• Auto industry love for Mexico grows with new Audi plant
• Mexico: Relief for a parched delta
• Mexico: In Oaxaca, a community unchanged

• Mexico: Thousands of indigenous students to meditate together at traditional celebration
• Mexico: Consciousness-Based Education to benefit student population, promote peace in the nation
• Mexico: Maharishi Vastu schools under construction

• Mexico cartel dominates, torches western state
• Mexican town besieged by drug cartel worries the army may not be enough to help
• GMO corn strain threatens Mexico's indigenous corn

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Positive Trends
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Auto industry love for Mexico grows with new Audi plant
5 May 2013 - The automotive industry's growing love affair with Mexico was celebrated in San Jose Chiapa on Saturday as Audi executives laid the foundation stone for its first assembly plant in the Americas. Volkswagen AG's premium brand is joining a parade of automakers who have announced plans to build cars in a country that is seen as a doorway not only to the rest of North and South America but to the world. Audi officials said the $1.3 billion (834.72 million pounds) plant will open in three years and eventually be the German brand's only source globally for its Q5 SUVs after it opens in mid-2016. (more)

Mexico: Relief for a parched delta
15 April 2013 - After decades of dismay in Mexico over the parched state of the Colorado delta -- once a lush network of freshwater and marine wetlands -- there is reason for some optimism. An amendment to a seven-decades-old treaty between the United States and Mexico, called Minute 319, will send water down the river once again and support efforts to restore native habitat and attract local and migratory wildlife. (more)

Mexico: In Oaxaca, a community unchanged
12 April 2013 - In the isolated pine- and oak-filled mountains about 60km northwest of Oaxaca City are eight small villages, collectively called Los Pueblos Mancomunados. Most of the inhabitants are Zapotecan and the villages operate under a unique self-ruling co-operative system, where rural life has remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years. The villagers' traditional cuisine is incredible, thanks in no small part to their local source of organic food. The land surrounding the villages is also rich in every sense of the word. The forests are abundant with medicinal plants and mushrooms, and the fields produce maize, squash, tomatoes, beans, watercress, and potatoes, as well as a large range of fruit. (more)

Mexican drug homicides fall 14 per cent at start of Pena Nieto's term
10 April 2013 - Mexico said on Wednesday that killings linked to organized crime fell 14 per cent in the first four months of the presidency of Enrique Pena Nieto, who has vowed to quickly reduce the menace posed by drug cartels. Pena Nieto has vowed to curb the violence, though he has put the stress on reducing murder, kidnapping, and extortion rather than focusing on the drug gangs. (more)

Mexico wants US ties to focus on economy, education, not drugs
4 March 2013 - Mexico must give greater priority to economic cooperation and education in relations with the United States rather than allowing the fight against organized crime to take centre stage, a senior Mexican official said on Monday. President Enrique Pena Nieto is keen to rewrite the script, which focuses on the negative image. Instead he prefers focusing his efforts on the economy, which has grown at a faster pace than the United States' in the last three years. (more)

Mexican President signs education reform
25 February 2013 - President Enrique Pena Nieto signed Mexico's most sweeping education reform in seven decades into law Monday, seeking to change a system in which teaching positions could be sold or inherited, and no official census of schools, teachers, and students was ever carried out. The reform seeks to create a system of uniform standards for teacher hiring and promotion based on merit, and will allow for the first census of Mexico's education system. (more)

Mexico: New aquifer may help Mexico City water problem
23 January 2013 - Mexico City officials are launching a new, deep-drilling effort to tap into what may be a new aquifer about 6,560 feet (2,000 meters) underground. The Mexican capital is built on the spongy soil of a former lake bed. So much water has been extracted from shallow near-surface wells that the city is sinking. Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera visited the new drilling site Wednesday. He says more drilling is needed to explore the deep limestone strata and determine how much water is there. (more)

Mexico City pushes for order with parking meters
19 January 2013 - Every day before dawn, dozens of men appear in the Mexican capital's hip Condesa neighbourhood and block off parking spaces along entire streets using water jugs, cardboard boxes, buckets, crates, and even blocks of cement. As visitors start arriving for the district's restaurants, organic food stores, boutiques, and art galleries, the men collect 20 to 40 pesos ($1.50-$3), remove the obstructions, and let drivers park. Not paying could mean returning to a broken windshield wiper, a long key scratch along a door or, in extreme cases, a smashed window. Here and in other well-to-do areas of traffic-choked Mexico City, authorities are trying to take back the streets by installing parking meters. They say the meters will make the area safer and more orderly, as well as encouraging less driving, which will be a boon for a polluted city with more than 4 million cars. (more)

Mexico's President Pena Nieto to launch drive to end hunger
18 January 2013 - Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto unveils his plans to eradicate extreme poverty on Monday, a blight affecting more than 10 per cent of the population in Latin America's second biggest economy. Hoping to emulate the recent success of Brazil in lifting millions out of poverty, the 46-year-old Pena Nieto will kick off a 'national crusade against hunger' in southern Mexico in Chiapas, one of the states hardest hit. (more)

Sweeping education reform approved in Mexico
16 January 2013 - A plan to overhaul Mexico's public education system has been ratified by 18 of the country's 31 states, allowing it to be enacted by President Enrique Pena Nieto, officials confirmed Wednesday. The law, which is backed by Pena Nieto and was approved by Congress in December, calls for creation of a professional system for hiring, evaluating, and promoting teachers without the 'discretionary criteria' currently used in a system where teaching positions are often bought or inherited. (more)

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Success of Maharishi's Programmes
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Mexico: Thousands of indigenous students to meditate together at traditional celebration
18 December 2012 - This Friday, 21 December, many young students from rural schools in Mexico will take part in a celebration of indigenous people in the southern part of the country. The students--along with many of their parents, teachers, and community leaders--are coming together to practise Transcendental Meditation and its advanced programmes in a large group, expected to number in the thousands. They have learned these meditation techniques as part of Consciousness-Based Education, which is being used in schools throughout Latin America and around the globe. The students are aiming to create through their group meditation a powerful, uplifting influence of coherence, harmony, and peace for Mexico, all of Latin America, and the world. (more)

Mexico: Consciousness-Based Education to benefit student population, promote peace in the nation
2 July 2011 - Consciousness-Based Education programmes are being applied in secondary schools and universities in Mexico, to improve student achievement while contributing to the creation of invincible peace, harmony, and progress for the nation. (more)

Mexico: Maharishi Vastu schools under construction
8 December 2010 - Construction began a few weeks ago on two 2-storey school buildings in Monterrey, Mexico, which have been designed according to Vastu principles of Maharishi Vedic Architecture. The buildings will be halls for 900 students to practise the Transcendental Meditation Sidhi Programme in large groups every day, to create a continuing influence of coherence, harmony, and peace in their region and for the whole nation. (more)

Mexico: Young school students innocently create invincibility for the nation
12 July 2010 - A school in Mexico is making a large nation invincible through students' group practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM Sidhi Programme. In a new film about the programme, the school's Academic Director says that students have become more orderly and more attentive in class; teachers feel more free from stress, more willing to listen to the children; and crime is decreasing in the town where the school is located, compared to other nearby areas. (more)

Mexico: 2,380 Yogic Flyers to be a 'lighthouse of coherence for the continent of Latin America'
2 July 2010 - National coherence is now becoming well established in Mexico. One thousand Yogic Flyers will soon regularly practise the Transcendental Meditation and Transcendental Meditation Sidhi Programme, including Yogic Flying, in ideal Vastu (Vedic architecture) facilities, and the number of Yogic Flyers will soon increase to 2,380. (more)

Leading universities in Mexico adopting Consciousness-Based Education
28 June 2010 - Two leading universities in Mexico have agreed to implement the Transcendental Meditation Programme on a large scale. (more)

Mexico: Five hundred students learn Yogic Flying, transform their school
29 May 2010 - A secondary school in Mexico--and the surrounding community--are being transformed by the daily Yogic Flying practice of 500 students, who recently learnt the technique as part of the Transcendental Meditation Sidhi Programme. Teachers in the project have noticed a distinct decrease in stress levels within the school, and growth of joy and confidence among students, teachers, and parents. (more)

Monterrey school leading the way for Mexico to achieve national invincibility
23 November 2009 - With rising numbers of student Yogic Flyers at a school in Monterrey, Mexico will soon reach the threshold number of 1,008 Yogic Flyers required to achieve national invincibility. (more)

Latin America: Students raising Mexico to invincibility
23 December 2008 - In Mexico there will soon be 1,000 students practising Yogic Flying (an aspect of the Transcendental Meditation Sidhi Programme)--the number required to create invincible peace, prosperity, and good fortune for the nation. These students are among 61,000 from 158 schools in 19 Latin American countries currently practising Transcendental Meditation, and 14,000 practising Yogic Flying--creating a powerful influence of coherence and harmony for the entire continent and the world. (more)

Mexico: School hosts Yogic Flying graduation
20 June 2008 - Raja Jose Luis Alvarez, Raja of Latin America for the Global Country of World Peace, spoke on the Maharishi Global Family Chat on 18 June 2008 about a school in Mexico now enjoying the experience and benefits of Yogic Flying. (more)

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Flops
Short Summaries of Top Stories

Mexico cartel dominates, torches western state
22 May 2013 - The State of Michoacan is burning. A drug cartel that takes its name from an ancient monastic order has set fire to lumber yards, packing plants and passenger buses in a medieval-like reign of terror. The Knights Templar cartel is extorting protection payments from cattlemen, lime growers, and businesses such as butchers, prompting a backlash in the western agricultural states. The Mexican army was met with cheers when it arrived to fight the cartel on Monday night. Federal Interior Secretary Miguel Osorio Chong promised that the offensive this time would have better coordination, cooperation, and intelligence to be successful. But federal forces are up against a deeply rooted local mafia that, with at least a decade of state and local government tolerance, exerts almost governmental power. The last time the federal government truly went after the cartel, then known as La Familia, was in 2010. La Familia's leadership fell apart, but one branch of the cartel evolved into the Knights Templar, which has consolidated control. 'It's like a monster with a thousand arms, that wants to control everything, the way you live, the way you think,' said a young patrolman. 'You cut off one arm, it grows another.' (more)

Mexican town besieged by drug cartel worries the army may not be enough to help
21 May 2013 - Residents of a western Mexico area who endured months besieged by a drug cartel cheered the arrival of hundreds of Mexican soldiers Monday. The town's supplies had been blocked after the Knights Templars cartel declared war on the hamlet. The cartel dominates much of the state, demanding extortion payments from businessmen and storeowners, and even low-wage workers. The idea that troops might come in and seize a town's weapons, or stay only a few weeks, worried people throughout the crime-ridden area. So in town after town along the main highway through Michoacan's hot lowlands known as the Tierra Caliente, self-defense squads welcomed the army's arrival, but vowed to keep their guns. Rafael Garcia Zamora, mayor of Comoalacan, said residents welcomed the arrival of troops, but worried the force might soon leave again and expose the town to the cartel's wrath. 'The government should have mobilized the army to do this 10 or 12 years ago,' he said. (more)

GMO corn strain threatens Mexico's indigenous corn
16 May 2013 - Mexico has 59 strains of native corn. While the country has some GMO corn as well, activists are concerned about expanding its reach. (more)

Thirteen dead, dozens hurt during Mexican prison riot
27 April 2013 - Thirteen people were killed and some 65 injured in a prison riot on Saturday in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, local officials said. Concepcion Tovar, head of the state's prison system, told reporters that at least 100 inmates participated in the riot, which she blamed on a gang that had been harassing and robbing other inmates. The deaths were caused by sharp objects and other improvised weapons, Tovar said. It was unclear if the violence was linked to drug gangs, whose turf wars and battles over trafficking routes to the United States have spread across Mexico. Deadly riots have repeatedly rocked the country's overcrowded prisons, which house inmates from different gangs. (more)

Climate change, herbicide may doom monarch butterfly migration
29 March 2013 - Over the past couple of years, the number of monarch butterflies that reach the Mexican sanctuaries has been declining, generating concern among rural communities that rely on spillovers of butterfly tourism activities, as well as entomologists, biologists, ecologists and monarch aficionados around the world. According to Mexico's annual report on monarch populations in the reserve region, released in March, the number of hectares occupied by the butterflies -- used as an indicator of population density -- in the 2012-2013 season dropped by 59 per cent compared with the year before. (more)

Monarch butterflies drop ominously in Mexico
14 March 2013 - The number of monarch butterflies making it to their winter refuge in Mexico dropped 59 per cent this year, falling to the lowest level since comparable record-keeping began 20 years ago, scientists reported Wednesday. It was the third straight year of declines for the orange-and-black butterflies that migrate from the United States and Canada to spend the winter sheltering in mountaintop fir forests in central Mexico. Six of the last seven years have shown drops, and there are now only one-fifteenth as many butterflies as there were in 1997. The World Wildlife Fund, one of the groups that sponsored the butterfly census, blamed climate conditions and agricultural practices, especially the use of pesticides that kill off the monarchs' main food source, milkweed. The butterflies breed and live in the north in the summer, and migrate to Mexico in the winter. (more)

Report: Mexico disappearances constitute 'crisis'
20 February 2013 - Human Rights Watch called Mexico's anti-drug offensive 'disastrous' in a report Wednesday that cites 249 cases of disappearances that the group says mostly show evidence of having been carried out by the military or law enforcement. The report says the 'enforced disappearances' follow a pattern in which security forces detain people without warrants at checkpoints, at homes or work places, or in public. When victims' families ask about their relatives, security forces deny the detentions or instruct them to look for their loved ones at police stations or army bases. Human Rights Watch criticizes former President Felipe Calderon, saying he ignored the problem that it calls 'the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades.'The report also says security personnel sometimes work with criminals, detaining victims and handing them over to gangs. The report cites incidents in which investigators used information collected in a case to pose as kidnappers and demand ransom payments from the victims' families. Authorities frequently fail to take even the most basic investigative steps, such as tracing victims' cellphone or bank records, and often rely on investigations carried out by the victims' relatives. (more)

Mexico's new president mostly mum on continuing drug violence
29 January 2013 - Two months after President Enrique Pena Nieto took office promising to reduce violent crime, the killings linked to Mexico's drug cartels continue unabated. Only the government's talk about them has dropped. The difference under this administration is that there have been no major press conferences announcing more troops or federal police for drug-plagued hotspots. Gone are the regular parades of newly arrested drug suspects before the media with their weapons, cash, or contraband. Critics suggest the country's new leaders believe that the best way to solve a security crisis is to create distractions. 'What Pena Nieto is doing is ... sweeping violence under the rug in hopes that no one notices,' said security expert Jorge Chabat. 'It can be effective in the short term, until the violence becomes so obvious that you can't change the subject.' (more)

Evidence surfaces of Wall-Mart bribery in Mexico
10 January 2013 - Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s CEO Mike Duke found out in 2005 that the retailer's Mexico unit was handing out bribes to local officials, according to emails obtained by lawmakers. The lawmakers say the emails contradict earlier claims by Wal-Mart that executives weren't aware of bribes being made by the company. Allegations first surfaced in April that Wal-Mart failed to notify law enforcement that company officials authorized millions of dollars in bribes in Mexico to speed up getting building permits and gain other favours. The bribery allegations were first reported by the New York Times. Last month, the paper published another story focusing on how Wal-Mart's Mexico division offered large payoffs to get things that the law prohibited. (more)

More than 20,000 missing in Mexico in past 6 years
20 December 2012 - A civic organization released a database on Thursday that it says contains official information on more than 20,000 people who disappeared in Mexico over the past six years, a period that also saw thousands of people killed after the government launched a crackdown against drug cartels. Propuesta Civica, or Civic Proposal, said the database it posted on its website contains details on 20,851 missing people that it says were collected by the federal Attorney General's Office during the just-ended administration of President Felipe Calderon. The missing include police officers, bricklayers, housewives, lawyers, students, businessmen, and more than 1,200 children under age 11. Numbers vary on just how many people have disappeared in recent years. The database, which Civic Proposal said it got from a Los Angeles Times reporter, was released three weeks after the Washington Post published a story saying it had received a list of missing people created by the Mexican Attorney General's Office that recorded more than 25,000 disappearances. In a letter to new President Enrique Pena, Human Rights Watch's director for the Americas, Jose Miguel Vivanco, said that if the numbers quoted by the Post were correct, they would 'place the wave of disappearances in Mexico that took place during President Felipe Calderon's six-year administration as the worst in the history of Latin America'. (more)