Britain should quit European Union - Nigel Lawson

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron's plan to claw back powers from the European Union is doomed and Britain would be better off leaving the 27-member bloc, former chancellor Nigel Lawson said on Monday.

Lawson, who served as Margaret Thatcher's chancellor from 1983 to 1989, is the most senior member of Cameron's Conservative Party to call for Britain to withdraw from the EU.

Cameron promised in January to renegotiate the terms of Britain's 40-year-old membership of the bloc and to hold an "in-out" referendum if he is re-elected in 2015.

Writing in the Times newspaper on Monday, Lawson said Cameron attempts to claw back powers from Brussels would probably only secure "inconsequential" results.

Lawson said the EU had become a "bureaucratic monstrosity" and Britain's economy would be stronger if it left the bloc after 40 years.

"I strongly suspect that there would be a positive economic advantage to the UK in leaving the single market," Lawson wrote. "In my judgment the economic gains would substantially outweigh the costs."

His intervention piles pressure on Cameron, days after the Conservatives were shaken in local elections by the surging anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP).

(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge)

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98 arrested in union protest on Las Vegas Strip

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Throngs of workers blocked traffic on the Las Vegas Strip in a demonstration against the Cosmopolitan casino that has ended with the arrest of nearly 100 protesters.

Tourists watched from an overpass across Las Vegas Boulevard on Wednesday as workers wearing red union shirts were led one-by-one into a large white police bus. Metro Police Captain Todd Fasulo says 98 protesters were arrested.

Workers have been in contract talks with Cosmopolitan Las Vegas owner Deutsche (DOY'-chuh) Bank for two years.

The Culinary Union earlier this year held two one-day pickets outside the casino, which is next to the Bellagio resort.

Cosmopolitan spokeswoman Amy Rossetti says management is continuing to negotiate with labor to "find a fair agreement."

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Mexico's arrested union leader started humble

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Elba Esther Gordillo started out as a school teacher, then rose to become one of Mexico's most flamboyant and powerful political operators, displaying her opulence openly with designer clothes and bags.

For years, the 68-year-old union leader beat back attacks from dissidents, political foes and journalists who have seen her as a symbol of Mexico's corrupt, old-style politics. Rivals long accused her of corruption, misuse of union funds and even a murder.

But prosecutors had never brought a charge against her until Tuesday, when she was arrested and accused of embezzling $160 million in union funds to pay for everything from houses in a suburb of San Diego, California, to plastic surgery to her Neiman Marcus bill.

Gordillo was detained as she landed at the Toluca airport near Mexico City on a private plane from San Diego and whisked away by authorities.

Born in the impoverished southern state of Chiapas, Gordillo was just 15 years old when she joined the National Education Workers Union, then considered a sort of electoral army for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which governed Mexico for 71 years. She followed the path of most Mexican politicians, rising through a series of union, party and government posts. She was a senator for the PRI and also served in Mexico's lower house.

When a strike by dissident teachers led President Carlos Salinas to oust the old boss of the teacher's union in 1989, the job fell to Gordillo, who was widely seen as a reformer.

The union post made her one of the most powerful figures in the PRI at a moment when democratic reforms were starting to erode the party's hold on power, as well as its unquestioning subservience to Mexico's president.

Even before the PRI lost the 2000 election to the National Action Party's Vicente Fox, Gordillo began hedging her bets. She was the guiding force behind the creation of the New Alliance Party, which was based on members of the teacher's union and was once headed by one of her daughters.

She participated in a high-profile discussion group that included prominent social activists and opponents of the government, including Fox, and her friendship with him infuriated some PRI officials, who managed to prevent her from becoming leader of the party in 2005. She was expelled from the party a year later for supporting other parties' candidates and for founding the New Alliance.

The new party, along with the vast spread of the teacher's union itself, has given Gordillo special leverage. Because it is large enough to swing votes from one large party to another, rivals have negotiated for its backing. Her support was considered key in giving both Fox and Felipe Calderon the presidency, as well as blocking her rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, from reaching Mexico's highest office.

She maintained close ties to Calderon and was seen as the force behind the humiliating firing of Education Secretary Josefina Vazquez Mota in 2009. Officials said the firing was revenge for Vazquez Mota mocking Gordillo after it was widely reported that the union leader was going to offer Hummers to subordinates. In the middle of the Hummer controversy, Vazquez Mota jokingly offered a toy Hummer to one of her advisers at a private dinner and Gordillo heard of the incident and became enraged.

Witnesses recall seeing Vazquez Mota's legs trembling so much she had to sit down as Calderon announced her resignation.

Critics accused Gordillo of amassing more than a dozen properties worth millions of dollars. The newspaper Reforma once published a story analyzing one of her outfits and reported she was carrying a $5,500 purse and wearing $1,200 shoes.

She has acknowledged some of the wealth, saying part was inherited and part she earned through her job that paid her about $6,000 (80,000 pesos) a month.

A company that Mexican prosecutors said was registered to her dead mother's estate owns two multimillion-dollar houses in Coronado, a wealthy peninsular enclave across the bay from downtown San Diego. The properties sit across the street from each other in a gated community that caters to retirees and people with second homes.

One is a modern structure with six bedrooms and a three-car garage. It was purchased in 1991 for $1.15 million and is currently assessed at $4.72 million. A boat was docked behind the house Wednesday.

Coronado police visited the home Tuesday night after a newspaper reporter called to report that the front door was wide open, police spokeswoman Lea Corbin said. No one was inside, and police closed the door.

The company linked to the late mother's estate, Comercializadora TTS SA de CV, also owns a house across the street that was purchased in 2010 and is currently assessed at $4.08 million.

Lothar Kramer, 85, has lived next door to the six-bedroom home since 1985 and said he rarely saw anyone there and didn't know who owned it.

___

Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Mexico City and Elliot Spagat in San Diego, California, contributed to this report.

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Mexico arrests head of teacher's union on fraud charges

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico on Tuesday arrested Elba Esther Gordillo, the powerful head of the country's teachers' union, on suspicion of embezzling the union's funds, the Mexican attorney general said.

Authorities accuse Gordillo, who is viewed as one of the key obstacles to education reform in Mexico, of siphoning off millions of pesos of union money into private accounts, Jesus Murillo told reporters at a news conference.

"Clearly, we're facing a case in which the money of education workers has been misused illegally for the benefit of various people, including Elba Esther Gordillo," Murillo said. "Under this government nobody is above the law."

The arrest of Gordillo, who critics have for years accused of corruption, came a day after the Mexican government signed a broad education reform into law.

The Mexican teachers' union fought against the law, which limits union control over hiring and teaching standards, and aims to improve Mexico's failing school system.

(Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; editing by Jackie Frank)

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Mexican union boss arrest sounds warning to reform foes

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The arrest of Mexico's best-known trade union leader on fraud charges has thrown down the gauntlet to powerful interests standing between President Enrique Pena Nieto and his plans to shake up Latin America's second-biggest economy.

For a generation, even presidents shied away from taking on teachers' union boss Elba Esther Gordillo, making her Mexico's most prominent female politician and a formidable enemy to those who accused her of fostering corruption rather than education.

Pena Nieto, who has been in office for less than three months, crossed that line on Tuesday when police arrested Gordillo and three other people with her at Toluca airport near Mexico City.

Mexican television showed Gordillo, 68, wearing a prison uniform and standing behind bars as a state prosecutor formally charged her with embezzling around $200 million from union coffers and using the money to pay for U.S. property, luxury goods, designer clothes, works of art and plastic surgery.

She is not allowed to apply for bail under the charges.

Gordillo, who deferred comment to her lawyers, faces a maximum jail sentence of 30 years, though prisoners can apply to be moved to house arrest at age 70.

"It is clearly a criminal case," Attorney General Jesus Murillo said in a television interview. "The case is very solid."

A former grandee of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, Gordillo has denied accusations of corruption.

She was snared a day after Pena Nieto signed a law aimed at improving education standards that she had opposed because it would weaken her union's clout.

The Mexican president is preparing to launch a series of ambitious measures that aim to overhaul taxes, open up state oil giant Pemex to more private capital and ease tycoon Carlos Slim's tight grip on Mexico's telecommunications industry.

"The fundamental point is that resistance by the de facto powers to reform will be confronted with energy and determination," Federico Berrueto, director general of Mexican polling firm GCE, said after Gordillo's arrest.

In Mexico, the "de facto powers" refer to various entrenched interests that include Slim's business empire and dominant broadcaster Televisa, run by Emilio Azcarraga.

Both have repeatedly fought off regulatory efforts to loosen the control they wield over their respective markets.

The government is due to unveil a major telecommunications proposal in the next few days, while separate initiatives on overhauling Pemex and boosting Mexico's weak tax take are expected to go to Congress during the second half of 2013.

The education law signed by Pena Nieto on Monday still faces a fight from Gordillo's union because it requires a secondary law to be implemented.

Changes to the energy sector could face resistance from the Pemex union so Gordillo's arrest was also interpreted as a government warning to other labor bosses that they too might face close scrutiny.

BAD BLOOD

Although Gordillo is unpopular in Mexico, her arrest has also stirred fears that Pena Nieto could be leaning toward the authoritarian past of the centrist PRI, which ruled Mexico continuously from 1929 to 2000.

Brasil Acosta, a PRI congressman from Pena Nieto's home turf, the State of Mexico, said the party had to be careful that the case against Gordillo was not brought for the wrong reasons.

"If it isn't legally proven, we'll be looking at an act of political repression, which would be dangerous," he said.

Carlos Salinas, who was president from 1988 to 1994, removed two troublesome union leaders as he embarked on his own historic reform drive, but his administration ended mired in allegations of graft.

Appointed by Salinas in 1989, Gordillo became one of the most controversial figures in Mexico.

She has been widely criticized for her lavish lifestyle and she became more vulnerable after splitting with the PRI ahead of the 2006 presidential election, when the party suffered its biggest-ever defeat.

"I imagine he (Pena Nieto) was looking to land a decisive blow against someone, and she was the easiest target," political analyst Denise Dresser told Mexican television.

Gordillo was taken to Santa Martha Acatitla women's prison on the edge of Mexico City on Tuesday night.

NO GAMES

The PRI, reviled by many Mexicans as corrupt and heavy-handed by the time it lost power in 2000, pledged to mend its ways after Pena Nieto recovered the presidency last year.

The former State of Mexico governor vowed to usher in greater accountability and transparency, and his allies are portraying the investigation into Gordillo as part of the new PRI's broader efforts to clean up Mexico.

"They send a clear message. We're not playing games when it comes to governing," said Alejandra Del Moral, a 29-year-old PRI congresswoman.

Gordillo has long been a symbol of the PRI's cozy relationship with trade unions and established interests, which critics blame for fomenting inefficiency and helping to keep the economy lagging behind its emerging market peers.

Opposition lawmakers quickly argued that to realize lasting change Pena Nieto must go further than just arresting Gordillo.

"Today we're going to demand that Pena Nieto carries on with the others in the way he started with Elba Esther," said Armando Rios Piter, a senator for the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD. "There are hundreds and perhaps thousands who represent this model of corruption."

Among these, he said, is Carlos Romero Deschamps, head of the oil workers' union at Pemex and also a PRI senator.

Revamping the state-run Pemex is one of the toughest tasks facing Pena Nieto. Created when the PRI nationalized the oil industry in 1938, the company became a symbol of Mexican self-reliance and his party has been very reluctant to touch it.

Romero Deschamps has denied taking part in corruption and fought off such allegations in the past, and both the PRD and the conservative National Action Party, or PAN, called for an investigation into his wealth after Gordillo's arrest.

With no outright majority in Congress, Pena Nieto needs support from opposition parties for any major reform of Pemex. They are likely to seek concessions in exchange for votes.

(Additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter and Lizbeth Diaz; Editing by Kieran Murray, Simon Gardner and Paul Simao)

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Head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union arrested

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union was arrested at an airport outside Mexico City Tuesday for alleged embezzlement, with federal officials accusing her using union funds to pay for plastic surgery, rent a private plane and even pay her bill at Neiman Marcus.

Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said that Elba Esther Gordillo, who has led the 1.5 million-member National Union of Education Workers for 23 years, was detained in Toluca on charges that she embezzled about 2 billion pesos (about $160 million) from union funds.

Gordillo's arrest marks the downfall of a colorful woman long seen as a kingmaker and power-behind-the-scenes in Mexican politics. It comes a day after President Enrique Pena Nieto signed Mexico's most sweeping education reform in seven decades into law, seeking to change a system dominated by Gordillo in which teaching positions could be sold or inherited.

"We are looking at a case in which the funds of education workers have been illegally misused, for the benefit of several people, among them Elba Esther Gordillo," Murillo Karam said.

Prosecutors say the funds were drained from union accounts and later channeled through accounts in Switzerland and Lichtenstein. They said they had detected a whopping $2.7 million in purchases at Neiman Marcus using those funds, as well as $17,000 in U.S. plastic surgery bills and the purchase of a million-dollar home in San Diego.

"Between 2008 and 2012, there was systematic embezzlement of union accounts," Murillo Karam said.

Gordillo made little attempt to hide her extravagant, opulent lifestyle with designer clothing and accessories, a habit that drew heated criticism in a country where public

The overhaul of Mexico's education system was Pena Nieto's first major proposal since taking office Dec. 1 and was considered a political blow to Gordillo.

The plan moves much of the control of the education system to the federal government from the teachers' union. Gordillo was elected to another six-year term as union leader in October. She was the only candidate and there was not a single dissenting vote.

For years, she has beaten back attacks from union dissidents, political foes and journalists who have seen her as a symbol of Mexico's corrupt, old-style politics. Rivals have accused her of corruption, misuse of union funds and even a murder, but prosecutors who investigated never brought a charge against her.

She was expelled from Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party in 2006 for supporting other parties' candidates and the formation of her own New Alliance party.

Gordillo's arrest recalled the 1989 arrest of another once-feared union boss, Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, known as "La Quina." The longtime head of Mexico's powerful oil workers union, Hernandez Galicia was arrested during the first months of the new administration of then-President Carlos Salinas.

Like Gordillo, Hernandez Galicia's power was believed to represent a challenge to the president, and his arrest was interpreted as an assertion of the president's authority. He was freed from prison after Salinas de Gortari left office.

In 1988, he criticized Salinas' presidential candidacy and threatened an oil workers' strike if Salinas privatized any part of the government oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. On Jan. 10, 1989, — about a month after Salinas took office — soldiers used a bazooka to blow down the door of Hernandez' home in the Gulf Coast city of Ciudad Madero.

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