Pilgrim's Pride to acquire Tyson foods Mexican poultry business

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Greeley-based Pilgrim's Pride lost the bidding war for Hillshire Brands to Tyson Foods, but on Monday said it has reached an agreement to purchase Tyson's poultry business in Mexico.
JBS SA, the parent to Pilgrim's Pride, will pay $575 million for Tyson poultry units in Mexico and Brazil. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.
Tyson Foods' Mexican business will be acquired through Pilgrim's Pride. The Brazilian business is to be acquired by JBS Foods, also a JBS SA subsidiary.
Tyson will use the money to pay down debt related to its $7.75 billion purchase of Hillshire Brands, president and CEO Donnie Smith said.
Tyson said JBS and Pilgrim's Pride expect to keep the Brazil and Mexico operations working to capacity with the existing workforce. The company also said labor contracts in both countries will be maintained.
Earlier this year, both Pilgrim's Pride and Tyson Foods made bids for Hillshire Brands Co., with Tyson winning the bidding war after Pilgrim's Pride withdrew its proposal to acquire Hillshire in early June.
The Mexican business, Tyson de Mexico, is based in Gomez Palacio in north central Mexico. It has three plants and employs more than 5,400 people at its plants, offices and seven distribution centers.
Tyson's Brazil operations, Tyson do Brazil, involves three production plants, two in Santa Catarina and one in the state of Parano. The Brazilian operation employs 5,000 people.
Bill Lovette, president and CEO of Pilgrim's Pride Corp. CEO Bill Lovette said the deal demonstrates Pilgrim's "continued commitment to our growth strategy of disciplined acquisitions." The acquisitions, Lovette said in a statement, add company value for Pilgrim's shareholders and strengthen the company's position in the market.
Tyson said it intends to focus on growing its poultry business in Asia, which includes three poultry plants in China and majority ownership of two poultry plants in India.
"Longer term, we remain committed to our international business and will continue to explore opportunities to extend our international presence," Smith said.
Meanwhile, Tyson, the biggest U.S. meat processor, said it will close three struggling U.S. plants. A plant in Cherokee, Iowa, where 450 people work, will close Sept. 27. Plants in Santa Teresa, N.M., where 200 people work, and in Buffalo, N.Y., which employs 300, are expected to shutter in the first half of 2015.

The Real U.S. Mexican Border

Tornillo-Guadalupe international bridge To Mexico Open in few Weeks

Mexico side of Tornillo-Guadalupe international bridge to be finished in August

After three years of delays, the Mexican side of the Tornillo-Guadalupe international bridge will finally be completed in August, Mexican officials said.
Officials said that the new border crossing will not be operational until the end of the year when inspection facilities are built and a road connects the port of entry with a major highway running into the interior of Mexico.
The completion of the port of entry is about a month behind schedule. In late January, the U.S. Consulate in Juárez and the Mexican Consulate in El Paso said in a joint announcement that work on the Mexican side of the bridge was going to be finished in July.
Last week, the bridge project was a little more than 90 percent complete, according to the Mexican Department of Transport and Communications, or SCT.
"We are practically on schedule," said Efraín Olivares Lira, the general director of the SCT in Chihuahua. He said the bridge will be finished in mid-August.
Once complete, the 693-foot long structure will connect to the U.S. half of the six-lane bridge. The U.S. side was finished in the fall.
The first phase of a highway from the international bridge to Alameda Avenue in the El Paso County has also been completed.
El Paso County and state officials will have a meeting this week to inform the public about the second construction phase of the Manuel F. Aguilera Highway that will connect Interstate 10 to the new border crossing. The meeting will be at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Rogelio Sanchez county building, 1331 N. Fabens in Fabens.
In contrast, the Mexican Tributary Administration Service, or SAT, which funds and oversees the construction of Mexican customs offices, still needs to build the inspection facilities. The project was supposed to be have been done by the first half of the year.
SAT officials in Mexico City did not reply Friday to email messages about the inspection facilities.
Also, SCT needs to build a road from the Chihuahua-Juárez highway — which extends to the interior of Mexico — to the new border crossing. The project will allow commercial traffic to bypass Juárez.
It will be similar to the road that connects the Chihuahua-Juárez highway to the Santa Teresa border crossing.
The first phase of the project will consist of building the roadway from the Tornillo-Guadalupe bridge to the Juárez-Porvenir road. A second phase will stretch the road about 20 miles to the Chihuahua-Juárez highway.
The project will be done by the state using federal funds. Construction of the first phase of the access road will cost up to 120 million pesos, or $9.6 million, according to the SCT.
Because some of the funds will come from Fonadin, SCT officials expect drivers to be charged a toll to use the road.
The agency, through the Chihuahua state government, has acquired the right of way for the land where the new road will be located, Olivares Lira said.
He said bids for the road project have already been launched and the selected bid for the projects will be announced in the next few days.
Mexican authorities estimate that the new port of entry will be ready for use by the end of 2014.
It is unclear which Mexican federal agency will be responsible of demolishing the current two-lane Fabens-Caseta bridge once the new bridge opens. The old bridge, which was built in 1938, is about 650 feet from the new crossing.
Mexico was supposed to begin construction of its side of the bridge two months after the July 2011 ground-breaking ceremony for the new port. Since then, Mexican officials changed the start date several times.
The SCT, which is responsible for the construction, blamed the delay on a lack of funding and on national elections that installed new leadership in late 2012.

Strip Club, will your Heart stand the excitement?

 

Just like the rides at an amusement park, should strip clubs also have a sign warning those with heart conditions of what they're about to experience?
From the Nogales international:

According to Nogales, Sonora municipal police, officers responded at 10:20 p.m. on Friday to a report of a dead body at Boleiro TD’s on Calle Elias. When they arrived, they met with paramedics from the Cruz Roja who told them that they had found the victim, a 64-year-old resident of Nogales, Ariz., in a private room, showing no vital signs.

The man, who had a pacemaker, apparently died of a heart attack.
The paramedics also told police that they had seen one of the club’s employees, 36-year-old Raul Pelayo Huerta, take a gold chain from the body.
Pelayo, who works as a DJ at the club, allegedly confessed to taking the chain and returned it to police, saying he had removed it only in order to apply first aid...

The three employees, along with Loremy Martinez Ceballos, a 29-year-old dancer at the club, were taken into custody and placed at the disposition of a local prosecutor “for the clarification of responsibilities,” the police department said in a news release.

Mexican Bishop Raul Vera Lopez Slams Homophobes For Being 'Sick' And 'Heartless'

“The people who say homosexuals are sick are sick themselves," declared Catholic bishop Raul Vera Lopez of Saltillo, Mexico, in an interview with El Pais.
Lopez, who has long been involved with ministry to the gay community, continued, "The Church needs to come to them not with condemnation, but with dialogue. We cannot cancel out a person’s richness just because of his or her sexual preference. That is sick, that is heartless, that is lacking common sense."
His comments came in response to a question from El Pais that referenced a recent baptism. In May, Lopez attracted public attention for his public baptism of three children, one of whom was the daughter of a married lesbian couple. He explained, “If I find the natural daughter of one of two women, how can I deny her baptism? If the parents seek it, it’s because there is a Christian faith." Citing a recent meeting with Pope Francis, he added, “The pope has the same attitude as Christ did.”
Lopez has a long history of advocating for the marginalized and fighting against inequality, and this isn't the first time that he's denounced homophobia as a sickness. Though his causes have earned him censure from his superiors and criticism from his congregations in the past, many of his opinions in the El Pais interview seem to echo statements from Pope Francis.
In 2013, Pope Francis said that the church had become "obsessed" with the issues of abortion and homosexuality, detracting from its mission to be a "home for all." Lopez also touched on that theme, telling El Pais, "When there was a national campaign against abortion here, I organized rosary recitations to reflect on the defense of the lives of migrants, miners and women as well as the unborn. But we are hypocrites. It would seem that the only moral rules deal with condemning same-sex couples and abortions. You do that and you’re the perfect Christian."

Los Algodones B.C. Mexico Town Birthday Party July 17 2014

July   17  2014       120th Anniversary of Los Algodones Foundation    7 p.m.

Mayor C. Jorge M. Cochran the Tourist Center and Town Invite you to Attend.

Ave "B" at 4th (Just Four Blocks from the Border Crossing).

Fun For All. We attend each year and enjoy the Outing.

U.S. Border Effort Not Working? Migrant Efforts Have Increased

Migrants cross as Normal

A U.S. effort to discourage immigrants' repeated attempts to enter the country illegally by dropping them back in Mexico hundreds of miles away from where they were caught has been sharply scaled back after producing relatively modest gains.

U.S. authorities insist the Alien Transfer Exit Program has contributed to overall achievements in border security and say the cutbacks reflected a need to shift resources to deal with Central Americans pouring into Texas.
The government has flown or bused hundreds of thousands of Mexican men to faraway border cities since February 2008, believing they would give up after being separated from their smugglers.
But government statistics and interviews with migrants in Mexican shelters suggest the dislocation is a relatively ineffective deterrent, especially for immigrants with spouses, children and roots in the U.S.

After being dropped off, many get on another bus and head right back to where they started.
Once there, they reunite with their smugglers for another attempt, taking advantage of a standard practice that they pay only when they cross successfully.
"It's a nuisance. That's all," said Pablo Hernandez, 50, who lingered in the hallway of a shelter in Mexicali, swapping stories with other migrants after the U.S. government took him on a five-hour bus ride from Tucson, Arizona.
Hernandez planned to take a commercial bus to the Mexican town of Altar to reunite with his smuggler, who provided a phone number and said he wouldn't demand his $3,400 fee until Hernandez made it.

The challenges illustrate the limits and pitfalls of massive spending increases on border enforcement.
Despite overwhelming numbers of Central Americans crossing in Texas, the Border Patrol is making strides by key measures, including a drop in the percentage of migrants who are arrested entering the country again after being caught.
The recidivism rate for all migrants arrested on the Mexican border fell to 16 percent in the 2013 fiscal year from 17 percent a year earlier, 20 percent in 2011, 24 percent in 2010 and 27 percent in 2009.

Results for ATEP, as the program is known, were higher: 25 percent last year, up from 24 percent the previous year, down from 28 percent the year before, 33 percent in 2010 and 34 percent in 2009.
Last year's 9-point difference between ATEP and the overall rate matched the widest ever.
ATEP has barely fared better than "voluntary returns," the term for migrants who are simply turned around without being charged. Criminal prosecutions have yielded the lowest recidivism rates.
Without fanfare, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency largely withdrew from ATEP last June after spending $15.2 million to fly 50,295 Mexican men on 421 flights from Harlingen, Texas, to California's Imperial Valley, which neighbors Mexicali.
ICE virtually stopped providing detention space for ATEP and pulled back on bus transportation.
Thomas Homan, ICE's executive associate director for enforcement and removal operations, told a congressional panel in March that ATEP was "a good border enforcement strategy" but that ICE shifted money to flying home Central Americans who cross in South Texas, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings.
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency spending to deal with that crisis.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, said in a statement that ATEP has disrupted smuggling networks and contributed to an overall decline in recidivism rates. The program, it said, "was designed specifically to create displacement and increase time between entry attempts."
Asked to provide the cost, Customs and Border Protection said ATEP "uses resources that were already in place ... and cannot be separated from the normal cost of doing business."

Until last year, ICE typically paid a night of detention, which cost an average of $119 a person.
Air-conditioned buses still leave the Border Patrol's Tucson compound each weekday with up to 188 passengers. Two follow a 700-mile route east to Del Rio, Texas, where they are dropped off in the neighboring Mexican city of Ciudad Acuna. Two head about 300 miles west toward Mexicali.
As ATEP grew, Mexicali became the top destination for those deported to Mexico, peaking at 66,517 in 2012, a 24 percent increase from two years earlier, according to Mexico's National Immigration Institute. Several migrant shelters opened in the sprawling city of 750,000 to handle the influx.
Migrants gravitate to a breezy, sunlit hallway to discuss their next moves at the Hotel of the Deported Migrant, which housed up to 300 people a night after opening in 2010. The Mexican government offers discounted bus tickets and a limited number of free flights to their hometowns, but few consider it. Hey dude they are resting for the next run to the border.
Abel Delgado, who lived in the Phoenix area for 23 years and was a cook and construction worker before he was deported in 2010, was bused from Tucson after four days of walking through the Arizona desert.
The 30-year-old planned to reunite with his smuggler for another attempt in Arizona after the summer heat, determined to rejoin his wife and daughters, ages 5 and 8.
"If I didn't have family, I'd stay here," he said.

Phone Crash Mexcio During Drug Shoot outs.

Mexicans Are Losing Mobile Service During Drug-War Shootouts

When narco-related shootouts erupt in Mexico, citizens turn to social media to inform one another of “risk situations” in real-time, as local authorities and news outlets remain silent. The practice allows people to avoid gunfire in their communities without the help of official sources.
“This is how online communities that function as civilian alert systems are formed,” Andrés Monroy-Hernández, a researcher at Microsoft who is known for his work on the use of social media in war zones, told VICE News. “It helps not only to avoid the infamous ‘risk situations,’ it also helps people to not feel alone during harsh events.”
But what happens when the internet isn’t available to people when they need it most?
Take for example the evening of June 5, when residents of Altamira and Tampico, in Tamaulipas state, took to social media to report encounters with armed groups that were unfolding in the streets of their cities.
“Tampico, a trailer driver was executed in Monte Alto behind a tire shop, for resisting,” user @Adamgelio tweeted.
“#Tampico #altamira #SDR in progress #FF are pulling civilians out of their vehicles #bloqueos they are on the hillside in hiding,” @ALPHA28 said, using hashtags that have become common in a country that is still in the midst of war.
An #SDR is a situación de riesgo, or “risk situation,” while #bloqueos means roadblocks. #FF in this instance stands for “federal forces.”
Discovery of mass grave in Mexico casts doubt on country’s shifting number of missing.
The Altamira encounter ended with five casualties and various cargo trucks engulfed in flames. Egidio Torre Cantú, the governor of Tamaulipas, said the following day that one of the dead was identified as the local leader of a criminal group.
But many citizens were unable to update reports toward the end of the encounter or receive updates on their timelines. Several of them eventually managed to get enough of a signal to post complaints, indicating that the internet had failed, or that their cellular signals had somehow been blocked during the shootout and roadblocks.
“I don’t want to seem like I am exaggerating but just at this moment of insecurity the internet is failing,” a user named @Gerardo_GlzH tweeted.
“#Tampico typical there is an #SDR and the internet is failing,” @MaarLoop said.
“This usually happens in Tampico,” a local journalist who requested anonymity told VICE News. “The network becomes saturated when there are encounters.”
This phenomenon has also occurred in other regions of Mexico plagued by violence.

So who’s to blame?
Telcel, a telecommunications company that has a virtual monopoly on cellphone service in Mexico, maintains that service was uninterrupted in Tampico and Altamira on June 5.
“There was no failure,” Telcel spokeswoman Araceli Ruiz told VICE News.
Mexico lacks an entity that can effectively regulate the telecom juggernaut. Its government hasn’t conducted a formal investigation of service shortages, yet experts suggest that the intermittent network failures are due to saturation, meaning too many people are trying to connect to social media platforms on their phones at any given time.
Conspiracy-minded Mexicans have suggested that criminal organizations are somehow blocking the signals, but Alberto Islas, a security analyst and the director of the firm Risk Evaluation, told VICE News that this idea doesn’t really make sense.
“The cartels are looking for a safe way to communicate among each other, and they use cutting-edge technology during their communications,” he said. “During an encounter, I don’t think it would do much good” for them to block public signals.
Drug gangs that operate in the region have demonstrated that they are capable of setting up sophisticated communication networks on their own. In 2011, the Mexican navy dismantled one such network, which included signal repeaters, antennae, high-potency amplifiers, and solar panels.
Meanwhile, independent scholars and analysts warn that Mexico’s government could soon have the ability to temporarily shut down telecom services in the country if it is deemed necessary by the authorities.
Carlos Brito, a member of the organization Network in Defense of Digital Rights, told VICE News that a current telecom reform package proposed by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto would give the government greater access to flip off the switch.
The country badly needs to reform the telecom industry, with users complaining of inefficiency and high prices. But the proposed bill, which is currently being discussed in Mexico’s Senate, includes an article that would obligate providers to block electronic communication signal in “events and places that are critical for public and national security, upon authorities’ request.”
Mexican youth protest 'anti-freedom of expression' telecom bill. 
For citizens, the causes behind the failures they report are almost irrelevant, because the outcome is the same: when there is no signal, they cannot get informed. This is a severe hindrance when local media and security officials avoid publishing information related to violent events.
“It is a violation from a traffic management perspective, and from the perspective of signal annulment,” Brito said. “The UN and the human rights rapporteur have said that annulation is not justified under any circumstance, even in the event of an attack on public or national security.”
For now, citizen-led efforts to stay informed during drug-war battles remain unprotected and unregulated.