Actor and humanitarian Sean Penn called for the Dakar Rally to cancel its debut run in Bolivia unless an ailing American businessman being held under house arrest there is released. Penn, a friend of President Evo Morales has angered Bolivian authorities with his request.
The sixth stage of the Rally Dakar 2012, the first one in Chilean territory, has been suspended due to intense snow storms that do not allow the trespassing of the vehicles from Argentina.
The 33 edition of the Dakar Rally got off to a symbolic start on Saturday ahead of a 15-day race that will take 466 registered competitors from Argentina through Chile to a finish in Lima, Peru.
Dakar Rally chief Etienne Lavigne said that the next edition of the competition which takes off from Mar del Plata, Argentina next January first and ends in Lima, Peru, fifteen days later, is the most renewed and challenging version since the rally moved to South America in 2008.
Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner held on Wednesday a 45 summit meeting with her counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy on the third and last day of her official visit to France.
The Grande Brasile has arrived at Delta Rock, where the European vehicles participating in the 2011 Dakar Argentina-Chile Rally were unloaded during the night.
Organizers have unveiled the route for the 2011 Dakar Rally which will start and finish in Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires and include a section through Chile. The 33rd edition of the “the world's toughest motor-sport event” will be the third to be run in South America after concerns about terrorists moved the rally in 2009 from its traditional route through the Sahara desert in North Africa.