Labor unrest, infrastructure problems and charges of corruption at Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA have reached the point of a "significant operational emergency," PDVSA vice president for exploration and production Luis Vierma told the National Assembly's comptroller committee July 18. The warnings of crisis come just as PDVSA is embarking on an ambitious course of taking greater control over Venezuela's oil industry from foreign companies.

Italian anti-terrorism police arrested three Moroccans—an imam and two of his aides—at a mosque in Perugia, capital of Umbria region, July 22, saying it served as a base for an extremist cell that ran courses in hand-to-hand combat, making bombs and flying aircraft. A police statement said the cell had contacts with members of the Moroccan Islamic Combat group arrested in Belgium two years ago. The group, known by its French acronym GICM, is said to have ties to al-Qaeda and to the 2004 Madrid bombings and 2003 Casablanca attacks. (SMH, July 23) Meanwhile, the Algerian army killed 20 alleged al-Qaeda militants in gun-battles in the Kabylie region July 24. The killings followed more days of fighting that began July 14 when the army claimed to have foiled an al-Qaeda attack on two police stations in Yakourene village, Tizi Ouzou province. (Reuters, July 24)

On July 10, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 25 current or former employees of the Swift & Company meat processing firm. Twenty of those arrested were sought on federal and state warrants; most were picked up on the job, while others were detained in their homes. ICE arrested 18 workers on criminal charges relating to identity theft and administrative immigration violations in six locations where Swift plants are located: Marshalltown, Iowa; Grand Island, Nebraska; Worthington, Minnesota; Greeley, Colorado; Hyrum, Utah; and Cactus, Texas. In Marshalltown, ICE also arrested Braulio Pereyra-Gabino, an official of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) who represents Swift employees, on criminal charges for "harboring illegal aliens"; and Christopher Todd Lamb, assistant director of human resources at the Marshalltown plant and a 17-year Swift employee, on a harboring charge as well as misprision of a felony. (ICE news release, July 11; DesMoines Register, July 13, 22; The Militant, Aug. 6)

Some 5,000 campesinos, students and activists marched in the eastern Salvadoran port city of La Union on July 15 to protest plans to build two electric plants near the Conchagua Volcano. The Virginia-based AES Corporation, which controls most of the electric power distribution in El Salvador, plans to build a coal-burning plant, while Houston-based Cutuco Energy Central America wants to build a plant using natural gas.

At least one million people—more than two million, according to some sources—marched in El Alto, Bolivia, on July 20 to call for national unity and to oppose proposals to move the executive and legislative branches of government from La Paz, the de facto capital, to the southern city of Sucre. Although no government officials spoke at the demonstration, in the evening President Evo Morales called the mobilization "historic"; analysts considered it the country's largest demonstration in recent years. The media nicknamed it the "Pacenazo" (from La Paz), while participants called it a cabildo (a public discussion, like a town hall meeting).

Global warming is drying up mountain lakes and wetlands in the Andes and threatening water supplies to such major cities as La Paz, Quito and Bogota, World Bank research reveals. The risk is especially great to the high-Andes wetlands known as páramo, which supplies 80 percent of the water to Bogota's 7 million people. Rising temperatures are causing clouds to condense at higher altitudes. Eventually this so-called "dew point" will miss the mountains altogether, said World Bank climate change specialist in Latin America, Walter Vergara. "We're already seeing a drying up of these mountain lakes and wetlands. We're seeing that the dew point is going up the mountain," he said of the World Bank-funded research at Colombia's Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies. (Reuters, July 20)

In a strange case of role-reversal, BBC July 20 takes the more Bush-friendly tack in reporting a new executive order on treatment of detained "terror suspects," writing in the lead that it bans "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," while the headline states: "Bush bans terror suspect torture." Not until six paragraphs down do we get the requisite caveats from rights observers—and then in a quote from another news agency. Leonard Rubenstein, director of Physicians for Human Rights, told AP (BBC says): "What is needed now is repudiation of brutal and cruel interrogation methods. General statements like this are inadequate, particularly after years of evidence that torture was authorised at the highest levels and utilised by US forces." Meanwhile, the establishmentarian New York Times headline on the story reads "C.I.A. Allowed to Resume Interrogations," and the lead states: "After months of behind the scenes wrangling, the White House said Friday that it had given the Central Intelligence Agency approval to resume its use of some harsh interrogation methods in questioning terrorism suspects in secret prisons overseas." Gee, doesn't sound so good after all, does it? Is the BBC still so shaken over the scandal following the 2003 Hutton Report that they are determined to be more Catholic than the Pope?

Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante—known as "Rasguño," or "Scratch"—alleged head of Colombia's Norte del Valle cocaine cartel, has been extradited to the US to face charges of drug trafficking and money laundering. He was flown by helicopter July 19 from the Combita maximum security prison to an air base near Bogota, where he was turned over to DEA agents. Norte del Valle rose to become Colombia's most powerful narco mafia after the dismantling of the Medellin and Cali cartels in the 1990s. Colonel Cesar Pinzon, head of Colombia's Judicial Police (DIJIN), called Gomez the "capo of capos." The DEA says he was the source up to 60% of all cocaine consumed in the US. Gomez got his nickname when he laughed off a bullet wound to his cheek as "just a scratch." He was first arrested in Cuba in July 2004 after entering on a false passport, and returned to Colombia six months ago. (BBC, July 20)