Mexico

MIAMI - Mitt Romney, who rarely discusses his ancestry, has repeated a striking comment in Florida in recent days to soften his rhetoric about immigration and woo the crucial Hispanic voting bloc. "My dad was born in Mexico," Romney says at many campaign stops, as he expresses empathy and solidarity with immigrant families. It follows sharp rhetoric in places such as Iowa, where he decried what he called efforts to provide "amnesty" to the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants.

Bud weakened to a tropical storm Friday as heavy rain began to pelt a string of laid-back beach resorts and small mountain villages on Mexico's Pacific coast south of Puerto Vallarta. The National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, said that maximum sustained winds that were once blowing at 115 mph (185 kph) had slowed to 70 mph (113 kph) by Friday night. The government of Mexico changed the hurricane warning for the coast of Mexico from Manzanillo to Cabo Corrientes to a tropical storm warning.

A new poll in Mexico says the second- and third-place candidates in the presidential race are running neck and neck — but remain far behind the candidate of the country's former ruling party. The poll released by the consulting firm Mitofsky says Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party is supported by 38 percent of those surveyed a little more than five weeks ahead of the July 1 election. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party gets backing from 20.5 percent and Josefina Vazquez Mota of the now governing conservative National Action...

Mexico's government says it will protect a half-million acres held sacred by the Huichol Indian tribe that inspired a protest movement against a Canadian company's silver-mining concessions in the northern desert. First Majestic Silver Corp. is giving up concessions in the area, and the government says it will not authorize new mining permits there. Huichol Indians received backing from a wide variety of Mexican artists, intellectuals and civic groups objecting to mining in the area known as Wirikuta.

NEWTON - Dan Kennedy will graduate from Boston College on Monday, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and the recipient of the school's most prestigious prize, the Edward H. Finnegan Award. Winners of the Finnegan, given to the student who best exemplifies the BC motto, "ever to excel," tend to go big - top grad schools, Wall Street, overseas fellowships. Kennedy is planning to give away his computer, recycle his Blackberry, and move to a modest communal house in St. Paul, Minn.

Dealing with disappointment from a Gold Cup final loss that led to the firing of the coach, US Soccer is finally ready to move on. Juergen Klinsmann is set to lead the charge. He'll coach the Americans for the first time tonight against Mexico in Philadelphia. The US reached the round of 16 at last year's World Cup, but blew a two-goal lead in a Gold Cup final loss to Mexico in June. That led to the firing of coach Bob Bradley . Klinsmann said he's encouraged by the attitudes and talent after only a few days of camp.

VENTURA, Calif. — The man dubbed Mexico’s “King of Heroin,’’ who was pocketing up to $260,000 a week in California drug sales, pleaded guilty yesterday in a Ventura County courtroom to conspiring to sell narcotics. Jose Antonio Medina Arreguin, also known as Don Pepe, faces up to 24 years in prison when he’s sentenced April 13, prosecutor David Russell said. When Arreguin was arrested last year, investigators said the 36-year-old resident of Apatzingan, Mexico, was the leader of an elaborate, multimillion-dollar smuggling operation that once moved an...

HERMOSILLO, Mexico - Eight people have been arrested for allegedly killing two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman in ritual sacrifices by the cult of La Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, prosecutors said Friday. Jose Larrinaga, spokesman for Sonora state prosecutors, said the victims' blood was poured around an altar to the saint, which is depicted as a skeleton holding a scythe and clothed in flowing robes. The slayings recalled the notorious "narco-satanicos" killings of the 1980s, when 15 bodies, many of them with signs of ritual sacrifice, were unearthed at a...

Mexico is the fifth most dangerous country in the world for journalists with 70 killed since 2000, according to a joint assessment released Monday by the United Nations and the Organization of American States. The report said that 13 journalists have been killed so far in 2011 in Mexico. While motives vary in journalists' killings, one factor is the bloody drug cartel violence in Mexico. The U.N. Human Rights Council's investigator on freedom of expression, Frank La Rue, did not specify which four countries were considered more dangerous, but other press groups have ranked Mexico third,...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Landon Donovan is caught between two continents. As the United States meets Mexico tonight to open the final round of World Cup qualifying, Donovan, on loan to Germany's Bayern Munich, is waiting to hear whether Major League Soccer's Los Angeles Galaxy will let him stay in Europe after the agreement ends next month. But that's in the future. For now, all Donovan cares about is the game at hand. "Let's talk about Mexico," he said twice last night when questioned about his future.

Shortly after sunrise last month in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, police found 14 butchered bodies in a van outside city hall, a salvo in a seesawing battle of horrors between Mexico's two most powerful drug cartels. Soon after, nine people were hanged from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo. Fourteen heads were left in coolers outside city hall. Eighteen mutilated bodies were dumped by a scenic lake in western Mexico. The decapitated bodies of 49 people were dumped outside a small town 75 miles from the U.S. border.

Hurricane Bud weakened to a Category 2 storm as it headed early Friday toward an area of beach resorts and small mountain villages on Mexico's Pacific coast stretching south from Puerto Vallarta. Authorities canceled school in 11 communities expected to be hit by heavy rains in Jalisco state, and emergency workers were preparing emergency shelters. A hurricane warning was up for Mexico's Pacific coast from Manzanillo northwestward to Cabo Corrientes. A hurricane watch and tropical storm warning were in effect from Punta San Telmo westward to...

State officials say three prisoners have been killed and six wounded in a gunfight at a prison in the violent northern Mexico border state of Tamaulipas. The state attorney-general and head of state police said the fight erupted Wednesday afternoon in the prison in the city of Reynosa. No prisoners escaped, officials say. After the gunfight, state officials entered the cellblock and found two dead and seven wounded, one of whom died after being hospitalized. The officials said in a written statement that soldiers and federal police had helped...

Thousands of university students marched through central Mexico City on Wednesday to protest media coverage that they say favors the candidate of the former ruling party in upcoming presidential elections. The students say newspapers and television stations are tilting their coverage toward Enrique Pena Nieto, who is leading polls by double digits ahead of the July 1 vote. Many of the students were from the elite Iberoamerican University, where a May 11 appearance by Pena Nieto set off a rare wave of protests by young people against a return to the presidency of the...

The U.S. National Hurricane Center says Hurricane Bud has formed off the southwestern coast of Mexico. The Miami-based agency said early Thursday the storm was packing sustained winds of 75 mph and was located in the Pacific Ocean about 385 miles southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. Wind and storm conditions are expected to reach the southwestern coast of Mexico by late Friday. Mexico had issued the tropical storm watch on Wednesday night along the Pacific coast from Punta San Telmo to La Fortuna.

As the credits rolled on the first Cannes Film Festival screening of Mexican director Carlos Reygadas' new film, someone in the audience shouted out "Viva Bunuel!" The reference to surrealist cinema icon Luis Bunuel was apt. Reygadas' "Post Tenebras Lux" includes such incongruous elements as the devil, disturbing dream sequences and landscapes that look seethingly alive. But Reygadas insists he makes "very realistic films. " "We (all) have images of the past, dreams, memories, fantasies, projected futures that mostly doesn't come as we imagine it," he told...

JOHANNESBURG — Argentina needed a couple of breaks in its second-round World Cup match. It got one from the referee and another from Mexico. Carlos Tevez scored twice — once on a disputed goal — and Gonzalo Higuain added another as the Albiceleste beat Mexico, 3-1, yesterday to move into the quarterfinals. “We’re not here on vacation, we came here to leave everything so that the Argentines can be proud of us,’’ coach Diego Maradona said. With Mexico getting the best scoring chances early, Tevez headed in a pass from Lionel Messi in the 26th minute from close in. One problem: He was...

Federal officials say a U.S.-born drug cartel lieutenant who was arrested in Mexico has been successfully extradited to the United States to face federal racketeering and drug charges. U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said Wednesday that Armando Villareal Heredia is the lead defendant in a 43-defendant prosecution against the Fernando Sanchez-Arellano Organization, a drug cartel. Also known as Gordo Villareal, he was arrested by Mexican law enforcement July 9, 2011, at the request of U.S. officials.