Mexico City

Robert L. Oatman does executive protection - and no, he isn't a beefy, brainless bodyguard. He is a fit, trim and congenial figure who likes to wear crisp suits and who works with his team to draw up complex plans for shielding people they're paid to protect. It's a point of professional pride that none of his clients have ever been attacked on his watch over the past 20 years. "If you've got to touch your gun, it means you've made a mistake," said Oatman, 62, whose R.L. Oatman & Associates Inc. is based in Towson.

Mary Patricia Castillo, a homemaker who was a financial supporter of Osher Lifetime Learning at the Johns Hopkins University, died in her sleep Wednesday at the Edenwald retirement community in Towson. She was 99. Mary Patricia Willis, who never used her first name, was born and spent her early years in Chesapeake City. She later moved to Baltimore, where she graduated in 1928 from Eastern High School. She then studied fashion design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. In 1945, she married Cuban-born Eugenio Castillo y Borges, who had been Cuban consul general in Baltimore since 1938.

Mexico City lawmakers on Monday made the city the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, a change that will give homosexual couples more rights, including allowing them to adopt children. The bill passed the capital's local assembly 39-20 to the cheers of supporters who yelled: "Yes, we could! Yes, we could!" Mexico City's left-led assembly has made several decisions unpopular elsewhere in this deeply Roman Catholic country, including legalizing abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

'1,000 Ultimate Experiences,' Lonely Planet, $22.99: The world is full of experiences, ultimate and otherwise; assembling all of these into one book is hard. Fortunately, Lonely Planet is up to the challenge. The editors have scoured places to go and things to do in every corner of the globe in preparing this entertaining volume. They include the world's happiest places, which range from Montreal to the town of Happy, Texas, but also countries wildly different from each other such as Colombia and Denmark (the latter is the world's happiest country, according to happiness studies)

DETROIT -- Bowing to pressures from the Mexican government, General Motors Corp. will move its truck assembly plant out of Mexico City within three to five years because of pollution concerns.But GM plans to spend $400 million to build a new truck plant in Mexico, a move that has riled members of the United Auto Workers. Caught in a massive reduction of its North American operations, GM so far has spared its facilities in Mexico while cutting 14 assembly and components plants in the United States and Canada.

Mexico City -- Lawmakers began hearings yesterday on a proposal to legalize abortion in Mexico's capital city, amid emotional arguments from women's groups that support the bill and Roman Catholic groups that are opposed. The city's Legislative Assembly is not scheduled to vote until mid-April, but passage seems likely. Mexican feminists say the legalization of abortion in this city of 8 million would be a landmark for the Latin American women's movement. "We've been working for this day for 36 years, and it's almost here," said Marta Lamas, one of the nation's leading feminists and founder of the nonprofit Reproductive Choice Information Group.

MEXICO CITY -- Three Marxist bomb attacks yesterday and another last Sunday are raising fears of a resurgence of the urban guerrilla movements that plagued Mexico in the 1970s.Three dynamite time bombs exploded shortly after 5 a.m. yesterday, slightly damaging the Mexican headquarters of IBM, a McDonald's and a Sanborns department store restaurant, said Hector Pina, a spokesman for the Mexico City attorney general's office.A Citibank building was bombed Sunday night.There were no injuries, and damage was limited to broken windows and damaged furniture, Mr. Pina said.

MEXICO CITY -- The residents of Ixtapalapa did more than accept the government's call to protect the forest next to their homes. They began their own beautification campaign.Digging into their pockets, they bought the materials to pave their streets and in lots that once were arid they planted grass and trees.But it turns out that the forest's worst enemy is the Mexico City government, which says it is protecting the forest.On April 1, a caravan of city trucks -- the open type which normally carry garbage here -- converged at the edge of the designated protected zone, identified by two billboards that say "construction in this area is strictly prohibited."

These ancient pyramids in Teotihuacan, 30 miles northeast of Mexico City, will take your breath away.If the spectacle of a 2,200-year-old city doesn't do it, climbing 248 steep steps at 7,500 feet above sea level almost certainly will.The climb is not mandatory, but it's the only way to get atop the Pyramid of the Sun, the best place to observe this two-mile stretch of streets, pyramids and temples of ornately carved stone.Seeing these pyramids is the most popular out-of-town trip for travelers to Mexico City, a city which, despite its cultural and historic treasures, inspires an occasional day trip, if only for a breath of smog-free air.At Teotihuacan, the air is usually clear, albeit thin.

MEXICO CITY -- In an anti-corruption crackdown ordered by Mexico City's new police chief, detectives arrested 44 city officers yesterday on charges that included murder, rape, extortion and abuse of authority.Mexico City's attorney general, Samuel del Villar, called the roundup "an unprecedented effort to impose the rule of law."Arrest warrants for some of the officers had been issued as long as six years ago but had never been served. A week ago, Police Chief Alejandro Gertz Manero, a former university rector who took office in August, announced that violent crime is soaring because organized crime leaders are defying attempts to end police corruption.

Mexico City lawmakers on Monday made the city the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, a change that will give homosexual couples more rights, including allowing them to adopt children. The bill passed the capital's local assembly 39-20 to the cheers of supporters who yelled: "Yes, we could! Yes, we could!" Mexico City's left-led assembly has made several decisions unpopular elsewhere in this deeply Roman Catholic country, including legalizing abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Robert L. Oatman does executive protection - and no, he isn't a beefy, brainless bodyguard. He is a fit, trim and congenial figure who likes to wear crisp suits and who works with his team to draw up complex plans for shielding people they're paid to protect. It's a point of professional pride that none of his clients have ever been attacked on his watch over the past 20 years. "If you've got to touch your gun, it means you've made a mistake," said Oatman, 62, whose R.L. Oatman & Associates Inc. is based in Towson.

Robert L. Oatman does executive protection - and no, he isn't a beefy, brainless bodyguard. He is a fit, trim and congenial figure who likes to wear crisp suits and who works with his team to draw up complex plans for shielding people they're paid to protect. It's a point of professional pride that none of his clients have ever been attacked on his watch over the past 20 years. "If you've got to touch your gun, it means you've made a mistake," said Oatman, 62, whose R.L. Oatman & Associates Inc. is based in Towson.

As Mexico City closed schools and began taking other measures to contain the spread of a swine flu outbreak that might have infected hundreds of people and killed as many as 60, U.S. officials said Friday they had found one new case in San Diego, bringing the total number of U.S. cases to eight. The most recent victim, a child, has recovered fully - as did all of the other seven victims - said Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Six of the eight U.S. cases occurred in California's San Diego and Imperial counties and two in Guadeloupe County, Texas.

Why can't Baltimore ban plastic bags? Mexico City recently banned store owners from using nonbiodegradable plastic bags; it even went so far as to impose possible jail time for offenders. It's amazing that Mexico City can pass such legislation but our city still refuses. Last summer, the City Council killed Councilman James B. Kraft's bill to ban plastic bags in Baltimore, citing the impact on grocery prices. However, a large number of those plastic bags end up in our waterways, killing wildlife and polluting our waters, not to mention clogging boat motors.

MEXICO CITY - Amid broad outrage over the slaying of a 14-year-old kidnap victim, Mexican President Felipe Calderon urged Congress yesterday to toughen punishments for convicted kidnappers to include up to life in prison. The proposal would make kidnapping in some cases subject to the harshest criminal sentence in Mexico, which formally abolished its long-dormant death penalty three years ago. Kidnappers currently face up to 60 years in prison, or 70 years when they kill the victim. Murderers face a possible maximum of 60 years.

After just a year and a half, Mexicana Airlines says that it is suspending service from Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport to Mexico City today. It's the second time that the airline has launched BWI service and then pulled back. Mexicana offered a daily flight to Cancun in 1986, but the airline said the route was unprofitable, and it was canceled five years later. Officials thought that business travelers and a bigger community of Mexican-Americans would make it a go this time.

MEXICO CITY -- In a plaza next to one of this city's most important shrines, the colossal Monument to the Revolution, a humble water pipe has become a curious monument of its own to what is, literally, Mexico City's continuing collapse.Flush with the ground in 1934 when the Monument to the Revolution was built, the water pipe now soars 26 feet into the air. Firmly anchored in a hard layer of subsoil beneath the city's shallow aquifer, the pipe has stayed put in the last six decades while the city has fallen away.

You can have your superhero movies. I met a man who could fly without a cape. "It's been a long time since I've been in Baltimore. I jumped here once. Can't remember where exactly." Bob Beamon paused, snapped out of his internal time-traveling by a sudden realization. He slapped me lightly on the shoulder as he laughed. "You weren't even born when I was jumping, were you?" No, I sheepishly admitted. But I sure wish I had been. Bob Beamon defines Olympic greatness the way Bill Shakespeare defines Elizabethan literature.

MEXICO CITY - Seven Mexican federal agents looking for an arms cache died early yesterday in a shootout with gunmen in the northern state of Sinaloa, officials said. The agents came under fire when they went to search a home in Culiacan, the state capital. Four other agents were wounded. At least one gunman was killed in the confrontation, which came as a wave of drug-related violence has washed over Mexico. Two suspects were arrested, the federal Public Security Ministry said. The state has registered more than 200 killings this year, mainly as a result of a power struggle in one of Mexico's biggest drug gangs, the so-called Sinaloa cartel.