Deputy health minister mocks proposed virus strategy; ex-minister urges humility

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September 10, 2020

The nearly-finished plant in Huexca, Morelos.

The federal government announced Thursday that construction of a controversial thermoelectric plant in Morelos will recommence.

President López Obrador said the state-owned plant, located in the municipality of Yecapixtla, is expected to begin operations at the end of the year.

“The work to build the thermoelectric plant in Morelos will restart. The project was suspended because of the demands of farmers [and] residents of the communities of that region. It’s a project that started several years ago [and] it was practically finished; there’s very little left to do for it to [start] operating,” he said.

The government held a public consultation on the plant in February last year that found 59.5% support. López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference this morning that there are no legal impediments to it going ahead.

“We believe that everything is resolved, that there is no legal problem. All the injunctions [against the plant] were resolved, there is now a plan for this thermoelectric plant to begin operations at the end of the year.”

Jorge Zapata says legal action against the plant will continue.

Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) director Manuel Bartlett noted that Morelos is one of just a few states that don’t have the capacity to generate their own energy and therefore the completion of the thermal plant was important.

He said the 20-billion-peso (US $930.7 million) plant will have a 642-megawatt capacity and that its operation will not affect the quantity or quality of the local water supply, as opponents claim. It will never draw water from the Cuautla River as it will use recycled water from a nearby wastewater treatment plant to generate steam, Bartlett said.

Interior Minister Olga Sánchez said studies have shown that the operation of the plant won’t affect the local water supply.

“As there was no valid suspension [order] related to the construction, the National Water Commission granted the permits to the CFE. … All the injunctions are resolved and the project can legally continue,” she said.

But one community leader in Morelos quickly challenged the government’s assertion that all legal impediments have been removed.

Jorge Zapata González, grandson of Mexican Revolution hero Emiliano Zapata, said that not all injunctions against the project have been overturned and asserted that the majority of communities, communal landowners and private landowners in the east of Morelos remain opposed to the plan.

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“Right now we’ll start with the organization to defend our land and water because they’ve already organized themselves to go ahead with a plant we’ve always rejected. What the president says is one thing and what the people decide is another,” he said.

Zapata said the members of 32 ejidos (cooperatives) and 12 owners of small lots are involved in legal action against the plant, located about 60 kilometers southeast of Cuernavaca in the town of Huexca.

He said if legal action in Mexico fails to stop the plant, its opponents could still take their case to international bodies.

Source: Reforma (sp), El Universal (sp)

Plans for 32,000-seat stadium revealed in Yucatán

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September 10, 2020

The environmentally friendly, solar-powered, state-of-the-art stadium is expected to open in 2023.

Construction will begin next year on what is being described as the most modern and sustainable stadium in Mexico.

The Merida, Yucatán, facility, which will seat up to 32,000 people, will cost 2.2 billion pesos (US $102.6 million) and will be the first Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum-certified stadium in Mexico.

The project will generate 4,000 jobs during construction and 1,000 permanent jobs when it opens.

The mixed-use property will serve as the new home of the Venados soccer club and the Leones de Yucatán professional baseball team, but developers say the stadium can be adapted for a variety of other sports, as well as concerts and cultural events.

Yucatán Governor Mauricio Vila Dosal and the chief operating officer of the New York City-based developer Juego de Pelota, Inc., José Antonio Téllez, presented the privately-funded project on Wednesday.

The environmentally friendly, solar-powered, state-of-the-art stadium is expected to open in 2023 and will feature a hotel, museum, restaurants, residential and office space as well as other services.

Governor Vila called the project “a message of optimism and hope in these difficult times that demonstrates the attractiveness and potential for growth that Yucatán has.”

The stadium is a “symbol of economic reactivation,” the governor said, and the “best sign that Yucatán is already on the way to recovery.”

Téllez compared the high tech stadium to a Swiss army knife as it can be converted from one sport to another in as little as seven hours by adjusting its moveable stands.

The stadium, which will combine modern and Mayan details, was designed by the architectural firm Populous, which also designed London’s Olympic Stadium, remodeled Wembley and Yankee stadiums and worked on more than 3,000 other major projects worldwide.

The stadium’s exact location has yet to be determined.

Source: El Diario de Yucatán (sp), El Universal (sp)

Anti-bacterial gel prohibited in US continues to be sold in Mexico

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September 10, 2020

Hand sanitizers that were banned in the United States because they were found to contain methanol are still available for purchase in Mexico, prompting concerns that people using the gel could be slowly poisoning themselves.

The news agency Bloomberg reported that four people in the United States died and three others partially lost their sight after drinking hand sanitizers this year.

The incidents prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct a testing campaign that found methanol in anti-bacterial gel that was made in Mexico.

A total of 37 Mexican companies were prohibited from exporting their hand sanitizers north of the border and almost half that number voluntarily recalled their products. However, at least some are still selling their potentially toxic sanitizers in Mexico.

Bloomberg said it recently saw at least five sanitizers for sale in a Mexico City pharmacy that were banned by the FDA because they contained or were suspected to contain methanol, a toxic alcohol used to make some fuels, solvents and antifreeze. It also said that Amazon is selling six hand gels made by one black-listed company.

According to the Methanol Institute, a global trade association for the methanol industry, the alcohol can “can cause serious damage to organs in the body if a person swallows it, breathes it in or gets it on their skin.”

Despite the dangers, the Federal Commission for Protection Against Health Risks (Cofepris) has not moved to ban tainted sanitizers even though the use of hand gel has skyrocketed due to the risk of coronavirus infection. It did, however, issue a public health alert that warned people to be careful with sanitizers from unknown sources.

Xavier Tello, a health policy analyst at Strategic Consulting in Mexico City, told Bloomberg that Cofepris doesn’t have sufficient personnel or budget to test hygiene products such as sanitizers.

“It’s not a minor issue,” he said. “How much gel are people pouring on their hands on a daily basis?”

Bloomberg said that it is unknown if anyone in Mexico has become sick or died from drinking sanitizer containing methanol or using it on their skin. But at least 42 people died in Jalisco earlier this year after consuming an artisanal alcoholic beverage containing high levels of methanol.

Thirty-three of 137 hand sanitizers banned by the FDA were produced by a México state-based company called 4E Global. The FDA found methanol in two of its anti-bacterial gels but banned all of its sanitizers because they were likely made at the same facility as the contaminated ones.

“Some of our series of Blumen Hand sanitizers were found to contain methanol,” 4E Global says on its United States website.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we decided to recall all lots due to potential contamination.”

The company’s Spanish language website doesn’t mention methanol or any product recalls, Bloomberg said.

Among the other brands that were found to contain methanol were Jaloma, V-KLEAN, Herbacil Hand Sanitizer and Saniderm.

A full list of the hand sanitizers the FDA is urging people not to use is published on the agency’s website.

Source: Bloomberg (sp), El Heraldo de México (sp)

Another phone buyer gets carton of Boing; laptop buyer receives bags of salt

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September 10, 2020

carton of boing — It was supposed to be a cell phone.

Two more online shoppers who bought electronic equipment have discovered that the delivery chain is not completely reliable. Once again, a box of Boing has showed up instead of a phone and bags of salt replaced two laptops.

Gerardo Nava says he purchased a Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S cell phone on Amazon but when the package arrived last Wednesday he opened it to find nothing but a carton of Boing apple juice. A cell phone case he purchased at the same time arrived without any problem.

When Nava contacted Amazon the company said it would return the 5,048 pesos (US $238) he spent on the phone on the condition that he send the juice carton back to Amazon via DHL to verify his story.

The same thing happened to Salvador Gómez, who purchased an iPhone SE from the Sears online store but received a box of Boing guava-flavored juice instead. The mix-up went viral after he posted a photo of the carton inside the shipping box to his Twitter account.

Gómez has since been reimbursed.

A third such complaint appeared on Twitter on September 1. A man posted a video showing a bag of salt inside a box that was supposed to contain a laptop.

After he ordered two laptops from Mercado Libre the shipments arrived at his home in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, on August 31. One box was sent from Chiapas, the other from Mexico City.

When he opened the first box, he found a bag of Mar de Cortés-brand salt, which he says is only sold in Sonora.

Anticipating that the same thing might happen with the second box, he filmed himself opening it. It too contained nothing but salt.

The man contacted Mercado Libre who said that they had indeed shipped the laptops, leading the man to believe that the switch may have been made once the packages arrived at the FedEx warehouse in Sonora.

“The thing in common with both is that they have the same type of brown tape, they have the same salt, the same appearance, the same brand and it seems incongruous to me that if one comes from Tuxtla, Chiapas, and the other from Mexico City, that they would contain the same salt,” he says.

He recommends that people who shop online film themselves opening the package.

“Hopefully these parcel companies make an effort to take or further improve security measures … to avoid these cases,” he said.

In 2019, 18 million Mexicans bought products online, Profeco reports, and 9% said they had problems with their purchases.

Source: El Financiero (sp), El Universal (sp)

16th-century document removed from archive, shows up at New York auction

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September 10, 2020

Leaving the General Archive of the Nation with a document would be 'almost impossible,' UNAM researcher says.

A 16th-century document linked to Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés that turned up in a New York auction was stolen from the General Archive of the Nation (AGN) in Mexico City.

A New York auction house had intended to sell it later this month.

The 1521 document – a royal order to Cortés, who led the Spanish forces, Pedro de Alvarado, identified as the mayor of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, and other conquistadores in New Spain – was listed by Swann Auction Galleries as one of almost 400 lots to go under the hammer on September 24 in its Printed & Manuscript Americana auction.

A group of researchers spotted the image of the document on the auction house’s website and alerted the AGN and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), both of which filed complaints with the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR).

The auction house, which cited a price range of US $20,000 to $30,000 for the document, said Wednesday that it was withdrawing the lot from the September 24 auction but did not say whether it would be returned to Mexico.

The stolen document linked to Hernán Cortés.

One of the researchers who saw the document on the Swann website told the newspaper El Universal that it was not the first time that a document from a section of the AGN that holds its oldest archives had been offered for sale.

Michel Robert Oudijk of the National Autonomous University’s Institute of Philological Research said that he and the other researchers decided that they had to alert the authorities because they felt a line had been crossed with the intended sale of the Cortés document. A Spanish academic had taken a photo of it during a visit to the AGN in 2010, which allowed the researchers to be certain that the manuscript in Swann’s possession had come from the General Archive.

Oudijk said that leaving the archive with a document is “almost impossible” and therefore the theft must have been perpetrated by someone who works there.

“At the archive they control everything, … there are police who register your details and check your computer to see if there are any documents. Apart from the police, the archive staff keep an eye on researchers. In other words, leaving the AGN with a document is almost impossible; this tells us that it had to be someone who who can enter and exit without being checked … someone within the archive, it’s as clear as water,” he said.

The researcher said it’s not enough for Swann simply to withdraw the document from its auction, and declared that the auction house must reveal how it obtained it. If the person who supplied it didn’t remove it from the AGN an investigation must be carried out to find out who did, Oudijk said.

“Simple detective work” is needed, he added

Marco Palafox, legal director of the AGN, said the General Archive also filed a complaint with the FGR against the auction house Morton’s, which is offering 75 lots that are probably part of the nation’s documentary heritage.

The complaint was submitted just hours before the auction, which went ahead regardless on Tuesday although some lots were withdrawn. Palafox said the AGN only learned about the auction on Monday when it was tipped off by researchers.

At least one of the lots the AGN was concerned about, a document signed by Mexican independence heroes, was sold.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Journalist found murdered and beheaded in Veracruz

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September 10, 2020

A journalist who covered the crime beat for a newspaper in Córdoba, Veracruz, was found dead Wednesday in Tezonapa, near the Oaxaca border. He had been killed and beheaded in an area known for gang violence.

The body of Julio Valdivia Rodríguez was found on railway tracks in the community of Motzorongo next to his motorcycle, which bore the newspaper’s logo. His head was found some 10 meters away.

Officials said the body was arranged in such a way to make it appear he had been struck by a train, but the Attorney General’s Office quickly discarded that theory.

The 44-year-old reporter with 20 years’ experience was nicknamed “El Tigre del Norte” for a lock of grey hair that made him resemble a member of the popular musical group. He leaves behind his wife and four children, the youngest of whom is 4 years old.

Valdivia’s friends and fellow journalists announced they would hold protests in the city of Córdoba Thursday to demand justice.

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The State Commission for Attention to and Protection of Journalists (CEAPP) condemned the murder and announced that it will initiate proceedings to follow up on the authorities’ investigations.

CEAPP pointed out that Valdivia did not have special protection measures offered to journalists in Veracruz who have been threatened with violence because there had been no evidence of any risk to his safety.

The state government condemned the murder and vowed there would be no impunity.

President López Obrador mentioned the incident Thursday during his press conference at the National Palace.

“I know Tezonapa and I know the importance of El Mundo de Córdoba [Valdivia’s newspaper], how heroic it is to practice journalism in that region as in other regions. That is why those responsible have to be investigated and punished,” the president said.

On March 31, journalist María Elena Ferral of the Diario de Xalapa was shot to death in Papantla. Jorge Celestino Ruiz Vázquez of the daily Gráfico de Xalapa was assassinated in Actopan in August 2019.

The National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) says 163 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, and 10 have been murdered this year. Since 2010, 25 journalists have been murdered in Veracruz alone.

Mexico is the deadliest country in the Western Hemisphere for journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2019, nearly half of all murders of journalists worldwide occurred in Mexico.

Source: Reforma (sp)

106-year-old Querétaro man beats coronavirus

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September 10, 2020

Don Juan was born during the Mexican Revolution.

At 106 years old Don Juan has a lot of stories to tell, and now surviving the coronavirus pandemic is one of them.

On Tuesday the man who was born two months before the start of World War I was released from a hospital in Querétaro to return home, coronavirus-free.

Don Juan, who is three years older than Mexico’s constitution and lived through the Spanish flu pandemic, was born in Castillo, Guanajuato, on May 2, 1914, in the middle of the Mexican Revolution and before the discovery of penicillin.

He met and married Sebastiana Parra, with whom he had five children.

For a time he worked in a soap factory, and sold cleaning products from his home. He also worked as a taxi driver when gasoline cost only 1 peso per liter and ran a nixtamal mill with his wife.

Don Juan (his surname wasn’t given) joins a select group of centenarians who have recovered from the coronavirus, including María Branyas, the oldest woman in Spain. She celebrated her 113th birthday in May and has kicked both the coronavirus and the Spanish flu in her lifetime.

On April 14, a 106-year-old great-grandmother in Birmingham, England, recovered from the disease after being ill for three weeks and was applauded by nurses and doctors when she was discharged from the hospital.

In Mexico, seven out of 10 people aged 100 or over who have been infected with the coronavirus have survived, despite having the highest comorbidity for the disease worldwide: advanced age.

As of last month, 72 centenarians in Mexico had been infected with the virus, and 22 had died according to the Ministry of Health. In infected patients who are between 80 and 90 years old, the mortality rate is higher, at 43.4%.

The oldest person in Mexico who has survived the coronavirus is thought to be a 116-year-old man in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, who was not hospitalized during his illness despite presenting comorbidities such as diabetes and hypertension.

Source: Excélsior (sp)

Russia to send Mexico 32 million doses of Covid vaccine in November

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September 10, 2020

Russia has announced an agreement with a Mexican pharmaceutical company to supply 32 million doses of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, said in a statement that it had reached a deal with Landsteiner Scientific, which will distribute the vaccine in Mexico.

“Deliveries are expected to start in November 2020 subject to approval by Mexico’s regulators,” the RDIF said.

The Sputnik V vaccine was registered by Russian authorities in August after phase one and two clinical trials “demonstrated no serious adverse events and a stable immune response in 100% of participants,” the fund said.

“Post-registration clinical trials of Sputnik V vaccine involving 40,000 volunteers are currently ongoing. First results of these trials are expected to be published in October-November 2020.”

Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the RDIF, said that “our Mexican partners clearly understand the advantage of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V compared to other vaccine candidates.”

“In particular, they highlight a much greater safety track record of human adenoviral vectors versus novel technologies such as monkey adenoviral vectors or mRNA,” he said.

Dmitriev noted that a survey conducted by the newspaper El Financiero found that 66% of Mexicans have confidence in the Russian vaccine.

“We have agreed to deliver the large batch of Sputnik V vaccine to Mexico which will help 25% of the Mexican population to receive access to the safe and effective vaccine,” he said.

The announcement of the agreement comes after Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said in late August that 2,000 Mexican volunteers would participate in phase three trials of Sputnik V.

The participation of Mexicans in the trials was confirmed last week but only 500 to 1,000 volunteers are set to take part. The Sputnik vaccine is administered in two doses with the second dose applied 21 days after the first.

Coronavirus cases and deaths reported by day. milenio

Mexico has also committed to participating in late-stage clinical trials for vaccines developed by United States company Johnson & Johnson and two Chinese companies.

If it passes phase three trials, millions of doses of a vaccine developed at Oxford University are slated to be produced in Mexico after the Carlos Slim Foundation reached a deal with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which has been licensed to supply the vaccine.

President López Obrador said last month that he was confident that the vaccine would be available for application in the first quarter of next year.

But Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday that the arrival of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca in Mexico could be delayed as a result of the decision to pause the trials due to a serious adverse reaction in a participant.

According to medical news website Stat, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said in a private call with investors on Wednesday that the participant who triggered the suspension of trials was a woman in the United Kingdom who developed neurological symptoms consistent with a rare but serious spinal inflammatory disorder called transverse myelitis.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s coronavirus case tally and death toll continue to increase.

The Health Ministry reported 4,647 new cases Wednesday, increasing the accumulated total of confirmed cases to 647,507.

There are an estimated 39,994 active cases across the country while the results of 83,537 Covid-19 tests are not yet known.

Mexico City has the highest number of active cases among the country’s 32 states followed by México state and Guanajuato. At the municipal level, Monterrey, Nuevo León, leads Mexico for active cases with 793.

Mexico’s official Covid-19 death toll increased to 69,095 on Wednesday with 611 additional fatalities registered by health authorities. Based on confirmed cases and deaths, Mexico’s fatality rate is currently 10.7 per 100 cases, the highest rate among the 20 countries currently most affected by Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Mexico City has the highest death toll in the country with 11,043 fatalities attributed to Covid-19. México state ranks second for deaths with 8,482 followed by Veracruz, Puebla and Baja California, each of which has recorded more than 3,000 fatalities.

Puebla city has recorded more Covid-19 deaths than any other municipality in the country with 1,973 as of Wednesday.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Chihuahua farmer killed; witnesses point finger at National Guard

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September 10, 2020