Daily Headlines: January 13, 2015 (Updated)

* Colombia: Colombian striker James Rodriguez won the FIFA Puskas Award for best goal of 2014 for his strike in last year’s World Cup round of 16 victory over Uruguay.

* Mexico: Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa, the wife of former mayor of the Mexican town where forty-three students may have been massacred, will be tried over her alleged ties to local criminal gangs.

Update: On a related note, several family members of the disappeared students accused Mexican authorities of "assaulting" them with rocks and tear gas during a protest on January 12th. (Source link is in Spanish).

* Brazil: Several thousand striking autoworkers upset at the announcement of layoffs last week blocked traffic on a major highway connecting Sao Paulo to Brazil’s largest port.

* Argentina: Argentina’s central bank will reportedly receive $400 million from China as part of an $11 billion currency swap with the Asian country.

Video Source – YouTube user FIFATV

Online Sources including Update – ITV Sport; Reuters; The Latin Americanist; GlobalPost; Bloomberg; La Republica

Daily Headlines: July 22, 2014

* Venezuela: Authorities today started to peacefully evict thousands of squatters residing in the "Tower of David", a Caracas skyscraper abandoned in 1994, to instead live in a publicly-funded housing project.

* Colombia: James Rodriguez, the Colombian player who was the top scorer in the recently finished World Cup, will reportedly join Spanish giants Real Madrid for about $100 million.

* Honduras: Police found the body of Honduran TV reporter Herlyn Espinal who was apparently kidnapped and subsequently murdered.

* Argentina: “Terrorism only knows to kill, it does not know how to build. It destroys,” said Pope Francis in a message last week commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the AMIA center bombing.
 
Video Source – YouTube user Vocativ

Online Sources – Reuters; Buenos Aires Herald; CBSSports.com; ABC News

Daily Headlines: July 14, 2014

* Colombia: Colombian James Rodriguez became the third South American player since 1978 to win the Golden Boot Award as top scorer at the World Cup.

* Argentina: Visiting Russian president Vladimir Putin backed Argentina’s claim to the Falklands and also signed a nuclear energy cooperation pact with his counterpart, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
 
* Peru: Peruvian officials claimed that their country could double their copper production by 2016 and surpass China as the world’s second-largest producer of the metal.

* Brazil: The BRICS group of developing countries that includes Brazil will reportedly launch its own development bank that could curb the influence of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Video Source – Richard Swarbrick via YouTube
 
Online Sources – USA TODAY; euronews; The West Australian; mining.com