Mexico Ford Fusions

Joe Hinrichs is playing catch-up, but as automaking challenges go, this is the type of problem executives relish.
Its midsize vehicles, namely the Fusion sedan and Escape sport-utility vehicle, are in short supply and executives say sales would be even higher if they could squeeze out more production.
“We could have sold more if we had more,” said Hinrichs, Ford president of the Americas, Thursday at Ford’s Flat Rock assembly plant, which is now supplementing Fusion production in Hermosillo, Mexico.
Hermosillo will continue to make about 250,000 Fusions on three shifts while Flat Rock will add about 100,000 Fusions a year on two shifts.
■ Related story: 1st Ford Fusion built at Flat Rock ready to roll off line
Hinrichs would not say whether it is more costly to make Fusions in Michigan than in Mexico, but Ford’s top two executives, CEO Alan Mulally and Chief Operating Officer Mark Fields, basked in the publicity MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” chat fest showered on the company by broadcasting their Thursday show from the Downriver factory.
Wages are lower in Mexico, but all but 100 to 150 of the 1,400 additional jobs in Flat Rock are second-tier workers, which means they are paid $15.78 an hour compared with first-tier workers who make $28.50 an hour. The rest of the 1,700 Flat Rock workers make the higher wage. Freight costs are less from Michigan than from Mexico to most U.S. dealerships.
“We wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t profitable growth,” Hinrichs said of the $555-million Flat Rock investment and addition of a second shift.
Flat Rock also makes the Ford Mustang and is preparing to add the next-generation Ford Taurus and Lincoln MKS full-size sedans, now built in Chicago. The new body shop is capable of making seven different vehicles from different underpinnings.
“I don't think we’re done yet,” said UAW Local 3000 Chairman Tony Bondy, hinting at more products to come.
Hinrichs would not comment on whether Flat Rock could make the Escape in the future to address shortages of the compact utility vehicle.
Other speculation has been that Ford will move Fiesta production out of Mexico to free capacity for other stronger-selling vehicles.
“We’re going to continue to look at where we need to move product around to leverage all the assets to meet the growing demand for our products,” Hinrichs said.
“I’m spending a lot of time working on the manufacturing plan,” said Hinrichs who rose up the ranks with a number of manufacturing jobs.
Jimmy Settles, head of the UAW Ford division, said the company’s growth could lead to 8,000 more jobs than the 12,000 the automaker has promised by 2015,but he later called that prediction wishful thinking.
“All of our assembly plants are full, but some of our components plants are not,” Settles said. “We’ll take work wherever we can get it.”
Settles noted that a few years ago, the Flat Rock plant, operating with a single shift, was on the chopping block. “We didn't know if this plant would stay open. Look at us now.”
Hinrichs also said that the new Mondeo (the Fusion’s twin) goes on sale today in China. But the car does not have a larger backseat because it tends to be bought by Chinese who like to drive, as opposed to the many cars sold to buyers who prefer to be driven.

The Beast Derailed with illegals on Board

 At least five people are dead and and 18 injured after Mexico's notorious cargo train known as "The Beast" derailed Sunday while carrying hundreds of Central American migrants derailed in a remote region of the country.

The train company and rescue workers were bringing in two cranes to begin lifting the eight derailed cars overnight, and officials said it was possible they might find more victims under the wreckage.

Late Sunday, federal authorities had lowered the death toll to three, but said minutes later that two more had died, and put the toll back at the five announced earlier by Tabasco state officials. It said 18 others were injured, two of them near death.

Thousands of migrants ride the roofs of the train cars on their way north each year, braving brutal conditions for a chance at crossing into the United States.

The Tabasco state government said at least 250 Honduran migrants were on the train heading north from the Guatemala border. Heavy rains had loosened the earth beneath the tracks and shifted the rails, officials said. Mexico's transportation ministry said the train traveled at six miles per hour, which meets standards. In a news statement, the government said the tracks were rebuilt in 2009 and recently received an inspection.

SUMMARY

While the number of Mexicans heading to the U.S. has dropped dramatically, there has been a surge of Central Americans making the 1,000-mile northbound journey, fueled in large part by the rising violence brought to their homelands by the spread of Mexican drug cartels.
Other factors, experts say, are an easing in migration enforcement by Mexican authorities and a false perception that Mexican criminal gangs are not preying on migrants as much as they had been.
Central American migration remains small compared to the numbers of Mexicans still headed north, but steeply rising numbers speak starkly to the violence and poverty at home. The number of Hondurans deported by the U.S. government increased between to 32,000 last year from 24,000 in 2011. Authorities say it's hard to estimate the numbers crossing north.

Dozens of migrants who survived uninjured were sent to a local shelter in the town of Chontalpa.

José Hectór Alfonso Pacheco, of Honduras, said he was riding between two train cars loaded with scrap metal. He said fellow migrants who squeezed in between the ladder and the car were the ones who were killed or injured.

"Many of my Honduran brothers fastened themselves to the train. They couldn't let go. They are the ones who lost their lives," Alfonso said.

Honduran President Porfirio Lobo set up a call center for families to learn information about their loved ones.

The head of civil protection for Mexico's Interior Department, Luís Felipe Puente, released a list of 17 Hondurans ranging in ages from 19 to 54 who were taken to two regional hospitals. Six of them were in serious condition, according to the list he published on his official Twitter account. Puente said another Guatemalan was also wounded and the Central American nation's foreign ministry said two were injured.

The locomotive and first car did not derail and were used to move victims to the nearest hospital, in the neighboring state of Veracruz. The federal government said the accident happened at 1 a.m. in a ranch of Huimanguillo, a marshy area surrounded by lakes and forest that is out of cell phone range.

The Red Cross said dozens of soldiers, marines and civilian emergency workers rushed to the area, which ambulances couldn't reach. Officials were trying to establish air or water links to the scene.

Honduran and Guatemalan diplomats traveled to the area to help identify victims and make sure the injured were getting needed medical attention, the nations' foreign officials said.

Mario Bustillos Borge, the Red Cross chief in Tabasco, described the rescue as a complex situation that was making it difficult to get rapid confirmation of the exact number of dead and injured.

"There are some very high estimates, and others that are more conservative," he told a local radio station, without providing details.

While the number of Mexicans heading to the U.S. has dropped dramatically, there has been a surge of Central Americans making the 1,000-mile northbound journey, fueled in large part by the rising violence brought to their homelands by the spread of Mexican drug cartels.

Other factors, experts say, are an easing in migration enforcement by Mexican authorities and a false perception that Mexican criminal gangs are not preying on migrants as much as they had been.

Central American migration remains small compared to the numbers of Mexicans still headed north, but steeply rising numbers speak starkly to the violence and poverty at home. The number of Hondurans deported by the U.S. government increased between to 32,000 last year from 24,000 in 2011. Authorities say it's hard to estimate the numbers crossing north.

Mexico officials ID bodies as 5 of missing 12

Mexican authorities said Friday they have identified five bodies pulled from a mass grave as some of the 12 people kidnapped three months ago from a Mexico City bar almost within sight of the U.S. Embassy and the city's main boulevard.

Assistant attorney general Renato Sales told reporters that 13 badly decomposed bodies were pulled from a grave covered with cement, quicklime and asbestos discovered Thursday on a rural ranch east of Mexico City.

Ricardo Martinez, a lawyer for relatives of the missing, said there is no doubt the other bodies would also be identified as the missing youths, most of whom are from the rough Mexico City neighborhood of Tepito.

"They're going to wind up identifying all of them,"  because now it's proven that this is organized crime."

Officials said the remains are at federal labs, where experts are using DNA tests, and they expect to have all of them identified soon. There was no immediate explanation about how the 13th body was related to the kidnapped youths.

"At this point we have plainly identified through genetic testing Alan Omar Athiencia," aged 26, said Renato Sales, adding "we have sufficient evidence" to identify the bodies of two other men and two women.

The head of the federal forensics office, Sara Monica Medina, said the bodies of the other four — Gabriela Ruiz Martinez, Rafael Rojo Martinez, Guadalupe Morales Vargas, and Josue Piedra Moreno — had been identified from implants, tattoos and other physical characteristics, and further tests were pending.

Relatives of the victims, angry and agitated by the identification of some of the bodies, gathered outside the headquarters of Mexico City prosecutor's office to demand a meeting with the attorney general on Friday afternoon.

"This is bad, bad, bad," said Ana Maria Vargas, mother of Morales, who had three children and sold lingerie in Tepito. "I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do."

Investigators found a pistol, a shotgun and several pairs of handcuffs at a home on the ranch where the mass grave was found.

The young bar-goers vanished from the Heaven club at midday May 26, just a block from the leafy Paseo de Reforma, the capital's equivalent of the Champs-Elysees.

The bizarre disappearance resonated across the city of 9 million people because many had come to believe it was an oasis from the rampant drug violence that had led to discovery of mass graves elsewhere in the country.

While drug gangs have carried out multiple killings in Mexico City, seldom had they involved so many victims, and seldom have the victims been buried in mass graves, as drug gangs have frequently done in northern Mexico.

Authorities set up a perimeter more than a mile (1.5 kilometers) from the excavation site on a hilly ranch known as La Negra, where federal police and attorney general's trucks and large white vans were seen working the operation. The private property next to Rancho La Mesa Ecological Park is walled and surrounded by oak and pine trees.

The federal Attorney General's Office said agents had received information about possible illegal weapons on the property and obtained a search warrant. When they started looking around, they discovered the grave.

"They found a home that looked like a safe house," Murillo Karam told reporters Thursday. "We were operating under the belief it was a weapons case."

Prosecutors have said the abductions from the Heaven bar were linked to a dispute between street gangs that control local drug sales in the capital's nightclubs and bars. They say the gangs are based in the Tepito neighborhood where most of the missing lived. Two of the missing youths — whose bodies have still not been identified — are sons of imprisoned drug traffickers , but the families insist the missing young people were not involved in drug trafficking.

Surveillance cameras showed several cars pulling up to the bar at midday and taking the victims away. A witness who escaped told authorities that a bar manager had ordered the music turned off, told patrons that authorities were about to raid the establishment and ordered those inside to leave.

Those detained in the Heaven case include club owner Ernesto Espinosa Lobo, known as "The Wolf," who has been charged with kidnapping, as well as another bar owner, a driver and a security guard. A fifth person, Jose de Jesus Carmona, 32, is under arrest pending charges and another is a fugitive.

In another element of the case that is reminiscent of cartel warfare, one of the owners of the Heaven bar, Dax Rodriguez Ledezma, fled authorities only to turn up dead, his body dumped and burned in a rural area with that of his girlfriend and another friend.

 

Mexico School Strike

As most of Mexico's 26 million students return to school this week, more than two million remain at home after teachers launched strikes to protest reforms aimed at improving the country's woeful public education system.

The strikers shut down some 24,000 schools in five impoverished states across southern Mexico, including the violence-plagued Pacific Coast state of Michoacan, in pursuit of a host of demands. Chief among them was a call for cancellation of new federal regulations requiring teachers to take competency exams to be hired and retained. More than 1,500 teachers idled 500,000 other students in the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco to force the resignation of the state's education minister.

Some 20,000 strikers poured into Mexico City to besiege the National Congress and set up camp in the sprawling central plaza, where leaders say they will stay indefinitely. Hundreds trying to force their way into a session of legislators voting on reforms fought with riot police outside the congress building, smashing cars and injuring 22 officers.

At the behest of President Enrique Peña Nieto, congress passed sweeping educational reforms last December. Legislators this month have been negotiating secondary legislation to put the reforms into effect.

"Education is the most powerful instrument for Mexicans to reach new and better opportunities in life," Peña Nieto said Monday, as classes began and strikers entered the Mexican capital.

The striking teachers say they are being used as scapegoats for the real problem: years of inadequate budgets and endemic corruption that have made Mexico's among the worst public education systems in the industrialized world.

“We want the whole national education system to be evaluated,' strike leader Juan Jose Ortega told Reforma newspaper on Monday.

A generation ago most Mexican adults were lucky to finish six years of grade school. Today, practically every Mexican child 15 years old and younger is in school, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But the quality of education varies dramatically. Mexico leads the OECD's 34 member nations in dropouts, with less than half the students who begin eventually earning a diploma.

Federal police jailed Elba Esther Gordillo, the powerful boss of the National Education Workers Syndicate, or SNTE, the largest teachers' union, in February on corruption charges, removing a powerful political obstacle to the reforms. Despite reportedly living on her teacher and union salaries, Gordillo amassed a fortune worth millions of dollars in her more than two decades in control of the 1.2-million member syndicate.

Gordillo's arrest and replacement with an underling subdued the giant union. The strikes this week are being led by the National Education Workers Coordinator, a rival and often more radical union to the larger SNTE. But among the more radical strikers are those of the SNTE's Section 22, which maintains a grip on public education in Oaxaca state. Section 22 launches crippling strikes in the state nearly every spring, pushing for sometimes trifling wage increases and other benefits.

The teachers throughout southern Mexico have been fighting against the reforms all year, marching on Mexico City, striking at home and fighting with state officials. Rioting teachers attacked and burned government and political party offices in the Guerrero state capital of Chilpanincingo in April after legislators approved the reforms.

More Shipping Operations for Mexico

OSLO, Norway-- Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL) has expanded its ocean transportation service from Veracruz, Mexico. Starting in September 2013, WWL will offer two to three sailings per month from Veracruz to service the U.S. East Coast and connect with routes across WWL’s global network, said the company.

Service calls include the ports of Veracruz, Galveston, Brunswick, Charleston and Baltimore; then proceed to Europe calling Antwerp, Bremerhaven and Southampton. The service also offers the capability to connect to routes across WWL’s network around the world.

“WWL is excited to support manufacturer needs for ocean transportation from Mexico to the U.S. East Coast and beyond,” says Rich Heintzelman, EVP and Head of Commercial for Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics Americas. “As we see a shift toward greater domestic manufacturing in Mexico, it will become increasingly important to strengthen export-bound ocean services from Mexico around the globe.”

The first vessel to launch the service will be the Freedom in September 2013.

UK. How do you recover from being struck by lightning?

Summer storms often result in thunder and lightning. Every year a small number of people die from being hit, but what about those who survive?

Lightning is a discharge of static electricity that occurs when there is an imbalance in the electrical charge between the cloud and the earth's surface.

Put very simply, it is a giant electric spark in the sky - a very powerful one. A single bolt could be a billion volts. It can stop a person's heart and cook their internal organs.

On average three people die in the UK each year from lightning strikes, according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa). In the US, deaths have been in decline but are still in the region of 30 a year. More than 85% of those killed are male.

In the UK, up to 60 people every year get struck and survive, but it's estimated that more than three-quarters of them suffer some form of permanent disability.

So what is life like after being struck by lightning?
Eric Brocklebank, then 64, was struck on 9 June 2009 as he boiled sausages for a group of cadets at an event at RAF Digby.
He had just removed a metal barbecuing prong from the water and was holding it in the air when the strike happened
"A bolt of lightning came straight through the gap in the tent. It hit the fork I was holding. That melted into my hand."
 

With lightning strike victims you can sometimes guess at the path of the electricity because of the formation of a Lichtenberg figure. Sometimes known as "lightning tree" or "lightning flower", these intricate, fern-like patterns are caused by capillaries bursting.

In Brocklebank's case, the lightning first caused a small wound in his wrist.

"Then it went down the right side of my body, across my hips and down through my left and right legs. It blew three holes in my right foot and two holes in my left foot."

He was lucky to be surrounded by people who were able to help.

"As luck had it, all of the cadets knew CPR. One of the first people down there was my son. The first responders then worked on me for 20 minutes."
More than three-quarters of lightning survivors suffer some form of permanent disability.
For Brocklebank, the consequences, four years after the strike, are both physical and mental.
 
Where does lightning come from?

Most lightning forms in the lowest portion of Earth's atmosphere known as the troposphere.
It either travels between clouds as sheet lightning or from the clouds to the ground as fork lightning.
Lightning can also form in the ash clouds of volcanoes

He has scar tissue on his lungs and can be easily left short of breath. Sometimes his mobility is fine but occasionally he has to resort to a wheelchair. He is grateful for all the doctors and nurses who have worked on him over the years.

"I've had numerous exploratory examinations. I try to put a brave face on it. I'm not a person who lets things get me down." He has retired from his job as a designer of X-ray systems, but still occasionally works. On one hospital visit he was told: "We don't normally treat people with so many different problems."

Men are four times as likely to be struck as women, says Rospa. This is believed to be because men are statistically more likely to be outdoors. Golfers are probably at greatest risk, because they are likely to be caught in the open far from shelter.

There are three types of lightning strike. A direct strike is when it hits you and goes to earth through you. A side flash is when it hits another object and jumps sideways to hit you. A ground strike is when it hits the ground then travels through it hitting you on the way.

Most people understand the dangers of being on open ground on water or near trees during the height of the storm. But there can still be danger before the storm is apparent and after it appears to have finished.

Most alarmingly, Brocklebank recounts how his house was later struck by lightning, damaging his television and causing him to be treated for shock. He is understandably anxious in stormy weather.

"I'm told lightning only strikes once. I'm told it's an act of God," he says.

Mexico and marijuana: A leaf out of Uruguay's book?

Ten days ago, the lower house of Uruguay's parliament passed a law legalising marijuana, reflecting a growing sentiment in Latin America that the current prohibition on drugs should change. Could Mexico be next?

Arguably, Mexico has lost the most in the war on drugs, with tens of thousands of drug-related killings every year. But there are now calls for Mexico to take a leaf out of Uruguay's book and pass similar legislation.

Tepoztlan is known as a pueblo magico, a magic village. Rugged, jungle-covered mountains ring a small Jesuit conurbation of colonial cobbled streets. At the summit of one of the peaks, a pre-Hispanic temple, Tepozteco, looms above the village, as both guardian and deity, lending a further sense of mysticism to the place.

As such, Tepoztlan is a popular destination for young hipsters and ageing hippies alike. At night, the mezcal flows, and in the more tolerant bars, the unmistakeable wafts of pungent marijuana smoke billow across the customers as jazz-fusion or ambient bands play on stage. The vibe is mellow, to say the least.
 

And if Vicente Fox gets his way, it could become the norm. He wants the bar owner to be allowed to offer you two menus when you come in, one for alcohol, the other for grass.

"Of course, you must enforce the law," the towering six-foot-something former Coca Cola executive told me last year. "But we need other strategies. One, which I am promoting, is legalising the consumption, production and distribution of all drugs."

Vicente Fox, lest we forget, was Mexico's president between 2000 and 2006. The first president to break 71 years of uninterrupted rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI. The man who arguably launched the drug war, as the violence began to turn up several notches towards the end of his time in office.

Now he argues: "We must take away the mammoth amount of money the criminals are getting from this income especially from the market in the United States, the largest drug consumer in the world."

That was last year, with weeks to go before the presidential election which saw his party ousted from office and replaced once again by the PRI.

This year, he went a step further, organising a forum at his ranch in Guanajuato, on the rights and wrongs of drug legalisation. Among the keynote speakers was Jamen Shively, an ex-Microsoft executive who is trying to set up the world's first commercial marijuana brand.

One of the speakers at Mr Fox's forum was Jamen Shively (L), who wants to set up a commercial marijuana brand

For the first time, there is an industry worth up to $100m a year, and yet "no established brand name exists," he told the assembled experts and journalists with disbelief.

A former manager of Microsoft sitting on a stage next to a former executive of Coca Cola, both extolling the virtues of drug legalisation. Clearly there is money to be made in creating the world's first legal Marijuana Incorporated Company.  

Mr Fox's new position on drugs is a U-turn of epic proportions. This was his take on the issue in the year 2000: "We must be against the consumption of drugs in Mexico," he said as presidential candidate. "We should change the law so it's clear we're against the consumption of drugs... There should be an initiative in place to punish drug consumption."

Actually, in Mexico itself, the drug laws are surprisingly liberal. Since 2009 it is legal to possess up to 5g of cannabis, 2g of opiates, 0.5g of cocaine and even 50mg of heroin for personal use.

Laundry is strung outside the house. The water comes from a well in a yard, overgrown with weeds. Only two police officers and Manuela, a three-legged dog, keep watch outside.

This is the residence of the president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, whose lifestyle clearly differs sharply from that of most other world leaders.

 

But nevertheless, the debate rages on. Every day, it seems another high-profile politician in the region comes out in favour of change, whether it's decriminalisation or complete legalisation. Just to voice such ideas as a sitting president 10 years ago would have brought down the ire of the White House upon you, let alone to push legislation through parliament, like Jose Mujica in Uruguay.

There is one well-known Latin American who remains unconvinced, though. Pope Francis, an Argentinian, recently attended the inauguration of a drug rehab clinic in Rio de Janeiro. In his first public address on the issue, he let the world know in no uncertain terms where he stood on the question of legalisation.

"A reduction in the spread and influence of drug addiction will not be achieved by a liberalisation of drug use, as is currently being proposed in various parts of Latin America," the pontiff said.

To be honest, his comments are unlikely to concern the young people of Tepoztlan, who are far more likely to listen to the former left-wing guerrilla, President Jose Mujica in Uruguay, than the Pope.

"Mi medicina" or "My medicine," one of the dreadlocked musicians grinned at me, as she lit her post-gig joint backstage. Soon, she may even be able to buy it at the pharmacy.