Montreal
Show your face: Montreal has proposed outlawing the wearing of masks in public because of a spate of violent demonstrations by masked activists. The near-daily student protests over the past month against a rise in university tuition have cost the city millions of dollars in smashed windows and cars, police injuries, and lost productivity. The Montreal ban, expected to be adopted this week, is seen as a test case for a federal ban. A bill to outlaw masks at protests across the country has been working its way through Parliament and could become law in a few months.
Monterrey, Mexico
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Mutilated bodies: In the latest gruesome evidence of drug-related massacres, Mexican police have discovered 49 headless bodies near Monterrey. The victims, whose hands and feet were also cut off, have not been identified, but most of the victims in three similar body dumps found earlier this month were believed to be ordinary people—not drug dealers or buyers—snatched off the streets and killed in order to cause terror. Interior Minister Alejandro Poiré said the killings are the result of a territorial battle between the Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel, the two main Mexican crime gangs. The area where the bodies were found is Zeta territory. Nearly 50,000 people have been killed since 2006, when President Felipe Calderón launched his offensive against drug gangs.
Caracas, Venezuela
Drug allegations: Venezuela is demanding the return of a former supreme court judge who defected to the U.S. and accused the government of President Hugo Chávez of complicity in drug trafficking. Judge Eladio Aponte was fired in March after an accused Venezuelan drug lord claimed that Aponte had been on his payroll. Aponte denies that charge and says he has evidence that Chávez has links to drug gangs and Colombian guerrillas and has consistently attempted to interfere with judicial rulings. “Woe be to the judge that refused to cooperate,” Aponte said. “They were fired.”
