SON MISSING: George Smith, left, makes a statement about the disappearance of his son, George. Royal Caribbean International is at the center of the case.
Watching the news, you'd think cruise-ship passengers getting lost at sea was an epidemic: Irish teenager Lynsey O'Brien, lost near Mexico last month.
Canadian Jill Begora, missing off the Bahamas in December.
Connecticut honeymooner George Smith, presumably overboard in the Mediterranean last summer. But is this really a growing problem resulting from poor safety practices, or something else?
The cruise lines say people need not worry -- the crime rate on sh ips is very low. They say 15 people have disappeared from their ships in the past two years, out of more than 20 million people who took cruises during that time period. And most, they say, were the result of suicide, not foul play, as is suspected with Smith.
But families of missing passengers say that while more people than ever are taking cruises, no law enforcement agency tracks crime on cruise ships, and the cruise ships are reluctant to talk about it. They say that makes it difficult to know just how safe cruise ships are.
''If somebody's going to visit a foreign country, they can go on the Internet and find out about crime in that country,'' said Brett Rivkind, a Miami lawyer who helped organize a new group devoted to cruise-crime victims and their families. ``But they can't do that with the cruise ships.''
Publicity over the Smith disappearance -- which has the FBI investigating the possibility of murder -- is prompting Congress to take a closer look at cruise safety.
U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican whose constituency includes the Smith family, is organizing a hearing on the issue for March, his second in three months. Shays said he's concerned that crimes on cruise ships are more common than statistics from the FBI suggest.
''I think we need honest statistics, and I think the way we get honest statistics is if we require it under law, with penalties if they don't give it to us,'' Shays said in a recent phone interview. ``I want to know how big the problem is.''
Tracking crime on cruise ships is complicated by the fact that most carry foreign flags and have operators that are incorporated in other countries such as Liberia and Panama, Shays said.
`PRETTY SAFE'
But the cruise lines disagree that more scrutiny is needed, especially when the same is not being proposed for hotels and other vacation destinations. They say cruising is about as safe a vacation as anyone can take.
''I think that once a thorough investigation is conducted by Congress, they'll come to the conclusion that, hey, cruise ships are pretty safe,'' said Bill Wright, senior vice president of fleet operations at Royal Caribbean International, the Miami-based cruise line that's at the center of the Smith tragedy.
The FBI investigated 10 cruise-ship disappearances from 2000 to 2005. That's fewer than the number of missing in just the past two years, a distinction probably explained by the fact that the FBI didn't have jurisdiction in every case, said Chris Swecker, assistant director of the agency's criminal investigations division.
The publicity over missing passengers also has raised questions about how the cruise lines report crimes to law enforcement. Because most ships are foreign-flagged and sail outside U.S. territorial waters, ''jurisdictional and bureaucratic tangles'' can arise and impede criminal investigations, Shays said at a December hearing. ''Passengers cannot assume the protection of U.S. laws,'' he said.
The FBI investigates cases involving American citizens aboard ships departing or arriving at U.S. ports -- though it might investigate others, Swecker said. He added that he's encouraging cruise industry leaders to ``err in favor of over-reporting.''
''If it involves a U.S. citizen, our contention is that it should be reported to us and then we'll sort it out,'' he said. The cruise lines say they notify the appropriate authorities about all crimes and already lean toward overreporting. ''Anytime there's a question of whether or not to report, we report,'' said Michael Crye, president of the International Council of Cruise Lines, an Arlington, Va., trade group.
John DiPaolo, an FBI agent who oversees criminal investigations at South Florida's seaports, agrees. He said the cruise lines contact his office about crim inal incidents even when the FBI might not have jurisdiction.
''We have very open lines of communication,'' DiPaolo said. 'We've never had an instance where I went to them and said, `Hey, you should have reported that to us.' ''
DOWNPLAYING CASES
But James Walker, a Miami lawyer who represents Smith's wife, said he's concerned that the cruise lines don't report missing passenger cases right away, and then when they do, they downplay the possibility of foul play to avoid negative publicity.
He said cruise ships should be required to carry a federal security force, so that an independent team of investigators could take over when crimes occur.
''The cruise lines do not want bad things to happen to their passengers,'' said Charles Lipcon, a Miami lawyer who's suing Carnival Cruise Lines on behalf of a 37-year-old Wisconsin woman who disappeared in December 2004 near the Mexican coast. He supports the idea of a federa l security force.
''But when something goes wrong, they take it as a bad press kind of thing -- let's hide the ball and hopefully people won't hear about it,'' Lipcon said.
Another point of contention is whether cruise ships have enough surveillance cameras. Families of missing passengers say more are needed to prevent crimes and aid investigations.
Kim Petersen, president of Fort Lauderdale consulting firm SeaSecure, estimates cruise lines have spent tens of millions of dollars on security for their ships. As a result, he said, people are 20 to 30 times safer on a cruise ship than in the average American city.
''No one has to take a cruise, and the moment the public believes cruising to be a risky enterprise, the cruise lines will suffer,'' said Petersen, who provides consulting services to the cruise lines. He was head of security for Princess Cruises during the 1990s and doesn't ``remember ever being denied funding for a secur ity upgrade.''
Miami-based Carnival Cruise Lines believes its ships already are ''pretty well covered,'' said spokesman Tim Gallagher. He added that some passengers might reject more surveillance cameras as an invasion of their privacy. ''We walk a very fine line,'' he said. ``We have to respect a certain amount of privacy for our guests, who are on vacation.''
But Shannon Nowlan, whose brother Chris Caldwell disappeared from the Carnival Fascination in July 2004, said she wishes a camera had captured him going overboard. Then, she said, she could feel some ''closure.'' Caldwell's body was never found.
''There's no question in my mind that he's gone. But there are times when I'm walking down the street and I see someone who looks like him. For a split second, I think, is that him?'' said Nowlan, a stay-at-home mom living in Atlanta. ``It's very difficult, and it always will be.''
MEXICO CITY — Angela Alfarache and Ivonne Cervantes met at a party 16 years ago and have been a couple ever since, filling their lives with books and writing and friends. After their daughter, Constanza, was born six years ago, they became a family.
The young woman seated next to us at the sushi bar exuded a vaguely exotic air; her looks and style, we thought, made it likely that she was not American born.
Police seized more than 20 million packs of counterfeit medicines, arrested at least 33 people and closed more than 100 illegal pharmacies in a series of raids in eight Southeast Asian nations coordinated by Interpol.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Maxi Extralien, a twig-thin 10-year-old in a SpongeBob pajama top, ate only a single bean from the heavy plate of food he received recently from a Haitian civic group. He had to make it last.
Haiti and the US have cut red tape in order to facilitate adoption of the hundreds of children who are believed to be orphaned by the Jan. 12 earthquake, but some argue that rushing the process could jeopardize family reunification.
A periodic climate phenomenon, El Nińo has prompted storms to smack southern California this week rather than the Pacific Northwest. But Indonesia and parts of Australia are also affected, except they're too dry.
Brazilian beer consumption rose more than 5 percent last year to 10.7 billion liters, even with the economic slowdown, O Estado de S. Paulo reported, without saying where it got the information.
The driven Colombian singer, who names Alexander the Great among her heroes, has the album sales and tour grosses to prove that her global appeal makes her a force to be reckoned with.
Nov. 24 -- Men who suppress their anger about unfair treatment at work are two to five times more likely to suffer a heart attack or die from heart disease than those who quickly vent their frustration, a Swedish study shows.
Nov. 27 -- The number of Americans with diabetes may almost double in 25 years, and the annual cost of treating them may triple to $336 billion, according to a study published today in the journal Diabetes Care.
MIAHUATLÁN, Mexico — During the best of the times, Miguel Salcedo’s son, an illegal immigrant in San Diego, would be sending home hundreds of dollars a month to support his struggling family in Mexico. But at times like these, with the American economy out of whack and his son out of work, Mr. Salcedo finds himself doing what he never imagined he would have to do: wiring pesos north.
Merck KGaA of Germany is gambling an unproven therapy that spurs the immune system to attack cancer cells will increase its share of a $48 billion oncology market.
Brazil’s government may agree to raise some pension payments in a bid to defeat a more costly proposal, Folha de Sao Paulo reported, without saying how it obtained the information.
Populist leaders in Latin America are increasingly making legal and political moves to silence their critics in the media, the president of the Intere American Press Associoation said.
The swine flu vaccine shortage is boosting demand from Americans concerned they won’t get the product in time to hold off the disease, said Thomas Frieden , director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Children and teens who took antipsychotic medicines in a study gained weight and developed increased blood-fat levels, possibly harming their future health, researchers in New York State said.
Stem cells were changed to form the precursors of sperm and eggs in a research advance that may lead to better ways of treating the infertility affecting 10 to 15 percent of would-be parents in the U.S.
Lungs too damaged for use in transplant operations may be salvageable through a gene-based technique, doubling or tripling the supply of organs, said the Canadian author of a report on the method.
Juanita Castro, sister of Cuban rulers Fidel and Raúl Castro, cooperated with the CIA in the 1960s -- a time when the U.S. agency was plotting to assassinate Fidel and overthrow his revolution -- according to an exclusive Univisión-Noticias 23 report on her newly published book.
MEXICO CITY — The lights have been going out all over this city. Food rots in tepid refrigerators. Computer screens pop and fizzle out. At a taco stand in Iztapalapa, José Martínez sticks a candle in a Coke bottle and serves hungry customers by its glow.
Michael Moore, the filmmaker who is a bęte noire of conservatives in the United States, now appears to have made some enemies among the leftist supporters of President Chavez.
Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Madeline Martinez is in constant pain from a disease that is destroying her joints and the discs in her back. Marijuana relieves her discomfort, she said, and the Obama administration has ended her worries that she may someday be jailed for using the drug.
Men earn 30 percent more than women in Brazil, according to a new report from the Inter-American Development Bank. That gap is almost zero in Guatemala and Bolivia.
BUENOS AIRES — Argentines woke up Thursday feeling as if a great weight had been lifted from their collective shoulders. After a 1-0 victory over Uruguay, Argentina´s soccer team qualified for the World Cup in South Africa next summer, despite growing doubts that Coach Diego Maradona could lead it there.
People living near gardens, parks and other green spaces have lower rates of anxiety, depression and poor physical health than those living in urban areas, Dutch researchers found.
MEXICO CITY -- The United States should reinstate a Clinton-era ban on assault weapons to prevent such guns from reaching Mexican drug cartels, former officials from both countries said in a report released Tuesday.
SORTE, Venezuela -- Thousands of Venezuelans congregated for candlelit rituals on a remote mountainside where adherents make an annual pilgrimage to pay homage to an indigenous goddess known as Maria Lionza.
President Obama told the largest U.S. gay-rights group that he’ll work with Congress and the Pentagon to end the policy that forbids openly gay men and women from serving in the military.
ISABELA, Puerto Rico -- The headaches began just after Hermogenes Marrero arrived on Vieques, the small Puerto Rican island where the young U.S. Marine guarded stores of Cold War-era chemical weapons.
Argentina’s senate approved a government-backed bill that puts new limits on television and radio ownership and will probably force Grupo Clarin SA, the country’s biggest media company, to sell off assets.
OTTAWA — A man unexpectedly pleaded guilty to leading a plot to to blow up at least three prominent sites, including the Toronto Stock Exchange, in a bid to create chaos to force Canada to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
MEXICO CITY — The man in the hospital bed complained of muscle aches and a fever so high he was sweating into his sheets. Two other patients, also confirmed to be infected with the swine flu virus, shared a special room with him, cut off from the general population.
Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- It was Christmas Day, 1984, and Carol Greider, a 23-year-old first-year graduate student at the University of California couldn’t stay away from the lab where she and assistant professor Elizabeth Blackburn were trying to untangle a genetic mystery.
Oct. 2 -- Scientists, moving closer to a cure for AIDS, identified a way to find medicines that would help rid patients of the hardest-to-treat pockets of HIV.
Brazilian President Lula da silva as applying his strategy of promoting ties among Southern Hemisphere countries to the quest for Rio de Janeiro to host the 2016 Olympics.
The Chilean air force said Tuesday it has invited its Peruvian counterpart to send observers to military maneuvers that Peru has interpreted as threatening and wants canceled.
MEXICO CITY — Back-room deals have long been a staple of Mexican politics, but no one has focused more attention on what goes on in the country’s smoke-filled rooms than a political neophyte who goes by Juanito.
A record-breaking drought in Guatemala -- coupled with higher food prices and a drop in remittances -- is raising concerns that malnutrition could be spreading in the Central American nation.
Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Researchers at the University of toronto said they have developed a microchip sensitive enough to more easily determine the type and severity of a patient’s cancer, which may lead to quicker and more effective treatment.
Cuba's official press said Friday that a Colombian rock star's nerves got the better of him before last weekend's historic "peace concert" in Havana, causing an outburst against authorities in which he threatened to cancel the show.
Sept. 21-- Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias will afflict 35.6 million people in 2010, about 10 percent more than previously estimated because of a higher number of cases in developing countries than doctors realized, researchers said.
A future generation lithium-air battery might be the much sought after power source for electric vehicles with ranges that match gasoline powered cars of today.
Juan Martín del Potro ended Roger Federer´s reign of dominance at the U.S. Open, claiming his first Grand Slam tennis title with a five-set win over the five- time defending champion.
Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales said companies that respect the law and don’t “conspire” against the government are welcome in his country.
MADRID -- The Spanish judge famous for indicting Augusto Pinochet and Osama bin Laden appeared in court with the tables turned: This time he was a suspect, accused of overstepping his authority in a huge domestic case involving Spanish civil war atrocities.
Lawmakers voted to extend adoption rights to gay couples in Uruguay, the latest measure to relax laws on homosexuality that has drawn criticism from church leaders in the country, which is predominantly Roman Catholic.
MEXICO CITY — If Guinness World Records ever creates a category for the country most obsessed with being in the Guinness book of world records, Mexico will surely be in the running.
The federal rules regulating what gifts and how much cash can be sent to Cuba finally became official Thursday, five months after President Barack Obama announced a loosening of restrictions amid great fanfare.
WINNIPEG, Manitoba — Each day, a single Greyhound bus pulls into Ethelbert, Manitoba, population 312, and stops for just five minutes before moving on, a critical lifeline for the village’s fragile economy.
SEOUL, South Korea -- North and South Korea agreed to hold a new round of reunions for families long separated by the Korean War - the first in nearly two years - in the latest sign of easing tensions on the divided peninsula.
MEXICO CITY — The first tropical storms of the season have begun raging across the Atlantic, bringing with them all manner of panic and potential destruction — and, behind the scenes, a little boost in United States- Cuba relations..
MEXICO CITY -- Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin - a move that prosecutors say makes sense even in the midst of the government's grueling battle against drug traffickers.
A team led by J. Craig Venter, the scientist who headed a private effort to map the human genome in the 1990s, succeeded in morphing one kind of bacteria into another, edging closer to the creation of artificial life.
Safaricom, Ltd, Kenya’s biggest mobile-phone company, today began what it describes as the world’s first commercial release of a solar-powered mobile phone, Chief Executive Officer Michael Joseph said.
President Hugo Chavez´s political movement has found a new target: golf. President Hugo Chávez says some golf courses could be better used for the poor.
When Alexis Arguello was found dead July 1, he became the latest in a line of Managua mayors to reach a bad end. His apparent suicide -- if it was that -- is surrounded by mystery.
HAVANA -- Cuba clicked into crisis mode Friday, postponing a key Communist Party congress aimed at charting a post-Castro future and announcing that its woeful economy is even worse than expected.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cut the number of Atlantic hurricanes it expects this year to a range of three to six of the storms.
July 31 --Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva raised the benefit in the country’s flagship anti- poverty program by 9.7 percent seeking to ease the impact of the economic crisis on the poorest citizens.
QUITO, Ecuador -- Ecuadorean officials say there's new hope that famed Galapagos giant tortoise Lonesome George, believed to be the last of his species, could soon be a father.
After killing a dozen Mexican police, Michoacán drug organization goes on TV to proclaim it wants 'peace' and a 'national pact.' The government declines.
Former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru acknowledged that he had paid his spy chief $15 million in government money to quit as the government collapsed amid a corruption scandal.
The number of women who developed an infection following an abortion induced by prescription drugs at U.S. Planned Parenthood centers plummeted after antibiotics were given routinely and other changes were made, a study found.
Bernard Madoff, the investment manager who pleaded guilty to masterminding the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history, should be sentenced to a term of 150 years in prison, federal prosecutors recommended.
June 27 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Jackson showed no signs of illness or lethargy during concert rehearsals preceding his death, according to one of the owners of the sound stage where the singer practiced.
The National Transportation Safety Comission said that it had begun an investigation into two recent incidents involving Airbus A330s, the same kind of plane as the one operated by Air France that crashed over the Atlantic Ocean on June 1.
TEHRAN — It was hot in the car, so the young woman and her singing instructor got out for a breath of fresh air on a quiet side street not far from the antigovernment protests they had ventured out to attend. A gunshot rang out, and the woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, fell to the ground. “It burned me,” she said before she died.
Reporting from Guatemala City -- His stride is an awkward hop, the scars on his abdomen and legs an ugly road map of hurt. Seven bullets tore into Yuri Melini -- that much is known.
The Air France crash that killed 228 people may be the most costly airline disaster since 2001 as insurers led by Axa SA compensate victims’ families and pay for the loss of the plane.
Brazilian authorities are preparing to identify the first bodies recovered from the debris of an Air France plane that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean last week with 228 people on board.
MEXICO CITY — Cliff divers, all-night discos, towering hotels on the sand — that is one side of Acapulco. But a four-hour gun battle over the weekend between soldiers and suspected drug traffickers made clear that the popular beach resort has a dark side and that no part of Mexico may be completely immune from the continuing drug war.
Over 50 percent of wellness executives do not believe an adequate job is being done to educate senior management and employees on the value of wellness programs.
They were dancers and doctors, engineers and executives, and even royalty. Many were parents, and eight were children.The passengers on the ill-fated Air France Flight 447 were from nations throughout Europe as well as from Africa, South America, Asia, the United States and Canada.
The disappearance of an Air France jet en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris left seasoned crash investigators with a mystery to plumb and very little data to work with.
Mexico's 50,000-strong Jewish community has grown over the years along with the country's tolerance -- and they've involved themselves in all aspects of Mexican society.
(Bloomberg) -- Che Guevara’s likeness shouldn’t stand at an entrance to New York’s Central Park, say 10 Republican U.S. lawmakers who urged Mayor Michael Bloomberg to immediately remove the artwork they say honors the Marxist revolutionary.
BOGOTÁ, Colombia – Latin America will be represented in the competitions at the 62nd Cannes International Film Festival which opens on 13 May by exceptional films from three directors – Colombian Ciro Guerra, Brazil's Heitor Dhalia and Gaspar Noé from Argentina..
MEXICO CITY — This sprawling capital was on edge Saturday as jittery residents ventured out wearing surgical masks and President Calderón published an order that would give his government emergency powers to address a deadly flu outbreak, including isolating those who have contracted the virus, inspecting the homes of affected people and ordering the cancellation of public events.
The World Health Organization is set to declare the deadly swine flu virus outbreak in Mexico and the U.S. a global concern, potentially prompting travel advisories, said a person familiar with the matter.
When first lady Michelle Obama hugged Queen Elizabeth yesterday, it was reminiscent of the classic American masterpiece when Chris Farley, embracing his new stepbrother said, “Brothers don’t shake hands, brothers gotta hug!”
The waiting room at Pérola Byington Hospital resembles a small day care center many days. Young girls play on the cold tile floors or rock hyperactively in plastic chairs, while their mothers stare pensively at the red digital readout on a wall, signaling their place in line.
SANTIAGO, Chile -- Lawmakers from Chile and Argentina are meeting in Antarctica to speak with a common voice against Britain's claim to oil and gas in the southernmost seas.
Warmer Atlantic waters spawned more severe storms in the Caribbean in 2005, including Hurricane Katrina, and had an unexpected impact on the world’s largest tropical rain forest: drought.
SANTIAGO, Chile — When a devastating virus swept through Chile's farmed salmon stocks last year, some of the industry's biggest players laid off thousands of workers, packed up operations and moved to unspoiled waters farther south along the Chilean coast. But the virus went with them.
Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Complete Gonomics, which offers DNA analysis services to drugmakers and other companies, will begin in June to sequence human genomes for $5,000, a far cry from the $2.3 billion the first sequencing cost in 2003.
BOGOTÁ, Among the elite here, David Murcia Guzmán is often disparaged as the Madoff of Colombia, after Bernard Madoff, the New York financier accused of creating a $50 billion investment fraud. But to some in the lower classes in one of Latin America's most stratified of countries, he is a folk hero, and his government-shaking arrest recently was just another example of the extent to which the rich will go to keep the poor in their place.
The Argentine government released a photograph of Fidel Castro, the first to be made public in two months. It came as Mr. Castro, the ailing former Cuban leader, broke his silence by publishing his first newspaper columns in more than a month.
COTA COTA BAJA, Bolivia -- Highland Indian communities here remain rooted in the past. The towns have dirt streets. Farmers till their fields with hand plows. Pigs, sheep and cattle graze alongside dogs that run loose.
The men wear trousers, sandals and fedoras. Women prefer bowler hats, colorful shawls and multilayered skirts known as polleras. They carry infants on their backs, wrapped in the shawls. Most everyone chews green coca leaves to ward off hunger and the cold.
One Caribbean nation, St. Kitts and Nevis, staged its first hanging in a decade . Another wants to begin executing criminals who use weapons, even if they have not killed anyone. And a South American country in the region is seeking the death penalty for murderous pirates.
OTTAWA — Marie-Čve Dean's harassment of the Montreal police department was, if nothing else, labor intensive. Over 15 months she flooded the city's 911 emergency line with more than 10,000 crank calls in a dialing marathon that sometimes blocked legitimate callers.
Tijuana's anticorruption police chief was fired and replaced with an Army officer Monday, following three days of drug-related violence that left 37 people dead.
MEXICO CITY — Exclusive clothing boutiques line Avenida Presidente Masarik here. A Burberry coat? A Corneliani suit? A Gucci scarf? Have enough pesos, and they are yours.
SANTIAGO, Chile — It is just after 5 p.m. in what was once one of Latin America's most sexually conservative countries, and the youth of Chile are bumping and grinding to a reggaetón beat. At the Bar Urbano disco, boys and girls ages 14 to 18 are stripping off their shirts, revealing bras, tattoos and nipple rings.
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela and Iran plan to start a new university program in the South American country with a focus on teaching socialist principles.
BOGOTA -- Colombia declared a state of emergency to crack down on illegal investment schemes that lured millions of people with promises of improbably high payouts, only to collapse amid rioting.
MEXICO CITY — When José hops into his Ferrari, presses his Ferragamo loafer to the floor and fills the night air with a deep roar, his bodyguards hustle into a black sport utility vehicle with their weapons at the ready, tailing their fast-moving boss through the streets.
Walking into Brazil's new soccer museum is like entering a hall filled with busts of Greek gods. Suspended on glass screens some eight feet tall in the darkened chamber are the outlines of a dozen or so of Brazil's soccer legends in action.
From their makeshift chapel in a room above a schoolhouse here whose entrance is adorned with a portrait of President Hugo Chávez and revolutionary slogans from his government, the bishops of the Reformed Catholic Church of Venezuela welcomed congregants to Sunday Mass.
HAVANA -- Cuban television showed the first images of Fidel Castro in more than five months, broadcasting a silent video of the ailing revolutionary chatting in a garden with visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Some Venezuelans gamble in neighboring Aruba. Others sell part of the purchasing power of their credit cards to brokers who turn it into dollars. Still others cross into Colombia to sell subsidized goods bought in Venezuela.
BOGOTA, Colombia --
Documents from a computer seized where Colombian commandos killed a senior rebel leader indicate Ecuador's president is deepening relations with Colombia's main guerrilla group, Colombia's police commander said Sunday.
Mexican lawmakers stripped a controversial provision from their plan to overhaul the country's judiciary that would have given police officers, who are widely mistrusted here, the ability to enter homes without obtaining warrants beforehand.
Jesús Malverde has been revered for almost a century in northwestern Mexico. According to folklore, he was a Mexican Robin Hood who took from the rich and gave to the poor until he was killed by the police in 1909.
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched here and in other cities around Colombia on Monday to protest the abductions and killings carried out by the country's largest rebel group.
Relatives of people kidnapped by the FARC attended a church service in Bogotá. Some relatives were opposed to the marches.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- A two-story high lion led an army of spinning women in gold-and-red hoop skirts Saturday night to open the carnival parade in a Rio stadium, a fierce competition between second-division samba groups seeking a promotion.
Groping and verbal harassment is an exasperating reality for women using public transportation in this sprawling capital, where 22 million passengers cram onto subways and buses each day. Some men treat women so badly that the subway system has long had ladies-only cars during rush hour, with police segregating the sexes on the platforms.
Chile's ranking as Latin America's safest country is cold comfort for the people who live there. The recent kidnap and murder of a mother of three, the robberies of three celebrities -- including former World No. 1 tennis player Marcelo Rios -- and an attack on an executive have Chileans on edge. Reports of serious crimes jumped 7.8 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier.
Police recovered paintings by Picasso and Candido Portinari worth millions of dollars stolen last month from Brazil's leading modern art museum and have two suspects in custody, officials said Tuesday.
— A federal grand jury here indicted four Venezuelans and one Uruguayan on Thursday on charges of illegally operating as agents of the Venezuelan government in covering up a scheme to deliver $800,000 in a cash-filled suitcase to the campaign of Argentina's new president.Argentina's president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, has been angered by an American investigation touching her campaign. Argentina wants the United States to extradite Guido Antonini Wilson for questioning.
SAO PAULO, Brazil -- This month's discovery of a monster offshore oil reserve justifies Brazil's plan to build a nuclear submarine because it would be used to protect the find, the defense minister said.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico --
A Puerto Rico prosecutor indicated criminal charges will be filed in the slaughter of dozens of dogs and cats seized last month from housing projects and allegedly thrown from a bridge - an incident that generated worldwide public outrage.
Victims of Colombia's civil conflict sued the banana importer Chiquita Brands, accusing it of making payments to a paramilitary group responsible for thousands of killings.
CARACAS, — Finding Yon Goicoechea, a leader of the nascent student movement protesting the expanding power of President Chŕvez, is not easy. He changes cellphones every few days. After receiving dozens of death threats, he moves among the apartments of friends here each day in search of a safe place to sleep.
SAN BASILIO DE PALENQUE, The residents of this village, founded centuries ago by runaway slaves in the jungle of northern Colombia, eke out their survival from plots of manioc. Pigs wander through dirt roads. The occasional soldier on patrol peeks into houses made of straw, mud and cow dung.
LIMA, PERU - Human rights groups in Peru and abroad are heralding the weekend extradition of former President Alberto Fujimori as a groundbreaking move for Latin America and beyond.
A former justice minister was convicted of masterminding the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán, a cartel-fighting politician and presidential candidate.
Trying to resolve one of Mexico City's oldest and most intractable problems, Mayor Marcelo Ebrard sent more than 1,000 police officers in riot gear into the historic center to keep street vendors from setting up stands and blocking sidewalks. The operation to clear the vendors from 87 streets downtown was carried out peacefully, though several hundred angry vendors staged a march to protest.
MEXICO CITY -- Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, wants his fellow citizens to know that he'll never abandon his beloved rancho in central Mexico, which his opponents and the media have attacked as a gaudy display of opulence rarely seen in a country racked by poverty.
Currently on a tour of the United States to promote his autobiography "Revolution of Hope," Fox is under fire at home for the wealth he appears to have accumulated during his six years as president. Fox handed over the reins to fellow conservative Felipe Calderon last year.
MEXICO CITY, Oct. 9 — Having spent his life as a stalwart in the corrupt political machine that ruled Mexico for decades, Roberto Madrazo has never suffered from a reputation for honesty.
The Mexican police have seized thousands of eggs of endangered turtles from a group of smugglers in the southern state of Oaxaca, where the eggs are a delicacy believed to have aphrodisiac powers.
MEXICO CITY, Aug. 4 (AP) — Mexican archaeologists using ground-penetrating radar have detected underground chambers they believe contain the remains of Ahuizotl, who was the emperor of the Aztecs when Columbus landed in the New World. It would be the first tomb of an Aztec ruler ever found.
NHA TRANG, Vietnam --
Miss Venezuela was crowned Miss Universe 2008 on Monday in a contest marked by the spectacle of Miss USA falling down during the evening gown competition for the second year in a row.
Brazil will offer free satellite Internet connections to indigenous communities in the Amazon as part of its latest effort to crack down on illegal logging in the tropical rain forest.
