■ MEXICO
Mayor faces criminal charge
Mexico City's mayor, Lopez Obrador, has a huge political following thanks to heavy spending on social programs and construction projects, and has consistently led public-opinion polls as a 2006 presidential candidate. But the Attorney General has asked Congress to strip the mayor of his immunity from prosecution so that he can face charges that he ignored a court order to stop construction of a hospital access road on private land. The mayor insists the case is a ploy by the administration to prevent him from entering the presidential race.
■ Brazil
Nun's murder probe widens
A Brazilian congressional panel investigating the murder of a revered American nun has found evidence that a broader conspiracy between loggers, ranchers and officials is behind a wave of violence against peasant farmers and environmental activists in the Amazon state of Para. "These are not isolated crimes. They form part of a much wider scheme where the price of an ordered killing is shared between farmers, land-grabbers and loggers," said Jose Batista Afonso, a coordinator for Pastoral Land Commission (CPT). The federal police have been drawn into the case, and are carrying out a parallel investigation into wider conspiracy claims thrown up by the panel.
■ United States
Tribe launches own smokes
A Native American tribe in Washington state is preparing to make and sell its own brand of cigarettes at a fraction of the cost of mainstream brands in an effort to diversify its income for tribal members. The Squaxin tribe, located on a small patch of land 50 miles southwest of Seattle, will begin selling its "Complete" brand of cigarettes made by its Skookum Creek Tobacco company for US$16 for a carton of 10 packs. The tribe's cigarettes can be sold cheaply because the tribe is not subject to most taxes paid by tobacco companies.
■ United States
Couple charged for cruelty
A husband and wife who forced their 13-year-old foster daughter to take her grandfather daily meals as he lay dead in an upstairs bedroom were each sentenced to nearly a year in prison. Kenneth and Donna Keaveney of Clark, New Jersey, pleaded guilty to charges of child cruelty and elder neglect after the police found the body of Donna Keaveney's father, Nicola Lombardi, 82, inside their home in August 2003, who had been dead for weeks. The parents did not admit knowing that Lombardi was dead, but said they made the girl tend to him because she had a good relationship with him and they did not. A prosecutor's office spokesman said, "They had to know, the house reeked of death." The girl and two other foster children were removed by the state protection services.
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