to be killed in Mexico in 2022, identified by tattoos in border city of San Luis Río Colorado
An independent journalist has been found dead in northern Mexico, bringing to 14 the number of reporters and media workers killed so far this year, which has been one of the deadliest ever for the profession.
Prosecutors in the northern border state of Sonora said on Tuesday that tattoos on a body found in the border city of San Luis Río Colorado matched those of journalist Juan Arjón López.
Continue reading...Arizona, Nevada and Mexico affected as federal government steps in after states failed to reach agreement
After western US states failed to reach agreements to reduce water use from the beleaguered Colorado River, the federal government stepped in on Tuesday, issuing cuts that will affect two states and Mexico.
Officials with the Bureau of Reclamation declared a “tier 2” shortage in the river basin as the drought continues to pummel the American west, pushing its largest reservoirs to new lows. The waning water levels, which have left dramatic bathtub rings in reservoirs and unearthed buried bodies and other artifacts, continue to threaten hydroelectric power production, drinking water, and agricultural production.
Continue reading...Doctor killed along with a nurse and another woman at a hospital in the suburb of Ecatepec, on the outskirts of Mexico City
A Cuban doctor has been shot dead at a hospital in a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of Mexico City, prosecutors in the state of Mexico confirmed late on Monday.
The doctor, whose name was not provided, was killed on Friday along with a nurse and another woman at a hospital in the suburb of Ecatepec.
Continue reading...Four radio station employees among dead as alleged gang members rampaged through Ciudad Juárez
A prison confrontation between members of two rival cartels spilled on to the streets of the border city Ciudad Juárez, where alleged gang members have killed nine more people, including four employees of a radio station.
The violence began on Thursday, when Los Chapos, members of the infamous Sinaloa cartel formerly led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, clashed with the local group Los Mexicles, in a Juárez prison, the deputy security minister, Ricardo Mejía, said.
Continue reading...The Biden administration agreed to pause plans that would have destroyed a 51-year-old oceanfront park
The Biden administration has agreed to pause plans for a double border wall that critics say would effectively destroy a 51-year-old oceanfront park that symbolizes friendship between the United States and Mexico.
Chris Magnus, the US Customs and Border Protection commissioner, said he wanted to hear community concerns before settling on a wall design for Friendship Park, which then-first lady Pat Nixon inaugurated in 1971.
Continue reading...Consulate accepts a dozen small artworks amid worldwide movement to repatriate Indigenous items
Small, ancient sculptures that have been gathering dust in an Albuquerque storage box are returning home to Mexico, where they are intertwined with the identity of Indigenous communities.
The Albuquerque Museum Foundation celebrated the repatriation of a dozen sculptures in a ceremony on Wednesday. The local consulate of Mexico accepted Olmec greenstone sculptures, a figure from the city of Zacatecas, bowls that were buried with tombs and other clay figurines that date back thousands of years.
Continue reading...Politicians and chefs pay tribute to the ‘Indiana Jones of food’, who helped preserve and popularise Mexican recipes in the English-speaking world
Diana Kennedy, the British-born food writer who dedicated her career to promoting the richness and diversity of Mexico’s culinary heritage and helped to popularise the national cuisine in the English-speaking world, has died aged 99.
The Mexican culture ministry confirmed Kennedy’s death at her home in Michoacán and paid tribute to her legacy, saying that she, “like few others”, understood that conserving nature and its diversity was crucial to upholding the myriad culinary traditions of Mexico.
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