RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Rolf Glaser zips his motorbike up the twisting alleyways of Vidigal slum, past a bunch of cheerful, gun-packing drug traffickers, and emerges at a cliffside plateau next to some demolished shacks. A scrawny dog barks angrily from a nearby rooftop. This, the German developer says with a straight face, could be Rio de Janeiro's next tourist hotspot. "Can you imagine sitting up here on a terrace with a glass of wine?" he muses, motioning toward the sparkling azure Atlantic Ocean that filled the view on a boiling summer day. "Do you think you would miss anything?" Many Brazilians, Glaser ...
Read Full Story
NEW YORK (Reuters) - While accused hedge fund swindler Arthur Nadel sits in a Manhattan jail, Burton Wiand is busy seizing control of his assets -- a 453-acre mountainside tract of land in North Carolina, several airplane hangars and a jumble of bank accounts. Wiand, a Florida lawyer, is a court-appointed receiver, a job that has become increasingly in demand in blockbuster fraud cases ranging from the Bernard Madoff scandal to the case against Texas tycoon Allen Stanford. These appointees and their teams are third parties that step in and try to sort out the mess, and their efforts are crucial for investors who ...
Read Full Story
BOGOTA 11 (Reuters) - Colombian college teacher Mercedes Diaz has little else in common with mattress maker Henry Moreno, but they both know the bitter sting of investment schemes that promise high returns only to collapse in scandal. Latin America's poor and working class are more often the victims of get-rich-quick scams, but now some of the more well-heeled are feeling similar pain since U.S. bank Stanford crumbled under the weight of massive fraud charges. The region's professionals and well-off pensioners were among the biggest investors with Stanford owner and billionaire, Allen Stanford, who was hit with accusations he fraudulently sold $8 billion in ...
Read Full Story
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Hundreds of heavily armed soldiers fanned out across Mexico's bloodiest drug war city Tuesday, trying to prevent a collapse in law and order just south of the U.S. border. Sirens blared as the army staged one of its biggest troop build-ups in years in Ciudad Juarez, a desert city across the border from El Paso, Texas, where near-daily clashes between drug gangs and police have terrified residents. Infamous in the 1990s for the unsolved murders of hundreds of women, Ciudad Juarez is now engulfed in the worst drug violence in Mexico as cartels in league with corrupt cops fight ...
Read Full Story
* Obama administration could have Mexico plan this week * Air Force general says Mexico is not losing drug war * U.S. military aids border surveillance of cartel movements By David Morgan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government is working on an integrated plan to address Mexico's escalating war with drug traffickers and could complete work on the initiative as early as this week, a top U.S. military official said Tuesday. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, who oversees U.S. military interests on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border as the head of Northern Command, told the Senate that the plan would likely involve all ...
Read Full Story
