MEXICO
President’s adviser resigns
One of President Enrique Pena Nieto’s closest advisers, Finance Secretary Luis Videgaray, has resigned in a move seen as linked to the unpopular decision to invite Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to visit Mexico. Pena Nieto has taken responsibility for inviting Trump, but a former government official familiar with the workings of the administration said Videgaray would have played a preponderant role in the decision. Newspaper columnists in Mexico have reported Videgaray was behind last week’s visit. Speaking at a town hall late Thursday, Pena Nieto sought to defend the decision to invite Trump to visit. He said the easier path would have been to “cross my arms” and do nothing in response to Trump’s “affronts, insults and humiliations,” but he believed it necessary to open a “space for dialogue” to stress the importance of the U.S.-Mexico relationship.
BRITAIN
Wall planned to halt migrants
Britain hopes a 13 foot-high concrete wall will succeed where security guards and barbed wire have failed, and stop migrants reaching the United Kingdom from the northern French port of Calais. Home Office Minister Robert Goodwill announced this week that a 0.6 mile-long barrier will be built as part of a $23 million security package agreed to by Britain and France. He told lawmakers on Tuesday that its construction along the main highway to the port would start soon. “We’ve done the fence, now we are doing a wall,” he said. Thousands of migrants, most from the Middle East and Africa, live in an overcrowded Calais camp known as “the jungle.” For many, the goal is to reach Britain by stowing away on trucks and trains through the Channel Tunnel. Migrants make regular attempts to walk through the tunnel.
Uruguay
Home sought for ex-prisoner
Uruguay’s government said Wednesday it is searching for another country to take a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who is threatening to die on a hunger strike if he is not allowed to reunite with his family abroad. Syrian native Abu Wa’el Dhiab has repeatedly said he is unhappy in Uruguay and is demanding to be allowed to leave the South American country, which took him in with five other former Guantanamo prisoners in 2014.
Compiled from wire reports.