37 Guatemalan prison officials sacked

October 8th, 2009 Attacks on Guatemalan police kill 2, wound 3GUATEMALA CITY — A series of attacks on police in Guatemala has killed two officers and wounded three. Interior Minister Raul Velasquez says the attacks appear to be retaliation by criminals, but did not point to a specific gang.

September 23rd, 2009 MEXICO CITY - Authorities in the eastern Mexican city of Cancun have dismissed 28 policemen, including the majority of the force's command officers, for poor performance, official sources said. They lost their jobs "for not getting good results in their work and for having completely lost the trust that had been placed in them", a source with the public safety office of the coastal city said Tuesday.

September 22nd, 2009 Calif. prison on lockdown after multiple fightsAVENAL, Calif. — Authorities say inmates at a California prison used canes, walkers and wheelchair parts as weapons in fights that sent 24 prisoners to hospitals and forced the facility to be put on lockdown.

September 16th, 2009 ALLAHABAD - Two police constables who allegedly shot at a truck driver after he refused to bribe them were sacked Wednesday in Uttar Pradesh's Allahabad district, officials said. The incident occurred in Naini locality around 4 p.m.

September 8th, 2009 6 Mass. boys accused of beating sleeping immigrantBOSTON — Six boys were charged with severely beating a Guatemalan immigrant with bricks, bottles and rocks as he slept near railroad tracks, an attack that civil rights groups decried Tuesday as "hateful." Derrek Shulman, New England regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the July beating of Damian Merida was an example of how immigrants are singled out for attacks. Police say six boys, ages 11 to 14, beat the 30-year-old Merida in July in Lynn, a city 10 miles northeast of Boston.

September 8th, 2009 Guatemala food-starved due to weather, economyGUATEMALA CITY — Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared "a state of public calamity" late Tuesday to help mobilize funds and resources to confront a food shortage that will affect thousands of families. "This will help us access resources from the international community that are generously offered for this type of situations and to mobilize national resources more rapidly," Colom said in a statement.

September 7th, 2009 Gunmen kill 4 prison officials in GuatemalaGUATEMALA CITY — Guatemalan police say four prison officials have been shot to death in three separate attacks that authorities believe are retaliation for a jail crackdown. Ministry of Interior spokesman Nery Morales says a warden, a deputy warden, a prison guard and a driver were killed Monday after officials seized cell phones and moved inmates to different prisons over the weekend to break up an extortion ring.

September 1st, 2009 Guatemala convicts paramilitary in disappearancesGUATEMALA CITY — A Guatemalan court has convicted and sentenced a former paramilitary to 150 years in prison for the forced disappearance of six people who were abducted and presumably killed during the country's civil war — a landmark ruling hailed by human rights activists Tuesday. The sentence against Felipe Cusanero represents 25 years for each victim who disappeared between 1982 and 1984 from the village of Choatalum.

August 14th, 2009 Calif. officials brief sheriffs after prison riotCHINO, Calif. — Prison officials are briefing sheriffs across California on how a weekend riot that destroyed seven Southern California prison housing units might affect their jail populations in weeks to come.

June 12th, 2009 Inmate shot during fight at US prison in IndianaTERRE HAUTE, Ind. — Officials at a federal prison in western Indiana say two inmates were injured when guards opened fire while breaking up a fight at the prison's recreation yard.

June 5th, 2009 Michigan shutting 3 prisons, 5 camps to save moneyLANSING, Mich. — Michigan officials say three prisons will close this year, along with five minimum-security prison camps, to save more than $118 million.

June 5th, 2009 Mexico drug cartel's grenades from Guatemalan armyGUATEMALA CITY — Thousands of bullets and grenades that were part of a Mexican drug cartel's weapons cache belong to the Guatemalan army, Guatemala's anti-drug prosecutor said Thursday. Prosecutor Leonel Ruiz said investigators have determined that more than 3,800 bullets and 563 grenades seized outside Guatemala's capital in April following a shootout that left five anti-drug agents dead came from military bases in the Central American nation, which has become a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine.

May 30th, 2009 2 murderers escape Ark. prison in guard uniformsGRADY, Ark.

March 24th, 2009 GUATEMALA CITY - Several children listed as missing during Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war were sold in illegal adoptions, the country's social welfare agency records revealed. The director of the government's Peace Archive, Marco Tulio Alvarez, told a press conference here Monday that during the analysis the archive, officials found a series of irregularities that prove the disappearance of children between 1986 and 1987.

February 14th, 2009 GUATEMALA CITY - Nearly half of Guatemala's children suffer from chronic malnutrition and their physical growth falls below the average established by the World Health Organisation (WHO), according to a study. The study carried out by the education and health ministries found that 45.6 percent of Guatemalan children suffer from chronic malnutrition, EFE reported Sunday.