Two members of Panama's militant Only Union of Construction and Similar Workers (SUNTRACS) were murdered on Aug. 14 and 15. Osvaldo Lorenzo was killed by a member of a company union when Lorenzo was protesting working conditions in the construction of a highway between Panama City and Colon. The Odebrecht company, Brazilian in origin, is running the project. Luigi Arguelles was shot at close range by a sergeant in the National Police in a tourist center in the Las Perlas Archipelago. The center's owner, a Colombian investor, had previously threatened the workers. According to Panamanian sociologist Marco A. Gandasegui, elements in the government of President Martin Torrijos are creating "ghost unions" and using them to destroy SUNTRACS. (Servicio Informativo "Alai-amlatina," Aug. 28). The union has had a leading role in protests against neoliberal economic policies. (See WNU, May 8, 2005)

On Aug. 30 thousands of workers marched in Mexico City from the Angel of Independence to the central plaza, the Zocalo, to protest what they called the "anti-union and anti-worker" policies of President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, of the center-right National Action Party (PAN). The organizers, the National Workers Union (UNT) and the Mexican Union Front (FSM), timed the march to precede Calderon's first state of the union report, to be delivered on Sept. 2. Police estimated the crowd at 20,000; organizers put attendance at 50,000. Despite several successful demonstrations, the UNT and FSM have repeatedly failed in their efforts to call a national strike against the government's plans for more privatization and other neoliberal economic policies.

In Chicontepec, Veracruz, members of the "Other Campaign in la Huasteca" activist network issued a statement Aug. 31 protesting the "disappearance" of three of the 10 Nahua campesinos detained at a June land occupation and since freed pending charges against them. All ten had gone to a local federal courthouse to check in and sign documents as a condition of their release, and three never returned. The others said they had been detained at the courthouse by elements of the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI), and are presumably being held at the federal prison at Tuxpan. However, authorities deny any record of their arrest. (La Jornada, Sept. 1)

On Aug. 27, the ACLU announced a settlement with ICE that improves conditions for immigrant children and their families inside the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas, a former medium security prison managed for ICE by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America. The case was to go to trial in Austin on Aug. 27. The settlement was approved on Aug. 30 by Judge Sam Sparks of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin. "Though we continue to believe that Hutto is an inappropriate place to house children, conditions have drastically improved in areas like education, recreation, medical care, and privacy," said Vanita Gupta, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program.

On Aug. 31, Judge Maxine M. Chesney of the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Social Security Administration (SSA) from sending "no-match" letters to companies whose employees' names do not match the Social Security numbers they used when they applied for their jobs. The letters were scheduled to be sent on Sept. 4 to about 140,000 employers with at least 10 workers whose names and Social Security numbers don't match. Chesney's order also prohibits the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from implementing a new rule, set to go into effect Sept. 14, under which the affected companies would have to resolve any discrepancies within 90 days or face sanctions, including fines.

Shades of the Niger Delta in Yemen. From Reuters, Sept. 1:

ADEN - A Yemeni tribe has freed two foreign engineers and their Yemeni driver, a government source said on Saturday, after the military threatened to storm the area to secure their release.

300 police backed up by helicopters beseiging a small rural town? Starting to look like counterinsurgency in Calabria. From the New York Times, Aug. 31:

Fears of Mob Feud Lead to Arrest of 32 in Italy
ROME — The Italian police carried out a major raid on Thursday, arresting 32 people, in part to stop a deadly feud between warring crime families. The arrests were linked to the fatal shooting of six men outside a pizzeria in Germany this month.

We got sick just reading about it. Good news the New Zealand cops turned it down. Bad news that it exists. From NZ's The Press, Aug. 15:

Police pass on acquiring 'vomit torch'
It is enough to make you sick – a crime-fighting flashlight that makes a culprit vomit.