Mexico rescinds Texas aid offer after huge quake

09/11/2017 Reuters

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico has withdrawn its offer to aid victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas due to demands on its emergency services from a massive earthquake that struck late last week, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Mexico’s government offered to send food, beds, generators, mobile kitchens as well as doctors after torrential rains from Harvey flooded vast parts of Houston.

But the earthquake that struck southern Mexico on Thursday killed at least 96 people and left some 2.5 million people in need of aid. Hurricane Katia also hit the Gulf state of Veracruz this weekend and heavy rains have stretched emergency services.

“Given these circumstance, the Mexican government will channel all available logistical support to serve the families and communities affected in the national territory,” the foreign ministry statement said.

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Thousands of homes wrecked by huge Mexican quake, death toll at 91

09/11/2017 Reuters

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A massive earthquake off southern Mexico on Thursday night that killed at least 91 people damaged tens of thousands of homes and afflicted upwards of two million people in the poorer south, state officials said, as more details of the disaster emerged.

 

The 8.1 magnitude quake off the coast of Chiapas state was stronger than a 1985 temblor that flattened swaths of Mexico City and killed thousands. However, its greater depth and distance helped save the capital from more serious damage.

On Saturday, authorities in the southern state of Oaxaca said there were 71 confirmed fatalities there, many of them in the town of Juchitan, where the rush to bury victims crowded a local cemetery at the weekend.

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At least six die in huge Mexico quake; small tsunami triggered

9/8/2017 Reuters

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – An earthquake of magnitude 8.1 struck off the southern coast of Mexico late on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said, killing at least six people and triggering small tsunami waves but no major destruction.

The quake was apparently stronger than a devastating 1985 tremor that flattened swathes of Mexico City and killed thousands, but this time damage to the city was limited.

A number of buildings suffered severe damage in parts of southern Mexico. Some of the worst initial reports came from Juchitan in Oaxaca state, where sections of the town hall, a hotel, a bar and other buildings were reduced to rubble.

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Mexican volunteers cross border to aid Texas after Hurricane Harvey

09/05/2017 Reuters

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Mexico has come to the aid of the United States following Hurricane Harvey, sending Red Cross volunteers, food and supplies to a country whose president has proposed building a wall to keep the two neighbors apart.

Mexican volunteers wearing white vests labeled “Cruz Roja Mexicana” are distributing food and lending a sympathetic ear to some of the 1,800 storm refugees at the George R. Brown Convention Center, a temporary shelter.

A caravan of Mexican storm relief was due to be shipped north for victims of a storm that has killed some 60 people and left tens of thousands homeless since first coming ashore Aug. 25.

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Elderly Mexican villagers cling to town, fight plans to flood land

08/22/2017 Reuters

TEMACAPULÍN, Mexico (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Abigail Agredano fears her 96-year-old mother would not survive being uprooted from their hometown in the highlands of western Mexico, where its 400 mostly elderly residents are battling a government plan to dam the nearby Río Verde.

“If they manage to force us out, I think she and many others would die immediately,” Agredano, head of the Committee to Save Temacapulín, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Damming the Río Verde would supply water for major urban areas in the state of Jalisco and neighboring Guanajuato but leave Temacapulín and the smaller villages of Palmajero and Acasico underwater.

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Mexico Casually One-Ups U.S. By Legalizing Medicinal Marijuana

6/21/2017 Forbes

This week, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto informed the world that his country is taking its relationship with cannabis to the next level.

In an official decree, Peña Nieto publicly confirmed Monday that his government has legalized medicinal cannabis, a.k.a. marijuana, with almost total support from Mexico’s congress and senate. The move marks a significant policy change for the country and the president, which finally came around on cannabis following national discussion and protest.

As the Independent reported, the bill passed with “overwhelming” support in Mexico’s Lower House of Congress in April, with 371 members voting in favor, and just 19 voting against or abstaining. In December, it also blazed through Mexico’s senate, managing 98 in favor and seven against.

In addition to spreading the news, the decree established that Mexico’s Ministry of Health will be responsible for drafting and implementing “public policies regulating the medicinal use of pharmacological derivatives of cannabis sativa, indica and Americana or marijuana, including tetrahydrocannabinol, its isomers and stereochemical variants, as well as how to regulate the research and national production of them.”

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Mexico takes drastic measures to halt rise of ‘super-obesity’

6/7/2017 Financial Times

Juan Pedro Franco, a 33-year-old Mexican, was so obese that no hospital had the facilities to see him. Bedridden for seven years, he reached a world record weight of nearly 600kg (1,320lbs).

Mr Franco suffered from diabetes, hypertension, lung problems and chronic swelling in his legs. He dropped 170kg simply to be able to undergo life-saving gastric surgery at a clinic in the western city of Guadalajara in May that had to widen its entrance and bring in stronger beds just to receive him.

He was a case of “super-obesity — off all the charts,” according to his surgeon José Antonio Castañeda, who sees an average of eight patients, mostly women, every day. “It’s a huge number, so you can see the scale of the problem in Mexico,” he says. Not all of those prospective patients are candidates for surgery but Dr Castañeda nonetheless performs 40 procedures a week.

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