NEWS
April 18, 2012 | By Brian Cronin
BASEBALL URBAN LEGEND : A pitcher once was both the winning pitcher as well as the losing pitcher in a baseball game. STATUS : True. Back in the 2009 season, Joel Hanrahan of the Pittsburgh Pirates received his first win of the season...in a game between the Washington Nationals and the Houston Astros! You can read this past edition of Baseball Urban Legends Revealed to get the specifics, but suffice it to say that it involved a suspended game and a trade.
WORLD
April 3, 2012 | By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY - Mexico picks a president in July, and the winner would be smart to study the lessons of a new film depicting public schools in the country as a giant factory of failure. Classrooms that are crumbling. Pupils who don't understand what they read. Parents who aren't involved. Teachers, often inept, who are protected by a powerful union boss and the politicians who fear her. If this were science class, Mexico's education system might be floating in a jar of formaldehyde, a sorry specimen of how not to prepare young people for the 21st century.
WORLD
April 3, 2012 | By Daniel Hernandez, Los Angeles Times
Javier Guzman, a 25-year-old industrial engineer, eased his SUV toward the curb on a recent Sunday as a masked state police officer in the middle of the road signaled him to pull over. Guzman rolled down his window, greeting the officer with a " buenas tardes . " "Do you live here? Where are you coming from?" the officer asked. "I live here, this car is mine," Guzman replied. He had nothing to hide, yet began coughing nervously. The officer, dressed in black, from combat boots to ski mask, circled the vehicle.
NEWS
April 2, 2012 | By Brian Bennett
The unchecked scourge of drug violence in Mexico and that country's campaign to hobble the cartels is expected to overshadow economic discussions when Mexican President Felipe Calderon visits the White House today. Calderon will be meeting with President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss economic policies, climate change and security issues facing the three North American nations, according to the White House. U.S. officials have been pushing for Mexico to reform the state-owned oil monopoly, Pemex, to open the country's oil sector to private investment and develop new oil and gas reserves.
WORLD
March 21, 2012 | By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
A powerful and prolonged earthquake rocked Mexico on Tuesday, toppling houses near the epicenter in the south, cracking building facades in this sprawling capital and briefly terrifying a population well schooled in natural disasters. Despite the quake's 7.4 magnitude, however, there were no reports of serious injury, according to President Felipe Calderon and officials across the country. Aftershocks rattled the area through the rest of the day. "This is one of the strongest we've ever felt," said Calderon, who urged Mexicans to remain calm.
WORLD
March 21, 2012 | By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
The Roman Catholic Church in Mexico this year took the unusual step of issuing guidelines on how Mexicans should vote in the upcoming presidential election: Candidates should value marriage as a bond between a man and a woman and should place prime importance on "the right to life, starting at conception. " Both ideas were clearly aimed at leftist parties and others who have backed same-sex marriage and abortion, legalized in recent years in Mexico City. Pope Benedict XVI arrives Friday to a Mexico that, officially, is a strictly secular nation.