The Camorra, the Naples organized crime machine, has declared "war on the state," Interior Minister Roberto Maroni told the Italian Senate Sept. 24, one day after the government authorized sending 500 soldiers to the Campania region in response to the shooting deaths last week of seven people, six of them African immigrants, in a suspected feud over drug turf in Caserta, north of Naples. Maroni called the killings of the Italian national and the immigrants from Ghana, Liberia and Togo an "act of terrorism." The last time soldiers were used to combat organized crime was in 1992, after Sicilian mobsters assassinated two top judges. Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa said the soldiers were needed to cope with a "criminal emergency." (BBC, Sept. 25; LAT, NYT, Sept. 24)

China and Venezuela signed 12 energy agreements in Beijing Sept. 25, calling for the South American country to export half a million barrels of oil a day to the Asian giant starting next year. The deal was signed on the final day of a three-day visit to China by Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez. The South American nation is the fifth exporter of crude oil in the world, but currently provides only 4% of Chinese imports of the product. The agreements also involve the construction of a new refinery in Venezuela with Chinese aid. (Radio Australia, Sept. 25)

Latin American currencies rose dramatically on Sept. 19 after the US government proposed an unprecedented $700 billion bailout of US financial companies holding bad debt. The Brazilian real went up 3.5% to 1.8298 to the US dollar, its biggest gain in six years, while the Colombian peso jumped 6.7% to 2,050.9 per dollar—the peso's biggest advance in at least 13 years, according to the Bloomberg news service. The rise in the currencies followed four days of equally dramatic declines as markets reacted to a financial crisis in the US that included the collapse of the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. investment firm and a $85 billion bailout of the American International Group Inc. (AIG) insurance company. The real fell 4% from Sept. 15 to Sept. 18, while in Mexico City, stock prices on the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores (BMV) fell 8.3% between Sept. 16 and Sept. 17. (Bloomberg, Sept. 19; La Jornada, Mexico, Sept. 18)

On Sept. 15, at least 12,000 Colombian sugar cane cutters went on strike to protest the systematic violation of their labor rights and human rights. The workers cut sugar cane for 16 sugar mills in the Cauca river valley, primarily in the department of Valle del Cauca but also in the neighboring departments of Cauca, to the south, and Risaralda, to the northeast. The same day the strike began, hundreds of agents from the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (ESMAD) of the Colombian National Police, together with army soldiers and private sugar company guards, attacked a group of striking cane cutters from the Incauca and Providencia sugar mills, injuring more than 100 workers, at least five of them seriously.

On Sept. 5 the Haitian Senate voted 16-0 with one abstention to approve a cabinet proposed by incoming prime minister Michele Duvivier Pierre-Louis. This ended a five-month period in which the country was governed by a caretaker cabinet. (AlterPresse, Sept. 5; Haiti Support Group News Briefs, Sept. 5 from Reuters) The new cabinet faces devastation left by four tropical storms that hit the country from Aug. 16 to Sept. 7.

Royal Dutch Shell formally signed a joint venture with an Iraq's state-owned South Oil Company to recapture gas that now goes to waste during oil extraction in the Basra fields. The deal is estimated to be worth $4 billion. Under the agreement, Iraq will control 51% while Shell will hold the remaining 49% of the venture. The gas, estimated at 5 billion cubic feet per day (up from 1 bcfd), will be both for for domestic use and export, said Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani.

Palestinian medics in the Gaza Strip Sept. 23 recovered the bodies of four Strip residents who were killed in an explosion in a tunnel at the Egyptian border. At least one was wounded and hospitalized in Rafah. The explosion took place in a tunnel in a-Brazil area in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. According to the Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Information Center, Egyptian security forces detonated the tunnel while five residents were in it. The forces likely did not know there was anyone in the tunnel, the report said. (IMEMC, Sept. 23)

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sept. 23 the Pentagon could send thousands more combat troops to Afghanistan starting next spring—but also warned: "I think we need to think about how heavy a military footprint the United States ought to have in Afghanistan. Are we better off channeling resources into building and expanding the size of the Afghan national army as quickly as possible, as opposed to a much larger Western footprint in a country that has never been notoriously hospitable to foreigners?" There are now some 31,000 US troops in Afghanistan and roughly an equal number of coalition troops. (AP, Sept. 23)