TIG Post

Tag: Mexican

  • VIDEO: Watch total solar eclipse in North America unfold

    VIDEO: Watch total solar eclipse in North America unfold

    Across North America, crowds gathered to witness a rare celestial event as a total solar eclipse cast its shadow on Monday, marking the first such occurrence in seven years.

    From a Mexican beach resort where the eclipse made landfall to the banks of the Ohio River and beyond to Niagara Falls at the U.S.-Canadian border, skywatchers marveled at the spectacle with cheers, music, and even matrimony.

    In Russellville, Arkansas, nearly 400 couples exchanged vows under the eclipse’s shadow in a mass wedding event called “Elope and the Eclipse.”

    Meanwhile, at Niagara Falls State Park, despite cloudy skies, two weddings and a marriage proposal added to the magic of the moment for the gathered 2,000 people.

    As the eclipse reached totality, the crowd erupted in awe and joy, shouting praises for the breathtaking sight.

    A band serenaded the retreat of the lunar shadow with a rendition of R.E.M.’s “Man on the Moon,” adding to the festive atmosphere.

    Across the border in Niagara Falls, Ontario, a record-breaking 309 people dressed as the sun, setting a new world record for the largest solar costume gathering.

    Participants from around the globe, including Singapore and London, joined in this celestial celebration, highlighting the unity and wonder sparked by this rare astronomical event.

    Watch video below:

    @fabian_boera

    Total solar eclipse in north America 8th April 2024 #solareclipse #eclipse #solareclipse2024 #trending #viral #viralvideo #trendingvideo #kenya #nairobi #viralpost #nairobikenya #kenya #trendingtiktok #viraltiktok

    ♬ original sound – 𝗙𝗔𝗕🇰🇪
  • Mexican government holds contractor accountable for Maya Train catastrophe

    Mexican government holds contractor accountable for Maya Train catastrophe

    The Mexican government has blamed a contractor for an error that caused a train to derail on the Maya Train, a scenic tourist route.

    The train accident on March 25 made President Andrés Manuel López Obrador feel bad because the $20 billion railway is one of the projects he is most proud of. No one got hurt in the accident.

    Critics say that the project, which goes in a circle around the Yucatan peninsula, is a waste and has harmed the environment. But some people are worried that it is being built too quickly. Lopez Obrador wants to complete it before he finishes his time as the president in September. “Rewrite this text in simple words. ”

    Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval showed the problem by saying that the rail switch involved in the accident is supposed to work by itself eventually.

    Because the automatic system is not ready yet, the president wanted some of the train line to be working. But this means the switch that moves train cars onto another track has to be moved by hand instead of automatically.

    In one of the tasks, it seems like someone forgot to tighten the fitting properly.

    Sandoval said “They found that this clamp wasn’t fastened tightly. ”

    He said that Alstom, the company that made the trains, and Azvindi, the company that built the rail line, are looking at how much damage was done in the accident.

    López Obrador told the builders to make the project through a jungle, even though activists said it would harm the caves in the Yucatan peninsula.

    The president said he would build a raised platform for the train tracks to avoid damaging the caves, but they put the support beams right into the caves.

    In March, people who care about the environment shared pictures of steel and cement posts being put through the roofs of the caves.

    The caves, lakes, and rivers in Mexico’s Caribbean coast are important for the environment and have old human remains inside them.

    They are the only source of clean water in the area because there are no rivers on the flat limestone peninsula.

    The caves were dry a long time ago, so people and animals used them. Then, the caves got flooded and the things inside them were protected from being disturbed.

    In December, López Obrador opened a new part of the train that goes to the north and east. It goes between Cancun and the colonial city of Campeche, but it is not finished yet.

    The 950-mile line makes a big circle around the Yucatan peninsula. It is supposed to connect beach resorts and old places where people used to live.

    The Mexican army helped build the train, and the armed forces will run it. President López Obrador has given the armed forces more projects than any other president in the last 100 years.

  • Maria Fernanda Sanchez, missing Mexican woman discovered dead in Germany

    Maria Fernanda Sanchez, missing Mexican woman discovered dead in Germany

    On Saturday, German police said that they had discovered the body of a 24-year-old Mexican woman who vanished in Berlin at the end of July and whose story had received a lot of attention in her home country.

    According to the authorities, a guy walking over a bridge in Berlin’s Adlershof district discovered Maria Fernanda Sanchez’s body floating in a canal. Interpol had issued a yellow search notice for Sanchez.

    “No third-party blame can be assumed,” police said in a statement, but added that “the police investigation continues.”

    On social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, the Mexican Foreign Ministry announced that German officials had discovered a dead lady who matched Sanchez’s description.

    The president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, stated earlier this week that he would urge the leader of Germany to help with the search for Sanchez, who, according to local media, was a masters student there.

    A few days after the woman’s disappearance, Berlin police said in a statement that there were “indications” that the woman was “in an exceptional psychological situation.”

    The reporting was done by Stefanie Eschenbacher and Adriana Barrera. The writing was carried out by Alexander Villegas, with editing done by Jonathan Oatis.

  • Mexico confirms human remains in 45 bags belong to missing call center staff

    Mexico confirms human remains in 45 bags belong to missing call center staff

    Mexican officials have determined that the human remains discovered in 45 bags located in a Guadalajara suburb belong to call centre employees who vanished in May.

    The next of kin have been notified, according to the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences (IJCF), which reported Tuesday that testing had proved the bodies belonged to the missing workers. It was unclear, though, if the bags contained the remains of all seven of the missing workers.

    Sometime after May 20, the seven employees vanished from the Guadalajara metropolitan area. When bags containing human body parts were discovered in a ravine in the municipality of Zapopan last week, the search for them took a macabre turn.

    Mexico’s Secretary of Security Rosa Icela Rodriguez Velazquez said last Tuesday that initial investigations suggested the workers might have been involved in “some type of real estate fraud” and “telephone extortion.”

    CNN cannot independently verify the Secretary of Security’s claims.

    Mexico has been troubled by an epidemic of disappearances with more than 100,000 Mexicans and migrants still missing.

    More than 1,500 bodies have been found in Jalisco state since 2018, official figures show. According to the office of the Jalisco’s special prosecutor for missing persons, 291 bodies were discovered in 2019, 544 bodies were found in 2020, 280 bodies in 2021, and 301 the following year. So far in 2023, 147 bodies have been found.

    In March, after four Americans were kidnapped in Mexico, resulting in the deaths of two of them, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador argued that Mexico is a safer country than the United States.

    Kidnapping and human trafficking are also not unusual in parts of Mexico, particularly in border areas and Mexico’s overall homicide rate is among the highest in the world.

  • Oaxaca bans sale of junk food to children

    The Mexican state of Oaxaca has banned the sale of junk food and sugary drinks to children in an attempt to reduce high obesity and diabetes levels.

    Oaxaca is the first state to take the measure in Mexico, which has one of the world’s highest rates of childhood obesity.

    People breaking the law can be fined and have their businesses closed. Re-offenders face jail terms.

    The move comes as Mexico’s number of deaths linked to COVID-19 nears 50,000.

    Mexico’s death toll is the third-highest in the world after the US and Brazil. Experts say being obese or overweight puts you at greater risk of serious illness or death from the virus.

    About 73% of the Mexican population is overweight, compared to one-fifth of the population in 1996, according to according to study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

    Mexicans consume more carbonated drinks per person than any other nation.

    Oaxaca is the Mexican state with the highest child obesity rate and the second-highest rate in adults, according to Oaxaca state health data.

    The passing of the law was greeted with applause from lawmakers inside the state Congress, but outside shop owners and street sellers were protesting against it.

    The law forbids the sale, distribution and promotion of sugary drinks and junk food to those under age. It will also apply to vending machines in schools.

    The lawmaker who introduced the bill, Magaly López Domínguez, said the idea was not to harm shop owners and street sellers. She argued that they could continue selling sugary drinks and junk food, just not to children.

    Mexico’s deputy health minister and the country’s coronavirus czar, Hugo López-Gatell, welcomed the move. Mr López-Gatell last month called sugary drinks “bottled poison” and urged people not to drink them.

    Christian Skoog, the Unicef representative in Mexico, also tweeted his approval (in Spanish), saying that such measures protected children’s rights to quality and nutritious food.

    In 2014, Mexico introduced a tax on sugary drinks and junk food but it had so far stopped short of banning the sale of such items to children.

    Source: bbc.com

  • Mexican drug rehab centre stormed by gunmen

    Gunmen have stormed a drug rehabilitation centre in central Mexico, killing 24 people.

    At least seven others were injured including three seriously in the attack on Wednesday, according to police.

    It is the second attack at a rehab facility in Irapuato, Guanajuato, within a month, and one of the mostly deadly massacres this year.

    The motive is unknown but gangs often target clinics where they believe members of rival factions are hiding.

    The latest rehab centre to be hit was not officially registered, according to authorities.

    The state has hundreds of unofficial treatment centres. The prior attack – at a nearby centre called Starting a New Life – killed 10 people.

    Police told local media that, in the latest ambush, several gunmen jumped out of a truck and rushed into the building, where they forced those present to drop to the floor before shooting them.

    Witnesses said relatives rushed to the scene and some women – believed to have sons being treated inside – collapsed as the news broke.

    Guanajuato’s Attorney General Carlos Zamarripa called it a “cowardly” attack.

    A turf war has erupted in Guanajuato, where the local Santa Rosa de Lima gang vies with the brutal Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which has become one of the country’s most dominant organised crime groups.

    It is not yet known if either of the groups was involved in most recent attack.

    “We have no information on those responsible. There is no data regarding the vehicles or the people,” police told local media in the immediate aftermath.

    However, State Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo said gangs appeared to have been involved.

    “I deeply regret and condemn the events in Irapuato this afternoon,” he wrote on Twitter. “The violence generated by organised crime not only takes the lives of the young, but it takes the peace from families in Guanajuato.”

    The state now has the highest number of homicides in the country, according to the National Public Security System (SNSP).

    President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who came into power at the end of 2018, vowed to crack down on the gang violence. However, the national murder rate reached an all-time high in 2019 and this year has brought some high-profile attacks.

    Last week, an assassination attempt was made on a Mexico City police chief.

    Omar García Harfuch survived after his car was ambushed, but three others – two bodyguards and one passer-by – died in the gunfire.

    A federal judge, Uriel Villegas Ortiz, and his wife, Verónica Barajas, were murdered in June.

    Both attacks are believed to be linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, but this has not been confirmed as investigations are ongoing.

    Source: bbc.com

  • Mexican drug lord Carrillo Fuentes’ villa auctioned for $2m

    The Mexican government has auctioned off the villa of the late drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

    The Mexico City home sold for more than $2m (£1.6m) and the proceeds will go to Mexico’s public health service and its fight against coronavirus.

    Carrillo Fuentes, who was known as “Lord of the Skies”, died in 1997 after botched plastic surgery.

    He gained his nickname for his knack of smuggling large quantities of drugs in his private fleet of airplanes.

    Amado Carillo Fuentes was one of the most powerful Mexican drug lords in the 1980s and 1990s. Born in the northern state of Sinaloa, he was the nephew of one of the founders of the Guadalajara cartel, which he soon joined.

    Carillo Fuentes learned to fly planes and would later use his knowledge of planes and flight routes to expand the drug-smuggling business to the skies, earning him his nickname.

    He began by smuggling marijuana but later switched to smuggling mainly cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and on to the US in his fleet of aeroplanes.

    He took control of the Juárez cartel after killing his boss, Rafael Aguilar Guajardo, and was known for his ruthlessness.

    He kept out of the public eye and was rarely photographed. In 1997, he checked into a Mexican hospital under a false name to have plastic surgery to alter his appearance and evade capture.

    He died as a result of the botched operation, which included liposuction.

    The authorities released gruesome photos of his body to counter rumours he was still alive. But the battered state of the body meant he was almost unrecognisable and their release only fuelled the rumours.

    The surgeons who performed the operation were killed some months later. Their bodies, which showed signs of torture, had been stuffed into oil drum and covered in concrete.

    Amado Carrillo Fuentes’ brother, Vicente, allegedly took over leadership of the Juárez cartel after Amado’s death.

    Vicente Carrillo Fuentes was arrested in October 2014 and is awaiting sentencing in a jail in Mexico.

    The two-million-dollar home

    Under the slogan “buy goods to do good”, Indep, the Mexican government body created to return the proceeds of crime to the people, put up the Mexico City home for auction on Sunday.

    There was only one bidder for the luxurious property in the Álvaro Obregón neighborhood and the sum he offered fell short of the $2.17m Indep had hoped to sell it for.

    The house measures 3,500 sq m (38,000 sq ft) and boasts a swimming pool, a jacuzzi, a bar, and a wine cellar, as well as extensive gardens.

    Apart from Carrillo Fuentes’ home, there were another 143 lots for sale at the auction held at the presidential palace.

    Among them were more than 70 cars, five planes, five other homes and more than 100 items of jewelry.

    In total, the six-hour-long auction raised more than 111m Mexican pesos ($4.5m; £3.6m) the highest amount an Indep auction has so far fetched, the government body said in a statement.

    Source: bbc.com