A US anti-kidnapping expert who has negotiated the release of dozens of hostages in Latin America has been abducted by gunmen in Mexico.
Felix Batista, a Cuban-American from Miami, was kidnapped as he stepped outside a restaurant to answer a phone call in the northern city of Saltillo.
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A major drug cartel has infiltrated the Mexican attorney general’s office and may have paid a spy inside the US embassy for details of the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s DEA operations, Mexican prosecutors said on Monday.
The DEA’s intelligence chief expressed concern about the alleged spy’s claims but said he couldn’t confirm that the embassy had been infiltrated and that it was too early to pull out undercover agents for fear their identities may have been compromised.
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It’s been 40 years since Mexico began taxing vehicles. Originally, the money was meant to fund the Olympic Games that took place there in 1968, but the income has apparently proven indispensable as it’s still collected to this day. If proposed legislation from the Partido Verde Ecologista (a.k.a. the Mexican Green Party) passes, though, hybrid vehicles may soon be exempted from that tax plus the 15-percent consumption tax.
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It may have taken Mexico a while to produce its first car, but at least when it finally took place, it did so with style. When we originally heard of the Mastretta MXT, it was said to be powered by a stock Ford Duratec four-banger. Fortunately, the production machine will be blessed with a much more impressive version of the 2.0L mill, one tuned by the maestros at Cosworth, who have also bestowed the block with a turbocharger. Claimed output is 240 horses, which is plenty to move the MXT along at an impressive clip due to its light weight of just 900 kilograms — just a bit shy of a ton. The run to sixty is dispatched in under five seconds and top speed is up around a buck-fifty.
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Roberto, a 25-year-old man who didn’t want his last name used for fear of retribution, said he, five other men and a teenage boy were returning from a nearby town recently when they were stopped by soldiers.
Roberto said they were beaten, bound, blindfolded and taken to a military camp.