https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45806524

A court in Guatemala has sentenced the former vice-president, Roxana Baldetti, to 15 years and six months in jail for her role in what became known as the "Magic Water" scandal.

Prosecutors said that she embezzled millions from a state fund set up to decontaminate a lake.

The chemical formula used as part of the clean-up was an ineffective solution of water, salt and chlorine.

The deal was negotiated by her brother, Mario, who held no official post.

He was sentenced to 13 years in jail.

In his verdict, Judge Pablo Xitumul said that Ms Baldetti was the mastermind of a scheme devised to defraud the Guatemalan state.

She agreed to pay almost $18m (£13.7m) to an Israeli company to clean up the Amatitlán Lake.

However, the chemicals being used in the decontaminations scheme turned out to be mostly water and salt - leading the scandal to be dubbed "Magic Water".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-45791820

Police in Mexico are investigating a couple arrested for transporting body parts in a pram in connection with at least 10 murders.

At a hearing following his arrest, the man reportedly confessed to killing 20 women in a suburb of Mexico City.

Investigators have found body parts in the couple's flat and at another nearby property. They were kept in buckets filled with cement and in a fridge.

Prosecutors say the couple sold the body parts but it is not clear to whom.

Femicides - murders of women - are common in Mexico and often go unpunished, but the gruesome details of this case have caused outrage and triggered street protests in Ecatepec, the poor suburb in Mexico state where they occurred.

'Victim's baby sold'

Neighbours said that whenever they saw the couple they were pushing the pram in which police found the body parts.

Police stopped and searched them after the disappearance in September of a local woman, 28-year-old Nancy Huitron and her two-month old baby, Valentina.