Seeking to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship.
11/25/19 – AP News
The Mexican government says it won’t allow a 1,000-ton shipment of the pesticide glyphosate into the country, citing health and environmental concerns.
Mexico became the latest in a string of countries to announce bans on glyphosate, the active ingredient in weed killer Roundup.
11/19/19 – AP News
A couple of hundred demonstrators have protested against a proposed Mexico City law that would allow children and adolescents to change the gender listed on their birth certificates.
They would have to be accompanied by at least one guardian to do so.
11/14/19 – AP News
By Nomaan Merchant
A smoke-filled stench fills a refugee camp just a short walk from the U.S.-Mexico border, rising from ever-burning fires and piles of human waste. Parents and children live in a sea of tents and tarps, some patched together with garbage bags. Others sleep outside in temperatures that recently dropped to freezing.
Justina, an asylum seeker who fled political persecution in Nicaragua, is struggling to keep her 8-month-old daughter healthy inside the damaged tent they share. The baby, Samantha, was diagnosed with pneumonia and recently released from a hospital with a dwindling supply of antibiotics.
11/11/19 – BBC Travel
By Megan Frye
Frankie was missing half his face. A fungal infection had come over the little axolotl, a native amphibian of the waterways of Mexico City.
But Frankie, along with other axolotls, have a special talent. Veterinarian and axolotl researcher Erika Servín Zamora, who was also Frankie’s caregiver, said she was astounded to see the animal’s remarkable regeneration abilities that she’d read about in her studies. Within two months, Frankie had grown a new, fully functional eye, and life was back to normal in his tank at the city’s Chapultepec Zoo.
11/06/19 – AP News
Mexican anthropologists say they have found two human-built pits dug 15,000 years ago to trap mammoths.
Researchers from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said Wednesday the pits were found during excavations on land that was to be used as a garbage dump.
10/09/19 – Nearshore Americas
By Narayan Ammachchi
Mexico is planning to allocate over US$5 million for science and technology-related activities in its 2020 fiscal budget, as the government looks at technology to prop up the flagging economy.
The money is 6.5% more than what was allocated to the sector in 2019, according to the President of the Congressional Committee on Science and Technology, Marivel Solís Barrera, who announced the move on October 4.
10/04/19 – ProPublica
By Stefanie Dodt, Jan Lucas Striozyk, ARD German TV, and Dara Lind
Every week, thousands of Mexicans cross the border into the U.S. on temporary visas to sell their blood plasma to profit-making pharmaceutical companies that lure them with Facebook ads and colorful flyers promising hefty cash rewards.
The donors, including some who say the payments are their only income, may take home up to $400 a month if they donate twice a week and earn various incentives, including “buddy bonuses” for recruiting friends or family. Unlike other nations that limit or forbid paid plasma donations at a high frequency out of concern for donor health and quality control, the U.S. allows companies to pay donors and has comparatively loose standards for monitoring their health.
