Category Archives: Mexico

US to breed billions of flies and dump them out of aircraft in bid to fight flesh-eating maggot

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Program mirrors earlier successful mission to fight new world screwworm fly, whose larvae can infest living tissue

The US government is preparing to breed billions of flies and dump them out of airplanes over Mexico and southern Texas to fight a flesh-eating maggot.

That sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but it is part of the government’s plans for protecting the US from a bug that could devastate its beef industry, decimate wildlife and even kill household pets. This weird science has worked well before.

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Twenty bodies discovered in Sinaloa as Mexican cartel violence surges

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Grisly finding comes at end of worst month in war between Sinaloa factions as government tries to stop killings

Mexican authorities have found 20 bodies in the state of Sinaloa, a region gripped by a war between factions of the Sinaloa drug cartel that is reaching new heights of violence.

The state prosecutor’s office said on Monday that four of the victims had been decapitated and their bodies had been found hanging from a bridge on a main road near Culiacán, the state capital.

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Mexico police discover 381 bodies ‘thrown indiscriminately’ on crematorium floor

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Prosecutor says the bodies in Ciudad Juarez had not been cremated, and that relatives of the dead have been given ‘other material’

Police have found 381 corpses piled up in a private crematorium in northern Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez, the local prosecutor’s office has said , attributing the grisly find to negligence.

“Preliminarily, we have 381 bodies that were deposited irregularly in the crematorium, which were not cremated,” Eloy Garcia, spokesperson for the Chihuahua state prosecutor’s office, told AFP.

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Sinaloa cartel hacked security cameras to track and kill FBI informants, US says

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Hacker working for cartel run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was also able to access phone records of an FBI legal attaché at the US embassy in Mexico City

A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel was able to obtain an FBI official’s phone records and use Mexico City’s surveillance cameras to help track and kill the agency’s informants in 2018, according to a new US justice department report.

The incident was disclosed in a justice department inspector general’s audit of the FBI’s efforts to mitigate the effects of “ubiquitous technical surveillance”, a term used to describe the global proliferation of cameras and the thriving trade in vast stores of communications, travel, and location data.

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‘Win-win’: new maps reveal best opportunities for global reforestation

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New study shows regions with best potential to regrow trees and suck climate-heating CO2 from the air

New maps have revealed the best “win-win” opportunities across the world to regrow forests and tackle the climate crisis, without harming people or wildlife.

The places range from the eastern US and western Canada, to Brazil and Columbia, and across Europe, adding up to 195 million hectares (482 million acres). If reforested, this would remove 2.2bn tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, about the same as all the nations in the European Union.

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Supreme court strikes down Mexico’s lawsuit against US gunmakers

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Lawsuit alleged that Smith & Wesson and Interstate Arms aided the illegal trafficking of firearms to drug cartels

The US supreme court on Thursday spared two American gun companies from a lawsuit by Mexico’s government accusing them of aiding illegal firearms trafficking to drug cartels and fueling gun violence on the south side of the US-Mexico border.

The justices, in a unanimous ruling, overturned a lower court’s decision that had allowed the lawsuit to proceed against the firearms maker Smith & Wesson and distributor Interstate Arms. The lower court had found that Mexico plausibly alleged that the companies aided and abetted illegal gun sales, harming its government.

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Indigenous lawyer to head Mexico’s supreme court after direct election

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Hugo Aguilar, who has links to governing party, topped unprecedented and controversial popular vote

An Indigenous lawyer from the state of Oaxaca is set to become the president of Mexico’s supreme court following the country’s unprecedented elections to appoint its entire judicial system by popular vote.

Activists hailed the election of Hugo Aguilar, a member of the Mixtec Indigenous group, as a symbolic victory – while noting that Aguilar, who topped the poll of candidates for the supreme court, had long since shifted from his own roots as an activist to a figure much more closely aligned with the state, and involved in controversial mega-projects such as the Maya Train.

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Mexican president hails ‘complete success’ after just 13% vote in judicial elections

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Claudia Sheinbaum defends decision to put 2,600 judges’ posts to vote despite record low turnout

Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the country’s unprecedented judicial elections after just 13% of Mexicans turned out to vote, a record low in a federal election.

Roughly 2,600 posts, from local magistrates to supreme court justices, were up for grabs on Sunday, as an entire judicial system was put to the vote for the first time in the world.

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Eight Mexican soldiers killed by improvised explosive device

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The use of IEDs in a war between criminal groups in the Michoacán-Jalisco border region has increased drastically

Eight Mexican soldiers have died after triggering an improvised explosive device (IED) in the state of Michoacán, underlining the rising use of mines by organised crime factions.

The soldiers were on patrol in an armoured vehicle in the municipality of Los Reyes, near the border with the state of Jalisco, when the mine detonated on Wednesday. Six soldiers were killed instantly, while two more later died from their wounds, according to El Universal.

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Personal secretary and adviser to Mexico City’s mayor killed in brazen daylight attack

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Members of Clara Brugada’s team shot dead by gunmen on motorcycle in attack in central part of the city

The personal secretary and an adviser to Mexico City’s mayor have been shot dead by gunmen in a brazen daylight attack in a central part of the city.

Mayor Clara Brugada called the murder of her personal secretary Ximena Guzmán and adviser José Muñoz a “direct attack”. The motive is under investigation, but Brugada promised that her government would “continue its relentless fight against insecurity”.

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Mexican navy ship crashes into Brooklyn Bridge, killing two sailors

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Twenty-two crew members injured, 11 of them critically, with nine in stable condition, Mexican government says

Two sailors from the Mexican navy were killed and another 11 critically hurt when a sailing ship taking part in a promotional tour in New York City collided with the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said.

The crash happened on Saturday night when the Cuauhtémoc – an academy training vessel with 277 people on board who shares a name with the last Aztec ruler – lost power and struck the bridge. Eyewitness videos showed dozens of sailors in ceremonial uniforms spread across yardarms shortly before the collision, which snapped the Cuauhtémoc’s three masts.

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Mexican woman charged in US with supplying arms to ‘terrorist’ drug cartel

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María Del Rosario Navarro, 39, accused of conspiring to provide material support to Jalisco New Generation cartel

A 39-year-old woman has become the first Mexican national to be indicted in the United States on charges of providing material support to a cartel designated as a foreign terrorist organization, according to the US Department of Justice.

María Del Rosario Navarro is accused of conspiring with others to provide grenades to the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), a powerful Mexican crime faction that the US in February designated as a terrorist organization alongside other criminal groups across Latin America.

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Mexico demands compensation from YouTube star MrBeast after pyramid chocolate video

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Celebrity used trips to ancient Maya cities to advertise his own-brand snacks, drawing criticism from Mexico’s archaeology and history institute

Mexico is seeking compensation from YouTube celebrity MrBeast’s production company, accusing it of using images of the country’s ancient archaeological sites to advertise a chocolate brand.

A video of the social media star visiting Maya ruins has been viewed around 60m times since 10 May on YouTube, where he has 395 million subscribers.

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Judge dismisses trespassing charges against people crossing US-Mexico border

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New Mexico judge rules immigrants did not know they were entering US military zone, marking setback for Trump

A federal judge in New Mexico on Thursday dismissed trespassing charges against dozens of immigrants caught in a new military zone on the US-Mexico border, marking a setback for Trump administration efforts to raise penalties for unlawful crossings into the US.

Chief US magistrate judge Gregory Wormuth began filing the dismissals late on Wednesday, ruling that immigrants did not know they were entering the military zone in New Mexico and therefore could not be charged, according to court documents and a defense attorney.

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Mexican beauty influencer shot dead during TikTok live stream

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Death of Valeria Márquez, 23, being investigated as femicide, says Jalisco state prosecutor

A young Mexican social media influencer, known for her videos about beauty and makeup, was brazenly shot to death during a TikTok live stream, in an incident that sent shock waves through a country that faces high levels of gender-based violence.

The death of Valeria Márquez, 23, is being investigated as a femicide – the killing of a woman or girl for reasons of gender – the Jalisco state prosecutor said in a statement released on Tuesday evening.

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Mexico sues Google over changing Gulf of Mexico’s name for US users

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President Claudia Sheinbaum says lawsuit has been filed after US lawmakers voted on name change

Mexico has sued Google for changing the Gulf of Mexico’s name to “Gulf of America” for Google Maps users in the United States, Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president, said on Friday.

“The lawsuit has already been filed,” Sheinbaum said at her morning news conference, without saying where and when it was submitted.

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Mexico’s president tries to defuse fears of US military intervention

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Sheinbaum emphasises communication with Trump ‘very good’ after rejecting offer to send US troops into Mexico

A sharp exchange of statements over the weekend has heightened concerns in Mexico that Donald Trump may push for a US military presence in its territory to fight drug trafficking.

The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, sought to defuse the situation in her daily press conference on Monday, emphasising that communication between the two leaders had been “very good” so far.

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World may be ‘post-herd immunity’ to measles, top US scientist says

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As infections pummel communities in the US, Mexico and Canada, fear of ‘the most contagious human disease’ grows

A leading immunologist warned of a “post-herd-immunity world”, as measles outbreaks affect communities with low vaccination rates in the American south-west, Mexico and Canada.

The US is enduring the largest measles outbreak in a quarter-century. Centered in west Texas, the measles outbreak has killed two unvaccinated children and one adult and spread to neighboring states including New Mexico and Oklahoma.

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Trump border pick accused of ‘cover-up’ over death of man beaten by US agents

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Former top official calls for Rodney Scott to be blocked from CBP role over handling of investigation into Anastasio Hernández Rojas’s death

Rodney Scott, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has been accused by a former top official of orchestrating a “cover-up” over the death of a man detained while trying to enter the country from Mexico, according to a letter obtained by the Guardian.

Scott is a former US border patrol chief who has supported the president’s vow to build a wall along the border with Mexico and criticized Joe Biden’s handling of immigration policy. As commissioner of CBP, Scott would lead one of the largest federal law enforcement agencies, which encompasses the border patrol and staffs ports of entry across the United States.

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New daily weight-loss pill shows success at clinical trial

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Orforglipron also reduced blood sugar levels in participants with type 2 diabetes

A significant trial of a daily weight-loss pill has found that it helped people to shed the pounds and reduce their blood sugar levels, making it a contender to join the new wave of drugs that combat obesity and diabetes.

People who took a 36mg pill of orforglipron lost an average of 7.3kg (16lbs) over nine months, according to results from a phase 3 clinical trial reported by the drug’s manufacturer, Eli Lilly, on Thursday.

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