The week at a glance...Americas

Kitamaat Village, British Columbia

Pipeline spat: Radical environmentalists funded by rich Americans are trying to disrupt a pipeline project vital to Canadian interests, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver charged this week. “They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources,” he said in an open letter released before public hearings on the project. The proposed pipeline would take bitumen from oil sands around Alberta to a port near Kitamaat Village, a Haisla First Nation community; giant tankers would take the oil from there to Asia. Local aborigines oppose the project, fearing that an accident like the Exxon Valdez spill could pollute their lands. “All kinds of birds, all kinds of fur animals—this is what I am concerned about,” Haisla chief Sam Robinson told the hearings.

Mexico City

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U.S. narcs dealt drugs: Undercover U.S. and Mexican agents laundered millions of dollars for a Mexican drug lord, a Mexican magazine reported this week. Emeequis published documents showing that DEA agents and Mexican police infiltrated the Beltrán Leyva drug cartel in 2007, helped it launder at least $2.5 million in cash, and then lost track of most of the money. DEA agents flew at least one shipment of cocaine to Spain, where it was seized by Spanish authorities. The documents came to light as part of an extradition proceeding against a Colombian arrested in Mexico and wanted by the U.S. The Mexican government confirmed the undercover operation and said it had been “carried out strictly within the legal framework.” U.S. officials refused to comment.

Kingston, Jamaica

No more queen: Jamaica will break its link with Britain this year, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller said in her inaugural address last week. Simpson Miller said that as Jamaica prepared to celebrate 50 years of independence, it was time to make the island a republic, and the British monarch should no longer be head of state. “I love the queen, she is a beautiful lady, and apart from being a beautiful lady she is a wise lady and a wonderful lady,” Simpson Miller said. “But I think time come.”

Lima, Peru

Van der Sloot guilty: Joran van der Sloot, the main suspect in the 2005 disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway, pleaded guilty this week to the 2010 murder of a Peruvian woman. The murder took place five years to the day after Holloway, 18, disappeared on the island of Aruba. She was last seen leaving a nightclub with van der Sloot, but her body was never found. In a confession to police, van der Sloot said he beat and strangled Stephany Flores in his Lima hotel room after she discovered that he had been linked to Holloway’s disappearance. “I truly am sorry for this act,’’ van der Sloot said. He faces up to 30 years in a Peruvian prison.