Tempting shoppers from Mexico into Texas
It’s not just family and friends that draw travelers from Mexico to Texas this time of the year.
“It’s shopping there. A lot of shopping,” said Mexico City shopper Jenny Lo-Re.
She timed her shopping spree to take advantage of holiday bargains.
“I need clothes, I need bags, I need things for the hair. I need everything,” Lo-Re said.
Prices for brand names are steep in Mexico, and not just in the designer boutiques. Shoppers say it pays to cross the border and stock up, even with travel expenses.
Shoppers from Mexico spend more than a billion dollars a year, just in South Texas.
Lo-Re was heading to Houston, the San Marcos outlet mall and San Antonio, where a new upscale center just opened.
More: khou.com
MEXICO CITY – Federal agents have rescued an American woman kidnapped in Texas and held in northern Mexico, the Attorney General's office said Friday.
Police arrested the woman's captor, Simon Andres Garcia, during the rescue operation late Thursday in the parking lot of a Church's Chicken in Monclova, officials said in a statement. Garcia's nationality was unclear.
The woman, who was in a car with Garcia at the time of the arrest, was able to get the attention of federal authorities, the statement said. She told them she was kidnapped on Aug. 16 in San Antonio, Texas.
Source: Signonsandeigo.com
Texas residents flee Rita to Mexico crime city
Thousands of jittery Texas residents piled into cars, trucks and buses and fled south of the Rio Grande on Friday, risking refuge in Mexico's most violent city rather than face Hurricane Rita's wrath.
Texans and Mexican migrant workers piled across bridges to Nuevo Laredo, from Laredo Texas, throughout the morning, some hauling cherished family valuables in pickup trucks, others escaping with little more than their passports.
"We didn't expect to get to Mexico. ... We just brought our clothes and some food and left everything else at home," Maria Leblanc of Houston said as she
Texas fugitive arrested in Mexico
A fugitive sex offender from Del Valle has been located in Mexico after being featured on America’s Most Wanted, the Texas Attorney General's office announced Tuesday.
The Attorney General’s Fugitive Unit had been seeking Charles Randall Brunson, 38, for violating his parole. Brunson was convicted in 1997 in Travis County for sexually assaulting his four-year-old daughter.
After the America’s Most Wanted report aired in late September, a couple living in Jalisco, Mexico, contacted authorities to say Brunson was living in the area. The Attorney General’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice worked with Mexican officials
Trade Mission builds Texas-Mexico business ties
For a sixth summer, Texas officials headed south for a trade mission to Mexico, focusing on developing energy-related trade between Texas and its southern neighbor.
"It went exceedingly well," said Victor Carrillo, chairman of the Railroad Commission and leader of the recent mission. "From my perspective, it was one of the most well-attended of the trade missions."
In fact, he said, "we're already making plans for next year."
His visit earlier this month continued a tradition begun by former Railroad Commissioner Charles Matthews, who saw the potential in cooperation between the Lone Star State and
Mexico's Rio Grande water debt repaid
A long-standing Rio Grande water debt that pitted drought-stricken South Texas farmers against Mexico appeared resolved Friday when Gov. Rick Perry announced the debt was paid in full.
"Our farmers, ranchers and cities will have 100 percent of the water they are entitled to, not just for the rest of this year, but for all of 2006," Perry said in a statement. "Now that the debt is paid, both countries must continue to work in good faith to meet the water demands of citizens on both sides of the Rio Grande for years to come."
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Exchange brings exhibit of art from Mexico
The first art exchange between Austin and its sister city of Saltillo, Mexico, has opened at Mexic-Arte Museum in Austin.
"Hermanados en el Arte 2005: Austin/Saltillo" has had a short stay at Mexic-Arte, closing there today before reopening at the nearby La Peña center Dec. 2. It will remain at La Peña through Dec. 31.
The exhibit, whose title translates as "Friendship in the Arts," features more than 40 works by 15 artists in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico.
Before Texas declared its independence from Mexico in 1836, the region was part of the Mexican state
For migrants passing through Mexico, full detention centers often mean they are set free
After two months of dodging thieves and thundering trains during the perilous journey from Honduras, Marco Antonio Vasquez has finally reached the Rio Grande.
Now plotting his next move, the 26-year-old displaced factory worker sits on the steps of a Reynosa church and worries aloud that, if the Border Patrol catches him, he'll be deported and his hopes of finding a job in Houston will be dashed.
What he may or may not realize is that he would likely be freed in Texas, even after American agents stop
Gulf of Mexico oil ops in 'relatively good shape' after Rita - Texas governor
Oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and the hub of refineries along the southern coast of the US appear to have survived Hurricane Rita without major damage, the governor of Texas said on Sunday.
'The refineries appear to be in relatively good shape,' Governor Rick Perry told Fox News Sunday.
One pipeline was ruptured 'but it's being repaired as we speak,' Perry said.
While oil companies said it would take some time to figure out the full effect of the storm, Perry expressed cautious optimism
Foreign bid on Dallas to Mexico rail line
Louis Repa has been farming his land near Granger for almost 50 years. Ten years ago he dodged a proposed light rail line that was to run right through the middle of his corn field.
Now, the Trans-Texas Corridor threatens to do the same.
"If it goes through this piece of property and I have 20 acres on this side and then have another 20 acres on this other side. It's going to be hard to get over here to this other plot that's going to be left. It's just going to make a
All Gulf of Mexico crude prod halted
Essentially all Gulf of Mexico crude oil production and 30 percent of U.S. oil refinery production was shut as Hurricane Rita approached the Texas and Louisiana coasts.
Oil prices dropped Friday afternoon as Rita was downgraded to a Category 3 at maximum sustained winds of 125 mph.
About 72 percent of natural gas production was shut in by Friday, the U.S. Minerals Management Service said.
The MMS said 99.1 percent of crude production was shut.
The storm has forced shut 15 big U.S. refineries, adding to the four that had remained shut after Hurricane Katrina
