"They [the media] are news-as-entertainment professionals – packaging glossy corporate content for maximum distribution and big bucks. The goal is not objective reportage. Their targets are quantifiable and highlighted in a business plan somewhere. Success is based on a simple formula: stay within parameters "understandable" to a wide audience that devours sound bites and familiar storylines on the hour, every hour.

Like trained seals whose every desire, instinct and buying pattern has been measured by corporate media's marketing department for the consumption of its advertisers, the audience demands satisfaction – and western media delivers it." -- Sharmine Narwani
 

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A group of Ecuadorian opposition lawmakers has filed a formal impeachment request against President Guillermo Lasso, alleging extortion and embezzlement from public companies. A previous effort to impeach the conservative politician in June last year fell short of the required vote, after the leader cut off negotiations with indigenous protesters.  

The petition, which was presented on Thursday, was signed by 59 assembly members from the Union for Hope (UNES), Social Christian, and Democratic Left parties.  

 Mexico's army has dramatically revised upward the number of drug lab raids it says it conducted under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, according to government data and leaked military documents reviewed by Reuters.

The documents, found among a trove of millions of emails leaked last year by the Guacamaya hacker group, show the upward revision being due to the army retroactively including hundreds of inactive labs on its seizures list under Lopez Obrador's presidency. Figures for the years of previous administrations were left unchanged.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently upbraided the United States, calling out Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken by name, for hundreds of years of imperialism, colonialism and otherwise “meddling” in the affairs of other nations all over the globe.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards — colonialism. We often hear that problems of immigration, drug-smuggling, and terrorism can’t be solved unless we can tackle the “root causes” in non-white nations. That assumes they can’t solve those causes themselves. Foreign aid has largely failed. Don’t “root cause” solutions imply colonialism?

Mexico's Defense Department said Tuesday that soldiers found over 1.83 million fentanyl pills at a stash house in the border city of Tijuana. The discovery came just one day before Mexico's president claimed the synthetic opioid is not produced in the country.

A mega-prison in El Salvador brought in a second wave of suspected gang members who will now serve out their sentences in the notorious facility that has been criticised over its 'severe conditions.'

The second group of 2,000 inmates were moved today amid tight security to the new Izalco prison, the largest mega-prison in the Americas, which was built to accommodate more than 40,000 gangsters.

Footage shows the heavily tattooed and barefoot men, dressed only in white shorts, being hurriedly moved around with their heads bowed and hands cuffed behind their backs.

 El Salvador’s government sent 2,000 more suspects to a huge new prison built especially for gang members Wednesday, and the the justice minister vowed that “they will never return” to the streets.

The tough statement came as the administration of President Nayib Bukele asked for yet another extension of an anti-gang emergency measures that would take the crackdown into its 13th month.

Colombia’s government and the left-wing National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel group have hailed progress in their efforts to end decades of armed conflict in the South American nation, as a second round of peace talks concluded in Mexico City.