At least 90 journalists (30 in Latinamerica) have been killed doing their job so far this year, a 25% increase on the same period of 2009, the media watchdog Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) said this week. PEC has also called on the UN Humans Rights Council to urgently take up the matter.
Chile’s government said this week it will be impossible to meet demands by 34 Mapuche hunger strikers that all three branches of Chile’s government meet together to resolve the on-going hunger strike.
While rescuers have insisted that the 33 Chilean trapped miners at San Jose mine will be evacuated in early November, the government has suggested that the rescue will most likely be as early as mid-October.
World Bank's Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean Augusto de la Torre said that the Latin American economy will grow between 5.5 and 6% this year spurred mostly by a good performance from Mercosur members.
*Exclusive Report for MercoPress by Peter Lowy.
International tourism is rebounding across Latin America this year, and to help ensure that the upward trend continues, 10 nations across the region participated in the inauguration last week of FITA, the International Tourism Fair of the Americas, in Mexico City.
Regional and municipal elections in Peru this coming Sunday are expected to result in the first female mayor of Lima since the military dictatorship of the 1960s, as two women compete for the office in the final days of the campaign.
A Chinese freighter has become the millionth vessel to cross the Panama Canal three years ahead of the waterway's 100th anniversary, the Canal authority said Monday. The vessel actually crossed the canal September 4 with a load of 40.000 tons of steel products from the Pacific to the Atlantic but the authority announced the news only Monday.
The world's biggest container shipper, Maersk Line, is increasingly serving Latin America and Africa with ships sailing directly from Asia to tap accelerating growth in those markets, the Financial Times said.
Colombia's narco-terrorist guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has named a successor to one of its top military commanders who was killed in a military air strike five days ago.
President Hugo Chavez Venezuelan United Socialist Party, PSUV finally obtained 98 seats in last Sunday’s legislative election while the opposition managed 65, according to the primary proclamations based on official data from the country’s different regions.