Excelsior Newspaper

One year after a well-known journalist was gunned down on a busy city street, federal authorities still have no leads as to who killed Manuel Buendia, a newspaper reported last week. La Jornada newspaper printed large black spaces on many pages of its Thursday edition with the caption, "And a good day to you too, Attorney General," to denounce the lack of a suspect in the killing.

Freedom Newspapers Starts Hispanic Paper: Freedom Newspapers Inc., owner of the Orange County Register, launched a Spanish-language newspaper aimed at Orange County's Hispanic population. The debut edition of Excelsior consists of a 28-page tabloid news section and a six-page broadsheet classified section. About 35,000 copies of the paper will be distributed free on Wednesdays at retail and grocery stores in five cities--Santa Ana, Anaheim, Buena Park, Fullerton and Stanton.

Freedom Newspapers Starts Hispanic Paper: Freedom Newspapers Inc., owner of the Orange County Register, launched a Spanish-language newspaper aimed at Orange County's Hispanic population. The debut edition of Excelsior consists of a 28-page tabloid news section and a six-page broadsheet classified section. About 35,000 copies of the paper will be distributed free on Wednesdays at retail and grocery stores in five cities--Santa Ana, Anaheim, Buena Park, Fullerton and Stanton.

One year after a well-known journalist was gunned down on a busy city street, federal authorities still have no leads as to who killed Manuel Buendia, a newspaper reported last week. La Jornada newspaper printed large black spaces on many pages of its Thursday edition with the caption, "And a good day to you too, Attorney General," to denounce the lack of a suspect in the killing.

The dead were mainly mothers and grandmothers, middle-aged women who routinely stopped by the Casino Royale for an afternoon game of bingo or a shot at the slot machines. At least 52 people were killed Thursday when armed men set fire to the gaming hall in a busy commercial center of Mexico's wealthiest city. The attack, carried out in broad daylight, was the deadliest to target Mexican civilians in nearly five years of bloody drug warfare. "Mexico has witnessed one of the most terrible acts of barbarism in memory," President Felipe Calderon said Friday as he declared three days of national mourning.

Mexico's consul general in El Paso, Tex. has accused U.S. officials of violating the human rights of at least 2,000 undocumented Mexican citizens last year, according to a published report Saturday. The diplomat, Enrique Buj Flores, was quoted in the Excelsior newspaper as saying that last year there were 2,077 cases reported to the consulate about abuse of rights. He said these included alleged beatings and molestation of Mexicans by U.S. authorities.

Mexican film star Maria Felix, one of Latin America's most popular stars of the last 40 years, told Mexico City's Excelsior newspaper that plans for her return to the screen after 20 years might be off. Last year, it was announced that Felix would star in "Eternal Splendor," which was to have started filming in Paris in August. In an interview published over the weekend, she acknowledged that "it is probable that the project might be reconsidered."

An average 60,000 firearms enter Mexico illegally from the United States every month, a newspaper reported Tuesday. Citing figures from border agents in Nogales, bordering the Arizona town of the same name, the Excelsior newspaper said, "Most of the weapons are handguns and automatic rifles, which are more efficient than the Mexican army's arsenal." U.S. Border Patrol agents have been cooperating with Mexican officials in a three-month-old operation to try to stop the illegal arms traffic.

Mexicana Airlines blamed slow maintenance work for dozens of cancellations of domestic flights Wednesday and Thursday. At least 20 flights from Mexico City to other Mexican airports were canceled Wednesday for lack of aircraft, the government newspaper El Nacional reported. Seven more were canceled within a two-hour period early Thursday, according to the Excelsior newspaper's national news wire. The Mexico City airport was packed with stranded travelers, the newspaper said.

Chihuahua state Atty. Gen. Jose Miller said authorities have located six more escaped convicts, and their arrest is expected soon, the Excelsior newspaper reported Friday. A total of 34 convicts escaped, four people were killed and eight others were injured during a jailbreak and riot Tuesday in Chihuahua, 225 miles south of El Paso, Tex. Twenty-six of the escapees were rounded up Tuesday and Wednesday, according to Gabriel Nahas, director of Chihuahua state's 14 prisons.

Rogelio Cardenas Sarmiento, 51, founding editor in chief of the respected Mexico City business news daily El Financiero, died Friday of glandular cancer at his home in the capital. The son of a columnist for the Mexico City Excelsior newspaper, Cardenas graduated from Universidad Anahuac in Mexico City, then went to England to study at Cambridge and complete a master's degree in economic development at the University of Sussex.