Colombian incumbent presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos is poised for an overwhelming victory in next Sunday’s runoff according to the latest public opinion polls published Sunday in Bogotá’s main newspapers.
The Colombian military on Sunday rescued Gen. Luis Mendieta and Col. Enrique Murillo, two top national police officers held by the FARC guerrillas for nearly 12 years, President Alvaro Uribe announced.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised this week after meeting with Colombian president Alvaro Uribe that when she returns to Washington she will begin “a very intensive effort to try to obtain the votes to get the free trade agreement with Colombia finally ratified”.
The Cuban government has freed a jailed dissident and moved six others to jails closer to their homes. Senior Catholic clergymen had urged Cuban president Raul Castro to release Ariel Sigler, 47, on humanitarian grounds.
Chilean senators Juan Pablo Letelier and Guido Girardi met this week with the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, Fernando Schmidt, to plead the removal of Chilean Cristián Maquieira from his position as chairman of the International Whaling Commission.
Cuban Catholic church said this week that it expects the government of Raul Castro to make more gestures favouring political prisoners, although it added that in that “process” no fixed dates have been set for particular actions.
Chilean President Sebastián Piñera has announced plans to invest 15 billion US dollars in Codelco, the state-owned copper company. Speaking to an audience of workers, managers and executives at a mine in Calama earlier this week, Piñera said the investment would bring about “a renaissance and a new youth to Codelco”.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez suspended a national electricity rationing plan, saying that the grid had been strengthened by new investments in thermoelectric plants and heavy rains that filled up reservoirs. He also wants Venezuelans to watch the World Cup in South Africa.
Argentina ratified this week the adhesion to the South American Nations Union (Unasur) Treaty, following a unanimous vote in the Lower House of Congress. The Senate had already approved the initiative.
A Venezuelan historian and academic presented the book ‘I saw him cry’ in which he affirms that President Hugo Chavez was crying, fearful and pleading to be sent to Cuba on April 11, 2002 during the coup that had him out of office for several days. He also insists there was no plan to have Chavez shot by a firing squad as the ‘official version” of events has since turned into epic days.