US giant Ford is to invest $3bn in a new car plant in Mexico, the biggest investment in the country's manufacturing sector.
The move is a blow to American car workers who had hoped the factory would be built in the United States. Ford has lost more than $15bn over the past two years and says the new facility is crucial to its future. Mexican President Felipe Calderon hailed the announcement as a "turning point" for his country.
The new factory, and other changes to Ford's Mexican operations, are likely to create an estimated 4,500 jobs in Mexico, where car workers earn substantially less than their American counterparts. Mr. Calderon made the announcement with Ford president Alan Mullaly at the presidential compound in Mexico City on Friday.
"We want Mexico to be an automotive country, one that is competitive and with the most advantages so that the worldwide automotive industry will establish itself here," Mr. Calderon said. Mr. Mullaly said: "We are convinced the geographic location as well as Mexico's highly qualified labor force and economic stability make this decision the right one for our business."
This might take Mexicans away from drugs and violence a phenomenon that increases worryingly!
Gunmen in Mexico have killed another top Mexican police official - just one day after the head of the national anti-narcotics effort was shot dead.
Esteban Robles headed the anti-kidnapping unit of the Mexico City police department. He was shot several times outside his home on Friday. Mr. Robles was flown to a nearby hospital, but died shortly afterwards. The news came as Mexico's president was attending a memorial service honoring three other senior police officers.
President Felipe Calderon said these latest attacks would not deter his efforts to continue his government's campaign against the drugs trafficking cartels operating in the country. "We have to come together to confront this evil, we Mexicans have to definitively and categorically say 'That's enough!'," he said. "We can't accept this situation, we have to take back our streets," he added.
Mr. Robles was the fourth top policemen to have been killed in Mexico City in the past 10 days. He was ambushed by four gunmen in a truck and shot as he was driving out of his house in Mexico City, officials said.
Is very sad to read that a country of so many poor has to survive armed gangs also, a fully corrupted society that pushes people from poverty to total desperation.
Gunmen have killed at least nine people and injured six more in an attack on a cattle ranch in southern Mexico, authorities have said.
At least 40 people launched the attack outside the home of a prominent cattle breeder in Guerrero state, police said. It was the second attack to target ranchers in as many days. On Saturday at least seven people died in another shooting in the same state.
Guerrero has experienced a wave of violence blamed on drug cartels. The ranch in Petatlan attacked on Sunday belongs to Rogaciano Alba Alvarez, the head of the Guerrero cattlemen's association. Officials said the gunmen drove up to the ranch in pick-up trucks early on Sunday morning before opening fire.
A day earlier, at least seven ranchers attending a meeting of the cattlemen's association in the city of Iguala were killed. The motive for the attack on Mr. Alba is not clear, but the scale of both attacks and the firepower used suggest clear links to organized crime, he says.
Organized crime and drugs trafficking seems to be the all time disease for Mexico that keeps it in that low condition with no way out.
Gun battles between rival factions of a Mexican drugs cartel have left at least 15 people dead in the city of Tijuana, near the border with the US.
Police said all the dead were from the Arellano Felix cartel, which has come under pressure from a rival gang. Two were wearing police uniforms or equipment, but are thought to have been gang members, police say.
Drug-related violence is a serious issue across Mexico. Nearly 200 people have been killed in Tijuana this year. Investigators believe two of the dead were senior hit men for the Arellano Felix cartel and were identified by large gold rings on their fingers.
It becomes urgency for the mecxican government to do something and control all this drug trafficking and killing.
A U.S. Marine wanted in the brutal slaying of a pregnant colleague who accused him of rape was arrested Thursday night in western Mexico, authorities said. Police arrested Cpl. Cesar Laurean as he wandered on a street in the rural township of Tacambaro in the state of Michoacán. The bearded suspect, chained at the wrists and ankles, stared straight ahead but his eyes occasionally filled up with tears as he answered a reporter's questions in terse phrases.
"You know my name. You know who I am," Laurean said while being held at the Michoacán state attorney general's office in Morelia, the state capital. Asked if he wanted to say anything, Laurean simply said "Proof," but wouldn't explain.
Why all of them one way or another try to escape in Mexico? Anything to do with corruption?
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has called on the country's Congress to approve an energy reform bill to overhaul state oil giant Pemex.
Mr. Calderon said the plan would give Pemex more freedom to manage its budget and contract out work, so boosting both oil production and exploration. Mexico's known oil reserves are running out and production has been falling.
Mr. Calderon stressed the bill would not privatize Pemex, a national symbol that has been in state hands since 1938. "To strengthen Pemex is to strengthen Mexico," President Calderon said. "We must act now, because time and oil is running out." Oil revenues constitute some 40% of federal income, but production has been falling.
So for a country that has oil and thinking to expand plans why there are so many poor? Perhaps before they start making oil plans they should do something with corruption plans!
Mexico is to make a major investment in water projects to try to guarantee that at least 95% of the population has access to clean drinking water by 2012. President Felipe Calderon said the government would invest $21bn (£10.6bn) to expand supply networks and to improve drainage and water treatment.
The aim was to work for the sustainable development of Mexico, he said. A key challenge is Mexico City, home to 20 million people, which suffers both water shortages and flash floods.
"There is an imbalance between the availability of water, population growth and economic development," said President Calderon as he unveiled the investment program during a visit to the state of Hidalgo. Mexico's population, currently some 106 million, had quadrupled in the last 55 years, he said, with people tending to concentrate in urban areas where provision of drinking water was more expensive.
Mexico needs too many thing to escape the misery but water is a good beginning as long it starts!
In the dry state of Chihuahua, south of the Texas border, 68-year-old Amado Trevizo became an accidental outlaw last year when his son planted 10 sacks of seeds of GM corn, banned in Mexico. Trevizo was left with the 10-hectare (25-acre) harvest when his son was killed in a car accident, making him the unwitting owner of a technically illegal crop. That fact aside, Trevizo is delighted with his harvest."The other corn stalks were completely eaten by worms, but on those ones the worms only took a little bite and then fell off," said Trevizo. With genetically modified, or GM, corn he also saved money by using less water and pesticides. GMO foods, whose DNA is altered to be resistant to pests, are pushed by supporters as a way to boost world food supplies, but opponents question their safety. In Europe consumers dub them "Frankenstein" foods.
The debate over GMOs is now dividing the Mexican countryside, known as the birthplace of corn, which was first grown in the region thousands of years ago. Some farmers in the arid northern flatlands are planting banned GMO corn to boost productivity. But farmers in the south fear stray GMO pollen will ruin native corn varieties, and environmentalists also decry any entry of GMOs into Mexico. The seeds are smuggled across the border from the United States, the world's largest corn producer. More than 70 percent of U.S. corn is genetically modified.
At least they grow …corn because reading it I was expecting something else that according some researches is pretty high in planning and …using in Mexico!
Is to wander if they tried to use all the gadgets as well!!! Bu the truth is that the police in Mexico have found a 007 style car used by the country's drug cartels. The car was abandoned by the gang members after a shoot-out.
The police and army sent to fight Mexico's drug cartels have seen most things - sophisticated rocket launchers, powerful assault rifles and gold-plated pistols. But in the northern state of Tamaulipas even they were shocked to come across a Jeep Grande Cherokee kitted out with its own anti-police gadgets.
The Mexican drug dealer will die …another day!
It must be one of these very rare times when the name Bush will be mentioned in a positive way and naturally is not George W. Bush but his wife Laura. So US first lady Laura Bush and Mexico’s first lady Margarita Zavala launched a joined effort to try reducing deaths from breast cancer. With breast cancer the worst enemy is not the cancer itself but the lack of information and it involves millions of women internationally. In Mexico especially one out of 258 women of ages between 30 and 40 will discover having breast cancer in the next ten years and the key word is discovered. Needs a huge effect of information to lead these women in testing their breasts or make sure that they can read the signs.
The move from the Mexican first lady is especially referable because you would never call Mexico the paradise of this kind of information and her work is definitely difficult. But it seems that Mexico’s first lady feels strongly that she can make the difference and the only thing we can do is offer our support and wish her luck.
Soldiers seized assault rifles, grenades, marijuana and bulletproof vests bearing police insignia after a brief shootout in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. No one was wounded in the overnight exchange of fire with three suspects hunkered down in a house in La Mesa district, army Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito told reporters Friday. Most likely they were …stoned so they didn’t know what and where they were shooting. Troops seized 91 assault rifles, some with butts of gold and ivory – no modestly in spending here -along with 18 grenades, the bulletproof vests and more than 880 pounds of marijuana. The three suspects, aged 25 to 33, were arrested. The big question is how many will be sentence due to local corruption.
Mexico's federal attorney general's office on Tuesday announced an investigation into allegations of corruption against Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, a confidant of the president who holds the government's second highest profile job.
Mourino faces allegations of using his political clout while previously serving as a federal congressman and top energy official to benefit a family business.
The announcement came after a prominent opposition politician produced a series of contracts dated from 2000 to 2004 between state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, and the Mourino family business, Transportes Especializados Ivancar SA.
At least there is soomekind of movement towards corruption, still surprising how high has reached.
