Mexico City - Once a week, vans loaded with reams of material to be stitched into trousers and shirts for US retailers, drive through the muddy streets of the Los Reyes-La Paz neighbourhood on the outskirts of Mexico City.

The fabric is distributed to the area's many seamstresses, who have a week to each make about 50 trousers and shirts. For sewing all day for some of the biggest and most expensive department stores, these women earn about 4,000 pesos (283 dollars) a month.

Mexico City - US President Barack Obama is set to visit Mexico on April 16-17, the Mexican government said Wednesday.

Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon are set to discuss "several matters in the hemispheric and global agenda that are of interest to both nations, particularly taking into account the active participation of both countries in several regional and global forums," said Max Cortazar, spokesman for the Mexican Presidency.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is to visit Mexico on March 25-26 for meeting with Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa.

Washington  - US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will travel to Mexico March 25 and 26 amid increasing drug-related violence along the US border.

The State Department said Friday Clinton will meet with Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa for talks on a host of issues that focus on cooperation between the two countries in fighting narcotics.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon's crackdown on drug cartels has resulted in a jump in violence near the US border among trafficking gangs and retributions against police.

Mexico City  -

Teopisca, Mexico  - Before the financial and economic crisis broke out, Abelardo Lopez, a peasant from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, worked as a gardener at a golf course in Phoenix, Arizona.

He earned 10 dollars an hour for mowing and watering the lawn, and for assisting people who took part in golf tournaments. In the middle of the ongoing global recession, however, he was handed over to the authorities for deportation alongside 70 other Mexicans.

Mexic