Latin American

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- For weeks now, tales of corruption have been falling from the pages of newspapers here like the rains that have flooded this city as summer approaches.A prominent labor leader admitted steering lucrative union business to lawyers and accountants in return for cash because "it's very difficult making money working." In another case, the government is suspected of paying $1 billion in fraudulent claims to state employees and others in lawsuits fixed by lawyers and judges.

STRANGE PILGRIMSGabriel Garcia Marquez; translated by Edith GrossmanKnopf188 pages. $21 These 12 stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian author and Nobel laureate, strike a wistful, ephemeral key beside his great novels, a key that is no less lovely for being minor. Like all his fiction, these stories are distinguished by rich, evocative and often startling prose. All feature Latin Americans in Europe. Three are as elusive as dreams, and, fittingly, dreaming is their subject."The Ghosts of August" is a nightmare in which a guest in a Tuscan castle wakes to find himself and his wife not in the room where they went to sleep, but in the haunted bed of the murderer and suicide who committed his dreadful acts there centuries ago.In "Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane," a traveler flying from Paris to New York falls in love with his silent, beautiful seatmate, whom he watches in an ecstasy of worship as she sleeps for "the eight eternal hours and twelve extra minutes of the flight" "I Sell My Dreams" introduces a mysterious woman who supports herself by selling predictions about people's futures which come to her in dreams.

It's not a matter of "if" but "when. " Medifast Inc., the No. 3 manufacturer of weight-loss food products, is growing so quickly in that industry that there will soon come a time when it outgrows its sole production facility in Owings Mills and builds plants elsewhere. To keep up with that rapid growth, Medifast plans on making $5 million in improvements to its headquarters and plant in Owings Mills over the next two years. But it's also considering other sites for the future, including a possible West Coast manufacturing site and one in Mexico to serve the growing Latin American market.

WASHINGTON -- For years, the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga., which is meant to teach combat skills to Latin American soldiers, has come under political attack.Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney, a Georgia Democrat, has gone so far as to call it the "School of Assassins" because of human rights abuses she says were committed by some of its graduates.But the school's federal funding has never been in jeopardy -- until now.Late Thursday, the House cut funding that would have paid for training the soldiers from South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

The acting chairman of Novatek International Inc., the Columbia-based company under Securities and Exchange Commission investigation for fraud, acknowledged at a bankruptcy hearing yesterday that the company misrepresented some claims about contracts it announced in Latin America."

A Baltimore-based foundation has won one of the largest grants in its history to create job training programs for teen-agers and young adults in Latin America and the Caribbean. The International Youth Foundation, which sponsors children's programs worldwide, received $10 million from the grant-making arm of an international bank to teach computer and work skills to people between the ages of 16 and 29 in the mostly poor countries. "We're trying to forge something new ... to enhance employment opportunities for disadvantaged youth who haven't had a chance to enter into the new economy," said Eliana Vera, director of the employment program.

CARACAS, Venezuela -- If one were looking for hell on earth, the Reten de Catia prison would not be a bad place to start.A vile stench cloaks the jail where inmates wander amid scattered garbage, many of them half-naked. This is a place where food and water are scarce. The world within is violent and anarchic, the arsenal of weapons so vast that guards stay clear of some areas.As crime rises in Latin America, frighteningly overcrowded prisons have become flash points for violence and human rights violations.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Frustrated by a lack of economic progress under the democratic regimes that rule them, a majority of Latin Americans would support an authoritarian government if it bettered their lives, according to a United Nations report released today. The study by the U.N. Development Program also found that most government leaders in the region feel they are slowly losing the ability to shape policy in their countries because of the increasing influence of the United States and international lending institutions.

WASHINGTON - The Maryland Hispanic population has increased by at least 65 percent since the 2000 Census, contributing to increasing ethnic diversity nationally, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau report. There are 375,830 Hispanics living in Maryland as of 2007, an increase from 227,916 in 2000, according to Census Bureau data analyzed by the Maryland Department of Planning and released Wednesday. After Hispanics, Asian immigration ranks second with a 29 percent increase. The Census Bureau American Community Survey reported that the massive increase in immigration from Latin American and Asian countries over the last 40 years "has been the major force changing the racial and ethnic composition of the American population."

Supposedly, an estimated 10 percent of Americans can trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower. Not surprisingly, former President George W. Bush - son of a president, grandson of a U.S. senator, first offspring produced by the marriage of the blueblooded Bush and Walker families - is a Mayflower descendant. President Barack Obama's roots go almost that deep: He is a descendant of Thomas Blossom, who arrived in Plymouth Colony less than a decade after the Mayflower landed. America's two most recent presidents are distant cousins.