Corruption Scandal

Jack Abramoff is hardly a household name outside the nation's capital. But in Washington's corridors of power, his name is spreading waves of anxiety about a possible political corruption scandal that could tarnish members of Congress, their aides and Capitol Hill lobbyists. Abramoff, a once-powerful lobbyist who is the subject of a federal influence-peddling investigation, is considering a deal to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors, according to sources familiar with the probe.

With his party tainted by a corruption scandal, Prime Minister Paul Martin lost a confidence vote in Parliament on Monday, and the government said Canadians would have to head to the polls for a new election in January. Martin is expected to set the election for Jan. 23 after visiting Governor-General Michaelle Jean, the country's constitutional head of state, this morning to request that Parliament be dissolved. It will be the second election in less than two years.

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, living in self-exile in Japan, has been granted a Peruvian passport. Fujimori's passport expired after he fled to Japan in 2000 as his government crumbled amid a corruption scandal. Peru's Congress has since banned him from public office until 2010, but Fujimori has pledged to return to run in the April election. Peruvian prosecutors have also petitioned Japan to extradite Fujimori to face 22 criminal charges.

In a televised address, Prime Minister Paul Martin apologized to Canadians in connection with a corruption scandal that has shaken his Liberal Party. Martin pledged to call an election within a month after an investigation is completed, which is expected by Dec. 15. Martin has not been implicated in the scandal.

Carson officials are counting on aggressive development efforts and new leadership from an upcoming municipal election to help shake the stigma left by a political corruption scandal. "We have a bright future," said Councilwoman Julie Ruiz Raber. "We don't want to forget what has happened, but we must move forward." The city is pushing a plan to make a 157-acre former landfill home to a team that the National Football League hopes to bring to the Los Angeles area by the 2008 season.

Carson has no property tax or utility tax. A gleaming new soccer stadium is bringing in much-needed revenue for the South Bay city with an ethnically balanced population that, for the most part, lives harmoniously. But in recent years, the industrial city of 90,000 gained a reputation for political strife. Since 2002, four city officials, including two mayors, have pleaded guilty in federal court to bribery, extortion and other charges.

Of the dozens of characters Jose Sarney has invented as a novelist, perhaps none has so colorful a past, or so interesting a present, as the person he is now busily reinventing: himself. More than just an author of moderate renown, Sarney is a politician -- and a former president of Brazil at that.

A businessman at the heart of a corruption scandal implicating the administration of Mexico City's popular mayor was arrested in Cuba, prosecutors said. Carlos Ahumada is the businessman widely seen on videotape handing cash to the former secretary of Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and to a borough leader belonging to Lopez Obrador's leftist Democratic Revolution Party. Ahumada later admitted he made the tapes because he said city officials were extorting him.

The former head of Mexico's biggest left-wing party quit the organization in a corruption scandal. Rosario Robles, who headed the Democratic Revolution Party from 2002 to 2003, was linked with a businessman who was shown in a televised video last week apparently bribing another party member. Robles said at a news conference that she had "committed errors," but did not elaborate. The politician in the video has said the money was a political donation.