An average of 72 people were , often times in incidents unrelated to the country’s drug war, according to a Mexican nongovernmental organization. The numbers reported by the Council for Law and Human Rights differ sharply from official figures, creating confusion over the degree to which the crime -- which often goes unreported -- has expanded in recent years. Fernando Ruiz, the director of the Mexican NGO that works with victims of kidnappings, told Spanish news wire EFE the figures...

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission says it has opened an investigation into the death of an 8-year-old girl who authorities say committed suicide at a shelter in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. The commission says the girl was traveling with a migrant smuggler who planned to take her to her parents in the United States when federal authorities arrested the smuggler. Federal officials turned the girl over to Chihuahua state authorities who placed her at a private shelter instead of...

Mexican telecoms reforms are forcing the break-up of billionaire Carlos Slim's America Movil empire, Latin America's biggest telecoms company. Mr Slim, one of the world's richest men, says he will bring America Movil's market share below 50%. Its Telmex fixed line subsidiary has 80% of the Mexican market and its mobile Telcel operation 70%. The reforms would make America Movil in its present form a dominant player, subject to strict new rules. They would include being forced to share...

Reporters Without Borders calls for more protection for the staff of Contralínea, a Mexico City-based independent magazine whose offices were broken into and ransacked on the night of 23 June, two months after a break-in at the home if its editor, Miguel Badillo. Before removing computer equipment and files from Contralínea’s offices, the unidentified burglars cut the cables of the surveillance cameras that the Mexico City prosecutor’s office installed in 2012 under...

The senate has just approved the “ ” that President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government proposed on 24 March. Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by the speed with which the bill is being adopted because some of its articles threaten freedom of information. The bill provides for content surveillance, the right to block telecommunication services, prior censorship of news and information that could endanger national security, and an unequal distribution of licences...

Last year, the supporters of Mexico's conservative National Action Party created the Mexican Nationalist Movement of Labor, a neo-Nazi group with the intention to "protect traditional families, the Catholic-Christian religion, and relive the history of the Nazi doctrine." The group, which considers itself to be a political alternative to the 'Zionist capitalism,' argues that democracy has the interest of few in mind. First created in Jalisco last November, the is headed by Juan...

In Mexico, where 32 journalists have been murdered in the last four years and hundreds more live under death threats, the real news would have been if Jorge Torres Palacios had turned up alive. But this was not the case. Torres Palacios, a reporter and government worker for the city of Acapulco, was found dead on Monday after being kidnapped outside his home on Thursday evening. His body was decapitated and dismembered and showed other signs of extreme violence, the local media...

MEXICO CITY - Mexican authorities said on Sunday they had captured one of the top leaders of the Gulf drug cartel who was responsible for a recent wave of shoot outs and massacres in the northern state of Tamaulipas. Juan Rodriguez Garcia was arrested in a wealthy suburb of the northern industrial city Monterrey, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido told a news conference in Mexico City. Rubido said Rodriguez's struggle to gain control of the Gulf cartel was behind a...

For the first time ever, Reporters Without Borders is publishing a list of profiles of “100 information heroes” for World Press Freedom Day (3 May).Through their courageous work or activism, these “100 heroes” help to promote the freedom enshrined in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the freedom to “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” They put their ideals in the service of...

On 24 March, the Mexican government introduced a telecommunications bill in the Senate that is intended to supplement existing federal telecoms legislation in force since 1995. It is officially designed to restore the balance of power between the giants in the market and the small players. However, the draft has aroused strong reactions because of its provisions that would give the government the right to monitor media content. Senators are due to start considering the proposals later today. ...