Javier Sicilia, a well-known Mexican poet who writes for a news magazine called Proceso, Sunday 8 May asked for five minutes of silence after a rally in Mexico City’s main square, where people yelled “Enough is enough” in the fight against Mexico’s drug war.
An estimated 150,000 people attended the rally to call on the government to change its strategy in this war.
The violence and the number of victims in the fight against the drug cartels has increased in recent weeks, even though the government argues that almost all the dead are members of drug cartel gangs. Sicilia’s 24-year-old son was found dead last month along with six other people, and authorities have recovered more than 350 bodies from graves and pits around the country, described as “collateral damage”.
The five minutes of silence were to commemorate the city’s more than 35,000 victims of violence in Mexico’s war against drugs in the four and a half years since the president, Felipe Calderón, ordered the military in to fight the cartels.
Links to other sites: BBC, New York Times
Argentina’s Senate voted 33 – 27, with three abstentions, to permit gays to get married legally. The bill was supported by left-of-centre President Cristina Fernandez, whose government is under pressure in the polls. Mexico City’s tourism office announced that it would pay an all-expenses paid vacation to the first Argentine gay couple married.
A justice of the peace in General Pico, in the central province of La Pampa, said she would refuse to marry gay couples on principle. “The Bible taught me to obey the law of God first, then the law of man”, she said. She said she would delegate the job to her deputy.
Links to other sites: BBC, Dallas News, La Nación (Spa),
The city of Puebla, 120 km east of Mexico City, has inaugurated a taxi service for women by women who drive pink cars. In Puebla the drivers undertake 160 hours of first aid and self-defense training before they can drive a pink taxi. Their passengers can preen themselves in two mirrors in the back seat and drive in the knowledge that their whereabouts are tracked by GPS, reports Le Monde. Fares are about 10 percent higher than usual.
Other cities in addition to Mexico City are studying the concept with a view to copying it. Dubai and Moscow already have women-only taxis, reports the Korea Times, which says that Seoul is to introduce the concept in December 2009.
In 2008, 87 women reported being raped in taxis in Mexico City and a woman is murdered every six hours country-wide.
IOC President Jacques Rogge, © 2009 IOC All rights reserved
Copenhagen, Denmark (GenevaLunch) – Jacques Rogge, the president of the Olympic Committee, was re-elected president of the Movement by a vote of 88-1 today, 9 October for a final four-year term. Rogge said his main priority will be to concentrate on the new Olympic Youth Games, which kick off in Singapore in the summer of 2010, followed by the Youth Winter Games in Innsbruck in 2012.
Rogge has been president since 2001. He competed in the sailing events at the Games in Mexico City in 1968, in Munich in 1972, and in Montreal in 1976.
