
A new business association promoting Chile’s thermal hot springs hopes to bump visits up 12% to 1 million people by 2015. Last year only 700,000 people visited Chile’s hot springs, which exist in all corners of this mountainous, volcano-rich country.

In spite of healthy economic growth in Latin America, local and foreign companies alike single out one area as deficient, especially compared with Asia: infrastructure.

The nudism and naturism movement in Chile will soon be in the international spotlight, as the country was recently named headquarters for the Latin American Nudism-Naturism Conference, scheduled for March 2012.

A 3.85 billion US dollars pipeline to carry freshwater some 1,000 kilometres from central Chile to the country’s northern desert will provide a cheaper alternative for users now reliant on desalinization of ocean water, a business news Web site said this week.

Finance Minister Ismael Benavides said Peru's economy should grow between 8% and 8.5% this year, with inflation ending the year from 2.2% to 2.5%. The Peruvian Central Bank latest forecast was annual growth of 7.5% to 8%.

Ecuadorean Foreign Affairs minister Ricardo Patiño hailed the approval by the Colombian Senate of the Union of South American Nations, Unasur, charter which leaves the group one short of its legal constitution. The Uruguayan parliament is expected to follow suit in coming days.

Japan’s Sumitomo and Mitsubishi will send experts and equipment to Bolivia to support efforts to produce value-added lithium by-products in the Andean nation, state media reported.

Leaders from Brazil, Mexico and Argentina in the framework of the G-20 summit in Korea called on rich countries for a commitment to end the “currencies war” and ensure balanced growth out of the current crisis.

Ingrid Betancourt, a former Colombian presidential candidate who was held captive by the FARC guerrilla for six years, accuses Colombia of treating her worse than a criminal since she was rescued in 2008, according to reports in the Argentine press.

Yasmin Elsayed, a 9-year old girl who was prohibited from wearing a hijab (an Islamic head scarf) at the W. A. Mozart School in the La Reina borough of Chile’s capital Santiago, was allowed to register again for the 2011 school year this week.