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by Santiago PIEDRA SILVA QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Ecuador began counting the cost Monday of 12 days of indigenous fury against fuel hikes that left seven protesters dead and severely dented President Lenin Moreno’s austerity program. Moreno and indigenous leaders reached an agreement Sunday after the president pledged to withdraw subsidy cuts, known as Decree 883, that had more than doubled fuel prices. The cuts were part of an austerity package to obtain a $4.2 […]
LIMA, Peru (AFP) — At least six people died and 40 were injured after a hailstorm caused a roof to collapse on a costume party in central Peru, authorities said. Around 1,000 people were in the building at the time of the accident on Sunday, according to local media. Some are still trapped in the rubble and five of the injured are in a serious condition, police said. The incident occurred during a local […]
by Katell ABIVEN / Hector Velasco QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — A first meeting between Ecuador’s president and indigenous leaders will take place on Sunday, the United Nations said, after Lenin Moreno ordered a curfew and military control in the capital to try to quell deadly, anti-austerity protests. The rolling demonstrations have left six people dead and nearly 2,100 wounded or detained, according to authorities, with protesters on Saturday targeting a television station and a newspaper […]
by Allison Jackson, with Valeria Pacheco in Puerto Maldonado, Peru Agence France Presse ITAITUBA, Brazil (AFP) — A shortage of Catholic priests in the Amazon is eroding the church’s influence in the remote region, bishops in Brazil and Peru warn, ahead of a Vatican synod dedicated to the rainforest. Wilmar Santin, one of scores of Brazilian bishops set to attend the October 6-27 gathering, says the church is ceding ground to more nimble Evangelical […]
LIMA, Peru (AFP) — At least 17 people were killed and some 30 injured when a passenger bus plunged off a cliff on Tuesday in the mountainous Cusco region of Peru, local police said. Police are trying to determine why the bus driver sent the vehicle off the road and into a 100-meter deep ravine. The accident took place around dawn Tuesday as the bus, with 48 passengers, was heading from the Amazon rainforest city […]
by Francisco JARA LIMA, Peru (AFP) — Peru’s President Martin Vizcarra consolidated power Tuesday in a tense stand-off with the opposition over corruption, confirming the backing of the armed forces, police and the international community after dissolving Congress. Opposition lawmakers accused Vizcarra of mounting a “coup d’etat,” voting to suspend him temporarily from the presidency and appointing Vice President Mercedes Araoz as leader in what appeared to be a token gesture of defiance. Thousands of […]
SANTIAGO, United States (AFP) — A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck in the Pacific off the coast of Chile on Sunday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said. “There is a low likelihood of casualties and damage,” the USGS said of the earthquake, which it earlier reported as a magnitude 7.2, and which occurred 41 miles (66 kilometers) west-southwest of Constitucion, Chile. Chile’s National Seismological Center (CSN) put the quake at 6.6 magnitude. Despite the tremor’s […]
by Mauro PIMENTEL / Carlos FABAL Agence France Presse RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — At least 11 people, many of them elderly, were killed when a fire swept through a hospital in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro as staff and desperate visitors battled to rescue patients from smoke-filled wards. Hospital authorities said the blaze late on Thursday was thought to have been caused by a short circuit in a generator, although […]
by Luis Jaime CISNEROS Agence France Presse LIMA, Peru (AFP) — Peru’s Supreme Court on Thursday halved the pre-trial detention of Keiko Fujimori, paving the way for the opposition leader to leave jail in April of next year. Fujimori, 44, was ordered held for 36 months last October in a corruption case linked to Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. Fujimori, who is detained at a women’s prison south of the capital Lima, had petitioned the […]
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) — Intrepid Brazilian and British scientists say they have located the Amazon’s tallest tree in northern Brazil, untouched by a spate of wildfires that have raged in the rainforest for weeks. The scientists say they located an unusually large specimen of the giant Dinizia Excelsa species — measuring 88 meters (288-feet) with a circumference of 5.50 meters — in a sanctuary of other Dinizia trees. “The species generally reach a height […]
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) — Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro will skip a regional summit on fires that have devastated swaths of the Amazon because doctors want him to get ready for surgery scheduled for next week, a spokesman said Monday. The far-right president has been widely criticized over his support for Amazon deforestation and a delayed reaction to wildfires that have hit the rain forest. Bolsonaro has to go on a liquid diet starting Friday, […]
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) — The number of fires in Brazil’s Amazon basin is still on the rise, even though the government has banned burning, officials said Saturday. In the first 48 hours since the ban was issued, satellite data from the National Space Research Institute (INPE) showed 3,859 new outbreaks of fire, of which some 2,000 were concentrated in the Amazon region. From January to the end of August, 51.9 percent of Brazil’s recorded […]
