Chile

• Friday, December 29th 2017 - 10:09 UTC

  Valparaíso planning a cruise pier that can handle a pair of 300-meters ships

  

  The Chilean port of Valparaíso has plans for a specific cruise ships pier, where calls have dropped due to berthing conflicts with the cargo business. Agencias Universales SA, Agunsa, has proposed the pier, designed in conjunction with the Dutch engineering company Royal HaskoningDHV, and it would be able to handle a pair of 300-meter ships simultaneously, with the possibility to expand for bigger vessels in future.

• Wednesday, December 27th 2017 - 09:42 UTC

  Morales insists in involving the Pope in the ongoing sea outlet dispute between Bolivia and Chile

  

  Bolivian President Evo Morales implied in a Tweet that he and Pope Francis had discussed Bolivia’s territorial dispute with Chile during a meeting at the Vatican on December 15. According to the Vatican, the 30-minute private meeting “took place in a cordial atmosphere.”

• Sunday, December 24th 2017 - 17:18 UTC

  Pope coming visit to Chile and Peru; no reference to the sea outlet conflict with Bolivia

  

  During his visit to Chile and Peru, Pope Francis will honor the country’s religious roots and underline the plight of indigenous men and women. The Vatican said the pope will be in Chile Jan. 15-18, visiting the cities of Santiago, Temuco and Iquique. He then will fly to Peru and, from Jan. 18-21, he will visit Lima, Puerto Maldonado and Trujillo.

• Tuesday, December 19th 2017 - 11:21 UTC

  Markets and investors cheer Piñera, but he faces a determined opposition in Congress

  

  Billionaire conservative Sebastian Piñera will begin a second term as Chile's president in March with a strong mandate after trouncing his center-left opponent in Sunday's election, and local markets soared on hopes of more investor-friendly policies.

• Monday, December 18th 2017 - 13:12 UTC

  Chile bans bottom sea trawling in 98% of its EEZ to protect marine environment

  

  Chile's Under secretariat of Fisheries and Aquaculture, SUBPESCA, and Oceana Chile jointly announced the freezing of the fishing footprint for the common hake and demersal crustacean fisheries. This means that 98% of Chile's exclusive economic zone, EEZ, will be protected from bottom trawling.

• Monday, December 18th 2017 - 07:09 UTC

  Mudslide buries village in Patagonian Chile: at least 8 dead and 15 missing

  

  At least eight people are dead and 15 are still missing after a landslide swept through a remote village in Patagonian Chile on Saturday, the country's president said. The deadly catastrophe devastated the town of Villa Santa Lucia, near a popular national park in the Chaitén region following a deluge of rain on Friday.

• Monday, December 18th 2017 - 05:55 UTC

  Piñera is Chile's next president: he beat the center left candidate by ten points

  

  Billionaire former President Sebastian Piñera easily won Chile's presidential runoff election on Sunday, moving the world's top-copper producing country back to the right. Piñera got 54.6% of the votes to 45.4% for center-left Senator Alejandro Guillier, with nearly all the ballots counted.

• Saturday, December 16th 2017 - 16:29 UTC

  A disenchanted Chile will elect the least unpopular of two candidates on Sunday

  

  Chile faces on Sunday one of the elections with most uncertain result. Longstanding disenchantment with the center left leaning coalition that has ruled Chile since the return of democracy in 1990, and a Latin American natural reaction which erupts every now and then when an economy stalls and the blame goes to the local elite in combination with outside “treachery capitalists”, seems to be the scenario.

• Thursday, December 14th 2017 - 05:13 UTC

  Chile: Sunday's winner will have to learn to cohabit with the opposition

  

  With only a few days left for next Sunday's runoff in Chile's presidential election two factors have become decisive and a challenge for the two hopefuls, opposition candidate conservative Sebastian Piñera, and Alejandro Guillier, the incumbent, reluctantly accepted by the current system in office.

• Saturday, December 9th 2017 - 19:14 UTC

  Santander sells assets in United States to a Chilean bank

  

  Spain's Banco Santander said it had sold its U.S. unit Totalbank to Chile’s BCI for US$528 million as part of moves to sell non-core assets it inherited when it bought Banco Popular. BCI owns City National Bank of Florida and had been in talks with TotalBank’s former owner Banco Popular before it was acquired by Santander.