Mexico's top Cabinet secretary dies in crash

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO

MEXICO CITY (AP) - The country's top Cabinet secretary, Francisco Blake Mora, a key figure in Mexico's battle with drug cartels, died Friday in a helicopter crash that President Felipe Calderon said was probably an accident.

Blake Mora, 45, was the second interior minister, the No. 2 post in the government, to die in an air crash during Calderon's administration.

Despite some tendencies to suspect a hit on the top officials leading Calderon's offensive against organized crime, the crash that killed Blake Mora and seven others may have had to do with bad weather. A Learjet that slammed into a Mexico City street in 2008, killing former interior secretary Juan Camilo Mourino and 15 others, was blamed on pilot error.

One of Blake Mora's last postings on his Twitter account commemorated the loss of Mourino. "Today we remember Juan Camilo Mourino three years after his death, a person who was working to build a better Mexico," he tweeted on Nov. 4.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20111112/D9QUS0600.html

[valerief]

1. "Probably an accident." Right. nt

[freshwest]

3. Uh, huh. Nothing to see here. 'Probably.' Move along, folks.

[a la izquierda]

2. I got the briefing on this today...

from a Mexican newspaper digest. Reminded me of the very plane crash mentioned in the article, and I was in Mexico City at that time.
Crazy. I wouldn't want to be in a vehicle with any Mexican government higher-ups.

[valerief]

4. For years I've had nightmares I was on an elevator with a famous person and the elevator got stuck.

I knew that might I was going to die because the famous person must have had a hit on them. Ha! Stupid, I know, but the stupid dream keeps coming back. I never get to see how it ends.

[a la izquierda]

5. Just being STUCK on an elevator would give me...

nightmares! I got stuck once with 20 other people in the Museum of Natural History in NY. Talk about a panic attack...