Short news updates

• El Salvador's National Assembly adopted a budget and approved government borrowing for 2006. The approval of the 2006 budget shows the waning power of the FMLN and the influence of the center-left legislators known as the G-14, some of whom are ex-FMLN members. With the support of the G-14, no votes of the FMLN were needed to approve the measure, even though it required a super-majority vote.
  
  
• Tony Saca spoke out against immigration measures making their way through the US Congress. After the US House passed a measure which increases the penalties on undocumented workers and funded building a $2 billion wall along the Mexican border, Saca described an attitude of hostility and intolerance in the US. Saca declared that immigrants had human rights, including a right to search for work, which were threatened by developments in the US.
  
  
• The toxic algae bloom known as red tide began to recede from the Salvadoran coast raising hopes that the ban on the sale of shellfish can soon be lifted.