Latest news with #CentralAmerica
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Walmart's Mexico unit posts 10% dip in Q2 profit even as sales rise
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Walmart's Mexico and Central America unit reported a 10% dip in its second-quarter net profit on Wednesday, coming in at 11.23 billion Mexican pesos ($598 million). Revnues for the quarter were up 8% from the same quarter in 2024 to reach 246.25 billion pesos. ($1 = 18.7654 Mexican pesos at end-June)
Reuters
6 hours ago
- Business
- Reuters
Walmart's Mexico unit posts 10% dip in Q2 profit even as sales rise
MEXICO CITY, July 16 (Reuters) - Walmart's Mexico and Central America unit reported a 10% dip in its second-quarter net profit on Wednesday, coming in at 11.23 billion Mexican pesos ($598 million). Revnues for the quarter were up 8% from the same quarter in 2024 to reach 246.25 billion pesos. ($1 = 18.7654 Mexican pesos at end-June)
News.com.au
a day ago
- Politics
- News.com.au
David vs Goliath: Inside the legal battle to help Trump's deportees in El Salvador
A small group of overstretched and outmatched lawyers is fighting for the rights of men deported by the Trump administration and held in a notorious Salvadoran prison -- a David vs. Goliath battle that may end up in international courts. In a half-empty old schoolhouse outside San Salvador, lawyer Rene Valiente is trying to determine the fate of 252 Venezuelan migrants expelled from the United States in March without any kind of court hearing. He is the investigations coordinator for Cristosal, a human rights NGO that is challenging El Salvador's all-powerful president, Nayib Bukele, and his even more powerful US ally, President Donald Trump. For months, Valiente and his team have gone from jail to ministry to courthouse, trying to find out more about those being held at the tightly controlled CECOT facility, and to have the men's legal rights recognized. With both the Trump and Bukele administrations stonewalling, the lawyers have had little success. Valiente has no visitation rights, no proof the men are alive, and not even an official list of their names. "We've asked for information, but have repeatedly been rebuffed," Valiente told AFP. "They are in a kind of legal black hole." "We've filed 70 applications for habeas corpus. None have been resolved," he said, referring to prisoners' right to challenge their detention. On a laptop, Valiente shows a database of detainees that he and his colleagues have managed to cobble together despite the official silence. Some on the list were spotted by distraught family members in Hollywood-style images of chained and shorn deportees being bundled off planes and into jail. Others are like Jhoanna Sanguino, who saw her 24-year-old nephew's name on a list of detainees leaked to the media. "It's overwhelming to know nothing," she said. "Is he being fed? Does he get a sip of water? How is his health? - 'Crime against humanity'? - Trump has claimed the Venezuelans deported were "criminals" and "barbarians", mostly made up of gangsters, rapists, and murderers. But Cristosal's database tells a different story. The group has registered 152 individuals so far, and 90 percent of them have no criminal record. Cristosal's work appears to have earned the ire of Bukele -- who has consolidated power and packed the courts with allies since being elected in 2019. Valiente's colleague Ruth Lopez was abruptly detained in May and accused of illicit enrichment, a charge she denies. Days before her detention, she told AFP she had been working on documenting forced disappearances under Bukele's government. She is one of tens of thousands of people who have been detained under Bukele's state of emergency, often without court orders, the right to phone calls or even to see a lawyer. A further crackdown seems likely. Cristosal director Noah Bullock said that in Bukele's El Salvador "speaking out or asking something that is not aligned with the government entails the risk of being arrested." The lawyers are determined to help the Venezuelans, but expect little from a country where the president has near-absolute control. "We want to document these grave human rights violations, to leave a trace. For the moment we are exhausting all domestic legal channels" said Valiente. Ultimately, they may look to bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court, whose treaty, the Rome Statute, was ratified by El Salvador in 2016. "The Salvadoran government is obligated to report on the condition of the prisoners," said Venezuelan former diplomat Walter Marquez, whose Amparo Foundation represents dozens of the detainees. "Failing to do so is a crime against humanity, according to the Rome Statute, and could lead to international prosecution." Salvador Rios, a Salvadoran lawyer hired by the government in Caracas to represent 30 deportees, similarly believes that "sooner or later" Bukele will face justice.
France 24
a day ago
- Politics
- France 24
David vs Goliath: Inside the legal battle to help Trump's deportees in El Salvador
In a half-empty old schoolhouse outside San Salvador, lawyer Rene Valiente is trying to determine the fate of 252 Venezuelan migrants expelled from the United States in March without any kind of court hearing. He is the investigations coordinator for Cristosal, a human rights NGO that is challenging El Salvador's all-powerful president, Nayib Bukele, and his even more powerful US ally, President Donald Trump. For months, Valiente and his team have gone from jail to ministry to courthouse, trying to find out more about those being held at the tightly controlled CECOT facility, and to have the men's legal rights recognized. With both the Trump and Bukele administrations stonewalling, the lawyers have had little success. Valiente has no visitation rights, no proof the men are alive, and not even an official list of their names. "We've asked for information, but have repeatedly been rebuffed," Valiente told AFP. "They are in a kind of legal black hole." "We've filed 70 applications for habeas corpus. None have been resolved," he said, referring to prisoners' right to challenge their detention. On a laptop, Valiente shows a database of detainees that he and his colleagues have managed to cobble together despite the official silence. Some on the list were spotted by distraught family members in Hollywood-style images of chained and shorn deportees being bundled off planes and into jail. Others are like Jhoanna Sanguino, who saw her 24-year-old nephew's name on a list of detainees leaked to the media. "It's overwhelming to know nothing," she said. "Is he being fed? Does he get a sip of water? How is his health? 'Crime against humanity'? Trump has claimed the Venezuelans deported were "criminals" and "barbarians", mostly made up of gangsters, rapists, and murderers. But Cristosal's database tells a different story. The group has registered 152 individuals so far, and 90 percent of them have no criminal record. Cristosal's work appears to have earned the ire of Bukele -- who has consolidated power and packed the courts with allies since being elected in 2019. Valiente's colleague Ruth Lopez was abruptly detained in May and accused of illicit enrichment, a charge she denies. Days before her detention, she told AFP she had been working on documenting forced disappearances under Bukele's government. She is one of tens of thousands of people who have been detained under Bukele's state of emergency, often without court orders, the right to phone calls or even to see a lawyer. A further crackdown seems likely. Cristosal director Noah Bullock said that in Bukele's El Salvador "speaking out or asking something that is not aligned with the government entails the risk of being arrested." The lawyers are determined to help the Venezuelans, but expect little from a country where the president has near-absolute control. "We want to document these grave human rights violations, to leave a trace. For the moment we are exhausting all domestic legal channels" said Valiente. Ultimately, they may look to bodies like the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court, whose treaty, the Rome Statute, was ratified by El Salvador in 2016. "The Salvadoran government is obligated to report on the condition of the prisoners," said Venezuelan former diplomat Walter Marquez, whose Amparo Foundation represents dozens of the detainees. "Failing to do so is a crime against humanity, according to the Rome Statute, and could lead to international prosecution." Salvador Rios, a Salvadoran lawyer hired by the government in Caracas to represent 30 deportees, similarly believes that "sooner or later" Bukele will face justice. © 2025 AFP
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
The US has a plan to breed millions of flies and drop them from planes. Here's why
Hundreds of millions of flies dropping from planes in the sky might sound like a horrible nightmare, but experts say such a swarm could be the livestock industry's best defense against a flesh-eating threat poised to invade the southwestern border of the United States. An outbreak of New World screwworms — the larval form of a type of fly that's known to nest in the wounds of warm-blooded animals and slowly eat them alive — has been spreading across Central America since early 2023, with infestations recorded in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador. Most Central American countries hadn't seen an outbreak in 20 years. The fly reached southern Mexico in November, sparking concern among US agricultural industry officials and triggering the closure of several border-area cattle, horse and bison trading ports. It wouldn't be the first time the US has had to battle these invasive bugs. The nation mostly eradicated the New World screwworm populations in the 1960s and 1970s by breeding sterilized males of the species and dispersing them from planes to mate with wild, female flies. The strategy — essentially fighting flies with flies — slowly degraded the insects' populations by preventing them from laying more eggs. Now, as the insects continue to spread north officials are hoping the approach could work again. However, today only one facility in Panama breeds sterilized New World screwworms for dispersal, and hundreds of millions more sterile flies are needed to slow the outbreak, according to a June 17 letter from 80 US lawmakers. The next day, the US Department of Agriculture announced plans to open a 'fly factory' in a yet to be determined town near the Texas-Mexico border. But the process of defeating the screwworm may not be quick — or inexpensive. New World screwworms are the parasitic larva of a metallic blue blow fly species called Cochliomyia hominivorax. Unlike all other blow flies native to the Western Hemisphere, the New World screwworm feeds on the flesh of living animals, rather than dead ones, said Dr. Phillip Kaufman, a professor and head of the department of entomology at Texas A&M University. The flesh-eating maggots go for most warm-blooded animals, including horses and have also been known to infect domestic pets and even humans in rare cases, Kaufman said. 'After mating, the female fly finds a living host, lands on its wound, and will lay up to 200 to 300 eggs,' Kaufman explained. 'After 12 to 24 hours, those eggs all hatch, and they immediately start burrowing and feeding on the tissue of that animal, causing very, very large wounds to form.' After the larvae feed on the tissue with their sharp mouth hooks for several days, they drop from the animal and burrow into the ground to emerge later as fully grown adult flies, according to Thomas Lansford, the deputy executive director and assistant state veterinarian for the Texas Animal Health Commission. Since the outbreak began in 2023, there have been more than 90,000 New World screwworm infestations reported, according to a USDA spokesperson. Treatment for infested cattle often involves cleaning, antiseptic treatment and coverings for the wounds, Lansford said. If left untreated, the flies can kill an animal in a matter of one to two weeks and spread to others, posing a threat to the livelihood of ranchers. 'It's a daily chore to provide those inspections to our livestock, just to make sure they're not infested,' said Stephen Diebel, a rancher and the first vice president of the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. 'We know the incredible economic impact an infestation would cause.' There are no known vaccinations or effective repellant methods to prevent infestation, Diebel said. Instead, during warmer months, ranchers should avoid branding, tagging and other procedures that create potential entry points for the screwworms in livestock, he recommended. The tropical fly is less active in the winter. While regional cattle trading is thought to be a major way the fly populations travel, Diebel said infestations can also affect wildlife such as deer, birds and rodents, making surveillance of the parasite's spread even more challenging. Just like a caterpillar goes into a cocoon before becoming a butterfly, the New World screwworm becomes a black, pill-sized pupa before emerging as an adult fly, Kaufman explained. In a sterile fly production facility, the pupae are subjected to high-energy gamma rays that break down the DNA of the males, damaging their sex chromosomes, according to the USDA. The result: impotent adult flies that cause female mates to lay unfertilized eggs. The amount of radiation the male flies are exposed to does not pose a danger to animals or humans, according to the USDA. But since the female flies only mate one time in their short, 20-day lifespan, once populations are exposed to sterile males, the populations die out over the course of months or years, depending on the size of the outbreak. While it is unclear how dispersal would work in the US in the event of an outbreak, Kaufman said the adult flies are typically loaded into temperature-controlled containers and dropped from planes. However, there's no need to panic about the fly drops coming to a suburb near you, he said — they usually target sparsely populated rural areas, since the flies have no interest in urban environments. At the Panama–United States Commission for the Eradication and Prevention of Screwworm Infestation in Livestock (COPEG) facility, about 100 million sterilized flies are produced and dispersed aerially in affected regions each week. Currently, the dispersal efforts have been focused in the southern regions of Mexico and throughout Central America, where cases of infestation have been reported, according to COPEG's website. The new US dispersal facility is expected to be located at the Moore Air Base in Hidalgo County, Texas, and to cost $8.5 million, per the release. The location and price tag of the production facility, or the 'fly factory' itself, has not been revealed, but lawmakers estimate it could cost around $300 million. In addition to the new sterile fly facilities, the USDA also announced $21 million plans to renovate an old fly factory in Mexico by late 2025. While the plans are expensive, it's a price worth paying to save the multibillion-dollar livestock industry, Diebel said. 'When you offset the $300 million to the $10 billion of economic impact these flies would have, it's an easy trade-off to understand,' Diebel said. 'Having (a domestic production facility) here is super important … to control the distribution of those sterile flies more efficiently.' Shortly after the June 18 announcement, the USDA shared plans to begin reopening livestock trading ports in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico that closed last year, citing 'good progress' in surveillance and sterile fly dispersal efforts throughout Mexico. COPEG did not immediately respond to request for comment on further details about the current progress of the US dispersal initiatives. Editor's Note: This story has been updated to reflect the latest screwworm infestation numbers from COPEG.
