■ Brazil
Firms behind graft scandal
Private and state companies were financing the alleged vote-buying scandal in Congress, the congressman who made the corruption allegations earlier in the week told Brazil's largest newspaper yesterday. Representative Roberto Jefferson, who last Monday claimed President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's Workers Party paid monthly "allowances" of more than US$12,000 to other congressmen, said the bribe money was collected from the companies by a man who works with Delubio Soares, the Workers Party treasurer accused of making the reported payoffs.
■ United States
Paper gets journalism award
The co-founder of a Tijuana-based weekly newspaper that has investigated government corruption and drug cartels for more than a decade, and whose editors have repeatedly been the targets of assassination attempts, received Southern California's top journalism honor Saturday night. Jesus Blancornelas, 68, who founded the weekly Zeta in 1980 and is an editor of the paper, was wounded in a 1997 assassination attempt in which his bodyguard was killed.
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