Latin America

• Friday, March 9th 2007 - 21:00 UTC

  Chavez accuses Bush of trying to “divide” Latinamerica

  Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned that President George W. Bush's attempts to bolster trade and improve ties with Latin America threaten to divide the region and undermine economic stability.

• Friday, March 9th 2007 - 21:00 UTC

  Bush to talk trade with a long standing US strategic ally

  United States president George Bush arrived from Brazil at 21:35 local time in Montevideo, Uruguay, the second leg of his five countries Latinamerican trip and is scheduled to leave early Sunday morning for Colombia.

• Thursday, March 8th 2007 - 21:00 UTC

  Peru begins work on a 'petrochemical pole'

  

  Peru's government owned oil company Petroperu signed memorandums of understanding with a French firm to build a 500 million US dollars gas pipeline and with a Brazilian company to construct 2.8 billion in petrochemical projects.

• Thursday, March 8th 2007 - 21:00 UTC

  Bush accustomed to running “into demonstrations”

  

  US President George Bush said that if Venezuela's leader Hugo Chavez wants to protest from Argentina when he's visiting Uruguay this weekend, he can do so because “I'm accustomed to traveling and running into demonstrations all over the world”.

• Thursday, March 8th 2007 - 21:00 UTC

  Bachelet's Chile (until 2010), will not have nuclear power

  Six days after Chile's government announced a committee to investigate the feasibility of nuclear power, Mining and Energy Minister Karen Poniachik said this week that no nuclear program would start during President Michelle Bachelet's term. The committee's study, costing 200.000 US dollars, will however go ahead.

• Thursday, March 8th 2007 - 21:00 UTC

  Lan ranked best airline in South America

  Chile's LAN was chosen as the premier airline in Central and South America by U.S. magazine Global Traveler. The company received the award based on a reader survey conducted by the magazine between February and August of last year.

• Thursday, March 8th 2007 - 21:00 UTC

  Ecuadorian police bars legislators from Congress

  Police surrounded Ecuador's Congress in Quito Thursday to keep out dozens of Deputies who were fired a day earlier by four electoral judges the lawmakers had sought to impeach in the latest constitutional crisis for the small Andean nation.

• Thursday, March 8th 2007 - 21:00 UTC

  Bush's agenda: care for the 200 million Latinamericans in poverty

  Extending the benefits of democracy to all the region's peoples and helping 200 million Latinamericans living in poverty to improve their condition are the main purposes of US President George Bush's visit to five Latinamerican countries said Thomas Shannon, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

• Wednesday, March 7th 2007 - 21:00 UTC

  Negative February Consumer Price Index in Chile: -0.2%

  

  Chile's Consumer Price Index deflated 0.2% in February, totaling 0.1% in the first two months of 2007 and 2.7% in the last twelve months, according to a release from the country's National Statistics Institute.

• Tuesday, March 6th 2007 - 21:00 UTC

  Dengue fever extends to Argentina and south Brazil

  Argentina confirmed 126 cases of the mosquito transmitted dengue disease with another 415 patients with symptoms but yet have to be definitively diagnosed. In southern Brazil an estimated 45.000 cases have been estimated.