Wedding
scam fools
Dutchmen
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands
(AP) — Five men hoping to tie the
knot with a Thai woman discovered
at the airport they were all waiting for
the same bride — a suspected con
artist who never showed up.
The jilted men were all victims of
a Bangkok-based scam in which one
woman placed personal advertise
ments in Dutch newspapers under
dozens of different names, the daily
De Telegraaf newspaper reported
Thursday.
Claiming she wanted to marry a
Dutchman, the woman sent photos
and poured her heart out in letters to
anybody who answered her ads, one
victim said. As the long-distance
romances blossomed, the woman’s
letters began to include requests for
cash, including $625 to cover the cost
of a flight to Amsterdam.
With wedding bells ringing in
their ears, the Dutch men didn’t hear
any alarm bells — until they ran into
each other at Amsterdam’s Schiphol
Airport and began comparing notes.
■ A water shortage from
Hurricane Pauline has left
thousands thirsty.
Mexico (AP) — Standing in
huge, snaking lines along Acapulco’s
sweltering, dust-caked streets, thou
sands of people pleaded Thursday for
one of life’s most basic necessities:
water.
The shortage of clean water has
become critical since Hurricane
Pauline tore through southern
Mexico last week, killing at least 230
people. Officials are trucking in tens
of thousands of gallons a day, but it is
not enough to quench the thirst of an
increasingly desperate population of
1.5 million.
Thousands of people lined up to
pick up half-liter bottles of water at a
distribution center in the Parque las
Lajas neighborhood on Thursday.
Some came as early as 3 a.m. To pre
vent unrest, a soldier with an auto
matic rifle stood guard at the front of
the line.
Paula Tomatzin, a 27-year-old
taco vendor, made it to the front of the
line but was turned away by a worker.
She had an iodine mark on her right
hand, showing that she had already
picked up her daily ration.
“It’s not enough for my whole
family. I need more. I have three little
children and they don’t have enough
to drink,” she begged.
It didn’t work. Tomatzin walked
away, head hanging low.
The relief center’s director, Juan
Jose Alarcon, said it was tough to turn
people away, but many hadn’t gotten
any water yet. He was supposed to
stop handing out water at 5:30 every
afternoon, but he kept the center open
an extra couple of hours Wednesday
because the lines were still long. Even
then, he had to turn people away.
“Shamefully, most of Acapulco is
without water,” he said. “There is a
great need.”
The deadly flash floods unleashed
by Hurricane Pauline on Oct. 9 man
gled water pipes throughout the city
and heavily damaged the two main
aqueducts that carry river water to
Acapulco’s water purification plants.
The smaller of the aqueducts was
repaired Wednesday, and by
Thursday, 30 percent of city residents
had running water for at least part of
the day, said Eleno Garcia Benavente,
an official with the National Water
Commission.
Crews delivered an extra 1.3 mil
lion gallons a day in bottles and
tanker trucks. But in many neighbor
hoods, there simply wasn’t any.
In the western suburbs, women
piled up sacks of flood-muddied
clothes and took hourlong bus rides
to a river where they could bathe and
do their washing. Downtown, people
scooped water from an open, gurgling
manhole.
On the banks of the fetid
Camarones River, people dug holes
in the mud, let the sediment sink and
scooped up liquid from the top. Some
were drinking it.
“It isn’t good to drink, but we’re
thirsty,” said Selene Toribio
Abellanera, 21. “We adults can han
dle it, but children aren’t as strong,
and we have to look for bottled water
for them.”
She had waited five hours to get
that bottled water - a ration of about
1 Vi quarts for her family of four.
Already, waterborne diseases
have begun to appear. Officials said
Thursday that Acapulco had eight
confirmed cases of cholera, a bacter
ial infection that causes diarrhea,
dehydration and sometimes death.
Doctors warned of a possible epidem
ic.
Hundreds of water trucks stopped
wherever lines of people, buckets in
hand, had formed. Although officials
forbid anyone to sell water, some peo
ple were hawking jugs of water for $ 1
each; $5 for those without an c mpty
jug to trade in.
Juan Carlos Angel, driving a truck
from Pepsico’s Electropura dri iking
water subsidiary, unloaded thre>: jugs
for a man on die sidewalk who forked
over $3. A policeman looked cn and
did nothing.
“It’s up to the company,” said the
officer, Marcos Rodriguez. “I don’t
know what arrangement they have
with the government”
Garcia Benavente, the National
Water Commission official, said the
driver would be punished.
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