Top drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman has done what Mexican authorities promised would not happen again after his recapture last year — escaped for a second time from a maximum security prison.

Rescuers are searching for survivors of a powerful gas explosion that shattered a maternity and children’s hospital in Mexico City, killing at least three adults and one baby while injuring dozens more.

Mexican authorities said yesterday that mounting evidence and initial DNA tests confirmed that 43 trainee teachers who were abducted by corrupt police 10 weeks ago were incinerated at a garbage dump by drug gang members.

Authorities testing remains found in nine mass graves in southern Mexico have yet to find any of 43 students who disappeared after a confrontation with police.

Mexico has effectively legalised the country’s growing “self-defence” groups as security forces captured one of the four top leaders of the Knights Templar drug cartel, which vigilante groups have been fighting for the last year.

Soldiers dug through tons of mud and dirt in search of victims of a massive landslide, as Mexican authorities looked for a police helicopter that went missing while carrying out relief operations on the flood-stricken Pacific coast.

A top leader of Mexico’s Gulf Cartel has been captured in a military operation near the US border with Texas, the second major capture since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office last December.

Michael Weissenstein reports from Mexico City on the arrest of drugs cartel baron Morales

The recently appointed tourism minister in western Mexican state of Jalisco was shot to death yesterday.

Rescue teams worked through the night to pull out survivors after a massive explosion at the main headquarters of Mexico’s state-owned oil company killed 14 people and injured 100.