Category Archives: Mexico

Mexican drug lord pleads not guilty to killing of DEA agent after US extradition

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Rafael Caro Quintero arraigned in New York over federal agent’s death after years as one of US’s most wanted men

After years as one of US authorities’ most wanted men, the Mexican drug cartel boss Rafael Caro Quintero was brought into a New York courtroom on Friday to answer charges that include orchestrating the 1985 killing of a US federal agent.

Caro Quintero pleaded not guilty to running a continuing criminal enterprise. Separately, so did Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the leader of another cartel. Carrillo is accused of arranging kidnappings and killings in Mexico but not accused of involvement in the death of the DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.

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Mexico releases 29 high-level organized crime operatives into US custody

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Prisoners, including Rafael Caro Quintero, extradited as Mexico faces pressure to show it’s tackling fentanyl trafficking

Mexico has extradited 29 high-level organised crime operatives to the US, as it faces intense pressure from the Trump administration to show that it is tackling fentanyl trafficking.

Among the prisoners sent to the US was Rafael Caro Quintero, the drug lord who was convicted of the murder of an undercover US Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1985.

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Alarms raised over legitimacy of Fyre festival 2: ‘An event that does not exist’

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Tourism and local officials in Mexico deny any knowledge of proposed follow-up to disastrous 2017 event

When tickets to the second Fyre festival went on sale this week, there was just one concrete detail: it would take place on Isla Mujeres, a tropical island off Cancún, Mexico.

But the festival seems to be repeating its own history as an improvised disaster after the local government in Isla Mujeres denied knowing anything about it.

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Trump threatens China with additional 10% tariff in escalation of trade war

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US president also insists delayed tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico will go into effect on 4 March

Donald Trump has threatened China with an additional 10% tariff on its exports to the US, setting the stage for another significant escalation in his trade war with Beijing.

The US president also claimed that he plans to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting next Tuesday, having delayed their imposition last month following talks with his counterparts.

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Shimmering oarfish rarely seen near ocean surface pops up on Mexico beach

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Distinctive, slender deep-sea creature, also known as ‘doomsday’ fish, seen wriggling on Baja California beach

A shimmery, slinky oarfish – a deep-sea creature that is rarely seen near the surface – was spotted in Baja California Sur, along Mexico’s Pacific Coast, this month. A group of people visiting the area noticed the shiny, wriggling fish along the beach, and tried to guide it back into the water.

The slender creatures live at depths between 660 and 3,280ft underwater, and on the rare occasions that they have been seen by humans, they have usually been dead – washed ashore after storms. In Baja California Sur, Robert Hayes of Idaho, who was visiting the beach with his wife, saw a live fish and quickly began filming it.

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Woman charged in dating app druggings and one death of older men in Las Vegas

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FBI says Aurora Phelps met men online for dating then drugged them and stole cars and money

A woman used online dating apps to lure at least four older men to meet her in person, drugged them with sedatives and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in a “sinister” romance scheme, FBI officials in Las Vegas said on Friday.

Three of the men died, authorities said, and she has been charged in one of their deaths.

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US congresswoman ‘rooting’ for Canada and Mexico against Trump’s threats

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Democrat Jasmine Crockett calls it ‘really wild’ that it is foreign leaders who are speaking truth to power

The congresswoman Jasmine Crockett has revealed she is “rooting” for Canada and Mexico over Donald Trump in their attempts to stand up to him, saying it is “really wild” to find herself in that position given he is the president of the US.

“They are really the ones that are speaking truth to power right now,” the Democratic representative from Texas said on Friday on the popular Breakfast Club podcast, alluding to the political feuds Trump has engaged in with the US’s two North American neighbors during the first month of his second presidency. “They can see what it is and they were like, ‘We are not messing with this crazy regime.’”

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Mexico will not stand US ‘invasion’ in fight against cartels, president says

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Claudia Sheinbaum’s warning follows Washington designating Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations

Mexico will never tolerate an “invasion” of its national sovereignty by the United States, Claudia Sheinbaum has warned after Washington designated Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations.

“This cannot be an opportunity for the US to invade our sovereignty,” the Mexican president said. “With Mexico, it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination or interventionism, and even less invasion.”

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US adds Mexican cartels to list of foreign terrorist organisations

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Six cartels added to list as part of Trump’s plan to ‘wage war’ on drug trafficking groups to address fentanyl crisis in US

The US has added six Mexican cartels to its list of foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs), as it calls for the “total elimination” of the criminal groups trafficking drugs to the US.

Mexico’s two biggest organised crime groups, the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels, were among those added, as were Tren de Aragua and Mara Salvatrucha, groups with ties to Venezuela and El Salvador.

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Mexican president blasts US for harboring drug cartels

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Claudia Sheinbaum gives riposte to Trump’s accusation of ‘intolerable alliance’ between Mexican government and gangs

Mexico’s president has accused the US of harboring drug cartels and American citizens of working with organized crime groups in Mexico, in a riposte to Donald Trump’s allegation of an “intolerable alliance” between traffickers and her government.

“There is also organized crime in the United States and there are American people who come to Mexico with these illegal activities,” Claudia Sheinbaum said during her morning press conference on Thursday. “Otherwise who would distribute fentanyl in the cities of the United States?”

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Canada and Mexico tariffs risk inflating US housing crisis, Trump is warned

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Exclusive: Dozens of congressional Democrats urge president to reconsider threatened import duties on US’s two largest trading partners

Pressing ahead with steep tariffs on Canada and Mexico risks exacerbating the US housing crisis and threatening the broader economy, dozens of congressional Democrats have warned Donald Trump.

The US president, after threatening to hit imports from the US’s two biggest trading partners with a 25% tax, is weighing how to proceed after approving a one-month delay.

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US arrests in Mexico for cartel-related crimes soared under Amlo, study finds

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Sixfold rise from days of Peña Nieto suggests Americans have increasingly become pawns for criminal drug gangs

The number of Americans arrested in Mexico for offenses related to organized crime increased by 457% – or nearly sixfold – during the 2018-24 presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador compared to his predecessor, according to a new report.

Since the current president Claudia Sheinbaum took office in September, 185 US citizens have been arrested by the Mexican army on organized-crime related charges – an average of three a day.

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Why Trump blinked before imposing his ‘beautiful’ tariffs on Canada and Mexico

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Trump has teased two of the US’s biggest trading partners with levies but has moved the goalpost at least three times in two weeks

Donald Trump was in his element in the Oval Office this week. Surrounded by cameras, flanked by billionaire allies and confronted by a barrage of questions about whether he was really prepared to unleash a trade war on the US’s closest neighbors, the president talked tough.

By his telling, powerful economies were scrambling to bend to his will. Hours earlier, Mexico had announced a series of measures to shore up its border, prompting the White House to hastily postpone the imposition of 25% tariffs on all its goods; Canada would announce similar measures, and receive the same reprieve, later that day.

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Trump’s claim that Mexican cartels and government are allied is not reality

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Corruption in Mexico is a problem, experts say, but any claim the two are linked shows a lack of comprehension

Mexico breathed a sigh of relief this week when Donald Trump delayed his threatened tariffs by a month, apparently swerving away from an economic crisis at the last moment.

But one aspect of the spat still rankles: the Trump administration’s vague but shocking accusation of an “intolerable alliance” between Mexico’s government and organised crime.

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Mitch McConnell calls Trump tariffs ‘bad idea’ but most Republicans toe line

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Ex-Senate majority leader is one of few party members to criticize president’s trade war with US neighbors and China

Republicans on Capitol Hill have largely fallen in line with Donald Trump’s move to impose tariffs on the US’s biggest trading partners, with the notable exception of the former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who called it a “bad idea”.

With even Trump admitting that the tariffs – 25% on imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% on China – might cause “some pain”, there was mostly strong support from the president’s loyalists. Jason Smith, chair of the ways and means committee of the House of Representatives, said the tariffs would “send a powerful message that the United States will no longer stand by as other nations fail to halt the flow of illegal drugs and immigrants into our country”.

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Trump threatens to widen tariffs with warning against EU – US politics live

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President says measures against bloc will ‘definitely happen’ following moves against Mexico, Canada and China

The director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) has appealed to leaders to pressure the Donald Trump administration to reverse its decision to pull out of the UN’s health agency.

“Bringing the US back will be very important,” Associated Press reports Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told attenders of a budget meeting. “And on that, I think all of you can play a role.”

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Asian stock markets tumble in response to Trump tariffs

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European futures also down more than 3% after Trump indicates tariffs will ‘definitely happen’ in EU countries

Asian sharemarkets tumbled in early trade on Monday after the Trump administration’s imposition of tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China sparked fears of an escalating global trade war.

Taiwan’s Taiex fell 4.4% at the open, led by a more than 6% plunge in semiconductor heavyweight TSMC. Japan’s Topix index was down as much as 2.3% and Korea’s Kospi fell as much as 2.4%, led by major exporters with exposure to global markets, including Canada and Mexico such as electronics manufacturers Samsung and LG, and automaker Kia. China’s sharemarkets remain closed for the lunar new year holidays.

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Fury in Mexico over Trump’s ‘slanderous’ claim of cartel links

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President Sheinbaum and politicians across the spectrum condemn accusation, which follows imposition of US tariffs

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has hit back at Donald Trump’s “slanderous” claim that her government had joined forces with drug bosses, amid anger and incredulity at the US president’s attack on the leaders of Latin America’s second biggest economy.

Trump made the claim on Saturday as he announced 25% tariffs against Mexico that the US said were a response to illegal immigration and the “intolerable alliance” between drug trafficking organisations and Mexico’s government, which had allegedly offered safe haven to “dangerous cartels”.

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Wall Street Journal editorial calls Trump tariffs ‘dumbest trade war in history’

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Some US business leaders reacted neutrally, while JP Morgan CEO says tariff threats can be used effectively

US business leaders are offering a mixed reaction to the steep trade tariffs that Donald Trump’s administration has imposed on Canada, Mexico and China, as the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal called it “the dumbest trade war in history”.

Donald Trump hit Canada and Mexico with a 25% tariff on imports, and China with 10%, on Saturday in a move that launched a new era of trade wars between the US and three of its largest trading partners. The tariffs against Canada tax oil and energy products at 10%.

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Trump warns Americans that tariffs may cause ‘pain’– US politics live

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US president says measures against Mexico, Canada and China will ‘all be worth the price’

After Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Volkswagen, Germany’s largest carmaker, said that tariffs would have a “harmful economic impact” on American consumers, as well as the international automotive industry.

German automakers say the tariffs will cause inflation for consumers.

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