
Keiko Fujimori is poised to win the first round of Peru's presidential election on Sunday, but with insufficient votes to avoid a second round on June 5, according to the latest survey with data collected on April 6. The Ipso poll showed Keiko with 37.7% of valid votes, and a double digit lead over each of her nine rivals.
Veronika Mendoza, a 35-year-old leftist presidential contender in Peru who is promising a new constitution to weaken the country's business elite jumped 5 percentage points in a poll and was seen as statistically tied at second with investor-favourite Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

Catches of Peruvian giant squid (Dosidicus gigas) are showing a slow recovery, something that has long been awaited not only by local fishermen and industrialists, but also by the largest processors in Europe and Asia.

French president Francois Hollande is scheduled to visit Peru, Argentina and Uruguay in the last week of February, and in a display of Gallic diplomacy expects to promote trade, investments and French interests in the region.

The fragile relations between neighboring Chile and Peru appeared to unwind further Saturday, after Peruvian President Ollanta Humala officially recognized an administrative district in a disputed border area. The Chilean government promptly sent a protest note to Peru strongly rejecting the law because it concerns unquestionably Chilean territory.

A US hedge fund has threatened to sue Peru over bonds issued by the country's former military regime. Connecticut-based hedge fund Gramercy purchased the defaulted debt at a discount in 2008 after other bondholders failed to reach a deal.

Of all four Pacific Alliance countries, Colombia spends most on its congressional representatives, despite the South American country’s low wages. According to a report published on Monday by economic newspaper La Republica, the state pays Colombia’s congressmen a total of nearly $2.1 million per month in salaries, almost double the total of Chile, whose congressmen have the highest individual salaries, but in total cost the state $1.2 million per month.

Peruvian lawmakers elected an opposition legislator as head of Congress in a new but hardly unsurprising defeat for the ruling party and increasingly unpopular President Ollanta Humala who this week begins the last year in office. GfK polls indicate the president has a disapproval rating of 80%.

Chile will insist at the two-day Pacific Alliance summit which took off on Wednesday in Paracas, Peru, that a convergence with Mercosur is needed to ensure the integration of Latina America, and this is more evident now that both groupings face similar challenges such as falling prices for commodities, normalization of US monetary policy and an international context of slow growth.

China and Peru have agreed to study the feasibility of a controversial 5,300 km transcontinental railroad that will connect Peru's Pacific coast with Brazil's Atlantic coast, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported.