by the El Reportero news services
The authorities had to evacuate 10,800 people from Mexico’s tallest building on 30 August after being warned that there was a bomb in its car park.
The bomb scare has all the hallmarks of the Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR), the terrorist group that blew up oil and gas pipelines in central Mexico in early July. The EPR is taking increasing care not to kill people but it is also increasing the frequency of its disruptive attacks, which now invariably involve bombs. The bomb found in the Torre Mayor on 30 August was semi-sophisticated.
It was composed of three pipes filled with gunpowder but it did also seem to have a trigger connected to a mobile telephone, according to the Mexico City Secretaría de Seguridad Pública. The authorities said that if the bomb had gone off it would just have damaged the (stolen) car it was in.
Court approves Noriega’s extradition to France
Panama’s former dictator, Manuel Noriega, can be extradited to France for a money-laundering trial after he completes a lengthy jail sentence in Miami next month, a United States judge ruled on Tuesday. Judge William Turnoff said Noriega’s status as a prisoner of war under the Geneva conventions did not mean he should immediately be sent back to the Central America country he ruled in the 1980s.
Chavez’s largesse unprecedented in Latin America
CARACAS, Venezuela — Laid-off Brazilian factory workers have their jobs back, Nicaraguan farmers are getting low-interest loans and Bolivian mayors can afford new health clinics, all thanks to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
Bolstered by windfall oil profits, Chávez’s government is now offering more direct state funding to Latin America and the Caribbean than the United States. A tally by the Associated Press shows Venezuela has pledged more than $8.8 billion in aid, fi nancing and energy funding so far this year
While the most recent figures available from Washington show $3 billion in U.S. grants and loans reached the region in 2005, it isn’t known how much of the Venezuelan money has actually been delivered. And Chávez’s spending abroad doesn’t come close to the overall volume of U.S. private investment and trade in Latin America.
But in terms of direct government funding, the scale of Venezuela’s commitments is unprecedented for a Latin American country. (AP and Mail Guardian contributed to this report).
