Latin America

• Saturday, April 1st 2017 - 09:09 UTC

  Chavism divided: Chief prosecutor says there has been a ”rupture of constitutional order

  

  Venezuela's chief prosecutor broke with the government on Friday and rebuked a Supreme Court decision stripping Congress of its last vestiges of power, showing a crack in the unity of the embattled populist government of President Nicolas Maduro as it came under a torrent of international condemnation over what many decried as a major step toward dictatorship.

• Friday, March 31st 2017 - 07:20 UTC

  Venezuelan Supreme Court closes Legislative gives all power to Maduro: world condemnation

  

  The Venezuelan Supreme Court's decision late Wednesday to take control of the opposition-controlled legislature has set off a wave of outrage, with some hemispheric neighbors, including the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Argentina, denouncing the measure as a threat to democracy.

• Monday, March 27th 2017 - 05:12 UTC

  Correa´s candidate headed for victory in Ecuador presidential runoff next Sunday

  

  The latest release of public opinion polls ahead of next Sunday's (April 2) presidential runoff in Ecuador show the ruling party candidate Lenin Moreno winning by a margin of 4.5 percentage points. The Cedatos poll conducted between March 18th and 21st, showed the ruling party candidate with 52.4% of the vote compared to opposition leader Guillermo Lasso‘s 47.6% (a 4.8% difference).

• Saturday, March 25th 2017 - 10:00 UTC

  Mexico prepared to “step away” from NAFTA if negotiations don't benefit the country

  

  Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said that if North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations don't benefit all parties involved, the country is willing to “step away” from it. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said pulling out of NAFTA would be a last resort.

• Wednesday, March 22nd 2017 - 12:01 UTC

  Guyana beats exploration/production record: oil extraction expected to begin 2019

  

  United States oil giant Exxon Mobil Corporation is moving full steam ahead with plans to transform Guyana, in the north of South America, into a major oil producer. In what industry experts call a rare occurrence in the industry, Exxon Mobil has asked the David Granger administration for a production license to start pumping oil from the country’s seabed, less than five years after it discovered major oil finds.

• Friday, March 17th 2017 - 06:39 UTC

  Torrential rains and mudslides ravage Peru: thousands left homeless

  

  Muddy water spilled onto streets and into homes on Thursday in a new round of unusually heavy rains that has killed at least a eighteen people in Peru and now threatens flooding in the capital Lima. The intense rains and mudslides over the past three days have wrought havoc around the Andean nation and caught residents in Lima, a desert city of 10 million where it almost never rains, by surprise.

• Wednesday, March 15th 2017 - 07:56 UTC

  Two US airlines cancel flights to Cuba: excess of capacity

  

  On Monday, two US airlines announced that they have plans to cancel their flights to Cuba, one of which is Fort Lauderdale-based Silver Airways, whose representatives said they had made the “difficult but necessary” decision to cancel its services to Cuba from April 22.

• Tuesday, March 14th 2017 - 21:34 UTC

  Death of swimming pigs of Big Major Cay shocks Bahamas

  

  For many years the swimming pigs of Big Major Cay, also known as Pig Beach, in the Bahamas Exuma island chain, have been a major tourist attraction. Running wild on the uninhabited island, swimming out to meet boatloads of tourists and happily gobbling down the food and snacks they brought, the friendly porkers enjoyed a porcine paradise on their island in the sun.

• Tuesday, March 14th 2017 - 21:23 UTC

  Mexico practices direct diplomacy with the Trump family at the White House

  

  Mexico's top diplomat was in Washington last week for meetings with the U.S. government, sidestepping the normal channels and heading straight for the White House. Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray met at the White House with President Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner, along with National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, a top financial aid, the Mexican government announced.

• Tuesday, March 14th 2017 - 21:08 UTC

  Death toll in girls shelter in Guatemala rises to 40; allegedly they were locked in by officials

  

  The death toll from the fire at Guatemala's Virgen de la Asunción shelter for girls in the municipality of San José Pinula has risen to 40, officials said. Four of the girls hospitalized after the fire last Wednesday were flown on an airplane ambulance to the United States for treatment at the Shriners Hospital for Children of Galveston, Texas, Saturday night.