News Summary for June 3rd, 2010

++ “Gregate” continues…The Dialogue for the Reconstruction of Mexico leftist front, composed of the PRD, PT and Convergencia, had yet to define whether it would keep Gregorio Sánchez as its candidate for governor Quintana Roo. PRD deputies’ leader Alejandro Encinas said the party must find a replacement, otherwise it would not be able to participate in the elections. Gregorio Sánchez Martínez’s legal team filed an appeal against the indictment handed down by a judge on Wednesday… Gregorio Sánchez’s lawyer Eduardo Luengo Creel said the way the indictment was handled was unusual and unprecedented.

++ Candidates for governors in 12 states agreed to sign a letter proposed by the Common Cause civil group pledging to make public their assets and properties, fight corruption in government and the private sector and behave honorably in office.

++ Drug traffickers every year shift between 19 billion and 29 billion dollars from the United States into Mexico, said John Morton, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for U.S. Immigration and Customs. He said it was regrettable that the governments of both countries have not done enough to stem that flow of illegal funds. At the presentation of the Binational Study on Illicit Assets Mexico-United States, Morton said that the death of Mexican citizen Anastasio Hernández Rojas, after being beaten by 20 border patrol agents last weekend, was a tragic event.

++ Officials at Webb county in Laredo, Texas, seized 147 high power rifles that were to be sent to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.

++ Mexico is seeking to bring about a high-level UN Security Council meeting on the topic of transnational organized crime so that the U.N. body would discuss the matter by broaching specific issues, said Mexico’s U.N. representative, Claude Heller.

++ Mexico City Attorney General Miguel Ángel Mancera said there was no evidence of bodies or disappearances in Tepito, denying a flurry of rumors about them earlier. The mother of the children who had allegedly been stolen from Tepito, Irma Merino, told investigators that her husband, Javier Covarrubias, had lied, and that is why he fled from justice.