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After a Mexico City suburb euthanized 11,000 street dogs, Sheinbaum demands a review

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After revelations that nearly 11,000 street dogs had been euthanized in a Mexico City suburb, President Claudia Sheinbaum on Thursday said animal protection laws and animal euthanasia regulations must be reviewed. The controversy arose after Senator Mariela Gutiérrez, a member of Sheinbaum’s Morena party, admitted that the stray dogs were killed between 2019 and 2023 while she was mayor of Tecamac, México state, about 40 kilometers north of downtown Mexico City. Sen. Mariela Gutiérrez’s decision to have nearly 11,000 diseased or dangerous dogs put down has been controversial, to say the least. (Senado de México) Gutiérrez confirmed the actions in a Wednesday press conference after a video showing her arguing with municipal officials last year about the mass euthanasia was made public this week and went viral. The senator defended her actions, saying the animals were in “deplorable” health or had attacked people and that the procedure followed official protocols. Municipal record...
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After weeks of denials, Pemex admits responsibility for Gulf Coast oil spill

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The government finally admitted what it had denied for weeks: The oil that began washing up along 700 kilometers of Gulf of Mexico coastline in February did indeed originate from Pemex facilities.  An official investigation revealed that a leak had been detected in early February, but was deliberately hidden by operational divisions within the state-run oil company. More than two months after the spill, a panel of government experts this week confirmed what nonprofits had previously reported: that the spill originated from a Pemex pipeline. (Andrea Murcia / Cuartoscuro.com) As a result of Pemex’s internal analysis of the events, three high-ranking company officials were fired and a complaint was submitted to the Federal Attorney General’s Office to determine criminal liability. When complaints by fishermen and residents of Veracruz about oil slicks in the Gulf and tar balls washing up on shore became public in early March, Pemex issued a statement saying that “after conduct...
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Michoacán releases 1,000 endangered achoque salamanders in Lake Pátzcuaro in major conservation push

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The Michoacán Fisheries Commission (Compesca) released 1,000 Lake Pátzcuaro salamanders this week, marking a historic conservation effort for the critically endangered species. The salamanders, known locally as achoques ( Ambystoma dumerilii ), are close relatives to the axolotls ( Ambystoma mexicanum ) found in Xochimilco, Mexico City. In Pátzcuaro, achoques are seriously threatened by habitat pollution, drought, invasive species like the Asian carp and even human consumption, as residents of the region believe that axolotls have healing properties. In 2018, experts estimated that there were fewer than 100 left in the wild. “Today is an important day for Lake Pátzcuaro,” Ramón Hernández Orozco, head of the Michoacán State Fisheries Commission (Compesca) said during the release event. “We hope this is the beginning of the recovery of this endemic and mystical creature here in Lake Pátzcuaro.” Meanwhile, Armando González, resident of La Pacanda island in Pátzcuaro and head of the K...
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Mexico, US advance critical minerals pact ahead of their inclusion in the USMCA review

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Two months after a plan for preferential trade in critical minerals with the U.S. was outlined, Mexico’s Finance Minister Édgar Amador visited U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to discuss a broader binational strategy regarding these strategic resources. The two nations have been working for months to cobble together a joint strategy for arranging a stable supply of minerals deemed critical for the electronics and sustainable energy industries. With the critical minerals such as lithium taking on such vital importance, Mexico and the U.S. are discussing developing regulatory standards for their mining, processing and trading. (Unsplash) President Claudia Sheinbaum has emphasized the importance of lithium and copper for electric vehicle production and is working to position Mexico as a key supplier of critical minerals. Lithium — which President Andrés Manuel López Obrador nationalized in 2022 — is used in battery manufacturing, while other strategic minerals found in Mexi...
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US border wall construction damages sacred Cuchumá Hill on Mexico–US border

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To facilitate the construction of a section of wall on the border between the United States and Mexico, the U.S. government has been using explosives on a sacred hill, angering the Kumeyaay Indigenous people . The explosions on the rock-covered Cuchumá Hill (also known as Tecate Peak ) began in early April and have continued during the past week, according to residents of Tecate, a municipality in Baja California that borders California. Authorities in Mexico and Kumeyaay people say that the blasts are causing major damage to the hill, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border just west of the Baja California city of Tecate. A 35-meter-high carved monolith that is considered sacred was reportedly damaged by one detonation. “They’re destroying it,” Indigenous rights advocate Norma Meza Calles said of the hill, which is considered intangible cultural heritage in Mexico and has been on the United States’ National Register of Historic Places since 1992. “It’s very sad because that m...
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Mexico in numbers: Mexico’s biggest and smallest states

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You likely know that Mexico has 32 federal entities — 31 states and the national capital, Mexico City, which has state-like status. But do you know how many municipalities Mexico has? At the end of 2024, the number was 2,478, including Mexico City’s 16 alcaldías (mayoral districts or boroughs), according to national statistics agency INEGI . So which state has the most municipalities and which has the least? Read on to become a Mexico municipality master! In this “Mexico in Numbers” article we also take a look at the size of Mexico’s states by area and compare some of them to different countries around the world. Did you know that Chihuahua is slightly bigger than the entire United Kingdom? Oaxaca has 570 municipalities, Baja Sur has just 5  As you can see in the map below, the southern state of Oaxaca easily has the most municipalities among Mexico’s 32 federal entities. Why so many? In a nutshell, the provision of Indigenous autonomy at a hyper-local level — more than 400...
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Punto Put: The concrete monolith that could redraw the map of the Yucatán Peninsula

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“It is the most significant court case in the entire history of the state.” Those are the words of Arturo Coral, a lawyer representing Quintana Roo in a territorial dispute with the Caribbean coast state’s two neighbors — Campeche and Yucatán. “There isn’t, there hasn’t been and there won’t be another case like this,” Coral told the newspaper El País. He was speaking about a legal case related to a long-running dispute over close to 10,000 square kilometers of land on the Yucatán Peninsula. One 5,000 square kilometer parcel of land that is in dispute is located in a kind of no man’s land between Quintana Roo and Campeche. Which state does it belong to? Another parcel of land with an area of some 4,800 square kilometers and which is located on the border between Quintana Roo and Yucatán is also disputed. Which state does that  belong to? The answer to those two identical questions will come from Mexico’s Supreme Court, which has been tasked with settling the dispute over land ...
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