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But the hard-won accomplishments that earned Bogotá plaudits around the world are now being eclipsed by outrage. So many ambitious construction projects have been put in motion simultaneously that the city has endured months of traffic chaos. And a long simmering corruption scandal has resulted this week in the suspension of Bogotá’s mayor, Samuel Moreno. Making matters worse, fears of violent crime are spreading yet again. While Bogotá is still safer than it was before its once heralded comeback, when it was plagued by car bombs and high kidnapping rates, news reports of grisly murders and robberies, including assaults on foreign tourists in hotels, are gripping residents again. Much of the ire here is focused on the deterioration of this capital city’s once cutting-edge public transportation system, a bus network called TransMilenio designed to have the feel of an above-ground subway.
Bogotá, Colombia, Backslides After a Comeback
Tomas Munita for The New York Times Protesting last month in Santiago, Chile. Government approval of a plan for a dam in a pristine part of the country has brought thousands to the streets.
Patagonia Dam Project Inspires Outrage in Chile
Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times Andreia Soares played with a child at her employer's home. The training she has received has helped her command higher pay. With the money she saved, she bought a two-bedroom apartment with granite kitchen countertops and a small veranda, a house for her mother, a plot of land for her brother and a Louis Vuitton purse from Paris that she proudly pulls from a closet.
Nannies Move Into Brazil’s Middle Class — São Paulo Journal
KEIKO FUJIMORI’S father, , ’s former president, sits in prison here serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses . Her mother, Susana Higuchi, has shown scars on her neck that Ms. Higuchi said resulted from torture by Mr. Fujimori’s intelligence agents after Ms.
Keiko Fujimori Contends For Peru’s Presidency
Meridith Kohut for The New York Times The sexes mix freely at San Antonio prison in Venezuela. But once inside, the prison for more than 2,000 Venezuelans and foreigners held largely for drug trafficking looks more like a Hugh Hefner-inspired fleshpot than a stockade for toughened smugglers. Bikini-clad female visitors frolic under the Caribbean sun in an outdoor pool. Marijuana smoke flavors the air.
Where Prisoners Can Do Anything, Except Leave
The New York Times At the Yellow Submarine bar, the Beatles provide the decoration and the inspiration. Better yet, perhaps because of that history, the band played like rebels. Fast and raw, they zipped up and down the bass lines of “Dear Prudence” as if the song were new. They raced through “Rocky Raccoon,” and when they reached the opening words of “Let It Be” — “When I find myself in times of trouble” — the entire crowd began singing along, swaying, staring at the band or belting out the chorus with their eyes closed in rapture.
Havana Journal - Beatlemania, a Half-Century Late
The actions by the security forces drew renewed attention this week when police officers searching for an accused leader of a drug gang stormed into the home of a gentle poet, breaking windows and doors and emptying closets and drawers. The government’s human rights commission said that to justify an illegal entry the security forces sometimes planted evidence or cited vague justifications, like having received an anonymous tip or having spotted a person who looked “unusually nervous.” “Illegal searches have become a common practice in many parts of the country, and they reveal a systematic pattern,” the commission said in a report released on Friday. It said that the security forces “burst into a home looking for illicit objects, they threaten, injure and detain the occupants, they take valuables or money, they alter evidence.”
Mexico Police Violations Seen in Drug War
Huffington Post
NEW YORK -- Investigators cut out a piece of carpet in a painstaking search of a penthouse suite for DNA evidence in IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's sex assault case, law enforcement officials said Wednesday as he made a new bid to get out of jail. New York detectives and prosecutors believe the carpet in the hotel room may contain Strauss-Kahn's semen, spat out after an episode of forced oral sex by a hotel maid, the officials told The Associated Press. Late Wednesday, Strauss-Kahn resigned as managing director of the International Monetary Fund, according to a letter released by its executive board. In the letter, Strauss-Kahn denied the allegations but said he felt compelled to resign with "great sadness" because he was thinking of his family and also wanted to protect the IMF.Newseum
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Bohemian
Lobbying is Great! Says newspaper owned by lobbyist By Gabe Meline Mar 27, 2013 The Big Winners