More than 35 000 Mexican minors seeking to cross the northern border, about half of them unaccompanied, were repatriated last year.
Former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson was chosen as the new coach of the Mexican national team on Tuesday, becoming the ninth foreigner to hold the post and seventh from Europe.
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/ 16 February 2008
A bomb exploded on a street near the security ministry in central Mexico City on Friday, killing one person and wounding two. No group claimed responsibility for the blast and there was no warning. The government is locked in a battle with drug gangs and has yet to catch left-wing rebels who planted small bombs at oil installations last year.
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/ 12 February 2008
A strong earthquake of magnitude 6,4 shook south-western Mexico on Tuesday, the latest in a series of temblors in recent days, but there were no reports of casualties or serious damage. The quake briefly cut off power in the Chiapas state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez, but officials said checks of dozens of small towns across the state found no damage.
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/ 9 February 2008
A magnitude 5,4 quake struck very close to the northern Mexican city of Mexicali in Baja California on Saturday morning, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said, but there was no immediate report of any casualties or damage. The USGS said the very shallow quake, only 7km deep, was centred 26km south-east of Mexicali.
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/ 30 January 2008
An asteroid that exploded over Siberia a century ago, leaving 2 072 square kilometres of scorched or blown down trees, was not nearly as large as previously thought, suggesting a greater danger for Earth. The asteroid that destroyed the forest at Tunguska had a blast force equivalent to one-quarter to one-third of the 10- to 20-megaton range.
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/ 23 January 2008
Mexico City has started a women-only bus service to protect female passengers from groping and verbal abuse common on the city’s packed public-transportation system. Millions of people cram into subway trains and buses in the Mexican capital, one of the world’s largest cities.
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/ 6 November 2007
Rescue officials were searching for more than a dozen missing people on Tuesday after a landslide slammed into a rain-swollen river, wiping out a tiny hamlet in southern Mexico. At least 16 people were reported missing in the village.
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/ 6 November 2007
A huge wall of mud and water engulfed a remote village in flood-ravaged southern Mexico on Monday and the government said at least 16 people were missing. Mexican media reported as many as 30 people could be missing in the landslide.
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/ 5 November 2007
Thousands more people were plucked from rooftops in southern Mexico on Sunday even as floods that have left 800 000 people homeless in Tabasco state began to recede, authorities said. The army evacuated 5 000 people in a four-hour operation with 14 helicopters, police official Daniel Montiel said.
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/ 2 November 2007
Tens of thousands of Mexicans were trapped on rooftops and others clung to lampposts on Thursday after heavy rains flooded nearly the entire southern state of Tabasco. At least 500 000 people were made homeless and one person was killed in the worst flooding the swampy state has seen in more than 50 years.
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/ 30 October 2007
An aspiring writer who left a horror scene of body parts in his apartment was arraigned last Thursday on charges of murder and desecrating a corpse after he allegedly cut up and ate part of his girlfriend’s body. But he refused to make a formal plea, saying: ”I can’t get my thoughts together right now.”
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/ 25 October 2007
A storm killed 18 Mexican oil workers fleeing a battered offshore rig, and navy rescue teams were searching on Wednesday for seven people missing in the turbulent seas. State-owned oil monopoly Pemex said 61 people had been rescued after huge waves knocked the Usumacinta drilling platform into an adjacent rig.
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/ 19 October 2007
Tropical Storm Kiko swirled along Mexico’s Pacific coast and was expected to strengthen into a hurricane on Saturday night, forecasters said on Friday. A tropical-storm watch was issued for western Mexico from Punta San Telmo to Cabo Corrientes. Kiko had maximum sustained winds of 65km/h early on Friday.
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/ 13 October 2007
Mexican police have arrested a suspected cannibal after finding the severed limbs of his fiancée in the fridge and a pot of meat boiling on the stove, prosecutors said on Friday. The remains of a meat dish were also found on a plate on the dining table in the Mexico City apartment of Jose Luis Calva Zepeda (40).
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/ 28 September 2007
Hurricane Lorenzo weakened into a tropical storm early on Friday after crashing into Mexico’s Gulf Coast, where it knocked out electricity, flooded roads and uprooted trees. Hundreds of people from low-lying communities were forced to seek higher ground.
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/ 10 September 2007
Thirty-seven people were killed when a truck loaded with explosives crashed into another truck in an accident in northern Mexico, Mexican media reported on Monday. About 150 people were injured by the blast, which left a crater of up to 20m in diameter in the road in the northern state of Coahuila, the El Universal daily said on its website, quoting police.
Hurricane Dean ripped into Mexico’s Gulf coast on Wednesday with screaming winds and torrential rain that killed two people, flooded towns and forced thousands into shelters, but then weakened rapidly. Large trees felled by wind were blocking roads as Dean made landfall in Mexico for the second time.
Hurricane Dean raced through Mexico’s southern Gulf on Wednesday, whipping up wild winds and roaring seas around oil platforms that produce crude for export to the United States. Dean hammered Mexico’s Caribbean resort of Tulum and swallowed sand from the famous beach at Cancun before crossing the Yucatan Peninsula out into the Gulf of Mexico.
Hurricane Dean, a monster category-five storm, smashed into Mexico’s Caribbean coast on Tuesday, its roaring winds and heavy rain battering beach resorts where thousands of tourists huddled in shelters. Seas churned as the storm, which killed 11 people earlier on its rampage through the Caribbean, came to shore around the cruise-ship port of Costa Maya.
Hurricane Dean strengthened into a category-five storm capable of catastrophic damage on Monday night as its first rain and winds began hitting the coasts of Mexico and Belize. Thousands of tourists fled the beaches of the Mayan Riviera as the fast-moving storm roared toward the Yucatan Peninsula.
Rescuers called off their search on Friday after pulling 32 bodies from the wreckage of a Mexican passenger bus buried when a rain-soaked mountainside gave way. Officials initially speculated as many as 60 people were aboard the bus when it was engulfed by tons of rock and earth as it travelled on a twisting rural road early on Wednesday.
The side of a sodden mountain collapsed on a bus carrying up to 60 passengers along a remote Mexican road on Wednesday and hours later rescuers could only pull a woman’s corpse from the debris. Local rescuers said those on board were probably killed but the government held out hope for survivors.
Tropical Storm Barbara strengthened in the Pacific Ocean on Friday and was expected to make landfall near the border between Mexico and Guatemala on Saturday without becoming a hurricane. Forecasters at the United States National Hurricane Centre in Miami said Barbara was located 350km south of the small oil port of Salina Cruz.
Tropical Storm Barbara, the first Pacific cyclone to form close to the coast this year, swirled erratically off Mexico on Wednesday and may reach hurricane strength within four days. Mexico’s Civil Protection Agency said Barbara was veering slightly southwards about 305km south of the port of Puerto Angel in the state of Oaxaca.
Two strong earthquakes shook Mexico early on Friday, sparking gas fires in Mexico City and sending residents into the streets around the sprawling capital and in the southern city of Acapulco. The first quake, which lasted less than a minute, was of 6,2 magnitude and struck at 12.41am local time, according to authorities.
An economist and a journalist became the first couple united under Mexico City’s new gay civil-union law, kissing while a string orchestra played Besame Mucho and police cordoned off streets around a white wedding tent filled with guests. The new law took effect on Friday.
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/ 13 February 2007
Sports fishermen better known for battling marlin with rod and reel now are defending their beloved game fish by launching a high-profile campaign to convince diners not to order marlin at restaurants, under the slogan: ”No Marlin on the Menu!” With stocks of the spike-nosed marlin becoming smaller and harder to find even in the Pacific.
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/ 13 January 2007
The northern Mexican state of Coahuila became on Friday the third Latin-American jurisdiction to approve gay civil unions, but the new law bars same-sex couples from adopting children. The law, which follows similar moves in Mexico City and Buenos Aires, allows same-sex and heterosexual couples to register as ”civil or united companions”.
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/ 1 December 2006
Felipe Calderon took over as Mexico’s president on Friday and pleaded for an end to months of unrest over his narrow election win, but a huge brawl erupted in Congress where leftist opponents vowed to block him from taking the formal oath of office.
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/ 15 November 2006
Tropical Storm Sergio became a hurricane off Mexico on Wednesday and was due to brush by Pacific coastal towns by the weekend, the United States National Hurricane Centre said. ”Additional intensification is likely during the next day or two,” the Miami-based centre said.
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/ 22 October 2006
Tropical Storm Paul formed off Mexico’s Pacific Coast on Saturday and looked set to turn into a hurricane as it headed toward luxury resorts on the Baja California Peninsula, the United States National Hurricane Centre said. Charts showed Paul passing near the tip of the desert peninsula popular with US tourists next week.