UK boosts Bolivia drug campaign

27 July 2011 Last updated at 22:34 GMT By Mattia Cabitza BBC News, La Paz Bolivia acknowledges half the land under coca production supplies drug traffickers The British government has announced a new co-operation deal with Bolivia in the fight against drug trafficking.

During a two-day visit to Bolivia, Britain's Minister for Latin America, Jeremy Browne, said the Serious Organised Crime Agency in London will join forces with the counter-narcotics police in La Paz.

Significant quantities of Bolivian cocaine end up on the streets of Britain.

An example of the co-operation that already exists between Britain and Bolivia in the fight against drug trafficking was shown off during the ministerial visit.

Mr Browne saw for himself how ?500,000 ($800,000) from Britain has funded the building a forensic drug laboratory, which has proved successful in analysing and verifying evidence in drug smuggling cases.

And Mr Browne outlined the aim of British police working more closely with their Bolivian counterparts in future: "The main purpose of this co-operation will be to provide training on investigative techniques to combat drug smuggling."

Jeremy Browne (r) aims to enhance the investigative techniques of Bolivian police

The collaboration would also help improve border control, he said.

And he recognised Britain's responsibility as one of the top consumers in Europe of Bolivian cocaine: "We are trying to reduce the demand for drugs in Britain, but we also realise that we do have a responsibility to try to reduce the supply."

Mr Browne called on the Bolivian government to reduce its production of coca, the raw material for making cocaine, which is grown legally in Bolivia for cultural and medicinal purposes.

According to the United Nations, more than 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) are given over to coca farming in Bolivia.

The authorities acknowledge that half of that area supplies drug traffickers. Independent estimates of illicit cultivation are higher.

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Mexican teenage hitman is jailed

27 July 2011 Last updated at 08:02 GMT Jimenez was arrested last December while trying to catch a plane to the US A Mexican judge has sentenced a US-born teenager to three years in prison for four murders, which he said he carried out on the orders of a drug gang.

Edgar Jimenez Lugo, 14 at the time of the killings, said he was under the influence of drugs and threatened by gang leaders, according to officials.

The sentence was the maximum allowed for a juvenile in the state of Morelos, where he was tried.

Jimenez was born in California, but has spent most of his life in Mexico.

The juvenile court in Morelos found the teenager guilty of killing four people, whose mutilated bodies were founding hanging from a bridge in Cuernavaca in 2010.

A court spokesman said Jimenez's three-year sentence was effective from 2 January 2010. He will be kept in a juvenile facility.

Jimenez, nicknamed El Ponchis, was arrested by the Mexican army last December. He was trying to catch a plane from Cuernavaca with two of his sisters to get back to San Diego, where his Mexican mother lives.

Intimidation

Officials say the boy confessed to working for the South Pacific drug cartel in Morelos state.

He told them he had been abducted and given drugs, and then ordered to carry out the killings.

At the time of his arrest, the Reforma newspaper quoted Edgar Jimenez as saying: "I felt bad doing it. I was forced to do it. They said they would kill me if I didn't do it.

"I only beheaded them, but never hung [bodies] from bridges, never."

Hanging bodies from bridges at busy intersections is a practice among Mexican cartels as a way to intimidate rivals.

Some 40,000 people have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon began deploying troops to fight the cartels in late 2006.

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Mexico crime reporter found dead

27 July 2011 Last updated at 10:25 GMT Yolanda Ordaz had worked as a reporter for 20 years The body of a Mexican journalist who worked for the Notiver newspaper has been found dumped outside the offices of another newspaper in Veracruz state.

Crime reporter Yolanda Ordaz de la Cruz had been missing since Sunday night.

Officials said organised crime was suspected in the murder of Ms Ordaz, who was found with her throat cut.

Last month, columnist Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco, who wrote about politics and crime for Notiver, was killed in his house in the port city of Veracruz.

His wife and son were also killed in the attack.

Ms Ordaz had been reported missing at the weekend. Her body was found on Tuesday outside the offices of another newspaper in Boca del Rio, a city next to the port of Veracruz.

Authorities are looking at links between her murder and those of Mr Lopez Velasco and his family.

The attorney general of Veracruz state, Reynaldo Escobar, said that "everything pointed to" organised crime being behind the killing of Ms Ordaz.

However, he denied that she had been killed because of her work.

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists says that 15 reporters have been killed in Mexico since 2010. Four of these murders have been confirmed as relating to the journalists' work.

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Chavez in appeal to middle class

30 July 2011 Last updated at 01:50 GMT Chavez brought out a yellow shirt for his birthday The Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, says he wants to open up his socialist political project to the middle classes and private sector.

Mr Chavez said his government had to convince Venezuela's middle classes they were needed.

Speaking by telephone on state television, he said he was entering a more reflective period of his life.

Mr Chavez recently underwent cancer treatment in Cuba, but plans to stand for re-election next year.

The Venezuelan leader made his comments a day after he celebrated his 57th birthday, when - appearing in yellow rather than his characteristic red shirt - he told a rally of cheering supporters that he was in no mood to leave office in the near future.

In Friday's telephone interview, Mr Chavez said the treatment to remove a tumour had led him to radically change his life towards a "more diverse, more reflective and multi-faceted" period.

He told his supporters to eliminate divisions and dogma, and end what he called the abuse of symbols such as the term "socialist".

"Why do we have to always have to wear a red shirt?" said Mr Chavez. "And the same goes for the word 'socialism'."

The president cited the example of a mayor in the governing party who inaugurated a "Socialist Avenue", which Mr Chavez described as "stupid".

"We need to reflect and introduce changes in our discourse and in our actions."

Cuban lessons

Mr Chavez, who came to power in 1999, said the private sector and the middle classes were "vital" to his political project.

He said it was a shame that attempts to be more inclusive of these groups in society had been criticised by some in official circles in Venezuela.

"Raul Castro is leading a process of self-criticism," said Mr Chavez, hinting that Venezuela could learn from the reforms being undertaken by the president of Cuba, who has made some concessions to the private sector since taking over from Fidel Castro in 2006.

Mr Chavez said his government needed to correct the perception that small businesses would be taken over by the state.

"We have to make sure no-one believes that," he said. "We have to convince them about our real project, that we need this sector and that we want to acknowledge their contribution."

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Big boots to fill

28 July 2011 Last updated at 00:06 GMT By Sarah Grainger BBC News, Caracas Hugo Chavez is the central and dominant figure in Venezuelan politics Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has made it clear that he intends to stand for re-election in presidential polls scheduled for 2012, despite having treatment for cancer.

Speaking on his return from chemotherapy in Cuba, he said doctors had found no malignant cells.

"I haven't for a single moment thought about retiring from the presidency," he said. "If there were reasons for me to do that, I would."

Mr Chavez, who is celebrating his 57th birthday on Thursday, first came to power in 1999.

With his charisma and skills as a public speaker, he centralised government, basking in the political limelight.

His style of government has become known as "chavismo" and his followers are dubbed "chavistas".

"The president's capacity for leadership is extraordinary," Reinaldo Iturriza, a member of Mr Chavez's United Socialist Party (PSUV), told the BBC. "Without doubt, finding another Chavez will be quite difficult."

Few other members of his cabinet and of the PSUV are recognisable faces either within Venezuela or on the international stage.

Nevertheless, if the president's illness were to leave him unable to continue as head of state or run for re-election, the PSUV would be faced with seeking a successor.

So who would be in the running?

Credited with introducing his younger brother Hugo to the world of politics, Adan Chavez is the current governor of the family's home state of Barinas.

Adan Chavez is a year older than his brother

A university professor, he has served as both the minister of education and Venezuela's ambassador to Cuba in recent years.

"He is considered a favourite of the Castro regime," says Roger Noriega, former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs under US President George W Bush, and currently at the conservative US think tank, American Enterprise Institute.

His appointment would ensure the continuity of "chavismo" in name at least, and would mirror the handover of power in ally Cuba from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul in 2006.

When Hugo Chavez left for a first round of chemotherapy treatment in Cuba earlier this month, he signed over some powers to his vice-president Elias Jaua.

Hugo Chavez has handed over some powers to vice-president Elias Jaua since his illness

Constitutionally, the vice-president would be expected to step in and take over the reins should Chavez be unable to serve out his current term of office, due to end next year.

But analysts are sceptical that Mr Jaua has what it takes to lead the party and the country in the long-term.

"He's just a sheer placeholder," says Mr Noriega. "He's trusted by the Cubans but he doesn't have any charisma whatsoever."

Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro has been at the president's side through his cancer diagnosis and treatment, shuttling back and forth between Havana and Caracas when Mr Chavez was recuperating from surgery to remove a tumour.

Other leading lights within the party include Rafael Ramirez, the energy minister, who holds the key to the source of most of the government's money, and Celia Flores, vice-president of the PSUV.

But none has a profile even close to that of the man they would have to replace.

Former army officer Diosdado Cabello helped Hugo Chavez to stage a failed coup in 1992 that presaged Mr Chavez's eventual election to the presidency.

During the early years of President Chavez's government, he served as interior minister before being elected as the governor of Miranda state in 2004 elections.

But he lost that position four years later to an opposition candidate and his political star seemed to be on the wane.

Nevertheless, Mr Caballo is a powerful member of the political elite and among those who has the president's ear.

"There are seven or eight people surrounding the president and accompanying him at the moment," says Nicmer Evans, a political analyst at Venezuela's Central University.

"Jaua, Ramirez, Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, Celia Flores are his inner circle right now."

Hugo Chavez spent 17 years in the army

Hugo Chavez rose through the ranks of the army.

He often appears in military uniform, emphasising the control he has over the organisation.

Could the military play a key role in deciding who would take over from him?

"The army is one of the various players in any future selection of a candidate," says Miguel Tinker Salas, a professor of Latin American history at Pomona College in California.

"The PSUV will have to balance various forces."

President Chavez has always been quick to point out that he represents the grassroots members of the PSUV.

He has emphasised his poor upbringing in the hot and dusty plains of central Venezuela and his mixed ethnic background.

The party may find the charismatic figurehead they need to galvanise their traditional power base from among local leaders.

"There are a lot of social movement leaders from poorer neighbourhoods like the Barrio 23 de Enero in Caracas," says Tinker Salas.

"They don't have the national standing so they would have much more difficulty in trying to win support."

But perhaps the party would chose to groom one of them for a leading role.

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Honduras finds submarine cocaine

29 July 2011 Last updated at 23:26 GMT Naval forces from the US and Honduras have recovered 2.5 tonnes of cocaine from a semi-submersible craft intercepted off the Honduran coast.

Honduran General Rene Osorio said there were more than five tonnes of cocaine on the vessel, and authorities would need two days to retrieve all of it.

The vessel is submerged because the crew tried to sink it after they were intercepted two weeks ago.

Honduras is on a key route used by cartels trafficking drugs to the US.

Coast guard officials intercepted the submarine-like craft off the Caribbean coast of Honduras near the province of Gracias a Dios.

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Former Colombia aide faces arrest

31 July 2011 Last updated at 01:40 GMT Uribe employed Moreno as his chief of staff for eight years A senior aide of former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is facing criminal prosecution.

A judge has ordered the arrest of Mr Uribe's former chief of staff, Bernardo Moreno, for allegedly spying on judges, journalists and politicians.

It is the second such order this week. Andres Felipe Arias, a former agriculture minister, has been charged with corruption. He denies the allegations.

Alvaro Uribe left office last year.

Mr Moreno served as Mr Uribe's chief of staff for both of his presidential terms, from 2002-2010.

He now faces trial for criminal conspiracy, abuse of public office and other charges.

Mr Moreno would be jailed for at least three years, if convicted. He denies all the charges.

Mr Arias, 38, is suspected of diverting farm subsidies intended for peasant farmers to rich landowners.

He will be held at a jail in the capital Bogota while his case proceeds.

The Colombian Attorney General's office has already disqualified him from public office for 16 years because of what it deemed were irregularities in the subsidy scheme.

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