Brazil Deploys Troops To Amazon Rain Forest
BELEM, Brazil -- Brazil mobilized about 2,000 troops in the Amazon rain forest to curb death squads blamed for the deaths of an American nun, a union leader and two workers in battles during the last four days.
Army jungle-warfare troops based in the Amazon were sent to lawless areas of northern Para state after Dorothy Stang, an American nun and prominent Amazon activist, was slain Saturday in a suspected contract killing by local ranchers.
Activists feared more violence as rural workers in Anapu, near where Stang, 74, was gunned down, received death threats. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has called for a federal investigation.
THE AMERICAS
• QUITO, Ecuador -- Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Quito to protest what they call the heavy-handed tactics of President Lucio Gutierrez and demanded that he reverse his firing of the country's Supreme Court. The president's supporters staged a counter-march on a parallel route.
Local media estimated that more than 100,000 people marched against Gutierrez and that about 50,000 rallied in support of him.
Led by Paco Moncayo, the mayor of Quito, the opposition has accused Gutierrez of stacking the Supreme Court with cronies. On Dec. 9, Congress voted to dismiss 27 of the court's 31 members, as Gutierrez and his backers had demanded. The justices were quickly replaced with Gutierrez allies.
• ASUNCION, Paraguay -- The daughter of former president Raul Cubas was found dead on the outskirts of the capital, almost five months after she was abducted by heavily armed gunmen as she drove near the family home in a wealthy suburb.
Attorney General Oscar Latorre said the body of Cecilia Cubas, 32, had been found in a tunnel and identified through dental records.
In recent months, there have been marches by thousands of Paraguayans demanding her release, and many cars carried bumper stickers bearing her photograph.
EUROPE
• KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's prime minister said authorities were investigating the sale of 3,000 formerly state-owned companies to determine whether the firms were sold at unfairly low prices to people connected with the former government.
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has said many of Ukraine's privatizations took place under murky circumstances with companies sold at unexpectedly low prices, sometimes to people with close ties to Leonid Kuchma, then the president, whose government was accused of widespread corruption.
"We will return to the state what was turned over to private but dishonest hands," Tymoshenko said in a statement after a cabinet meeting. The statement indicated an intention to resell such companies to new bidders.
