Mexican journalist murdered while leaving his home

Reuters – 9/21/2018

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A Mexican journalist was murdered in the southern state of Chiapas on Friday, authorities and his employer said, the latest attack against the press in one of the world’s most dangerous countries for media workers.

As he was leaving his home in the city of Yajalon on Friday afternoon, Mario Gomez was confronted by two suspects and shot in the abdomen, according to El Heraldo de Chiapas, the local newspaper that employed him. Gomez was taken to a hospital, where he died of his injuries. The suspects fled the scene.

“We vigorously condemn the cowardly aggression suffered by our colleague,” the paper wrote in an editorial note. “We demand of the competent authorities the investigation of these criminal acts.”

The state prosecutor’s office said that its homicide department would investigate the crime.

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Envoy: US, Canada working 24/7 on revamped NAFTA deal

9/20/2018 – Washington Post

 Photographer: David Kawai/Bloomberg

WASHINGTON — U.S. and Canadian negotiators are working around the clock on a deal to keep Canada in a North American trade bloc ahead of a Sept. 30 U.S. deadline.

“Our officials are in pretty much constant contact,” Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland told reporters after meetings Thursday with her counterpart, U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer. “It would not be an exaggeration to say they are working 24/7.”

Freeland is returning to Canada for a summit of women foreign ministers Friday but said she and Lighthizer remain in close contact by phone and email.

Canada was left out when the United States and Mexico reached an agreement last month to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement. Freeland is trying to get the No. 2 U.S. trade partner reinstated.

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Mexico should tap natural gas to offset U.S. ‘supply risk’: regulator

09/21/2018 – Reuters 

Mexico should speed up development of its natural gas reserves, including potentially massive shale deposits, to curb a growing “supply risk” fed by excessive dependence on U.S. supplies, the industry regulator proposed on Thursday.

While the country has long been a major oil and gas producer, an extended output slump forced Mexico last year to turn to foreign supplies for 84 percent of its total natural gas demand, almost all of which came from the United States.

The commodity is increasingly used to fuel the country’s growing manufacturing sector as well as its electricity needs.

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GOP goes back to the immigration well in Arizona

9/19/2018 – Washington Post

(Matt York, file/Associated Press)

ARIVACA, Ariz. — Jim Chilton stood before the four strands of barbed wire that separate his ranchland from Mexico and pointed at a nearby ridge. “Very often, I see scouts on that mountain, right there,” he told Rep. Martha McSally.

 

McSally, a Republican who represents a stretch of the Arizona border in the House of Representatives and is running for U.S. Senate, quickly said she wrote a bill to stiffen penalties for the spotters who help usher people illegally into the United States.

The legislation has since been incorporated into one that would implement dramatic cuts in legal immigration and represents a rightward shift on the issue for McSally.

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Canada wants to see flexibility in NAFTA talks with U.S.

FILE PHOTO: Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau answers questions from the media in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 8, 2018. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi

9/19/2018 – Reuters

WASHINGTON/OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada said on Wednesday that it would need to see movement from the United States if the two sides are to reach a deal on renewing NAFTA, which Washington insists must be finished by the end of the month.

Although the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump and its allies are increasing pressure on Canada to make the concessions they say are needed for the North American Free Trade Agreement, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made clear he also wanted to see flexibility.

“We’re interested in what could be a good deal for Canada but we’re going to need to see a certain amount of movement in order to get there and that’s certainly what we’re hoping for,” he told reporters in Ottawa.

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Mexico Finds 124 Central American Migrants Aboard Trucks

09/17/2018 – The New York Times

Mexican immigration agents say they have found 124 Central American migrants aboard three trucks who said they were prevented from eating or drinking for several days.

The National Immigration Institute said Monday the trucks were detected after they sped through a highway checkpoint in the southern state of Oaxaca.

Inside the trucks officials found 60 minors and 64 adults. Fifteen of the minors were unaccompanied.

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Search for Missing Mayor-Elect in Mexico’s Guerrero State

09/10/2018 – The New York Times

Source: Reuters/Carlos Jasso

Authorities in the southern state of Guerrero are searching for a town’s mayor-elect who disappeared more than a week ago with his driver.

State security spokesman Roberto Alvarez says that the wife of Cochoapa el Grande Mayor-elect Daniel Esteban Gonzalez met with the state prosecutor Jorge Zuriel on Sunday and a search operation was launched in the state’s eastern mountains.

Gonzalez’s wife, Edith Lopez Rivera, said in a news conference Sunday that her husband and his driver disappeared Sept. 2 after a meeting with a federal legislator in Tlapa.

 

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