Mexico celebrates 200 years with huge fiesta,Viva Mexico!

MEXICO CITY  Mexico looked beyond its drug war to throw a 200th birthday bash celebrating a proud history, whimsical culture and resilience embodied in the traditional independence cry: “Viva Mexico!”Across the capital, hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets despite their fears, blowing horns and dancing alongside a parade of serpent floats, marching cacti and 13-foot-tall warrior marionettes and staying late into the night at open-air concerts.President Felipe Calderon capped the evening by ringing the original independence bell from a balcony in the Zocalo square and delivering “El Grito,” patterned on founding father Miguel Hidalgo’s 1810 call to arms against Spain: “Long live independence. Love live the bicentennial … Long live Mexico!”Roaring thousands echoed his cry as fireworks exploded in the square and at the iconic Angel of Independence about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) down the city’s crowded main promenade.

“I love being Mexican!” said Michel Dosal, wearing a green, white and red Mohawk wig. “The 15th of September is better than Christmas. It’s better than my birthday!”In cities where drug violence is heaviest, festivities were more subdued. The grito was canceled in Ciudad Juarez for the first time in its history. People still showed their patriotism in the border city – Mexico’s most violent – by hanging Mexican flags from their roofs and hosting family dinners.

In the western city of Morelia, the scene of a cartel-related grenade attack that killed eight during the 2008 independence celebration, barely 2,000 showed up at the main plaza for a “grito” that once drew tens of thousands.”My son asked me to take him to see the grito, so I brought him despite my fears,” said Silvia Godinez Perez, a secretary. “We can’t easily forget what happened two years ago.”

But in Mexico City, a $40 million fiesta, two years in the making, drew people from across the country to the main Reforma Avenue and Zocalo. Moments before Calderon emerged on the balcony of the National Palace, a voice boomed from loudspeakers: “Let’s show the world that Mexico is strong and standing.””This one is special,” said Iris Mari Rodriguez Montiel, a small business owner who had traveled from the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz and waited since morning for the festivities to start. “It gives me chills just to think about it.”

Little girls wearing ribbons of the Mexican flag watched the 1.7-mile (2.7-kilometer) parade down Reforma from the shoulders of their fathers. Other children blew trumpets as the air filled with confetti.”It’s like a Carnival of Rio, plus an Olympic ceremony, plus Woodstock all put together in the same day,” said artistic director Marco Balich, who produced the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics. “For the cost of a warplane, you can celebrate the birthday of a country.”

Several neighboring heads of state and U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis attended.Still, anxiety hovered over the festivities in a country that most recently has seen car bombs, the assassination of a gubernatorial candidate, and the massacre of 72 migrants who refused to smuggle drugs for a brutal gang.Military helicopters buzzed overhead in the capital, heavily armed federal agents and metal detectors greeted revelers.

The Interior Department said there were no attacks against the celebrations. Prosecutors in the Caribbean coast resort of Cancun said they were investigating whether six men detained with assault rifles and hand grenades had planned an assault on bicentennial festivities. In northern Nuevo Leon state, eight gunmen were killed in a shootout with soldiers, authorities said.”In Mexico, we all live in fear. And the worst part is that we are starting to get used to it,” said Eric Limon, 33, a professional dancer who volunteered to wear a jaguar mask and swing a colorful Aztec club and spear for the parade.

“I want to be part of something important,” he said. “I know this won’t solve our problems, but this is my grain of sand to create a sense of unity. This is what Mexico needs.”Those who stayed away from the city center celebrated from their rooftops and staged their own neighborhood fireworks displays. All night long, rockets whistled and boomed skyward, blanketing the yards and streets with smoke.(AP)

Chronology of Gulf of Mexico oil spill

A drilling rig explosion on April 20 left 11 workers missing and presumed dead, and the rig’s subsequent collapse unleashed a major oil spill that threatens the ecosystems and economy of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.Also threatened is the heart of U.S. energy production, as a giant, unprecedented underwater leak spreads oil across the northern Gulf of Mexico, threatening areas from Florida to points west of the of the Mississippi River.

President Barack Obama’s plans to widen offshore drilling have been suspended, and energy giant BP Plc (BP.N) (BP.L) faces another blow to its reputation and a multibillion-dollar bill for cleaning up the mess and paying damages.

Below is a chronology of the spill and its impact:

* April 20, 2010 – Explosion and fire on Transocean Ltd’s (RIG.N) (RIGN.S) drilling rig Deepwater Horizon licensed to BP; 11 workers missing, 17 injured. The rig was drilling in BP’s Macondo project 42 miles (68 km) southeast of Venice, Louisiana, beneath about 5,000 feet (1,525 metres) of water and 13,000 feet (4 km) under the seabed. A blowout preventer, intended to prevent release of crude oil, failed to activate.

* April 22 – The Deepwater Horizon rig, valued at more than $560 million, sinks and a five-mile long oil slick is seen.

* April 23 – The U.S. Coast Guard suspends search for missing workers.

* April 25 – The Coast Guard says remote underwater cameras detect the well is leaking 1,000 barrels of crude oil per day. The agency calls the leak a “very serious spill” that threatens ecosystems along the Gulf Coast. It approves a plan to have remote underwater vehicles activate a blowout preventer and stop leak, but the effort fails.

* April 26 – BP’s shares fall 2 percent on fears the cost of cleanup and legal claims will deal the London-based energy giant a heavy financial blow.

* April 27 – U.S. departments of Interior and Homeland Security announce joint investigation. Coast Guard says leaking crude may be set ablaze to slow the spread of oil in the Gulf.

* April 28 – The Coast Guard says the flow of oil is 5,000 barrels per day (bpd) (210,000 gallons/795,000 litres) — five times greater than first estimated. A controlled burn is held on the giant oil slick.

* April 29 – Obama pledges “every single available resource,” including the U.S. military, to contain the spill, which Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says is of “national significance.” Obama also says BP is responsible for the cleanup. Louisiana declares state of emergency due to the threat to the state’s natural resources.

* April 30 – An Obama aide says no drilling will be allowed in new areas, as the president had recently proposed, until the cause of the Deepwater Horizon accident is known.

* BP Chairman Tony Hayward says the company takes full responsibility and will pay all legitimate claims and the cost of the cleanup. The Interior Department orders safety inspections of all 30 deepwater drilling rigs and 47 deepwater production platforms.

* May 1 – Coast Guard says leak will affect the Gulf shore.

* May 2 – Obama visits the Gulf Coast to see cleanup efforts first hand. U.S. officials close areas affected by the spill to fishing for an initial period of 10 days. BP starts to drill a relief well alongside the failed well, a process that could take two to three months to complete.

* May 5 – A barge begins towing a 98-ton containment chamber to the site of the leak. BP says one of the three leaks has been shut off by capping a valve, but that would not cut the amount of oil gushing out.

* May 6 – Oil washes ashore on the Chandeleur Islands off the Louisiana coast, uninhabited barrier islands that are part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge and important nesting and breeding areas for many bird species.

* May 7 – BP engineers use undersea robots to move the containment chamber over the larger of the two remaining leaks on the seabed. A fishing ban for federal waters off the Gulf is modified, expanded and extended to May 17.

* May 8 – BP’s containment dome hits a snag when a buildup of crystallized gas forces engineers to postpone efforts to place the chamber over the oil leak and siphon oil to the surface. “Tar balls” suspected to come from the leak wash up along a half-mile stretch of Dauphin Island, Alabama.

* May 9 – BP says it might try to plug the undersea leak by pumping materials such as shredded up tires and golf balls into the well at high pressure, a method called a “junk shot.”

* May 10 – Forecasts suggest the oil spill could move significantly west of the Mississippi River delta as brisk onshore winds prevail. BP announces plans to place a small containment dome, known as a “top hat,” over the blown out well to funnel oil to the surface.

* May 11 – Executives with BP, Transocean and Halliburton appear at congressional hearings in Washington, where Senators criticize their safety records. The executives blame each other’s companies for the explosion. The oil slick washes ashore on a third land mass: Louisiana’s Port Eads area, on the southern edge of the Mississippi Delta.(Reuters)