Mexico

Headlines heralding violent news of Mexico’s drug war splash across the front pages of the country’s newspapers. Government tallies list more than 34,600 deaths since President Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on cartels in December 2006. Luckily this situation is in NO WAY occurring in La Paz or BCS and is related to certain areas at the Mexican mainland and the border areas to the USA. The United States are the main recipients of the smuggled drugs and the routes to deliver are the areas of conflicts. A comprehensive official database of drug-related killings around Mexico providing a new insight into the complexity of the conflict with criminal groups that traffic drugs into the United States has been released not long ago. But many stories behind the statistics are never told states Mexican journalist Marcela Turati Munoz.
“More of a voice has been given to the violent people; more of a voice has been given to the drug traffickers, and the victims really have not spoken,” Turati said. continue

Mexico celebrates its 200 years of Independence with national and local public events. The Bicentennial or Bicentenario actually takes in two celebrations: the first being the Bicentennial of two hundred years since Independence (1810) and the second the no less important Centennial of 100 years since Mexican Revolution of 1910. Mexican Independence Day celebrates the events and people that eventually resulted in independence from Spain, the country that had control over the territory of New Spain, as it was also known then. Fueled by three centuries of oppression and sparked by a call to revolt by the respected Catholic priest Hidalgo, the first call to arms was made in the village of Dolores continue

About 3,200 Mexican federal police have been fired since May for failing to do their work or being linked to corruption, Federal Police Commissioner Facundo Rosas said Monday. Of those, 465 have been charged with crimes. In addition, Rosas said at a news conference, another 1,020 officers face disciplinary proceedings for failing confidence exams. The probe started in mid-May, said Marco Tulio Lopez of the federal police internal affairs department.
“Investigations of our department began many months ago and this is the result,” federal police spokesman Ramon Salinas told CNN. Among the officers who were fired, Rosas said, were officials in Ciudad Juarez who were publicly accused by fellow officers of corruption continue

A 7.2 magnitude earthquake has hit the peninsula of Baja California, killing at least two persons and causing tremors as far away as Nevada. The quake struck at 1540 (2240 GMT), 26km (16 miles) south-west of Guadalupe Victoria in Baja California, at a depth of 32km, said the US Geological Survey. Some people are still trapped in their homes in the city of Mexicali, where a state of emergency has been declared. It was the worst quake to hit the region for many years, officials said. The US Geological Survey said some 20 million people felt tremors from the largest quake to hit the area since 1992. Mexican civil protection officials said a man had died when his home collapsed outside Mexicali continue