"The U.S. government pays to guarantee 30,000 immigration detention beds available in four dozen facilities across the country, but so far this fiscal year about half, on average, have been occupied, according to immigration and Customs Enforcement data," The Associated Press reported July 4. "The average cost of a detention bed was $144 each day during the last fiscal year." "One month after snubbing President Biden by refusing to attend a summit meant to show American leadership, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico joined Mr. Biden at the White House (July 12) to shore up a relationship the United States needs to slow mass migration and bolster economic ties." - The New York Times, July 13, 2022 "Luis Echeverría Alvarez, who steered Mexico on a stormy left-wing course in the 1970s as president and who never escaped the shadow of a massacre before the 1968 Olympics, died (July 8) at his home in Cuernavaca. He was 100." - The New York Times, July 10, 2022 "One year after Cubans took to the streets in one of the largest protest movements since the Communist government took power six decades ago, hundreds of demonstrators are languishing in prison while tens of thousands have fled repression and destitution." - The New York Times, July 12, 2022 "Nicaraguan police took control of five municipalities run by a party opposed to President Daniel Ortega in recent days, dismissing elected leaders and installing ruling party sympathizers in their place, opposition organizations said." - Reuters, July 4, 2022 Nearly a year after El Salvador's President "Nayib Bukele, shocked the financial world by making its most popular digital coin a national currency, his bet appears to be backfiring, highlighting the gap between the utopian promises of cryptocurrency's proponents and economic realities." - The New York Times, July 6, 2022 "As Russia pushes to find new buyers for its oil to skirt ever tougher Western sanctions, it is cutting into the market share of two of its allies - Iran and Venezuela - and setting off a price war that could hurt them all." - The New York Times, July 13, 2022