Record deaths on US-Mexico border
A record number of illegal migrants have died while trying to cross the border from Mexico into the United States, say US customs officers.
At least 464 had died in the past year to 30 September, they said. The figure is a 43% increase on the previous year.
High temperatures in June and July caused many deaths, but others were due to car accidents or drowning.
A more accurate reporting procedure in the Arizona area was another factor in the rise.
According to the Reuters news agency, border patrols also conducted a record number of 2,570 rescue operations during the same period.
Many poor Mexicans try to cross the 3,000-km border with the US in search of a job, and more than a million are arrested every year.
Source: news.bbc.co.uk
Record deaths in U.S.-Mexico crossings
A record 460 migrants died crossing the United States-Mexico border in the last year, the U.S. Border Patrol says.
The toll was pushed higher by unusually hot temperatures and a shift of illegal migration routes through remote deserts.
The death total from Oct. 1, 2004, through Sept. 29 surpassed the previous record of 383 deaths set in 2000, according to Border Patrol statistics.
The dead were mostly Mexicans, many from the states of Mexico, Guanajuato and Veracruz, but also from the impoverished Southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, the Los Angeles Times said.
Migrants continue to die in automobile accidents
US says migrant deaths at record on Mexico border
Deaths of illegal immigrants on the U.S.-Mexico border soared to an all-time high in the past year, as a brutal heatwave killed hundreds in the remote Arizona desert, the U.S. agency in charge of border security said on Monday.
The U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection said at least 464 immigrants died crossing the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border during the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, a rise of 43 percent on the previous year and the highest number since records began.
Spokesman Mario Villarreal, speaking in a phone call from Washington, said well
Mexico pushing for probe in deaths of 2 immigrants
Their ire stoked by plans in Washington for tougher border enforcement, Mexican officials and politicians are pressing for investigations of the deaths of two young men while they were crossing illegally into the United States.
The men's deaths, one near San Diego last week and the other at Laredo in mid-December, are being blamed on the U.S. Border Patrol.
President Vicente Fox's government sent a diplomatic note this week to the Bush administration calling for an investigation into the Dec. 30 shooting death of Guillermo Martinez, 18, on the border near San Diego.
And
U.S. flights to Mexico fail to cut migrant deaths
A U.S. government program that returns illegal immigrants to Mexico by flying them deep into the country is ineffective at reducing the number of deaths in the Arizona desert, analysts said on Wednesday.
The Interior Repatriation Program of daily charter flights from Tucson to Mexico City and Guadalajara was implemented in 2004 to cut deaths in the summer months.
Instead of dropping the migrants near the border as is usually done, the program flies them hundreds of miles inside Mexico. The idea was to deter migrants from immediately reattempting to cross the border via
Beyond the season of death on the US-Mexico border
When I arrived in southern Arizona in the first days of June, temperatures were in the 90s - considerably more bearable than two weeks earlier when the mercury spiked and reached 115 degrees. The heat wave marked the early beginning of another "summer of death" in Arizona's Sonoran Desert: Authorities found the bodies of 12 unauthorized immigrants in the scorched terrain stretching from Yuma in the west to Douglas in the east.
This summer has been especially deadly in Arizona as migrants are perishing - most frequently from heatstroke and dehydration -
Gulf of Mexico dolphin deaths reported
Scientists concerned by bottlenose dolphin deaths in the Gulf of Mexico have reportedly asked for the marine mammal equivalent of a disaster declaration.
A 12-member working group of scientists voted Monday to recommend the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration add the dolphin deaths to an "unusual mortality event" the group declared in March for manatees, the Naples (Fla.) Daily News reported Tuesday.
The scientists suspect "red tide" is responsible for the deaths and NOAA is expected to initiate a study of the microscopic algae bloom's effects on dolphins, manatees, sea turtles and even seabirds.
More: upi.com
Deaths mounting on Mexico’s border security watch
A multimillion-dollar border security program launched in June has realized measurable results, but critics say it has failed to prevent more than 100 deaths since its inception as rival drug cartels fight for dominance along the country’s northern border.
Mexican President Vicente Fox initiated the Mexico Seguro or Safe Mexico program June 11 to address public safety concerns along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Since January, more than 800 have been killed in drug-related violence on the Mexican side of the border with almost daily killings and no arrests reported in Nuevo Laredo.
Although Matamoros and Reynosa have seen
Mexico criticizes U.S. immigration bill focusing mostly on border security
The Mexican government Friday slammed the U.S. Congress for approving the construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, while Mexican human rights groups said it will only cause more deaths.
The U.S. House of Representatives late Thursday approved building 700 miles of fence along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, giving priority for construction in Laredo, Texas. The city is across the border from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where warring drug cartels have been blamed for more than 140 killings this year.
The measure is part of a wider immigration enforcement bill that
More Bodies Discovered Along Texas-Mexico Border
Authorities say four bullet-ridden bodies have been discovered at a ranch 30 miles southeast of the northern Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo.
Meanwhile, four more shooting deaths in two attacks also were reported over the weekend in Nuevo Laredo, across the U.S. border from Laredo.
The four bodies found at a ranch in the rural town of Anahuac included a 13-year-old boy.
Jorge Cantu, a spokesman for the Nuevo Leon state attorney general's office, says the victims had been dead about 36 hours before police found them Sunday.
Cantu says prosecutors were investigating whether killings were related to
Wilma pounds Mexico’s Yucatan
Hurricane Wilma pounded Mexico’s Caribbean coast on Saturday, destroying homes and flooding beach resorts as it meandered slowly over the Yucatan peninsula.
Winds of 120 miles an hour knocked over houses, uprooted trees and kept thousands of tourists in cramped shelters.
The storm has been downgraded to a Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson scale— but its winds and rains were still powerful enough to cause massive damage and threaten lives. Emergency forces have reported no deaths so far.
The stalled storm has battered Playa del Carmen, Cancun and diving centre Cozumel for the past 36 hours and was
