Idaho consulate: A Mexican Consulate is expected to open in Boise, Idaho, within the next six months, to help serve a significant – and growing – Latino population in Idaho. Mexico will have 50 consulates nationwide after sites in Idaho and Alaska were approved this year.
New subway line: Mexico City's government awarded a $1.7 billion contract to build a new subway line through the south of the capital to a consortium led by the country's top builder, ICA. France's Alstom and a company owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men, are also part of the winning group.
Cubans snatched: Thirty-three illegal immigrants from Cuba and four from Central America were taken from a government bus at gunpoint by half a dozen masked men with assault rifles late Wednesday. Mexico's navy detained the Cubans on June 7, after they were found on a yacht off Cancun. The Central Americans had been working construction jobs in Cancun before being detained.
Tijuana paper goes tabloid: The Tijuana newspaper Frontera has switched from broadsheet format to tabloid. Its price: 4 pesos (nearly 40 cents) Monday through Saturday and 8 pesos on Sundays.
Calderón in Spain: President Felipe Calderón made a state visit to Spain and attended the inauguration of the Expo 2008 international fair on the world's water problems in Zaragoza.
Creel loses post: Sen. Santiago Creel, who Calderón defeated in 2005 for the presidential nomination of the National Action Party, or PAN, was dropped from his post as coordinator for the PAN in the Senate by new party leader German Martínez. Sen. Gustavo Enrique Madero was named in Creel's stead. Creel remains president of the Senate.
The Hulk buys pants: In “The Incredible Hulk,” which opened Friday, the Hulk's alter ego, Bruce Banner, passes through Mexico. He buys rip-resistant expanding pants there, asking the saleswoman, “Tienes más stretchy?”
Journalist threatened: A note threatening a Mexican journalist was found outside the office of a newspaper in Villahermosa on Monday, two days after someone left the severed head of a low-level drug trafficker there. Tabasco state officials said the letter was directed at Juan Padilla, editor of El Correo de Tabasco, which recently carried reports about immigrant smuggling and kidnapping in the area. “You are next,” the note read.
Longest drawing: Monterrey artist Filemón Treviño accomplished his lifelong dream of entering the Guinness Book of Records with a quarter-mile-long pencil drawing as the world's largest. He said he spent 6,000 hours and used 800 pencils to complete his representation of the heart and circulatory system.
Inflation up: Mexico's annual rate of inflation jumped in May to 4.95 percent, its fastest pace since late 2004, on rising food prices.
Compiled by Foreign Editor David Gaddis Smith: (619) 293-2211; david.smith@uniontrib.com
