San Miguel a model for Americas with cultural capital designation

By

-

August 23, 2018

San Miguel de Allende has been selected as the American Capital of Culture 2019, a designation that can bring worldwide exposure.

The International Bureau of Cultural Capitals, based in Spain, said the Guanajuato city will be a cultural model for the Americas next year, along with the state’s other 45 municipalities, which will also be able to participate.

San Miguel will benefit from promotion through Antena 3 Internacional, the program’s official television channel with a potential international audience of 90 million viewers, said a statement issued by the organization.

Mexican cities have been designated cultural capitals before. Mérida has been selected twice, and Guadalajara and Colima have also been chosen. No other country has received the honor so many times since the program began in 1998.

Its objective is to promote cultural integration in the Americas, and contribute to greater understanding among people of the region.

The UNESCO World Heritage Site also won international recognition last month when it was named best city in the world for the second year in a row by readers of Travel + Leisure magazine.

Mexico News Daily

New government: private sector must be engine of economic development

By

MND Staff

-

August 23, 2018

0

Nominee for transportation secretary, Javier Jiménez Espriú.

Two key members of the incoming federal government said yesterday that the private sector must make a significant financial contribution in order for Mexico to be able to fund the infrastructure projects it needs.

Javier Jiménez Espriú, president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s nominee for secretary of communications and transportation, said that he will seek a 20-peso contribution from the private sector for every peso that the new government allocates to new infrastructure projects.

Speaking at a strategic forum organized by the bank Banorte, Jiménez explained that private money will be required because the federal budget will not have sufficient resources to fully fund all the highway, airport, maritime and aerospace projects the new government plans to undertake.

Private investment could take the form of public-private partnerships, concessions or other arrangements permissible by law, he explained.

“All these actions have to do with a significant investment need [for infrastructure projects] and even though we’re going to redirect public spending, it’s not going to be possible to meet [all the costs]. Our ambition is to encourage the private sector to participate in a modest ratio of 20 to one,” Jiménez said.

Among the projects slated to be built with a combination of public and private funds are the so-called Maya Train between Cancún and Palenque and telecommunications projects to guarantee internet and mobile telephone services for all Mexicans.

At the same event, López Obrador’s prospective chief of staff said that programs to combat poverty and other social problems as well as projects such as development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and reforestation in the south of Mexico would also require the participation of the business sector.

“Mexico has to become a country that breaks paradigms and takes risks that it has never taken before,” said Alfonso Romo, a Monterrey businessman who owns a major brokerage firm.

“I include myself [as a member of] the private sector. We have to self-finance a lot of the projects that have been mentioned. Who’s going to be the engine? The national and foreign private sector,” he added.

In order to turn Mexico into an investment paradise and achieve the target of 4% economic growth, the new government must also work to strengthen the rule of law, improve security conditions, boost business confidence and combat corruption through the elimination of the use of cash for large transactions, Roma said.

With regard to Jiménez’s public-private investment proposal, the president of the Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism (Concanaco) said the 20-to-one idea would be viable so long as the government ensures that conditions favorable to investment are in place.

“An invitation from the government to contribute in a proportion of one to 20 is a proposal that has to be taken very seriously . . . Just two conditions are needed: certainty in the investment and profitability of the projects,” José Manuel López Campos said.

“Investors are willing to risk their capital but in a legal framework that offers certainty and where there is a scenario with the possibility of a return on investment and reasonable profits.”

Source: Milenio (sp)

Students create coffee-ginseng gum that relieves stress, improves energy

By

MND Staff

-

August 23, 2018

0

Coffee Gin, a substitute for energy drinks. — A substitute for energy drinks.

Stressed? Low energy levels? Physically and mentally fatigued? A chewing gum created by three university students contains caffeine and ginseng that might help.

The product is the brainchild of Lesly Figueroa Santos, Brenda Hernández Velasco and Mario López Luis, all biochemical engineering students at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN).

They explained that the chewing gum, which they have called “Coffee Gin,” was designed as an alternative to commercially available stimulants, especially energy drinks, which have a high sugar content and are potentially harmful to human health.

Ginseng, the root of plants in the genus Panax, contains natural antioxidants that help to overcome fatigue, relieve stress and combat the formation of free radicals that cause cells to age, the IPN said in a statement.

The students said that “Coffee Gin” is suitable for people aged over 18 and there is no risk of addiction or any adverse effects.

The gum contains quantities of ginseng and caffeine that are below recommended levels, the students added, explaining that a person would have to chew 20 pieces of the product to consume the same amount of caffeine that is contained in a single cup of coffee.

They also said that in contrast to most energy drinks, their gum doesn’t contain taurine, which acts as a nervous system depressant.

Production of “Coffee Gin” is “very cheap” and consumption levels of chewing gum are very high, the IPN statement said, and therefore the students may seek to commercialize their product at some point in the future.

Source: Notimex (sp)

Sinkholes drain most of Quintana Roo lagoon

By

César Hernández

-

August 23, 2018

0

A lagoon in Quintana Roo has all but disappeared down half a dozen sinkholes.

State Ecology and Environment Secretary Alfredo Arellano said the Chakanbakán lagoon, located in the municipality of Othón P. Blanco, shrank yesterday from its former 20 hectares to just five after the sinkholes opened up.

The cause is believed to be the resettling of an underlying geological fault.

Public access to the area, also known as Om lagoon, has been suspended as a preventive measure by the federal environmental protection agency Profepa and local police.

The lagoon will remain off limits until the cause of the water’s disappearance can be fully assessed, Profepa said.

Local official Leopoldo Santos said the lagoon’s wildlife now finds itself crowded into a much smaller area.

” . . . Crocodiles, turtles and fish are all crowding” into the remaining five hectares of shallow waters. He said Chakanbakán has been the habitat of many animals but many disappeared yesterday.

Secretary Arellano said that investigations into the event will continue, and that an initiative to declare the lagoon region a natural protected area will also continue.

What remains of Chakanbakán lagoon lies near the archaeological zone of the same name, and about 90 kilometers to the west of Chetumal.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Fiber optic installation announced for Cancún-Tulum corridor

By

César Hernández

-

August 23, 2018

0

quintana roo hotels — Faster internet coming.

The internet is going high-speed for the millions of tourists who visit the Cancún-Tulum corridor of Quintana Roo as interest grows in investing in fiber optic communications in the region.

Wireless broadband developer Cobalt Holdings is spearheading the trend with its plans to lay a 180-kilometer fiber optic network in the northern part of the state to cater to the hotel industry.

Company president Lawrence Malone explained that the firm is interested in the economic potential of northern Quintana Roo due to its more than 100,000 hotel rooms, high occupancy rates and investments in the hotel and services industries that have been announced.

The newspaper El Economista explained that the Cancún-Tulum corridor is one of the world’s fastest-growing tourist destinations, with more than 17 million visitors per year whose economic impact is over US $7 billion.

Cobalt Holdings’ focus on the hotel industry comes at a time when hotels are shifting from the traditional business model to co-living and co-working spaces, shared living quarters and offices that are in demand by professionals working away from a traditional office.

The head of the Quintana Roo Institute for Innovation and Technology told El Economista that other firms have also shown interest in fiber optic communications, including the local Lomastel Telecommunicación and China’s state-owned telecommunications company China Telecom.

Marco Antonio Bravo Fabián explained that established companies like Telmex and Grupo Salinas continue to invest and expand their fiber optic networks in the state.

He explained that the state has received some 400 million pesos (US $21 million) in fiber optic communications investments in recent years, given the appeal of the Caribbean hotel industry and the needs of the public sector, which will only go up next year when the federal Tourism Secretariat moves to the capital of the state.

Source: El Economista (sp)

Oaxaca police begin drone surveillance pilot project

By

Tony Richards

-

August 23, 2018

0

A police officer with one of Oaxaca's new drones.

Security officials in Oaxaca are anticipating a 40% reduction in crime through the deployment of surveillance drones in at least five communities.

Public Security Secretary Raymundo Tuñón said yesterday that surveillance by the unmanned aircraft is intended to halt assaults and kidnapping and identify retail drug traffickers.

They will be used in a pilot project at seven police installations in the city of Oaxaca, two in Tuxtepec and Salina Cruz and one each in Huatulco and Pinotepa Nacional.

The unmanned aerial vehicles will fly over areas where large numbers of people congregate, such as parks, shopping areas, markets and banks.

Tuñón said there is a five to 10-minute response time after the sighting of a crime using a drone. The fifth-generation aircraft are linked to C-4 security command centers.

The state has invested 25,000 pesos (US $1,320) in each one. They can remain airborne for up to an hour and 20 minutes and can operate within a radius of one kilometer.

Source: Milenio (sp)

US travel advisory update applies only to Ciudad Juárez

By

Tony Richards

-

August 23, 2018

0

Body parts were found in plastic bags Tuesday in Cancún.

Further restrictions on Mexican travel by United States government employees have been widely interpreted as a new travel alert for several Mexican states, but they are not.

The U.S. State Department revised its travel advisory for Mexico yesterday by announcing that a July 13 personnel restriction against travel to the downtown area of Ciudad Juárez will continue until further notice because “the higher rates of homicides during daylight hours that prompted that determination have not decreased . . . .”

The Chihuahua border city has seen a drastic spike in homicides.

But nothing else appears to have changed in the Mexico travel advisory.

At least one Mexican newspaper implied that travel warnings for Colima, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Michoacán and Guerrero were new, where in fact they have not changed since January. Several U.S. newspapers offered similar reports, some linking the updated advisory to the violent murders this week of eight people in Cancún.

The bodies — three were dismembered and one was beheaded — were discovered during an eight-hour period on Tuesday in various parts of the city, bringing to about 350 the number of assassinations so far this year.

But there has been no change in the United States’ travel advisory for Cancún or Quintana Roo.

The state government said today that incidents that occurred this week are related to actions between organized crime groups and have not involved local citizens or visitors.

The violence is attributed to turf wars between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Los Zetas, as well as other regional crime gangs.

Source: ABC (en), Infobae (sp)

6-million-peso sargassum removal boat sits idle in storage in Quintana Roo

By

MND Staff

-

August 23, 2018

0

The sargassum removal vessel in dryland storage.

As large quantities of sargassum inundated Mexico’s Caribbean coast beaches over the past three months, a 6-million-peso government-owned vessel specifically designed to remove the seaweed sat idle in a Quintana Roo marina.

The administration of former Quintana Roo governor Roberto Borge paid 5.96 million pesos (US $315,000 at today’s exchange rate) to the México state-based company Tecno Productos GAB for the sargassum removal boat, of which it took possession in January 2016.

But at that time sargassum wasn’t washing up on the state’s beaches and since then the vessel has remained out of service in dryland storage at Hotel El Cid in Puerto Morelos, the newspaper Milenio reported today.

David Jáuregui, a legal representative for Tecno Productos in the Riviera Maya and director of the company Sargazo Solutions, told Milenio that the vessel was delivered to the previous government in working order and that he didn’t know why the current government hasn’t put it to use.

“We’re the only Mexican company that has the technical and human capacity to manufacture this type of boat. They contracted us, paid us and we delivered,” Jáuregui said.

He explained that the vessel’s buoyancy and maneuverability were tested three years ago, although he added that its “stainless steel bands” or “sargassum harvesters” hadn’t undergone trials at the same time.

However, an inspection of the vessel a month and a half ago confirmed that it was still in working order, Jáuregui said.

Milenio reported that the businessman is making arrangements with the state government for the vessel to undergo testing at sea within the next two weeks.

Tecno Productos will absorb the 150,000-peso (US $8,000) transportation costs to show that the boat is ready to clean the beaches, Milenio said, because claims that it is not in working order are affecting other contracts it has signed with the private sector.

Meanwhile, the president of the federal Senate, Ernesto Cordero, said the Federal Auditor’s Office (ASF) should open an investigation into the whereabouts of 79 million pesos (US $4.2 million at today’s rate) that were allocated to the Borge government to combat an invasion of sargassum in 2015 but disappeared.

Current Quintana Roo lawmakers and government officials say they don’t know what happened to the missing funds, which were part of a larger 150-million-peso federal package.

Borge fled the country at the end of his term but was extradited to Mexico from Panama in January and is currently awaiting trial on corruption charges.

“Like all of the public budget, [resources] have to be used for what they were authorized for. If that’s not the case, it should be investigated, that’s what the ASF is for,” Cordero said.

Luis Sánchez, coordinator for the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) in the Senate, said: “Specialists are saying that the sargassum growth is a consequence of climate change, the temperature of the water and human activity. If we add corruption, we have a disaster for our beaches.”

Alfonso Ramírez Cuéllar, a Morena party lawmaker, said the incoming Andrés Manuel López Obrador-led government will ensure that those responsible for corruption at the state level will be held accountable.

“There will be no clean slate. On the contrary, all the cases where the [federal] government and the PGR [federal Attorney General’s office] have jurisdiction and, above all, those that involve embezzlement from the national finances, will neither be forgiven nor forgotten,” he said.

In response to this year’s sargassum crisis, the federal Natural Disaster Fund (Fonden) allocated 62 million pesos to Quintana Roo for clean-up efforts but the Secretariat of Tourism (Sectur) said it is now assessing the need for more federal funds to be allocated.

The first sargassum barrier was installed last week at Punta Nizuc near Cancún, where it is intended to prevent the seaweed from arriving on shore.

This week, the barriers are being placed in Xcalak in the municipality of Othón P. Blanco to protect the beaches at Mahahual, Ecology and Environment Secretary Alfredo Arellano said yesterday. Two vessels designed to gather sargassum are expected to arrive next week to remove the seaweed from behind the barriers.

His department also said it is hoping to raise 610 million pesos (US $32.3 million) of state, federal and private sector funds which can be placed in a trust for the purchase of equipment, barriers and vessels to combat the sargassum invasion.

The mayor-elect of Solidaridad, one of seven Quintana Roo municipalities with a Caribbean Sea coastline, estimated earlier this month that tourism had dropped by as much as 35% due to sargassum washing up on a 480-kilometer-long stretch of otherwise pristine Caribbean beaches.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Puebla state police take over security in Tehuacán, disarm local cops

By

Tony Richards

-

August 23, 2018

0

State police watch over disarmed Tehuacán police this morning.

Police in another Puebla municipality have been relieved of their duties while they are investigated for connections with organized crime.

State police and federal armed forces took control of security in Tehuacán in a surprise move during a municipal police shift change early this morning.

At least 200 local police will be investigated due to an increase in criminal activity, Governor Antonio Gali Fayad said.

The state will conduct a review of all police officers to confirm whether the force had been infiltrated by organized crime.

Officers’ identities will be checked to ensure they are on the national list of police officers, their weapons will be inspected to determine whether they have been used in criminal activity and their status checked with regard to evaluation and trust tests.

[wpgmza id=”61″]

Officers will return to duty following the successful completion of the evaluations, said the state’s public security secretary.

One municipal official challenged this morning’s action, accusing the state of violating the municipality’s autonomy. Miguel Ángel Romero Calderón said the state government could have provided support for Tehuacán’s security without putting on a show.

The state has conducted similar actions in three other municipalities — San Martín Texmelucan, Chalchicomula and Amozoc — in recent months. In Texmelucan the inspection turned up more than 100 police offers who were not official registered while in Serdán the review revealed 15 fake officers.

Petroleum theft, train robberies, homicides and extortion are the most common crimes in the municipalities whose police have come under the microscope.

Source: El Sol de Puebla (sp), Municipios Puebla (sp)

Citizens grab mayor and lock him up on suspicion of embezzlement

By

Tony Richards

-

August 22, 2018

0

Residents of a Oaxaca community rebelled this week and locked up the mayor on suspicion of corruption.

César Augusto Matus remained confined to the municipal jail in San Francisco Ixhuatán today, accused of embezzling 3 million pesos (US $160,000) since 2016.

His accusers, residents of El Morrito, also seized his personal vehicles and called on state officials to conduct an audit.

They claim the mayor hired a contractor friend to carry out public works projects in order to inflate the costs.

But his wife defended him by explaining that the funds allocated for the projects had never been delivered by the state.

[wpgmza id=”60″]

After Matus was seized and jailed yesterday, state officials attempted to mediate a solution. Citizens of El Morrito said they had a contractor lined up to do the work and wanted the state to come up with 1 million pesos to pay for it.

But when government officials explained they needed to confirm whether the contractor was authorized to do the work the citizens’ anger turned to fury. They ended the meeting and returned the mayor to his cell.

Source: Milenio (sp), OaxPress (sp)