One more journalist gunned down

Another journalist has been killed in Mexico - the fourth in just six weeks.

Authorities said reporter Maximino Rodriguez Palacios was shot dead outside of a shopping center Friday in La Paz, a coastal city in the state of Baja California Sur. Rodriguez, 72, wrote about politics and crime for a news organization called the Pericu Collective. He had previously worked as a spokesman for the state attorney general's office. Friday's shooting is the latest in a string of violent attacks on journalists in Mexico that has claimed four lives since March 2 and has left several others wounded. The attacks have drawn condemnation from human rights advocates, with the Committee to Protect Journalists calling the situation in Mexico a "crisis" of freedom of expression. Mexico's human rights commission, which on Saturday said it was sending investigators to La Paz to monitor the police investigation into the killing, has convened emergency talks with law enforcement officials from around the country to discuss how to better protect journalists.

Mexico is the world's third-most dangerous country for journalists, after Syria and Afghanistan, according to Reporters Without Borders. Since 2000, 124 journalists have been killed, according to Mexico's human rights commission.