Sonora, Mexico
Arrests in day-care fire: Mexican authorities have charged nine Sonora state officials with negligent homicide for failing to prevent a fire that killed 47 children at a day-care center. Seven of the accused work for the Sonora Finance Department, which operates a warehouse where the fire started before spreading to the adjacent day-care center. The two others run the day-care center. The center had just passed a fire-safety inspection, but rescuers who tried to evacuate the children said that all the doors but one were blocked and the fire alarms didn’t go off. “The tragedy demonstrates the corruption that reigns at state institutions responsible for safeguarding the lives of the boys and girls of this country,” said Gerardo Sauri, head of a children’s advocacy group.
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Rio de Janeiro
U.S. dad gets custody: A Brazilian court has given an American father temporary custody of his son, pending a final decision in the case. The boy, Sean Goldman, 9, has been in Brazil since 2004, when his Brazilian mother took him there for what she told the father, David Goldman, was a vacation. She never returned to the U.S. Instead she divorced Goldman and remarried. Last year, she died in childbirth, leaving Sean to live with his Brazilian stepfather. This week, a court said that Sean should stay with Goldman, who is in Brazil for the court case, and visit his stepfather on weekends pending a final ruling. President Obama and Brazilian President Luíz Ignacio Lula da Silva discussed the custody case during Lula’s visit to Washington in March; they agreed to let the courts decide it.
Santiago, Chile
Cops tied to prostitution: Four top members of Chile’s investigative police were fired this week after a television exposé on their ties to a prostitution ring that exploited underage girls. The TV documentary showed police officers entering a brothel, which they allegedly protected in exchange for free sessions with drugged girls. Some of the girls interviewed said they had been taken to police barracks to have sex with officers. One of the fired officers had headed the unit in charge of investigating allegations of police collusion with brothels.
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