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U.S. officials discuss fentanyl and migration in Mexico

U.S. officials discuss fentanyl and migration in Mexico
Photo: Reuters

October 5 |

Senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, were in Mexico on Wednesday for talks with Mexican officials on drug trafficking and a humanitarian crisis on the U.S. southern border.

Blinken will be joined by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. The U.S. delegation will meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Rosa Icela Rodriguez, Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection.

The meeting comes at a time of growing tension between the two nations. The United States is in the midst of an opioid addiction epidemic that claims more than 100,000 lives each year. Most of the deaths are attributable to fentanyl, a potent narcotic trafficked across the border by Mexico-based drug cartels.

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At the same time, the southern border of the United States faces a daily flood of migrants, often in the thousands, who use Mexico as a jumping-off point for their efforts to enter the United States, either illegally or to seek asylum as refugees.

The dual problem has led some U.S. political leaders to call for aggressive action, with several Republican candidates for the presidential nomination advocating military intervention.

Fentanyl charges
In an indication of the global nature of the fentanyl problem, Garland held a press conference at the Justice Department on Tuesday and announced that charges had been filed against eight Chinese companies and 12 individuals for their role in selling fentanyl precursors – the chemical compounds. from which the drug is synthesized – to buyers in Mexico.

It was the second time since June that the United States has brought charges against Chinese companies supplying fentanyl precursors to criminal organizations in Mexico.

“We know who is responsible for poisoning the American people with fentanyl,” Garland said. “And we know that this global fentanyl supply chain, which ends in the deaths of Americans, often starts with chemical companies in China.”

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As of August of this year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized more than 25,500 pounds of fentanyl entering the U.S., nearly double the amount seized in the same period last year. The amount of fentanyl seized in the US has increased by 800% since 2019, according to the Department of Homeland Security, with most of it coming from Mexico.

Unlike other drugs, such as cocaine and marijuana, whose raw materials must be grown on acres of farmland, fentanyl labs are small and easy to hide. And because the drug is so potent (50 times more potent than heroin), it is also easier to transport.

In addition, the United States and Mexico are looking for ways to cooperate on the issue of human migration. In recent years, the flow of economic migrants and asylum seekers through Mexico to the U.S. border has become a flood.

After plummeting to fewer than 500,000 during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, attempts to cross the southern border, whether legally or illegally, have skyrocketed in recent years. In 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials encountered 1.7 million people attempting to cross the southern land border. That number increased to 2.4 million in 2022, and the numbers for 2023 are on track to be even higher.

Mexican resistance
Among other actions, U.S. officials are expected to ask their Mexican counterparts to deploy more law enforcement personnel to interdict shipments of fentanyl precursors and shut down laboratories where the drug is produced.

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The reception is likely to be cool. The Mexican government, including López Obrador, has openly criticized U.S. politicians who campaign on drug and immigration issues, accusing them of making their country a scapegoat for the United States’ own problem.

López Obrador has referred to the opioid epidemic in the United States as a result of “social decadence.”

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International

Colombian Foreign Minister on the accusation of Diosdado Cabello: To foolish words, deaf ears

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, Luis Gilberto Murillo, said that “to foolish words, deaf ears” in reference to the accusations made against him by the Chavista leader Diosdado Cabello, who accused him of “working” for the United States Government.

“That doesn’t make sense, to foolish words, deaf ears,” the chancellor told journalists in Suriname, where he participated in a Ministerial Meeting of the Association of Caribbean States.

Murillo added that he met in Suriname with his Venezuelan counterpart, Yván Gil, to whom he expressed his “concerns.”

“We have always maintained a very fluid diplomatic dialogue, and that is the official voice of the Government of Venezuela. That’s why we don’t want to respond or give in to any provocation from other actors on both sides that sometimes what interests them is to generate conflict,” he said.

Cabello accused Murillo of working for the United States after the chancellor claimed that his country seeks a “quiet transition” in Venezuela after the presidential elections on July 28.

“Who sent it to you to declare that? Your president of Colombia or your president of the United States? Who do you work for? Who gives you the right to talk about transition in Venezuela? (…) Here the only transition that is coming is the transition to socialism, there is no other,” he said in his weekly television program ‘Con el mazo dando’, broadcast by the state channel VTV.

Cabello, first vice president of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), said that Murillo “works for the Government of the United States” and that that recent statement is “very rude” and “unfriendly.”

At the 54th Annual Washington Conference on the Americas, Murillo said that Colombia hopes that the upcoming Venezuelan elections “will be fair, obviously, competitive… free.” And that it is, “at least, an acceptable process.”

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International

Brian Wilson, of The Beach Boys, is under the tutelage of his manager because of his dementia

A judge in a Los Angeles court accepted the request of Brian Wilson’s family to put the founding musician of The Beach Boys under guardianship because of the dementia he suffers.

At a hearing, Judge Gus T. May determined that the tutelage of the creator of ‘Surfin’ the U.S.A.’ will be in the hands of his lifelong publicist and manager, Jean Sievers, and his business manager, LeeAnn Hard, American media reported.

“From clear and convincing evidence, I conclude that guardianship is necessary,” May declared at the hearing and ordered the new guardians to consult with Wilson’s children “all material decisions related to health care.”

The petition – presented after the death of Wilson’s wife, Melinda Ledbetter, at the beginning of the year – argued that the 81-year-old musician suffers from an “important neurocognitive disorment” that has taken away his ability to properly take care of his basic personal needs.

In February, Wilson’s relatives posted a post on Instagram in which they explained that they had made the decision to request the guardianship of the musician after consulting his seven children, the doctors, members of his staff and Wilson himself.

They also specified that the musician’s cognitive ability had regressed severely since the death of Ledbetter, who was in charge of his personal care.

Wilson is known for being one of the founders of the group The Beach Boys – one of the most important bands in the United States – and was responsible for immortalizing “the Californian dream” in the 1960s.

One of his most relevant works as a composer was the creation and production of the album ‘Pet Sounds’ (1966), considered one of the best albums of all time by the specialized press, in addition to being the one that impressed The Beatles.

In 1988, Wilson began his solo career and in 2008 Rolling Stone magazine placed him at number 52 on the list of the 100 best singers in history.

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International

Trump criticizes pro-Biden Jews: “If you vote for him, be ashamed”

Former President Donald Trump criticized Jewish American voters of the Democratic Party on Thursday, after the Joe Biden Administration confirmed on Wednesday that it will withhold the shipment of weapons to Israel while studying how it proceeds in the Palestinian enclave of Rafah.

“If you are Jews, don’t vote for Biden. They are doing a lot of damage to their country. (Biden) Now he is totally on the other side. He has abandoned Israel. If you are Jewish and you vote for it, I tell you to be ashamed,” Trump said in an interview with Spectrum News 1.

He also assured that he would not have made Biden’s decision and spoke of “loyalty.”

“I wouldn’t do what Biden did. He has just left Israel. I’ve never seen anything like it. They have to do it (attack Rafah)… They were attacked sacily on October 7. They had scenes that no one has ever seen,” he said, when asked if he would clarify to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the escalation of aggressions in the Gaza Strip has a limit.

The former ruler had already repeatedly charged against American Jews who vote for Democratic candidates, both before and after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas. In fact, in 2019, he said that Jewish Democrats were “very disloyal to Israel.”

Likewise, he has assiduously stressed that this conflict would never have been unleashed if he remained in the White House, due to his diplomatic skills with power leaders in the Middle East region.

According to CNN, the US arms blockade of Israel would have about 3,500 bombs: 1,800 of 2,000 pounds (907 kilos) in weight and 1,700 of 500 pounds (226 kilos). The United States would be especially concerned about Israel’s use of the heaviest in densely inhabited areas of Rafah.

Since October 7, 2023, the Biden administration has given the go-ahead to more than a hundred arms sales operations to Israel without the approval of Congress, according to The Washington Post.

Of these, it has only made public 2: 14,000 projectiles for tanks worth 106.5 million dollars and 155 mm type artillery projectiles worth 147.5 million dollars. In addition, the transfer approved by Congress of the 2,000 and 500 pound bombs, as well as 25 F-35A fighter planes, was pending.

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