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 THE PULSE NEWS MEXICO STAFF In yet another bruising blow to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s headstrong efforts to undo the country’s Energy Reform, implemented in 2014 by his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto, the national Chamber of Deputies’ Economic, Commercial and Competitive Commision (CECC) rejected his Electricity Reform Bill, which would limit grid providers almost exclusively to the
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By KELIN DILLON Mexico’s National Energy Control Center (Cenace) has been planning strategically timed blackouts across the country to help reduce energy consumption following a low supply of natural gas, which have now been affecting parts of Mexico that were never planned to lose power. Northern Mexico mainly uses gas to generate its energy, and the Texas pipeline that brings
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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 RICARDO CASTILLO AMLO on an Electrical Collision Course Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) clearly sent a “suggestion” to the Chamber of Deputies in regards to their discussions over the increasingly controversial bill regulating the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). “Do not change even an iota of the text” that they had received from him for a fast-track
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Ancira Negotiations Imprisoned Mexican steel tycoon Alonso Ancira’s lawyer, José Luis Castañeda, continued negotiations at the Mexico City North Penitentiary late Tuesday, Feb. 9, and finally came up with a figure that his client will have to pay to win his freedom. In an out-of-court negotiation still to be ratified, Mexico’s state-run oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex)
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Gags on Twitter and Facebook? A bill to “regulate the performance of social networks” in Mexico is due to be introduced in Congress this week by Senator Ricardo Monreal. The proposed bill would regulate social network companies like Twitter and Facebook on a national scale and would prevent them from censuring accounts of people or entities that
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By KELIN DILLON A mew survey of the Mexican population conducted by El Financiero Bloomberg showed a wide divide in political party preferences within Mexico, mainly stratified based on age and level of education. The survey was conducted using 1,000 Mexicans contacted by phone in the second half of January, and particularly asked those surveyed to choose between Mexican President Andrés
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By RICARDO CASTILLO Vaccines Registration Underway, Sort of… As of Tuesday, Feb. 2, the Mexican government has opened up its Natonal Vaccination Program of covid-19 vaccines to everyone over the age of 60, allowing those eligible to register on a webpage run by the Interior Secretariat (SeGob). In theory, everyone in Mexico over age 60 — including legal foreign residents
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