Mexico’s anti-corruption effort takes a PR blow

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president has made punishing corruption the centerpiece of his political agenda. So when the country’s arguably worst, self-confessed, most corrupt official was photographed dining out carefree at a luxury restaurant over the weekend, it wasn’t good optics. The case comes at a time when Mexico’s attorney general is trying to lock up 31 academics in a maximum security prison because he claims they improperly received about $2.5 million in government science funding years ago. Meanwhile, the same attorney general hasn’t managed to jail any of the top figures implicated in a big corruption case at the state-run Pemex oil company that almost bankrupted the firm.