Aeroméxico pilots’ strike delayed, but could happen Wednesday

By

-

October 1, 2018

A strike planned for today by Aeroméxico pilots over pay and working conditions was avoided but could still go ahead Wednesday.

The Association of Airline Pilots (ASPA) agreed to a request from federal Labor Secretary Roberto Campa to defer the work stoppage for 48 hours, meaning that it is now scheduled to begin at midnight on October 3.

The postponement will allow negotiations to continue with Mexico’s flag carrier over contracts for pilots who started working for the company in the past eight years.

ASPA last night rejected the collective labor agreement Aeroméxico is offering for 2018-2020, with salaries a key sticking point.

Under the airline’s proposal, pilots that were employed after 2010 will continue to receive salaries and benefits 40% lower than those who began their employment prior to that date.

ASPA agreed to the inferior pay and conditions for so-called “B Contract” pilots in 2010 when the global financial crisis was still affecting the airline industry.

But today the pilots believe that the economic situation of the sector — and Aeroméxico — is completely different from eight years ago and that the wage and benefits disparity should end.

“The dissatisfaction, anger and frustration of pilots on B contracts is real and in the face of the refusal of the company to grant adjustments . . . the [union] assembly rejected in their totality the terms of the negotiation,” ASPA said.

Aeroméxico said via its Twitter account last night that all flights are going ahead as scheduled.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Scarlet macaw chick is the first in 50 years to be born in the wild

By

MND Staff

-

October 1, 2018

0

The young macaw, born in the wild in Veracruz.

For the first time in 50 years, a scarlet macaw chick has hatched in the wild in the rainforests of Veracruz.

The birth is the result of a rescue plan by biologists at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) in a jungle area of the state’s Tuxtlas region.

Experts from Nanciyaga Ecological Reserve, the Ancient Forest Association and the Xcaret Ecological Park also participated in the project.

Patricia Escalante, a researcher at the UNAM Institute of Biology, said the birth of a chick offers hope both for the success of the rescue plan and the conservation of the species in Mexico.

She added that there was no point releasing the macaws in the area if they didn’t reproduce, stating that “sooner or later” they would disappear again.

Before the conservation project began four years ago, the last time a scarlet macaw was seen in rainforest in the Tuxtlas region was in the 1970s, according to a report published by the university’s news portal UNAM Global.

To encourage the released birds to breed, the project team placed wooden nesting boxes in trees in four release locations that were later checked each month to see if they were being used.

The breeding season of the scarlet macaw, or guacamaya as the bird is known in Spanish, began in March but for three months there was no sign that they had used the boxes for the purpose for which they were intended: to lay eggs.

“We thought there would be no chicks because a lot of time had passed and we hadn’t found anything,” said Omar Gómez, an UNAM student who was responsible for checking the nests.

But in June, five eggs were discovered in a single nest and through observation, the researchers discovered that three macaws were looking after it.

“Two females laid eggs accompanied by the same male,” Escalante explained. But unfortunately, only one chick survived.

A camera was installed in the nest that allows the biologists to monitor the chick and all appears to be going well.

“We’ve left them to raise it on their own, we haven’t intervened and they have protected the chick from possible predators,” Escalante said.

She added that by leaving the chick to be raised without human contact a new generation of completely wild scarlet macaws could begin to inhabit the region.

The species is considered endangered in Mexico, with only about 250 birds estimated to be living in the wild.

The largest population of red macaws in the country live in the Lacandon jungle in Chiapas.

Source: Noticieros Televisa (sp)

Baby macaw captured on video

Nace primer guacamaya en libertad en los Tuxtlas - UNAM Global

Watch this video on YouTube

The new trade deal is a goal for Mexico. The score: Mexico 1, Trump 0

By

Raoul Lowery Contreras

-

October 1, 2018

0

Mexicans have taken United States President Donald Trump to the cleaners on NAFTA, the newly agreed-to United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. That is what the president calls it instead of NAFTA 2.0, which it is.

Certainly there was some tinkering but stipulating higher North American content in imported vehicles from Mexico and Canada helps those countries more than it helps the U.S. Higher North American content, from 62.5% to 75%, is not a big deal. Canada, for example, makes far more parts than exportable automobiles.

Providing Trump-insisted-upon manufacturing caps on parts and autos themselves means little when those caps are far above current or projected sales of those items to U.S. customers. No matter what the caps are, small cars like Nissan’s Versa and Sentra will still be 100%manufactured in Mexico because of costs, costs that are too high in the U.S.

In reality it means that more foreign companies, like Michelin, will build larger factories in Mexico to supply the market in which nascent Chinese car makers now producing a handful of cars in Mexico.

We don’t know yet what the details of the new agreement are but we know that the Trump demand that a five-year “sunset” provision be used in the “new” agreement was junked by Mexico and Canada and didn’t survive the negotiations.

No savvy business person or analyst can figure exactly what Trump had in mind when he demanded a five-year “sunset” provision because no business executive in his or her right mind would ever consider such an onerous provision. Why? Because it takes more than a year to build a factory, for example, sometimes two or three.

Business planning, therefore, has to cover long periods of time; using a five-year measuring period simply does not work in business, in manufacturing especially.

BMW’s largest factory in the world is not in Germany, it is in South Carolina. Does President Trump think that the planning, construction and employee training of that factory (plus full-blast manufacturing) could be done in a short five-year period?

The “Trump sunset provision” of an agreement with Mexico and Canada never stood a chance of being approved by anyone with a brain. So goal for Mexico and to a lesser extent Canada.

Mexico can thank President Trump for more new job creation as companies will flood into Mexico to build new facilities to build air bags, alternators, car radios and computer gear, windshields, windshield wipers, bumpers, etc., etc.

Most of Mexican-made or assembled goods that are exported are exported to the United States as is the case with food products; Canada too. So, no matter what claims the president made about NAFTA being the worst agreement in history the three countries’ trade amounted to over a trillion dollars in 2017.

Moreover, Mexico alone, with 124 million people, buys more from the U.S. than all of Europe (with 500 million people) and all of China (with over a billion people).

Any comments made by President Trump about Mexico ripping off the United States were untrue. How, for example, can a country one-third the size of the U.S. buy as much from the U.S. as the U.S. does from Mexico?

In the final analysis, Mexico wins, Trump and Canada tie. Nobel Prize winner and New York Times economics commentator Paul Krugman says, “My original prediction on Trump/NAFTA was that we would end up making some minor changes to the agreement, Trump would declare victory, and we’d move on. That’s what seems to have happened.”

That, Dr. Krugman, is being charitable.

Gooooaaaallll! Mexico 1, President Trump, 0.

Raoul Lowery Contreras is the author of The Armenian Lobby & U.S. Foreign Policy,The Mexican Border: Immigration, War and a Trillion Dollars in Trade and White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) & Mexicans (to be released November 1).

Morgues say there are no problems; families of missing have a different view

By

MND Staff

-

October 1, 2018

0

A morgue in Tamaulipas: 'more like a bunker.'

Mexico’s forensic services authorities are operating morgues without clear laws, denying access to the families of missing persons and even disappearing bodies shortly after they take possession of them.

That is the claim of groups made up of family members of disappeared persons, an allegation that contrasts sharply with the official position of the authorities themselves.

Earlier this year, the newspaper El Universal asked authorities in several Mexican states about the situation in their morgues. The majority responded that they didn’t have any problems despite many receiving an increasing number of bodies due to increases in violent crime.

Among those that said that there were no problems was the Jalisco Institute of Forensic Sciences (ICJF), which operates 11 morgues in the state and made headlines two weeks ago for its “morgue on wheels,” revealing that there were indeed problems.

The institute was using two semi-trailers, including one that was shuffled around the Guadalajara metropolitan area, drawing the ire of residents who complained of fetid odors. The trailers were providing storage for about 300 unclaimed bodies.

According to former forensics chief Luis Octavio Cotero Bernal, who was dismissed for his role in the case, the Jalisco Attorney General’s office acquired the first trailer in 2013.

With more and more bodies arriving at morgues across Mexico that are already short on space, getting rid of them as quickly as possible has become a priority for some.

There is no law, El Universal reported, that specifies how long a morgue is required to hold an unclaimed body before it can be sent for burial in a common grave.

In addition, there is no federal authority that oversees the collection of DNA samples from unidentified corpses, meaning that states are free to act as they see fit.

In Tijuana, which with 1,559 homicide victims in the first eight months of the year was Mexico’s most violent city, the secretary of a Baja California association for families of disappeared persons said that bodies are quickly transferred from the city’s morgue to a municipal cemetery.

“. . . Authorities have turned it into a machine that practically disappears people. Out of necessity or because of negligence, the timeframes for sending bodies to a common grave are not complied with. If it was 30 days before, they reduced the time by half but now it’s not even that. [Bodies spend] between five and seven days in refrigeration and from there, they go into the ground,” Fernando Ortigoza said.

Geovanni Barrios, president of the Justicia Tamaulipas collective, said that morgues in that state are like bunkers because those looking for missing loved ones are prohibited from entering. Authorities argue that subjecting homicide victims to outside review amounts to re-victimization.

Barrios also said that people searching for family members receive little or no support from prosecutors’ offices across the country.

“They send you from one place to another, you even have to travel to Mexico City, they don’t realize that your life is in danger, they expose you,” he said.

In some states, authorities don’t have the personnel or resources to cope with the number of bodies they receive.

In Guerrero, one of Mexico’s most violent states, forensic experts have reported that they are forced to work at breakneck speed with limited resources, meaning they even have to reuse surgical gloves when carrying out examinations of corpses.

Until last year, there was only one forensic specialist working in all of Sinaloa.

With this year on track to surpass 2017 as the most violent year in recent history, morgues in many cities across the country are facing an increasing demand for their services, which in some cases they are not equipped to meet.

Statistics from the National Public Security System show that after Tijuana, the cities with the highest number of homicides in the first eight months of the year were Acapulco, Guerrero; Culiacán, Sinaloa; León, Guanajuato; Benito Juárez (Cancún), Quintana Roo; Irapuato, Guanajuato; Guadalajara, Jalisco; Reynosa, Tamaulipas; Tlaquepaque, Jalisco; and Morelia, Michoacán.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Business group forecasts 50% increase in exports with new trade accord

By

-

October 1, 2018

0

Castañón: three sectors will drive increase in exports.

A leading business organization issued a strong vote of approval today for the new NAFTA, forecasting that Mexico’s exports to the United States and Canada would grow 50% in the next 10 years.

The Business Coordinating Council (CCE), an umbrella organization of several business groups, said the new United States Mexico Canada Accord, or USMCA, is more robust, more modern and more agile, which will allow trade to multiply between the three countries.

The agreement was finalized last night and will replace the North American Free Trade Agreement.

CCE president Juan Pablo Castañón said in a telephone conference call the growth in exports will fuel employment and diversification in the production of Mexican products.

He cited three sectors that would lead the growth: food products, automotive and aerospace.

“. . . with the foundation of those three sectors of the economy, along with investment in energy, we are certain that we can grow our trade with the U.S. and Canada by at least 50%.”

One sticking point that was not resolved with the new trade accord were the tariffs imposed by the U.S. on steel and aluminum imports from Mexico and Canada, which U.S. President Donald Trump said today would remain in place for the time being.

But Castañón said the tariffs would be the subject of discussions this week. “This is now on the table . . . and conversations will begin this week to lift the imposition of these taxes on steel and aluminum, and on food products on Mexico’s part; we hope to have an announcement to make on the issue this week.”

Although many details of the USMCA have yet to be subject to outside analysis, it has been broadly welcomed for the fact that it ends more than a year of uncertainty for business and investors.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Cuernavaca tire removal campaign collects 46 tonnes’ worth

By

César Hernández

-

October 1, 2018

0

The seventh annual used tire collection drive in Cuernavaca, Morelos, removed 46 tonnes of discarded tires from streets, homes and businesses.

Known as Llantatón, the event was created by the local Sustainable Development Secretariat (SDS) and the Japanese tire maker Bridgestone.

Rainwater collects in used tires left in the open, becoming breeding grounds for mosquitoes. The collection drive was designed to remove the hazard.

Tires were collected at the San Miguel Acapantzingo park in Cuernavaca, and in the neighboring municipalities of Ciudad Ayala, Huitzilac and Emiliano Zapata.

“Thanks to the participation of the citizens and the municipal governments in the Llantatón, we kept [the tires] from reaching rivers, ravines, streets or open air dumps,” said the environmental management director at SDS.

“We appreciate the support given by Bridgestone México, who have been unconditional allies in the protection of the health of the people of Morelos, and we invite the public to continue participating in initiatives like this, in support of the environment,” said Noé Náñez González.

In the seven-year history of the tire collection marathon it has rounded up 446 tonnes — an estimated 46,000 tires, which have been used as an alternative fuel in the cement industry or reused as furniture parts or an asphalt ingredient.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Rosa now a tropical storm, will make landfall in Baja Monday night

By

MND Staff

-

October 1, 2018

0

Tropical storm Rosa was located off the Pacific coast of Baja California this morning and is forecast to make landfall later this evening, bringing heavy rain, strong winds and potentially life-threatening flash floods.

The National Meteorological Service (SMN) said in a statement that Rosa, which had earlier strengthened to a category 4 hurricane, was located 150 kilometers southwest of Punta Eugenia, Baja California Sur, at 9:00am CDT.

The storm is forecast to reach land late this evening between Punta Eugenia and San Quintín, Baja California, before moving across the peninsula and into the northern Gulf of California later tonight.

The SMN said the tropical storm had maximum sustained winds of 75 kilometers per hour and gusts exceeding 95. It is moving at 19 kilometers per hour to the north-northeast.

Intense storm activity is forecast for Mexicali and Ensenada in Baja California and San Luis Río Colorado, Puerto Peñasco, Caborca and Plutarco Elías Calles in Sonora.

The United States National Hurricane Center (CNH) is forecasting 7.5 to 15 centimeters of rain for Baja California and northwestern Sonora with isolated falls of up to 25 centimeters.

Very strong storms are forecast for parts of Chihuahua and Sinaloa while strong storms are predicted in Baja California Sur, the SMN said.

Swells of three to five meters with dangerous currents are predicted for the coasts of both Baja California and Sonora.

A tropical storm warning is in effect for the west coast of the Baja California peninsula from Punta Abreojos to Cabo San Quintín and for the east coast from Bahía de los Ángeles to San Felipe.

Another tropical storm, just below hurricane strength, was located in the Pacific Ocean 1,000 kilometers southwest of Manzanillo, Colima, at 9:00am CDT, the SMN said.

Tropical storm Sergio had maximum sustained winds of 110 kilometers per hour with gusts exceeding 140 kilometers per hour.

However, Sergio poses no immediate threat to land as it is moving west away from the Mexican coast at 22 kilometers per hour.

The SMN is still forecasting that it will bring rain to western Mexico and swells of one to three meters to the coasts of Colima, Jalisco and Michoacán.

It also warned of possible landslides, overflowing rivers, flooding and road blockages.

Source: El Financiero (sp)

Maya train rail cars will be manufactured by Bombardier in Hidalgo

By

César Hernández

-

October 1, 2018

0

Hidalgo Governor Fayad, left, and López Obrador.

President-elect López Obrador said during a visit to Hidalgo yesterday that rail cars for the new Maya train will be manufactured in the state.

López Obrador said Canadian manufacturer Bombardier will make the cars in Ciudad Sahagún, making the announcement after meeting with Governor Omar Fayad Meneses.

He told a press conference that the manufacture of the rail cars in Hidalgo will be one of his administration’s main commitments with the state, along with a 5-billion-peso (US $267.8-million) investment in the rehabilitation of the oil refinery in Tula.

The investment, López Obrador said, is part of a rehabilitation program for six refineries that will cost 50 billion pesos ($2.7 billion) between 2019 and 2020, and a similar figure the following year.

Plans for Hidalgo also include finishing the Pachuca-Huasteca highway.

At a public meeting later the governor was greeted by shouts of “Fuera!“, or “get out,” but the incoming president said his Morena party would work in a coordinated manner with the governments of the state and the municipalities.

He told the crowd he was not “a dictator” and did not have the power to remove governors from power or vice versa. “I don’t fire anyone; it’s the people who fire their rulers . . . .”

“We are building an authentic democracy,” he said, “not a dictatorship; I am not a cacique, let’s make that clear.” A cacique is a powerful regional chieftain.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Acapulco police missing 342 guns and 200 traffic cops

By

César Hernández

-

October 1, 2018

0

Counting guns in Acapulco: some are missing.

Missing guns and AWOL traffic cops are among the concerns identified by the army after its inspection of Acapulco’s municipal police force.

The National Defense Secretariat (Sedena) discovered that police are short 342 of 1,771 assigned firearms after federal and state security forces disarmed the police last week because of suspected infiltration by organized crime.

The spokesman for the state security agency Guerrero Coordination Group told a press conference that Sedena had given Acapulco Mayor Evodio Velázquez Aguirre a Monday deadline to explain the absence of the firearms.

However, as of today Velázquez is no longer mayor: his three-year term ended yesterday when he was replaced by Adela Román Ocampo.

The investigation into the Acapulco police department also found that close to half the port city’s traffic police never show up for work despite receiving a paycheck every two weeks.

The state Attorney General’s office is now attempting to locate the 202 missing officers.

Other irregularities that only 674 of the municipality’s 1,309 police officers have been certified and evaluated despite claims to the contrary by outgoing mayor Velázquez.

The police chief himself was not certified. The Guerrero Coordination Group said it had advised the mayor twice that Max Lorenzo Sedano had failed the evaluation test, but nothing came of it. Sedano resigned his post last week.

Acapulco has long held the title of the most violent city in Mexico as organized crime gangs fight over control of the city, causing some 700 homicides per year.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Canada is in: new 3-way trade agreement described as win-win-win

By

MND Staff

-

October 1, 2018

0

The United States and Canada reached a last-minute deal yesterday to maintain a trilateral trade accord in North America, ending negotiations that dragged on for over a year.

Under the updated pact, the United States will have greater access to Canada’s dairy market and both Mexico and Canada will be protected from any future auto tariffs that their neighbor imposes on imports up to a quota of 2.6 million passenger vehicles annually.

To be known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) instead of NAFTA, the new accord will preserve a dispute resolution system that Canada fought to maintain to protect its lumber industry and other sectors from United States anti-dumping tariffs, Canadian and U.S. sources told the news agency Reuters.

However, United States tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum were not lifted as part of the agreement.

The deal also requires a higher proportion of auto content to be made in high-wage areas where workers are paid at least US $16 per hour, in order for vehicles to qualify for tariff-free status.

The rule is designed to bring more auto sector jobs to the United States as it will make it harder for large manufacturers to operate cheaply in Mexico.

Its inclusion in the revised pact is seen as a big win for United States President Donald Trump, who called NAFTA “one of the worst trade deals ever made” and has pledged to return auto sector jobs to the U.S.

In a joint statement, the United States and Canada said the updated pact, which will govern more than US $1.2 trillion worth of trade between the three countries, would “result in freer markets, fairer trade and robust economic growth in our region.”

Most of its provisions, however, won’t start until 2020 after legislatures in Mexico, Canada and the United States have approved the new deal.

The announcement of the new agreement ends more than a month of uncertainty about whether Canada would join the pact that Mexico and the United States reached on August 27.

Leaders of all three countries were upbeat about the new trilateral treaty.

“The modernization of the trade agreement between Mexico, Canada and the United States ends 13 months of negotiations and achieves what we proposed in the beginning: a win-win-win agreement,” Mexican President Peña Nieto wrote on Twitter.

After a late-night cabinet meeting in Ottawa to discuss the new deal, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters “it’s a good day for Canada.”

Trump, who repeatedly threatened to terminate the 24-year-old pact, posted a glowing two-part assessment of the updated agreement to his Twitter account early this morning.

“Late last night, our deadline, we reached a wonderful new Trade Deal with Canada, to be added into the deal already reached with Mexico. The new name will be The United States Mexico Canada Agreement, or USMCA. It is a great deal for all three countries, solves the many . . . deficiencies and mistakes in NAFTA, greatly opens markets to our Farmers and Manufacturers, reduces Trade Barriers to the U.S. and will bring all three Great Nations together in competition with the rest of the world. The USMCA is a historic transaction!”

At a later press conference, Trump said that “this landmark agreement will send cash and jobs pouring into the United States and into North America.”

It’s “good for Canada, good for Mexico,” he added, praising both Trudeau and Peña Nieto who he called a “terrific person.”

Economy Secretary Ildefonso Guajardo, Mexico’s chief negotiator in the drawn-out and often-contentious talks, also took to Twitter to praise the new deal.

“The new trilateral trade agreement in North America is a state-of-the-art instrument that will bring great economic benefits to Mexico, Canada and the U.S.,” he wrote.

Jesús Seade, who participated in recent negotiations as the trade representative for president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, added his support for the new deal.

“We celebrate the trilateral agreement. It closes the door on trade fragmentation in the region. NAFTA 2 will provide certainty and stability to Mexico’s trade with its partners in North America . . .” he wrote on Twitter.

Speaking in Madrid, Spain, Foreign Affairs Secretary Luis Videgaray said the inclusion of Canada in the agreement was “fundamental” in order to maintain the advantages of having a common North American market.

“It’s important for the economic relationship and competitiveness to have the same rules, in that sense it’s something we’re delighted with, we’re excited,” he said.

Videgaray also said that it was pleasing that a so-called sunset clause was not included in the new agreement.

The proposal was pushed by the United States and would have seen a modernized pact automatically expire after five years if it wasn’t renegotiated.

“This five-year idea eliminated certainty but now this [six-year] revision mechanism is good because it eliminates uncertainty,” Videgaray said.

The foreign secretary said that a deal had been reached in time for the current government to sign it but added that the ratification process would take place in the Senate next year.

He also said he was proud of having worked with Mexico’s negotiating team, including López Obrador’s representatives.

“It’s remarkable how Mexico closed ranks [to achieve] something good for the region and particularly for Mexico,” Videgaray said.

Both the Mexican peso and the Canadian dollar made small gains against the U.S. dollar on news of the updated agreement.

Source: Reuters (sp), El Economista (sp)