General News

The University of Guadalajara is providing training to municipal authorities to enter into the national Mexico Conectado initiative, whose aim is to offer universal free internet access within the next three years.

Jalisco currently has 125 public spaces with free internet access but the state government wants to increase this to 12,000 points.

Administration, Planning and Finance Secretary Hector Perez Partida called the initiative “very important for the state,” in terms of economic development. 

The University of Guadalajara has opened four new training centers. Municipal officials will be able to register suggested sites for the new program, which will include hospitals, schools, government buildings and other public spaces. 

In 2014, 65,000 public sites were connected throughout the country. An additional 100,000 are planned this year.

The NGO World Animal Protection has been working with the University of Guadalajara to create an action plan designed to protect animals in case of a possible major eruption of the Colima Volcano.

A heavily armed commando under the orders of a drug cartel ambushed a convoy of state police pick-ups Monday afternoon near the village of Soyatan on the Mascota-Puerto Vallarta highway, causing the deaths of 15 officers – 14 men and one woman.

There’s a lot going on in the skies on Friday, March 20. 

Complex legal battles stemming from a land dispute between the Indigenous Community of Mezcala de la Asuncion on the shores of Lake Chapala and a Guadalajara businessman are heating up again after years of foundering in the Mexican court system. 

In Mexico, there’s a saying about the climate, “Febrero loco y Marzo otro poco” (Crazy February and March a bit too). Judging by the wave of unpredictable weather that hit Jalisco this week, there certainly seems to be some truth to the dicho. 

Five police officers who were killed in a confrontation with heavily armed gunmen in Ocotlan on Thursday, March 19  were members of the Gendarmería convoy platoon that has been assigned to carry out routine patrols in the Chapala area since early February. 

In a groundbreaking accomplishment last week, 27 young men and women from the Wixarika (Huichol) native Indian people of northern Jalisco and Nayarit graduated with law degrees after more than three years of study at the University of Guadalajara.

The pioneering Niuweme Project had been hailed as the first of its kind in Mexico for indigenous people.  During their studies, the students received specialist orientation in human rights, and worked closely with the Jalisco Commission for Human Rights (CEDH). 

CEDH President Felipe Alvarez Cibrian congratulated the students on their achievement and said he was sure they would take their knowledge back to their homes, and fight for human rights in their communities.