Development: On 7 April President Alfredo Palacio modified reforms to the recently proposed hydrocarbon law and sent the legislation back to congress. Significance: Palacio said tax on oil companies' windfall profits should be set at 50%, instead of the proposed 60%. The president needs 51 votes from 100 in Congress to approve his changes. If congress rejects the amendment, it will need 67 votes, a two-thirds majority, to override the decision. The president's decision appears to be a sop to the foreign oil companies which were outraged by the original congressional proposal, but it does not appear to have worked.…
Development: On 9 April President Hugo Chávez said he will expel US ambassador William Brownfield if he provokes violence again. Significance: Brownfield's misdemeanour was to be assaulted while handing out equipment at a baseball game. In the tit-for-tat exchanges that characterise Venezuelan-US relations, the ambassador's populist idea seems to be a small-scale imitation of Chávez 's decision to deliver subsidised heating oil to poor US communities, a move which irritated the US government. On 7 April Brownfield travelled to a working-class neighbourhood in Caracas to hand out baseball equipment to little leaguers. Chávez supporters present at the stadium demanded he…
Development: Rafael García, a disgraced former official in Colombia's secret service, has accused erstwhile intelligence chief and senior diplomat Jorge Noguera of colluding with paramilitaries. Significance: García was the head of IT for the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS, Colombia's intelligence service) until February 2005, when he was arrested for erasing the criminal records of drug lords wanted for extradition. It has taken over a year for him to speak out against his former employers at the DAS, but his eventual testimony is explosive, particularly as regards as his former friend Noguera. Noguera, who resigned as head of the DAS…