Municipal and federal police officers confront each other in Monterrey, Mexico, this summer after federal authorities arrested dozens of officers from several towns who were accused of colluding with drug traffickers. (Christian Lara / Grupo Reforma)
At the heart of the overhaul is a “new police model” that stresses technical sophistication and trustworthiness and that treats police work as a professional career, not a fallback job.
In steps that are groundbreaking for Mexico, cadets and veteran cops are being forced to bare their credit card and bank accounts, submit to polygraph tests and even reveal their family members to screeners to prove they have no shady connections.
[latimes]
Mexico is planning a big new tourism center near the US border along the Gulf of Mexico.
The Fonatur agency that also created Cancun says its new “Costa Lora” development should eventually have 20,000 rooms for guests and create 115,000 jobs. It’s based in the municipality of Soto la Marina, roughly 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Brownsville, Texas.
The name honors the Atlantic Ridley tortoise, known as Tortuga Lora in Spanish. Plans call for preserving habitat for the endangered animal.
A federal judge has issued a ruling supporting a nearly $2.5 billion bid by Grupo Mexico (GMEXICOB.MX)
Grupo Mexico SAB won the right to regain control of its bankrupt U.S. copper miner when a judge in Texas approved its plan to reorganize Asarco LLC and rejected a competing offer from Sterlite Industries (India) Ltd..
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, Texas ruled that Grupo Mexico’s proposal to pay about $2.5 billion to Asarco’s creditors “is both feasible and confirmable.”
Grupo Mexico and Sterlite each promised to spend more than $2.5 billion to guarantee that Asarco’s creditors are repaid in full. In ruling in favor of Grupo Mexico, Hanen agreed with a lower-court opinion from the bankruptcy judge that oversaw Asarco’s case for five years.
Mexico’s business leaders have appealed to the United Nations to deploy peacekeepers just yards from the American border to help stem the rampant violence
Mexico’s deployment of thousands of soldiers to the northern city of Ciudad Juárez hasn’t kept assassins from striking at will, killing 18 people at a drug
“It could be an important number of babies,” Mexico City’s chief prosecutor, Miguel Mancera, told the Televisa TV network. “They didn’t just steal babies and give them up in illegal adoptions. They also issued false registrations of births at the clinic for babies born without papers elsewhere.”
Mexico Senate committees approves tax hike
MEXICO CITY, Oct 30 (mexico.vg) - Mexican Senate committees have approved a watered-down version of President Felipe Calderon’s proposal to raise consumption taxes in order to reduce Mexico’s dependence on its waning oil industry.
Senators from Mexico’s main opposition party met for the third straight day on Wednesday to debate rejecting a government proposal to raise consumption taxes ahead of a deadline to pass the law.
Lawmakers from Senate committees were due to meet with Finance Minister Agustin Carstens following the meeting to discuss the proposal.
Senators from the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, have spent the week mulling conservative President Felipe Calderon’s proposal to hike taxes as a way to reduce Mexico’s dependence on revenues from waning oil output and avoid a looming credit rating downgrade.
Police arrested a man Tuesday who they say headed the operations of the “La Familia” drug cartel in the western state of Michoacan. Abel Valadez Oribe, 32, was reportedly heading for a cockfight when police stopped his car and arrested him, authorities said. They said police were tipped to his whereabouts by several informants.
Police said that Oribe, known as “El Clinton,” was allegedly the mastermind behind several murders, including the assassination last year of Salvador Vergara, the 33-year-old mayor of Ixtapan de la Sal, a popular weekend retreat.
U.S. authorities arrested more than 300 people Friday in a sting focused on La Familia.
Beer volumes in Mexico may recover, exports too
MONTERREY, Mexico, Oct 26 (Mexico Beer News) - Mexican brewer and bottler FEMSA is expected to post a 29 percent jump in third-quarter net profit on the back of solid soft drink sales and expansion from its Oxxo convenience stores.
four analysts forecast that FEMSA (FMSAUBD.MX) (FMX.N) earned, on average, 2.604 billion pesos ($193 million) in the July-September period, compared with 2.020 billion pesos in the same quarter of last year."Once again, the commercial segment (Oxxo) and the drinks unit (KOF) remain the most important operations supporting solid figures," IXE brokerage said in a report.
Mexican soldiers have captured a top leader of one of the nation’s most ruthless drug cartels, the government’s military announced.
Carlos Adrian Martinez Muniz, identified as the No. 2 person for the Zetas drug cartel in the Monterrey area in northeastern Mexico, was arrested after officials received an anonymous tip, the nation’s Ministry of Defense said Wednesday.
In addition to drugs and weapons, he was carrying deposit slips for up to 7,150 people, the ministry said.
