Word: cartels
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...government to convince the people that it was an accident, in light of the torrent of attacks on public officials by drug gangs. High-ranking police, prosecutors and judges have been slain across Mexico this year, while assassins have massacred hundreds of rank-and-file police and soldiers. Although cartel hitmen traditionally kill their targets with firearms, they have lately grown increasingly sophisticated and ruthless - drug gangs are alleged to be behind a bomb that exploded in Mexico City in February and grenades that were thrown into a crowded plaza in September...
...Mexico Spies Hinder The War on Drugs With the help of up to $450,000 paid each month to government workers, the Beltrán-Leyva drug cartel infiltrated the Mexican attorney general's office and may have paid a spy inside the U.S. embassy to leak Drug Enforcement Administration secrets, Mexican authorities say. The case is the most serious known example of corruption since 1997, when the head of Mexico's antidrug agency was arrested and later convicted of aiding a drug lord. U.S. officials have not confirmed the embassy infiltration, and no staff changes are planned...
...consumers, the only silver lining on the global financial crisis has been the falling oil price it has precipitated. But OPEC is determined to put an end to the relief at the gas pump. Concerned to protect their countries' financial health, oil ministers from the 13 members of the cartel of oil-producing countries meet in Vienna on Friday with only one item on their agenda - cutting their oil output in order to drive up world prices. Oil prices have been slashed by more than half in just three months, from $147 a barrel in July...
...with which they have tumbled. But their influence over prices is more limited than many in Western countries believe, or OPEC members would like: OPEC members, in fact, produces only one-third of the world's oil; the rest comes from Canada, Russia, Mexico, and several smaller countries. The cartel sets production quotas for each member, but those are routinely violated by bigger players, like Saudi Arabia, whose well usually have spare capacity. "We saw that when prices went up to $145 a barrel OPEC was helpless," says Fadhil Chalabi, executive director of the Center for Global Energy Studies...
...again. Their growing anxiety erupted early this week, when Iranian and Venezuelan officials warned that if Opec waited much longer before cutting its output, it could face another massive price collapse. On Thursday, Opec officials scheduled an emergency meeting in Vienna for Nov. 18 rather than wait until the cartel's scheduled summit in Algiers in early December. In the meantime, the world's biggest oil producer, Saudi Arabia - which increased production in the summer - has already begun loading less oil on its tankers, according to global oil figures...