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The man accused in the savage beating of a Canadian tourist says he was forced to sign a confession he never read. Jose Ramon Acosta Quintero admits he hit Sheila Nabb in a hotel elevator, but denies he wanted to kill her.

He told the newspaper Noroeste that he understands the authorities are looking to clean up Mazatlan’s image because the victim was a Canadian tourist, but argues they can do that without charging him with attempted murder.

Mexican authorities probing an alleged child-trafficking ring which aimed to pass on babies to Irish couples for adoption have detained six women and taken 10 children into custody.

The six suspects and children, aged between two months and two years, were held in the past week in western Mexico, said a spokesman for the attorney general’s office in Guadalajara city, Jalisco state, on Tuesday, January 17, 2012. “Three people were provisionally detained on Friday and three others were taken in on Monday,” Lino Gonzalez told AFP.

Support for the frontrunner in Mexico’s presidential race, opposition candidate Enrique Pena Nieto, fell by 2.6 percentage points in the first poll of the year after a series of public gaffes dented his lead.

The poll, conducted by Consulta Mitofsky, showed the former governor from the populous State of Mexico garnering 42 percent support when compared to the other two top candidates, a dip from the last survey in November when he received 44.6 percent.

A reality show producer charged with murdering his wife during a Mexican vacation is dropping his extradition fight and will stand trial in Cancun, his lawyer said Tuesday. More >

The United States will cut the number of National Guard troops patrolling the border with Mexico next year as it steps up other surveillance on the porous southern border, officials said Tuesday.

The effort reflects “a new strategic approach” that includes “a number of new multi-purpose aerial assets equipped with the latest surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities,” according to a statement from the departments of Homeland Security and Defense.

The suspected leader of the Los Zetas drug cartel in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz was arrested following a long shootout with marines, the Navy Secretariat said.

Raul Lucio Hernandez Lechuga, considered one of the “37 most dangerous criminals” in Mexico, was arrested Monday in the city of Cordoba, the secretariat said.

The front-runner for Mexico’s presidential election next year found himself on the defensive Monday after a gaffe-filled weekend.

Enrique Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, had his first major stumble of the campaign season when he couldn’t name three books that he had read.

Mexico’s two most powerful criminal gangs are locked in a titanic battle for control of the country’s heartland in a struggle that’s redrawn Mexico’s map of violence.

Violence has dropped along the U.S. border, with Ciudad Juarez, once considered the most violent city in the world, seeing a 35 percent decline in homicides this year.

That good news is balanced by bad news in Guadalajara, Culiacan and Veracruz, where the Sinaloa cartel, whose bulwark has always been Mexico’s Pacific coast, and the Zetas, a violent gang that originally was created to protect the Gulf cartel along the Gulf of Mexico coast, are locked in a spiraling struggle that’s seen each gang invade the other’s territory.

Mexico’s economic growth quickened in the third quarter, beating estimates as services grew at the fastest pace in two years even as waning factory
activity could herald slower growth ahead.

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