■UNITED STATES
Pot-pusher pleads guilty
A Fort Worth, Texas, man shown on videotape coaxing two toddlers into smoking marijuana has pleaded guilty. Vanswan Polty was sentenced to seven years in prison in a plea deal on Tuesday, after pleading guilty to two charges of injury to a child and other unrelated charges. Polty, 20, and a teenage uncle of the two-year-old and four-year-old were seen in the video found by police last year. Drug tests performed on the children revealed they had marijuana and cocaine in their system.
■BRAZIL
Banker sentenced to prison
A judged sentenced banker Daniel Dantas to 10 years in prison on Tuesday for attempting to bribe a police officer. Dantas, the founder of the Opportunity financial group, was arrested in July along with a former mayor of Sao Paulo on charges of money laundering and tax evasion. Prosecutors accuse Dantas of having offered a police officer US$1 million in exchange for dropping investigations into his case, which was linked to a scandal over undeclared campaign funds being used to buy votes in Congress.
■GUATEMALA
Shootout kills 17
A shootout between inebriated rival drug traffickers who disagreed over the winner of a horse race left at least 17 dead and three more wounded, police said on Monday. About 100 soldiers were deployed to the town of Santa Ana Huista to restore calm after Sunday’s incident, a police spokesman said. The dead include both Guatemalans and Mexicans, some with previous convictions for drug trafficking. Two men, a Mexican and a Guatemalan, have been arrested in connection with the shootout.
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