Juan Pablo García was six years old when he left home and joined a street gang. Over the next 14 years he sold marijuana for a local kingpin, became the leader of his own gang and developed a heavy cocaine addiction. Like thousands of others who hustle on the dusty streets of Monterrey, Mexico’s third-biggest city, he was the product of a society that has spawned a seemingly endless cycle of violent crime.

“I grew up in a very poor neighbourhood. We didn’t even have water or basic services,” García recalls. “After my dad abandoned us I wanted to earn money on the streets to support my mum, but I ended up getting involved with gangs.”

It was only when he “found God” at the age of 20 that García managed to break the cycle, although it took another three months of homeopathy and abstinence to kick his cocaine habit. Now 42, he is helping others to escape gang life and return to school or find formal employment opportunities.(The guardian)…[+]

Mexico will host its first high-profile Donald Trump envoys this week with at least one consolation: the proposed border wall is itself walled in, for now, by Washington bureaucracy.  Federal agencies are reportedly resisting the idea and Congress is hesitant to fund it, leaving the president fighting a lonely battle to keep his campaign promise.

Instead of a 2,000-mile “big, beautiful wall”, Trump may emerge from Washington’s policy labyrinth with a fence covering a few hundred miles. “He hasn’t made any progress other than to say ‘we’re going to do it’,” said Seth Stodder, a former senior homeland security official who focused on border security under the Obama and Bush administrations. “They’re pretty far away. I don’t think they’ve made much progress.”(the guardian)…[+]

Tony Blair has denied that a Labour government paid compensation to the former Guantánamo Bay detainee who went on to blow himself up in Iraq, in a strongly worded statement in which he accused the Daily Mail of hypocritical coverage over the Manchester-born jihadi’s death. The former prime minister said that compensation – thought to amount to £1m – was paid out under the Conservative-led coalition government in 2010 – and criticised the tabloid for blaming him and Labour instead. “He was not paid compensation by my government,” Blair said. “The compensation was agreed in 2010 by the Conservative government.”On Wednesday morning, the Daily Mail front-page story was the death of Jamal al-Harith – who changed his name from Ronald Fiddler after converting to Islam in his 20s but most recently went by the nom de guerre Abu-Zakariya al-Britani – in which Blair’s government was singled out for “intense lobbying” for his release.(The guardian)…[+]