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...thing, the flow of capital into the country's financial system is suspiciously high compared with the size of the economy, says Sigfrido Lee, former Vice Minister of Economy and an analyst at the Center for National Economic Investigations, a Guatemalan think tank. This indicates, he says, a likely inflow of illegal money. The U.S. government's recently released 2009 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report backs up those suspicions. Guatemala also has an unusually high number of luxury cars and high-end real estate purchases, Lee says, and buyers often pay in cash. Guatemala City has seen a boom...
Nowhere is this bilateral relationship more apparent than in Tijuana, the busiest border crossing on the planet. A giant launching pad for migrants, center for U.S.-owned assembly plants and strategic front in the drug trade, the city of 1.6 million has long enjoyed the best and worst of living next door to the U.S. colossus. However, that relationship has soured in recent months with news of a bloody cartel turf war that has scared many Americans away from even stepping foot in Tijuana. (See pictures of Mexico's war on drugs...
However, not everyone is counting on Obama to save Mexico from the wrath of the drug armies. Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights, said the Administration's efforts to stop U.S.-sold guns from getting to Mexico are futile, unless the weapons are banned in shops - a move U.S. officials have shied away from. "If the entire border-patrol service cannot stop tons of drugs and millions of migrants heading north, how will a few hundred U.S. agents stop all the guns coming south?" he asks...
Despite the successful operation to free the captain of the Maersk Alabama last weekend, Somali pirates continue to hold 16 ships with a total of 282 crew members, according to the International Maritime Bureau's piracy-reporting center, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Filipinos comprise nearly half the captives; a majority of the rest are from India, with smaller numbers from other South and Southeast Asian countries. In all these countries, sailing is seen as a tough but lucrative profession that fetches handsome dollar incomes relative to the amount of education required. Even amid the present economic gloom, officers' salaries have...
...benefit from its large and well-armed navy, but not all Asian countries have such military capability. Though nearly half the hostages held by Somali pirates are Filipino, the Philippine government has been unable to influence ship owners to negotiate ransoms or take military action. The International Seafarers Action Center (ISAC) in the Philippines says 122 Filipino seafarers are currently being held captive, which includes the 23 onboard the MV Stolt Strength, a Japanese-owned chemical tanker that was hijacked on Nov. 10 last year. ISAC secretary-general Joseph Entero says the ship's owner is unwilling to pay ransom...