By RICARDO CASTILLO Pemex Drops Fitch, But It’s Not Reciprocal The Mexican state-owned oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) dropped the international ratings firm Fitch from its budget on Tuesday, March 2, saying that it “no longer needs” the New York-based company’s services. Fitch’s ratings of the humongous Pemex debt has been harsh, and in its latest move. Fitch downgraded
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Committees Approve Energy Bill Late Monday, March 1, the Mexican Senate’s Energy, Environment and Legislative Studies Committees approved President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) controversial electric energy bill, which went to the Senate floor on Tuesday, March 2, for a fast-track vote. AMLO had asked Congress to approve the bill without even the slightest of changes, despite
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By RICARDO CASTILLO AMLO, Biden in Virtual Meet On Monday, March 1, U.S. President Joe Biden is slated to hold a virtual conference with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). This will be the second virtual gathering both presidents have, the last one having been on Jan. 22. According to White House sources, the two are expected to discuss
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Cabeza de Vaca Jumps the Gun After Tamaulipas Governor Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca, along with his fellow National Action Party (PAN) deputies, headed by minority leader Carlos Romero Hicks, took the facility nearly by storm on Wednesday, Feb. 24, and held a press conference claiming that he was a victim of a witch hunt being directed
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Electricity Bill It will come as no surprise for most people in Mexico that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) Electricity Reform Bill was approved by the Chamber of Deputies, as programmed by Congress’ majority rule, now in the hands of the leftist National Regeneration Movement (Morena) political party, and will now head to the Senate. If
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Electricity Reform Bill Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) on Sunday, Feb. 21, pleaded with Congress to pass his electricity reform bill. “I hope next week the (electricity) reform I presented to Congress will be approved to help strengthen the (state-owned) Federal Electricity Commission (CFE),” he said. AMLO spoke about the electricity bill in two acts
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Texas Gas Shortage The Arctic vortex that hit Texas and the north of Mexico on Monday, Feb. 15, did not catch the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) unprepared, said the commission’s director, Manuel Bartlett Díaz. The cold spell was expected, and the subsequent gas shortage it produced was also to be expected, he said, but not just for
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Outages Set Off Political Sparks The electricity outages on Monday, Feb. 15, in six northern Mexican states may have been caused by the freezing temperatures affecting Texas, but they set off a new round of heated debates at Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies over President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO’s) Electricity Bill. Beyond Texas’ pumped gas shortage,
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By RICARDO CASTILLO MLK III at Guerrero Homage Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of U.S. civil rights activist MLK, Jr., was the keynote speaker Sunday, Feb. 14, at the homage paid to the memory of Mexico’s second president, Vicente Guerrero. Guerrero was killed 190 years ago at Cuilápa, Oaxaca. Guerrero, a descendant of African slaves brought to Mexico,
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By THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF In an expected but still-unprecedented move intended to help stimulate the country’s floundering economy, Mexico’s Central Bank (Banxico) cut interests to a record low of just 4 percent late Thursday, Feb. 11. In its first official meeting of 2021, Banxico’s board of directors voted unanimously to continue to reduce interest rates, in keeping with
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