It was a late afternoon in April, and hot fog was creeping in from the coast. Lima?s colonial Plaza de Armas was relatively calm for a change: a din of grinding gears and hawker?s cries was in the air, as was a strong smell of diesel fumes and old cooking oil, but there were no jeering strikers, and there was no sting of tear gas.

The political unrest in Haiti, with its graphic daily images of gunfire and street violence, is focusing attention once again on the island's South Florida gun connection.

A federal judge on Friday sentenced a former official of the Venezuelan Air Force (FAV) to 24 months in prison after he plead guilty to conspiracy to export more than 650 MAK90 assault rifles and ammunition from Florida to guerrilla groups in Colombia.

The former Venezuelan official, Romulo Alfredo Martinez, was arrested on November 23, 2003, at Newark Airport in New Jersey.

A U.S. Justice Department attempt to break up one of California’s most powerful gangs, the Nuestra Familia, put FBI agents and local police in charge of gangster informants as their fellow gang members plotted and carried out murders, assaults and other major crimes, court documents and FBI reports uncovered by CIR reveal.