For a genuine fright this Halloween, you can turn your gaze to the southern border, where ravenous, flesh-eating maggots are festering and have taken to eating people's pets.

This week, the country's New World Screwworm (NWS) infestation spread to a third state, Arizona, which joins New Mexico and Texas in being plagued by the horrifying parasites. To date, 74 animal cases have been identified in the US since the flies re-invaded the country in June.

The flies lay hundreds of eggs in wounds and moist orifices of animals, and the resulting voracious maggots feast on their victims. The maggots resemble screws and tortuously bore and twist into living flesh, causing severe, sometimes fatal wounds, before dropping to the ground to develop into adults.

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Mr. Cárdenas, the only son of a Mexican president, never won the office but became a leading figure in the country’s democratic transformation.

© Luis Barron/eyepix, via Zuma, via Reuters

Mr. Cárdenas, the only son of a Mexican president, never won the office but became a leading figure in the country’s democratic transformation.

© Luis Barron/Eyepix, via Zuma, via Reuters

To protect Mexico’s tourism-reliant economy, the Navy is fighting a massive sargassum bloom that dumps thousands of tons of seaweed onto Caribbean beaches daily.

Guadalupe Taddei Zavala, the head of the electoral watchdog, stepped down after facing accusations of corruption and influence peddling.

© Jose Luis Torales/NurPhoto, via Getty Images

The Trump administration wants a public victory soon, as well as a potential path to U.S. military forces in Mexico.

© Paul Ratje for The New York Times

Meta must pay $25 billion to New Mexico after a jury found the tech giant guilty of nearly 44 million violations of state consumer protection laws.

The largest fine to ever hit Meta came after New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez declined to join an $18 billion settlement Meta reached earlier this year with attorneys general in nearly all states.

In his opinion Wednesday, US district court judge Francis J. Mathew said there was no “bright line rule” for determining the appropriate penalty for Meta's repeated and willful deception of users since 2010 about their “control of data, third-party data misuse, misinformation, hate speech, and equal enforcement.”

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The penalty, one of the largest levied against a tech giant, stemmed from a lawsuit by New Mexico claiming the social media company had misled users about their data privacy.

© Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

In each incident, the technology appeared to be conducting mundane data collection and resorted to hacking techniques to get it, researchers said.

© Lucas Foglia for The New York Times