Mexico organizing opposition to wall
Mexico City The Mexican government, angered by a U.S. proposal to extend a wall along the border to keep out migrants, pledged Tuesday to block the plan and organize an international campaign against it.
Facing a growing tide of anti-immigrant sentiment north of the border, the Mexican government has taken out ads urging Mexican workers to denounce rights violations in the United States. It also is hiring a U.S. public relations firm to improve its image and counter growing U.S. concerns about immigration.
Mexican President Vicente Fox denounced the U.S. measures, passed by the House of Representatives on Friday, as “shameful” and his foreign secretary, Luis Ernesto Derbez, echoed his complaints on Tuesday.
“Mexico is not going to bear, it is not going to permit, and it will not allow a stupid thing like this wall,” Derbez said.
Bolivian president-to-be may try to limit coca
La Paz, Bolivia Bolivia’s soon-to-be president, Evo Morales, a coca farmer under pressure to crack down on cocaine, pledged Tuesday to keep controls on coca but said he will study expanding the area where it can be legally grown.
Morales also called on the United States to work with him to develop better ways of ending drug trafficking while preserving the traditional market for coca in his Andean nation, where people have chewed the plant to stave off hunger and used it as a medicine for thousands of years.
“There won’t be free cultivation of the coca leaf,” said Morales, who still has his own coca plot and came to prominence leading fellow growers – “cocaleros” – in fighting U.S.-backed efforts to eradicate coca in Bolivia, the No. 3 supplier of cocaine to the United States after Colombia and Peru.
Morales’ apparently wide victory margin in Sunday’s election virtually assures that Congress will declare him president in January even if he falls shy of the majority needed to win outright in the eight-man race.
Afghan parliament opens on rowdy note
Kabul, Afghanistan The first full session of Afghanistan’s new parliament almost broke down Tuesday after a lawmaker demanded that authorities bring to justice all warlords, some of whom are delegates.
Underscoring threats to the fledgling democracy, a suicide bombing wounded three Italian peacekeepers and three civilians.
The attack took place as the national assembly convened its first working session in the capital, Kabul, a day after it was inaugurated in an emotional ceremony. Good feelings quickly gave way to a stormy debate over procedural matters as well as the potentially explosive issue of warlords sitting among the elected representatives.
One delegate, Malali Joya, called for all of Afghanistan’s human rights abusers and “criminal warlords” to be brought to justice. Delegates responded by pounding their fists on the tables to demand she sit down. But she refused, shouting that it was her right as an elected official to speak her mind.
Zookeeper fears stolen penguin will die
London A baby penguin believed to have been snatched from a British zoo as a quirky holiday gift is unlikely to survive until Christmas Day, his keeper warned Tuesday.
Toga, a 3-month-old jackass penguin, was stolen Saturday from Amazon World on the Isle of Wight in southern England.
Zoo manager Kath Bright said the bird, who was taken from a compound where he lived with his parents and four other penguins, probably would die of malnutrition if not urgently returned.
“Toga is very, very vulnerable. The penguin is still being fed by his parents and we don’t believe it could survive more than five days,” she told the Associated Press.
There was no sign of forced entry to the pen, but a thief would have been able to climb into the compound and carry Toga away, Bright said.
“We can’t understand what may have been going through the thief’s head, but we are worried someone decided a penguin would make the perfect Christmas gift,” she added.