Mexico

MEXICO CITY, July 12 (Xinhua) -- Mexico lost 921,583 jobs in the first half of 2020 largely due to the impact of COVID-19, the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) reported on Sunday.

In June alone, Mexico lost 83,311 formal jobs as a result of the pandemic, the IMSS said in a report.

In the six-month period, Mexico, Latin America's second-largest economy after Brazil, saw nearly 19.5 million jobs registered with the IMSS.

Of those jobs, 86.6 percent were permanent jobs and the other 13.4 percent temporary ones.

Mexico City, Jul 13 (AP/PTI) Mexican officials say the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths has passed 35,000, making it the country with the fourth highest total.

A count by Johns Hopkins University has only the United States, Brazil and Britain with more confirmed deaths from the new coronavirus. Sunday's rise to 35,006 confirmed deaths moved Mexico, a country with 130 million inhabitants, past Italy.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — For his first foreign trip as president, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador travels to Washington Tuesday to meet with President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly taken shots at Mexico and Mexican migrants to rally his base.

The visit, coming just four months before U.S. elections, has many Mexicans cringing. Trump has insulted them, threatened crippling tariffs to strongarm Mexico into playing an uncomfortable role in U.S. immigration policy and insisted they will pay for a border wall meant to keep migrants out of the U.S.

MEXICO CITY, July 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Mexican police have arrested three men over a bloody gun attack on a drug rehabilitation centre that left 27 people dead, the local prosecutor’s office said.

Gunmen burst into the centre in the city of Irapuato in the central Guanajuato state last Wednesday, forcing victims “onto the ground and shot them”, authorities said.

The suspects were captured in a swoop by special forces, the prosecutor’s office said on Twitter, calling the incident a “heinous crime.”

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican military officials said on Sunday they discovered a small plane from South America in flames after it made an illegal landing on the Yucatan Peninsula possibly carrying hundreds of kilos of drugs.

Nearby, military officials said they also found a truck carrying drugs that appeared to be cocaine, packaged into 13 parcels weighting 30 kg (66 pounds) each, and likely coming from the plane.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday he will travel to the United States on Tuesday ahead of his first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump a day later.

It will be determined on Friday whether Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will also attend talks with Trump in Washington next week, Lopez Obrador said during a regular news conference.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Gunmen burst into an unregistered drug rehabilitation center in central Mexico and opened fire Wednesday, killing 24 people and wounding seven, authorities said.

Police in the north-central state of Guanajuato said the attack occurred in the city of Irapuato. Three of the seven wounded were reported in serious condition.

Apparently the attackers shot everyone at the rehab center. State police said nobody was abducted. Photos purporting to show the scene suggest those at the center were lying down when they were sprayed with bullets.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico’s bustling capital was once seen as a relative oasis in the country’s raging drug war, but a shocking military-style assassination attempt on the city’s police chief offers proof at least one gang is unafraid to shatter the peace.

The hyper-violent Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, was quickly fingered as the probable culprit by the wounded target of the attack, Mexico City security head Omar Garcia Harfuch, in a message tapped out on his phone shortly after the shooting, likely from his hospital bed.

MEXICO CITY, June 27 (Xinhua) -- An airlift program carrying medical supplies from China to Mexico was extended this week after completing the first planned flights as the North American country is grappling with surging COVID-19 cases.

A plane, which arrived Thursday night in Mexico City from Shanghai, has become the 21st flight completed since April 7.

The air bridge has been made possible due to an agreement between the two countries to cooperate in fighting the pandemic.

MEXICO CITY, June 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Mexico City’s chief of police was shot and injured and two of his bodyguards killed in a dramatic assassination attempt early on Friday that he quickly blamed on one of Mexico’s most powerful drug gangs, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

The city’s public security chief Omar Garcia Harfuch suffered three bullet wounds as he and bodyguards came under heavy fire around dawn in an upscale Mexico City neighbourhood, where the attack was captured on security cameras.