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9 more people killed in attacks on political candidates as pre-election death toll mounts in Mexico
Two attacks against mayoral candidates in Mexico’s June elections have left nine people dead in the southern state of Chiapas, the prosecutor’s office in the organized crime-plagued region said Sunday.
The two candidates survived, though both were wounded, in the onslaughts Saturday night and early Sunday in the municipalities of Villa Corzo and Mapastepec, it said in a statement.
The attack in Mapastepec targeted the car driving Nicolás Noriega, who is running to lead the municipal government. Noriega confirmed the attack to The Associated Press and said he was wounded and at least five people from his campaign were fatally shot.
Running under the country’s ruling party, Morena didn’t add more details and was noticeably shaken after the attack. Photos shared by local media showed a red truck dotted by bullet holes, and bloodied bodies lying in the trunk and on the ground.
“I deeply mourn the deaths of my friends, whose lives were taken in a cowardly manner. Evil is never going to reign in our hearts, because there are more of us who love life, who think of doing good,” Noriega posted on Facebook Sunday. “I’m asking all of society to unite to honor life.”
The attacks marked an escalation of violence in Chiapas against politicians intending to seek office in the June 2 vote, when Mexicans will also elect a new president.
Last week, six people, including a minor and mayoral candidate Lucero Lopez, were killed in an ambush after a campaign rally in the municipality of La Concordia, neighboring Villa Corzo.
More than two dozen politicians have been killed since September last year, according to the NGO Data Civica — including one mayoral hopeful who was shot dead last month just as she began campaigning.
The toll increases to more than 50 people if relatives and other victims of those attacks are counted.
The prosecutor’s office said the attack in Villa Corzo targeted a motorcade transporting Mayor Robertony Orozco, who is seeking reelection for the Morena party of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Three people died in the attack, and another later in hospital.
Orozco was shot in both legs, the statement said.
Mexico’s president denies “Chiapas is on fire”
Spiraling criminal violence has seen more than 450,000 people murdered in Mexico since the government of then-president Felipe Calderon launched a controversial military offensive against drug cartels in 2006.
The homicide rate has almost tripled to 23 cases per 100,000 inhabitants since then.
Many Mexicans see insecurity as the most urgent challenge for the next government, according to surveys.
Electoral campaigns in Chiapas are often violent, but the situation has deteriorated because of a war being waged between the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels in a region known as La Frailesca, which includes Villa Corzo and La Concordia.
The cartels are fighting over drug trafficking routes and control of other criminal enterprises such as extortion.
Mapastepec is a key strategic area because of its proximity to the Pacific coast.
Last week, 11 people were killed in mass shootings in a village in the township of Chicomuselo, Chiapas.
That is also the same area where in April the Morena presidential candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, was intercepted by masked men during a tour of the Guatemalan border.
Victoria Razo for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Because of its strategic location, Chiapas is one of the three Mexican states with the highest levels of electoral violence, with 55 victims so far, according to the Mexican consulting firm Integralia. It trails only Guerrero and Michoacán, two states at the heart of the Mexican cartel warfare.
The surge in violence in Chiapas proved embarrassing for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as he visited the border state Friday for a meeting with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo. López Obrador.
Obrador has refused to confront the drug cartels and has largely minimized the problem of violence.
“There are those who maintain that Chiapas is on fire, no, as I’ve explained, the problem is in this region and we are going to solve it,” Obrador said during a news briefing in Tapachula, Chiapas on Friday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Despite losing his boxing match to Jake Paul, Mike Tyson in a social media post Saturday said he had “no regrets” to getting “in ring one last time.”
The boxing legend was defeated by social media star Jake Paul in a highly anticipated fight on Friday night with an age difference of over three decades between the two contenders.
Netflix said Saturday that 60 million households worldwide tuned in to watch the match. The two fighters went eight full rounds, with each round two minutes long. Paul defeated Tyson by unanimous decision and the 27-year-old upset boxer and 58-year-old former heavyweight champion hugged afterward.
Paul was expected to earn about $40 million from the fight, and Tyson was expected to take around $20 million for the fight, according to DraftKings and other online reports.
Getty Images
Tyson said on his social media that “this is one of those situations when you lost but still won. I’m grateful for last night.”
The fight almost didn’t happen after Tyson experienced an ulcer flare-up while on a plane in March. He addressed his illness Saturday, writing that he “almost died in June.” He said he had eight blood transfusions and “lost half my blood and 25lbs in hospital and had to fight to get healthy to fight so I won.”
Tyson retired from boxing in 2005 after a 20-year career. He last fought in a 2020 exhibition match against former four-division world champ Roy Jones Jr.
“To have my children see me stand toe to toe and finish 8 rounds with a talented fighter half my age in front of a packed Dallas Cowboy stadium is an experience that no man has the right to ask for. Thank you,” he said.
Alex Sundby and
contributed to this report.
In their final meeting, China’s leader Xi Jinping told U.S. President Biden that his nation was “ready to work with a new administration,” as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take over.
The two leaders gathered Saturday on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Mr. Biden was expected to urge Xi to dissuade North Korea from further deepening its support for Russia’s war on Ukraine. It marked their first in-person meeting since they met in Northern California last November.
Without mentioning Trump’s name, Xi appeared to signal his concern that the incoming president’s protectionist rhetoric on the campaign trail could send the U.S.-China relationship into another valley.
“China is ready to work with a new U.S. administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences so as to strive for a steady transition of the China-U.S. relationship for the benefit of the two peoples,” Xi said through an interpreter.
LEAH MILLIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Mr. Biden, meanwhile, spoke in broader brushstrokes about where the relationship has gone and reflected not just on the past four years, but on their long relationship.
“Over the past four years, China-U.S. relations have experienced ups and downs, but with the two of us at the helm, we have also engaged in fruitful dialogues and cooperation, and generally achieved stability,” he said.
Mr. Biden and Xi, with top aides surrounding them, gathered around a long rectangle of tables in an expansive conference room at Lima’s Defines Hotel and Conference Center.
There’s much uncertainty about what lies ahead in the U.S.-China relationship under Trump, who campaigned promising to levy 60% tariffs on Chinese imports.
Bobby Djavaheri, president of Los Angeles-based Yedi Houseware Appliances — which manufactures its products in China — told CBS News in an interview this week that such tariffs “would decimate our business, but not only our business. It would decimate all small businesses that rely on importing.”
Trump has also proposed revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status, phasing out all imports of essential goods from China and banning China from buying U.S. farmland.
Already, many American companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, have been diversifying their sourcing away from China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to cut imports from China by as much as 45% next year.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden administration officials will advise the Trump team that managing the intense competition with Beijing will likely be the most significant foreign policy challenge they will face.
It’s a big moment for Mr. Biden as he wraps up more than 50 years in politics. He saw his relationship with Xi as among the most consequential on the international stage and put much effort into cultivating that relationship.
Mr. Biden and Xi first got to know each other on travels across the U.S. and China when both were vice presidents, interactions that both have said left a lasting impression.
“For over a decade, you and I have spent many hours together, both here and in China and in between. And I think we’ve spent a long time dealing with these issues,” Mr. Biden said Saturday.
But the last four years have presented a steady stream of difficult moments.
The FBI this week offered new details of a federal investigation into Chinese government efforts to hack into U.S. telecommunications networks. The initial findings have revealed a “broad and significant” cyberespionage campaign aimed at stealing information from Americans who work in government and politics.
U.S. intelligence officials also have assessed China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine.
And tensions flared last year after Mr. Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon that traversed the United States.
President-elect Donald Trump has selected Chris Wright, a campaign donor and fossil fuel executive, to serve as energy secretary in his upcoming, second administration.
CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, Wright is a vocal advocate of oil and gas development, including fracking, a key pillar of Trump’s quest to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market.
Trump also said in a statement Saturday that Wright will serve on the newly-created National Energy Council, which will be chaired by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s selection for secretary of the Interior.
Burgum will oversee a panel that crosses all executive branch agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation and transportation, Trump said in a previous statement.
Wright has been one of the industry’s loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change and could give fossil fuels a boost, including quick action to end a year-long pause on natural gas export approvals by the Biden administration.
Wright also has criticized what he calls a “top-down” approach to climate by liberal and left-wing groups and said the climate movement around the world is “collapsing under its own weight.”
Consideration of Wright to head the administration’s energy department won support from influential conservatives, including oil and gas tycoon Harold Hamm.
Hamm, executive chairman of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources, a major shale oil company, is a longtime Trump supporter and adviser who played a key role on energy issues in Trump’s first term.
Hamm helped organize an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in April where Trump reportedly asked industry leaders and lobbyists to donate $1 billion to Trump’s campaign, with the expectation that Trump would curtail environmental regulations if re-elected.
The Energy Department is responsible for advancing energy, environmental and nuclear security of the United States. The agency is in charge of maintaining the country’s nuclear weapons, oversees 17 national research laboratories and approves natural gas exports, as well as ensuring environmental cleanup of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex. It also promotes scientific and technological research.
Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who is expected to become chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Trump promised bold choices for his Cabinet, and Wright’s nomination delivers.
“He’s s an energy innovator who laid the foundation for America’s fracking boom. After four years of America last energy policy, our country is desperate for a secretary (of energy) who understands how important American energy is to our economy and our national security,″ Barrasso said of Wright, adding: “Wright will help ensure America remains committed to an all-of-the-above energy policy that puts American families first.”
Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative group that supports fossil fuels, said Wright would be “an excellent choice” for Energy secretary. Pyle led Trump’s Energy Department’s transition team in 2016.
Liberty is a major energy industry service provider, with a focus on technology. Wright, who grew up in Colorado, earned undergraduate degree at MIT and did graduate work in electrical engineering at the University of California-Berkeley and MIT. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which helped launch commercial shale gas production through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
He later served as chairman of Stroud Energy, an early shale gas producer, before founding Liberty Resources in 2010.
