Gunmen kill newspaper editor in Mexico
A top editor of the weekly newspaper Zeta was shot dead
Tuesday afternoon in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, the Mexican
official news agency Notimex reported.
The editor, Francisco Javier Ortiz Franco, was gunned down by two
unidentified men when he drove a car through the city with his two
children.
Ortiz was killed at the scene, but the children, aged eight and 10, were
unharmed.
Tijuana is home to a drug smuggling group led by the Arellano Felix
crime family.
As the Zeta newspaper has made efforts to reveal the criminal activities
in the city, its employees have become targets of attacks. In April
1988, the newspaper's co-founder, Hector Felix Miranda, was murdered by
gunmen.
Argentina authorizes sending troops to Haiti
The Argentine government issued a decree Tuesday to authorize
the dispatch of more than 600 troops and medical staff to join the UN
peacekeeping forces in Haiti.
According to the degree posted on the State's Office Bulletin, Argentina
will send 614 troops, military doctors and nurses to the Caribbean
country along with a transport ship, 30 armored personnel carriers, a
mobile air force hospital unit and two helicopters.
They are scheduled to stay there for six months, but their mission is
expected to extend for a maximum of 18 months, the decree said.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry said Tuesday that the
Argentine troops will leave for Haiti on July 10 and be deployed in the
cities of Gonaives and Saint Marc.
Argentina's Lower House gave final approval on June 17 to the troop
sending plan proposed by President Nestor Kirchner. The troops will join
the Brazil-led UN peacekeeping force in Haiti.
The UN force began arriving in Haiti on June 1. It replaces a
3,600-strong multinational force led by the United States sent after
armed rebels forced Haiti's first democratically elected president, Jean
Bertrand Aristide, to resign in February.
Brazil to shoot drug runners' aircraft
The Brazilian government has said it will adopt by the end of
the month a policy to shoot down aircraft used by narco-traffickers who
bring drugs to inner cities in Europe and the Americas.
Peru and Colombia abandoned the controversial practice after the
Peruvian air force, with the help of US intelligence information in
2001, accidentally shot down an aircraft carrying American missionaries.
Experts say that partly as a result of that suspension, traffickers have
been able to increase their flights and drug supplies from Colombia,
heightening pressure on regional governments to take tougher action. In
recent years several cities in Brazil have been flooded with cocaine and
its cheaper derivatives, triggering bloody gang wars.
"It is a necessary measure," said José Viegas, Brazil's defence
minister, referring to the shoot-down policy. The regulation to a 1998
shoot-down law was "in its final phase" and would be ready this month,
he added.
For years drug traffickers have been mocking the Brazilian armed forces
and police. Last year, the Brazilian air force video-taped the pilot of
a suspected drug plane in mid-air making obscene and ridiculing
gestures, fully aware it was illegal for him to be shot at.
Unlike neighbouring countries, Brazil has its own technology that
permits "real-time" tracking of aircraft in its airspace.
Peru and Colombia have already expressed interest in participating in
Brazil's Sivam, the recently inaugurated satellite-based surveillance
system. "We have found a great ally in the fight against drugs in the
[President Luiz Inácio] Lula [da Silva] government," Alvaro Uribe,
Colombian president, said on Tuesday in São Paulo. Colombia reactivated
its shoot-down policy last year.
With many of the drug routes running through the heart of the Amazon
forest and across international borders, the region's countries have
been trying to co-ordinate their anti-drug policy. Brazil, Peru and
Colombia in February signed the first agreement for their military and
police to co-operate in the war on drug trafficking.
The US, which distanced itself from the policy after the 2001 Peru
incident, is now giving its tacit support after the region's countries
adopted tougher security measures to avoid accidental shoot-downs.
As part of Brazil's proposed security measures, Mr Viegas said, only
suspect aircraft lacking proper registration and an official flight
path, which did not respond to radio and visual contact, would be fired
at.
Landslides In Colombia Force Thousands To Take
Route Through Rebel Territory
Thousands of holiday travelers had to take a three-hour
detour through rebel territory after landslides closed a major highway.
One person was killed and two injured.
The three landslides hit the main road from Bogota to Villavicencio, 45
miles to the southeast, on Sunday, said police spokesman Javier Baquero.
There had been heavy rains in the area.
Police said Monday the three victims were traveling on the road at the
time.
Crews cleared boulders and mud from the road Monday, but it may not
reopen before Wednesday as some of the rocks are so big they will have
to be dynamited, Baquero said.
Travelers, who were enjoying a three-day weekend, were redirected
through an area frequented by rebels who often kidnap motorists.
Police stepped up their presence along the alternate route, which, in
addition to being more dangerous, also adds three hours to the two-hour
drive between the cities, Baquero said.
Some 3,000 people are kidnapped in this Andean nation each year, many of
them seized on highways by rebels who set up illegal road blocks.
Two leftist rebel armies have been fighting a succession of elected
governments in the South American country for 40 years.
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