New data reported by the Mexican media suggest that emigration to the United States rose sharply in 2007, the first full year of the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderón. Based on US Census Bureau numbers, Mexico's National Population Council (Conapo) estimated that 679,611 Mexicans made the move to El Norte last year. According to Conapo, the number of Mexican nationals relocating to the US was up 5.9% from 2006. It was the highest jump in Mexican emigration registered since 2002. The total number of Mexican-born residents living in the US now stands at 11,800,000 persons, or just over 10 percent of Mexico's population, Conapo estimated.

Following an anonymous tip, Mexico's Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) arrested three suspected members of the narco-paramilitary group Los Zetas Sept. 25 as the "material authors" of the Independence Day grenade attack that left eight dead and over 100 injured in Morelia, Michoacán. Four more are under investigation in the attack and may face imminent arrest, said Marisela Morales Ibáñez, chief of the Special Investigative Subprosecutor for Organized Delinquency (SIEDO). Morales Ibáñez emphasized that the men, detained at a house in the Michoacán city of Apatzingán, were themselves on drugs when they carried out the attack. The arrested suspects were named as Julio César ("Tierra Caliente") Mondragón Mendoza, Juan Carlos ("El Grande") Castro Galeana, and Alfredo ("El Socio" or "El Valiente") Rosas Elicea. (La Jornada, Sep. 27)

Mexico's military seized $26.2 million in cash believed to belong to members of the Sinaloa Cartel Sept. 14. The soldiers also found guns and two bags of marijuana in the weekend raid at the house in the city of Culiacán—as well as documents naming a member of a gang allegedly led by Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, an associate of fugitive Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.

At least 23 inmates have been killed and scores wounded in days of rioting at the overcrowded La Mesa prison in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. Violence first broke out Sept. 14 during family visiting hours after a prisoner died inside, apparently at the hands of guards. Prisoners took advantage of the greater mobility afforded by the visiting hours to seize work implements such as picks and shovels to use as weapons, and set mattresses on fire with cigarette lighters. Four prisoners were killed in the initial outbreak; the remainder met their deaths as Baja California state police stormed the prison Sept. 18. Authorities said prisoners also used firearms, but no guards were among the casualties.

Unknown assailants lobbed grenades through the crowded town square in Morelia, Michoacán, during Independence Day celebrations Sept. 15, killing seven people and injuring more than 100. The first explosion hit just after 11 PM as bells began to ring across Mexico and Michoacán's Gov. Leonel Godoy was delivering the traditional "grito" of independence before thousands of revelers. President Felipe Calderón, whose hometown is Morelia and has mobilized thousands of soldiers to Michoacán to fight drug gangs, delivered a nationwide address the next day calling on Mexicans to unite against the cartels. "On this national holiday, there are cowards hidden in the crowds of patriotic people that have converted joy into sadness and the happiness of Mexican families into sorrow," he said. (NYT, Sept. 17)

Tourists traveling the picturesque Copper Canyon circuit in Mexico's northern Chihuahua state got a far different look at the country this weekend from the one promoted in glossy brochures. Taking to the streets for more than three hours on Sept. 13, hundreds of angry residents of Creel and neighboring communities prevented the Chihuahua-Pacific train from passing through Creel.

Mexico says it has arrested 12 people on terrorism charges in the years since 9-11—but an official said none were linked to Islamist groups like al-Qaeda or were planning to strike in the US. Mexico's Federal Institute of Information Access revealed the 12 arrests to the Associated Press in response to a request made in February seeking details of any terrorism arrests in the last seven years.

Tens of thousands of Mexican workers, tradespeople, doctors and nurses, oil workers, telephone workers, miners, teachers, parents, students and campesinos demonstrated on Sept. 1 to protest the economic policies of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa as he presented Congress with the annual state of the union report. Until two years ago, the president read the report to the two houses of Congress in an elaborate televised ceremony; the tradition ended in 2006 when opposition legislators kept then-president Vicente Fox Quesada from giving his last report. This year Governance Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino Terrazo simply handed a copy of the report to congressional leaders; the event took eight minutes.