A last-minute change of plan saw federal authorities lower the announced start-of-year gasoline price increase from three to 1.9 percent.

While animal protection advocates applaud legal maneuvers to ban four-legged performers from Mexican circus shows, the new taboos raise some unforeseen issues regarding the future fate of an estimated 2,500 creatures kept by itinerant big top troupes that travel the national circuit. 

In one sense, the new year got off on the right foot for Mexican consumers the moment midnight struck on Thursday, with the introduction of a previously announced measure to scrap all national long-distance telephone charges.

Juan Manuel Estrada Juarez, the director of the Guadalajara-based Fundación para Niños Robados y Desaparecidos (Foundation for Missing and Stolen Children or FIND) receives the Premio Nacional de Derechos Humanos 2014 (2014 National Human Rights Award) from Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on December 12.

Public servants who are found guilty of torture could be sentenced to 20 years in jail after a reform to Jalisco State Penal Code was approved by Congress just prior to the holiday recess. The new law includes psychological as well as physical torture in its definition and is designed to prevent, sanction and eradicate the crime. The revised Penal Code legislates against “any public official who performs any act which inflicts mental or physical suffering on a person for the purpose of aiding a criminal investigation.”

Mexico’s Interior Ministry (Secretaría de Gobernación) will operate an amnesty program for illegal immigrants in the country beginning January 2 and running through December 31.