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URIBE DEFENDS OFFICIALS VS. ACCUSATIONS
The Miami9 Herald
May 16, 2007.
BOGOTA, Colombia --
President Alvaro Uribe defended his vice president and defense minister on Wednesday against a jailed former paramilitary commander's accusations that they conspired with illegal right-wing militias in the late 1990s.
"I have every confidence in the honesty and moral fiber" of both men," Uribe said in a radio interview. The officials, who are cousins, belong to one of Colombia's most powerful political families.
The allegations complicate the U.S.-allied president's efforts to deal with a widening political firestorm over the murderous militias' corrupting influence in Colombian politics and commerce.
The jailed warlord, Salvatore Mancuso, testified Tuesday that Vice President Francisco Santos proposed creating paramilitary bloc in the province surrounding Bogota, the capital, and that the defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, sought paramilitary help in an alleged plot to overthrow then-President Ernesto Samper.
At the time, both were private citizens but well-known public figures. Francisco Santos was an editor at the country's leading newspaper, El Tiempo.
Samper was disgraced and badly weakened by a scandal over the financing of his 1994 campaign by Cali cartel drug traffickers and Bogota, along with most of the country, was afflicted by extortionist leftist rebels.
COCA-COLA VS COCA SEK IN COLOMBIA
The Miami Herald
May. 10, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia --
President Alvaro Uribe is taking the war on drugs to the supermarket, prohibiting the sale of products made from the coca plant.
With the help of more than $600 million a year in U.S. aid, Uribe has strengthened Colombia's anti-narcotics police, seized record tons of cocaine and extradited 520 drug trafficking suspects to U.S. jails.
But until recently, his hardline government had not gone after natural coca products made by Indians, acknowledging that millions of peasants have chewed calcium-rich coca for thousands of years to stave off hunger and as a remedy for ailments from altitude sickness to stomach aches.
Uribe's presidential Web site even promoted natural coca products as a rare commercial enterprise for poor Indian communities, and the federal food-safety agency provided quality-control advice to the manufacturers of coca tea, cookies, shampoo and other consumer goods.
That suddenly changed in February, when Uribe's administration started banning the sale of coca products outside the reservations where Indians have a constitutional right to grow the hearty plant. Though it's still possible to find coca products at boutique markets and health food stores, inspectors have begun to forcibly remove them from supermarket shelves.
ROADSIDE BOMB KILLS 10 COLOMBIAN TROOPS
The Miami Herald
May. 10, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia --
A roadside bomb planted by leftist rebels killed 10 soldiers as they patrolled in southwestern Colombia on Thursday, the deadliest attack on security forces this year, authorities said. A similar attack killed nine police officers a day earlier.
The new attack, which also injured 13 soldiers, occurred shortly after midnight Thursday morning, said the commander of the army's 3rd Division, Gen. Hernando Perez Molina, who blamed Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
"We know this is the FARC because it fits their modus operandi, and historically they have operated in this zone," said Perez.
He said the patrol was searching for criminal gangs and far-right paramilitaries near the town of Tulua when the explosive was set off by remote control.
The area in Valle del Cauca province is home to some of Colombia's largest drug traffickers, as well as leftist rebels and far-right death squads. Both the security forces and the rebels have increased their presence in the zone in the past year.
SURRENDER ENDS STANDOFF IN COSTA RICA
The Miami Herald
May. 11, 2007
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica --
A 20-year-old Kazakhstan man turned himself over to police on Friday, ending a three-hour standoff and safely releasing a captive he held inside the Russian Embassy in Costa Rica, police said.
Roman Bogdanyants covered his face as he was escorted by police from the building, followed by a Russian man that police spokesman Francisco Ruiz said was held hostage.
Officials originally reported an armed gunman had seized eight hostages, quickly releasing five. But Russian Ambassador Valery Nikolayenko told Channel 7 Telenoticias in a phone interview from inside the building that he and three other officials had remained to help negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict.
Bogdanyants was taken to a cell in a San Jose courthouse, where he was being held late Friday. Court official Maria Isabel Solis said prosecutors were investigating what charges would be filed against him.
Immigration spokeswoman Heidi Bonilla told The Associated Press that Bogdanyants arrived in Costa Rica in 2005. Police earlier had described him as an Uzbek.
ANGRY PROTESTERS SWARM KIRCHNER'S SISTER
The Miami Herald
May. 12, 2007
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina --
Striking teachers and public workers tossed eggs and flour at President Nestor Kirchner's sister on Saturday, jostling the Cabinet minister as she visited the president's home province of Santa Cruz.
Alicia Kirchner, Argentina's minister for social development, was not seriously hurt during the brief fracas outside a restaurant in Rio Gallegos, some 1,675 miles south of Buenos Aires, authorities said.
TV newscasts showed angry protesters pulling the woman's hair, throwing flour on her head and trying to kick her before she could be whisked away from a protest by about 400 demonstrators in the provincial capital.
It was the latest incident marring attempts by the president and his Santa Cruz allies to quell more than a month of near daily protests by teachers and municipal workers demanding higher wages.
The attack came two days after Santa Cruz Gov. Carlos Sancho resigned in a bid to end a political crisis in Kirchner's Patagonian province. Sancho bowed out in the wake of clash between riot police and protesters on Wednesday that left 12 people injured, none seriously.
The Santa Cruz protests have been some of the strongest nationwide by teachers, government workers and others seeking wage increases. Salaries have yet to recover from devaluation during Argentina's 2002 economic crisis.
CUBA HONORS SOLDIER KILLED BY DESERTERS
The Miami Herald
May. 12, 2007
HAVANA --
Cuba awarded a posthumous medal to a soldier killed by conscripts who fled their base and later tried to hijack a plane to leave the island, an incident the government blamed on Washington's policies.
The soldier, Yoendris Gutierrez Hernandez, was on guard duty at a military base on April 29. Three deserters bayoneted him to death with stolen rifles after he refused to surrender his weapon, the Communist Party newspaper Granma reported Saturday.
In a somber ceremony in the eastern province of Granma, a medal for heroism was given to Gutierrez's parents. Acting President Raul Castro, also the island's defense minister, saluted the soldier's "bravery and rejection and opposition to the demands of three assailants who threatened him, demanding that he give them the weapon he used for military service."
Castro 75, has been in charge of a caretaker government since his brother Fidel had emergency intestinal surgery and stepped aside last summer. The 80-year-old Fidel Castro has not been seen in nine months, but life on the island has remained largely unchanged.
SEVERED HEAD FOUND OUTSIDE MEXICAN BASE
The Miami Herald
May. 12, 2007
VERACRUZ, Mexico --
A severed head accompanied by a note of defiance from organized crime gangs and two hand grenades was found outside a military barracks in Veracruz state on Saturday.
The head was found in a box outside the army base in Veracruz city, shortly after the government announced it was sending troops to respond to a shooting attack. The box also held a message saying gangs would continue operating despite the presence of troops.
"We are going to continue, even if federal forces are here," state Public Safety Secretary Juan Manuel Orozco quoted the note as saying.
The body of the victim - a 37-year-old auto mechanic who had been kidnapped four days earlier - was found on a street in another neighborhood, wrapped in a sheet.
"Clearly this is a provocation," Veracruz Gov. Fidel Herrera said of the message, noting similar notes have been found in other states.
IN JUAREZ, EXPIRING JUSTICE
The Washington Post
May 14, 2007
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico For 13 years, June 14 has brought tears, tortured memories and enduring pain to Griselda Salas.
It was on that date, in 1993, that her 16-year-old sister, Guadalupe Ivonne Salas, disappeared. Guadalupe Ivonne's body turned up less than a week later in a park in this dusty, windswept industrial city near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Guadalupe Ivonne, who was raped and strangled, was one of the first victims in Mexico's grisliest modern-day crime mystery -- the murders of more than 400 women in the past 14 years in Ciudad Juarez, many of the bodies dumped in the desert, horribly mutilated. The killings, mostly of poor young factory workers, have inspired two Hollywood motion pictures and enraged human rights groups, which have filled volumes with accusations of corruption, botched investigations and official negligence.
Yet the mystery remains unsolved.
WIZARD OF RECYCLING LURES KIDS TO SCIENCE
The Christian Science Monitor
May 14, 2007
MEXICO CITY - As a child, Carlos Macias made a hobby out of inventing his own toys. A self-described bookworm, he quickly exhausted the family supply of books and became something of a young scientist.
"I preferred [inventing] to playing or swimming," he says of a childhood full of the explosions, splatters, and sparks of invention.
On one family outing to a city park, the young boy decided that he wanted to catch bugs in a murky pond. After finding a stick, a piece of string, and a plastic bag, he made his own fishing rod. Seeing him using the new invention, some other children came over and asked to buy it. When the young inventor offered instead to show them how to make it, they insisted he sell it to them, but, Macias refused, saying they should make it themselves.
While his ethic hasn't made him rich, it has made him a minor celebrity among kids who consider him a modern-day wizard.
Mama Tierra, the science workshop he founded in 1992, helps make dreams come true. The wistful "I want to make a remote-control boat with passengers and a moving radar detector" becomes a plan, not a wish.
His mission is twofold: To introduce kids of all ages to recycling and environmental technologies like solar energy and to teach them to experience creativity firsthand, to reach for solutions rather than expect easy answers.
DRUG CARTELS TARGET MILITARY IN MEXICO
The Miami Herald
May. 14, 2007
APATZINGAN, Mexico --
Mexican drug cartels armed with powerful weapons and angered by a nationwide military crackdown are striking back, killing soldiers in bold, daily attacks that threaten the one force strong enough to take on the gangs.
The daily bloodshed includes an ambush that killed five soldiers this month, a severed head left with a defiant note outside a military barracks on Saturday and the slaying Monday of a top federal intelligence official who was shot in the face in his car outside his office in Mexico City.
Mexicans were particularly shocked last week by televised images of kindergartners fleeing their school during a grenade-and-gun battle between traffickers and soldiers that lasted for nearly two hours in this small town in President Felipe Calderon's home state of Michoacan.
The unrelenting bloodshed has forced a change in strategy for Calderon, who sent more than 24,000 federal police and soldiers out in December to reoccupy territory from Michoacan's poppy-dotted mountains to the tourist-packed port of Acapulco.
Now, to supplement the massive presence of soldiers and tanks in small towns, he's ordered the creation of an elite military special operations force capable of surgical strikes.
COLOMBIA ORDERS MORE LAWMAKERS ARRESTED
The Miami Herald
May. 14, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia --
Judicial authorities on Monday ordered the arrest of 20 politicians and business leaders, including five congressmen, on criminal conspiracy charges for signing a 2001 pact with illegal right-wing militias.
All are accused of benefiting - at the ballot box or otherwise - from close ties to the paramilitaries, which committed contemporary Colombia's must brutal massacres and stole land from tens of thousands of peasants.
It was the latest shock wave in a scandal that has badly marred President Alvaro Uribe's credibility because nearly all those implicated are his political allies, although the second-term president enjoys broad popularity for making Colombia's cities safer.
The nation's chief prosecutor, Mario Iguaran, rejected claims by some of the pact's signatories that they signed under duress.
"They willingly and freely participated in the meeting," he told reporters.
Shake-up in Colombia's security forces
The Miami Herald
May.15, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia --
In the biggest shake-up in years of the security forces, Colombia's police chief and the head of police
intelligence were forced to retire as the government alleged that police illegally tapped calls of opposition
political figures, journalists and members of the government for the past two years.
The scandal multiplied U.S.-ally President Alvaro Uribe's woes on a day judicial authorities also ordered
the arrest of 20 politicians and business leaders, including five congressmen, on criminal conspiracy
charges for signing a 2001 pact with illegal right-wing militias.
"The procedure is totally unacceptable, illegal and contrary to the policy of the government," Minister of
Defense Juan Manuel Santos said in a statement.
COLOMBIA ADMITS WIRETAPPING OPERATION
The Miami Herald
May. 15, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia --
An illegal police wiretapping operation against journalists, opposition figures and government members included the man President Alvaro Uribe defeated in the last election, his defense minister acknowledged Tuesday.
Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos insisted that the Uribe administration was unaware of the police spying operation. "We don't know who ordered these interceptions and the government has never learned what they contain," he said.
Santos refused to reveal all the known victims of the wiretapping, but he did acknowledge that Carlos Gaviria of the Polo Democratico Alternativo party, who finished second in May 2006 presidential elections, was spied on. "That's as much as I'm going to say. I saw others but I don't think it merits giving the names," he told a news conference.
The wiretapping didn't surprise Gaviria, who told The Associated Press that it "all formed part of the dirty campaign against me."
SILVA VOWS HELP FOR BRAZIL CANE CUTTERS
The Miami Herald
May. 15, 2007
BRASILIA, Brazil --
Brazil will push to improve working conditions for sugarcane cutters who harvest most of the cane that is turned into ethanol for the nation's booming biofuel industry, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Tuesday.
Brazil has been criticized over conditions for cane cutters, who use machetes to chop down sugarcane for wealthy landowners with large plantations where the cane is distilled into ethanol.
Brazil "must take the next step, to discuss the humanization of the sugar cane sector in this country," Silva said at a news conference.
Silva said the government will approach both industry leaders and workers.
Silva was widely criticized recently at home for calling Brazil's ethanol producers "national and world heroes." Critics said producers were pocketing huge profits while their workers suffered under miserable conditions.
On the same day in March that he made that statement, Brazil's Labor Ministry accused a cane field owner of violating labor codes by denying workers proper safety equipment, safe water and bathrooms as they worked under the hot sun, according to the Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil's largest newspaper. At least 17 workers have died since 2004 on cane plantations, the newspaper said.
MEXICO CITY CONSIDERS PLAN FOR FEMALE TAXI LINE
The Miami Herald
May. 15, 2007
MEXICO CITY --
Alejandra Olvera said she's been a taxi victim twice.
Fifteen years ago, she said, she was a passenger when a taxi driver pulled into a dark industrial district and tried to grope her before she pushed him away and escaped.
Now, as one of a handful of female taxi drivers in this sprawling megalopolis of 23 million, Olvera recently pulled over for a male passenger. He gruffly waved her on, telling her no female would drive him.
''It made me laugh,'' Olvera said. ``Mexico is such a macho country.''
Olvera isn't Mexico City's first female taxi driver, but her stories help explain why some Mexico City lawmakers are proposing a new all-women taxi service. Their belief: Women are safer with drivers and passengers of the same sex.
The capital's government estimated that at least 400 women last year were assaulted in taxis. But that number is unreliable because many women don't report assaults, let alone offensive ogling or flagrant flirtation.
ROCK STAR PRODS RIO'S RESIDENTS TO STAND UP TO THE VIOLENCE
The Christian Science Monitor
May 15, 2007
RIO DE JANEIRO - Rock stars are often angry young men and Tico Santa Cruz is no exception. But the tattooed lead singer of the hit Brazilian band Detonautas has plenty to be angry about.
His hometown of Rio de Janeiro is a city under siege, with more than 6,000 homicides each year. Drug factions fight for control of the shantytowns that dot the city. Stray bullets from their firefights strike down two innocent people every three days.
What ticks off Mr. Santa Cruz the most is that so few people seem to care. So he now channels his frustration into rousing Brazilians from their apathy with highly visible, creative forms of protest. Of course, he's not the first celebrity to use his star power for a good cause. But he is one of the first to galvanize victims' families to confront Brazil's growing scourge of violence.
ADOPTIONS FROM GUATEMALA FACE AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE
The New York Times
May 16, 2007
After successfully adopting a child from Guatemala two years ago, Mary Vertin and Mark Huepfel are trying to adopt another from the country. This time around, though, the process has been fraught with uncertainty.
The couple’s adoption agency, Children’s Home Society and Family Services, based in St. Paul, has encouraged them to consider other countries. The State Department fact sheet on adopting from the country states, “We cannot recommend adoptions from Guatemala at this time,” citing unethical practices. There have been signs that American adoptions from Guatemala — the second most popular destination for overseas adoptions, behind China — may end.
“In the end we wanted to do this,” said Ms. Vertin, 46, a special education teacher who lives Houlton, Wis. “And we felt we know the risks and we trust our agency. We’re hoping for the best.”
COLOMBIA'S URIBE FACING QUESTIONS ON WIRETAPPING
The Washington Post
May 16, 2007
BOGOTA, Colombia, May 15 -- Opposition politicians in Colombia demanded an explanation from President Álvaro Uribe's government on Tuesday after it was revealed that an elite police intelligence unit had for two years been illegally tapping the phones of opposition figures and journalists.
The disclosures, made late Monday by Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos after a long meeting with Uribe, was embarrassing for an American ally that has received upwards of $4 billion in mostly military and anti-drug aid. Democrats on Capitol Hill have expressed reservations about supporting a free trade pact with Colombia, citing its troubling human rights record, and some in the U.S. Congress are pushing for more restrictions on military assistance.
The government said the attorney general's office would immediately open an investigation into the wiretapping.
DEATH-SQUAD SCANDAL CIRCLES CLOSER TO COLOMBIA’S PRESIDENT
The New York Times
May 16, 2007
CALI, Colombia, May 15 — President Álvaro Uribe, the Bush administration’s closest ally in Latin America, faces an intensifying scandal after a jailed former commander of paramilitary death squads testified Tuesday that Mr. Uribe’s defense minister had tried to plot with the outlawed private militias to upset the rule of a former president.
Speaking at a closed court hearing in Medellín, Salvatore Mancuso, the former paramilitary warlord, said Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos had met with paramilitary leaders in the mid-1990s to discuss efforts to destabilize the president at the time, Ernesto Samper, according to judicial officials.
COLOMBIAN PARAMILITARY LEADER CLAIMS HIGH-LEVEL TIES
The Miami Herald
May. 16, 2007
BOGOTA --
A former commander of illegal paramilitary fighters testified to prosecutors Tuesday that Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos once proposed creating a paramilitary unit in Bogotá, and that Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos had proposed working together to overthrow former President Ernesto Samper.
Salvatore Mancuso, who once led some 5,000 paramilitary fighters against leftist rebels, testified that the proposals came during two separate meetings with the cousins, without specifying a date but before either Santos held their current political posts.
His mention of a possible overthrow of Samper put that meeting in the mid-1990s, when Samper was facing allegations of ties to drug cartels, and the United States had effectively severed ties with the Colombian leader.
The cousins are members of one of the most powerful families in Colombia -- owners of El Tiempo, the country's largest newspaper, as well as other media outlets.
Francisco Santos has been vice president since President Alvaro Uribe took power in 2002. Juan Manuel Santos became defense minister last year and served as finance minister under Uribe's predecessor, Andrés Pastrana.
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