Mexico City  - The death toll rose to two on Sunday in a small plane crash in northern Mexico a day earlier.

Two passengers died of their injuries and three others were also severely injured when the Cessna crashed and caught on fire less than half a kilometre from the airstrip at the Ramos Arizpe airport in Coahuila state, officials said.

The occupants, reporters and provincial government officials, suffered severe burns and were brought to a clinic in San Diego, California. One of the journalists was practically unhurt.

Mexico City  - A small plane crashed in northern Mexico on Saturday and one of its passengers later died from injuries sustained during the accident.

Four others were also severely injured when the Cessna crashed and caught on fire less than half a kilometre from the airstrip at the Ramos Arizpe airport in Coahuila state, officials said.

The occupants, reporters and provincial government officials, suffered severe burns and were brought to a clinic in San Diego, California. One of the journalists was practically unhurt.

Mexico City  - The Mexic

Mexico City - Pilgrims from across Mexico arrived Friday at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in a northern district of the Mexican capital, to celebrate the feast of the so-called Virgin Morena, Mexico's popular patron.

Every year, more than 5 million faithful take part in the pilgrimage to the Guadalupe sanctuary on December 9-12. There, they sing to the images of the Virgin in the early hours of December 12 to celebrate her apparition to an indigenous man named Juan Diego in 1531, according to popular belief.

Tijuana, Mexico  - Tijuana, in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California and just across the border from the US city of San Diego, is suffering a dramatic escalation of gruesome violence.

Last weekend, police found nine decapitated bodies in one incident and nine other murders perpetrated separately from that.

This is nothing out of the ordinary in the troubled border city of 1.6 million residents, where some 600 people are believed to have been killed so far this year.

And it is also only a fraction of the drug-related killings that have soared to more than 5,000 across Mexico since January, mainly in its northern states. On Thursday alone,

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 3  -- The U. S. government has provided Mexico nearly half of a $400 million aid package for its southern neighbor's ongoing battle against drug traffickers.

The $197 million giving to Mexico was released Wednesday at a ceremony in the Mexican capital led by U. S. Ambassador Tony Garza, El Universal reported online.

The release of the funds came at a time when drug violence has been on the rise in Mexican towns along the U. S. border.

The funding also follows last month's arrest of a top law officer working with Interpol after an investigation into alleged ties to Mexican officials and drug trafficking. Ricardo Gutierrez was placed under house arrest while investigators search for evidence of the alleged ties.