Mexican President Felipe Calderon said on Saturday that his controversial war on drugs had cost criminal gangs US$14.5 billion as he submitted his administration’s last report to congress.
Calderon leaves office on Dec. 1 after a six-year term that has been overshadowed by his government’s struggle to tame drug-related violence that has left more than 50,000 people dead since 2006.
In his final report to the new congress, the conservative leader, who is limited to one term by law, focused on the capture of gang leaders and the massive seizures of cash and drugs.
Photo: Reuters
“During this administration, the federal government was committed to returning peace and calm to Mexicans, as well as preventing violence and building the foundations of an authentic and lasting peace,” Calderon’s report said.
In the past six years, authorities have seized 114 tonnes of cocaine, nearly 11,000 tonnes of marijuana and more than 75 tonnes of methamphetamines.
More than 100,000 vehicles, 515 boats and 578 aircraft have been confiscated, along with more than US$1 billion in cash.
All these actions represented a loss of US$14.5 billion for the cartels, Calderon said. According to the public security ministry, the criminal organizations control a US$64 billion market.
Outside the congress, which opened its first session since July 1 elections, some 5,000 protesters demonstrated against Calderon’s security strategy.
The student movement #Yosoy132 submitted its own “counter-report” which read: “We have seen a cowardly president speak about courage while society contributed the dead, the displaced, the kidnapped and the ill-treated by the authorities.”
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS