Daily Headlines: April 15, 2016

* Panama: Panamanian authorities reportedly agreed to follow international tax reporting standards outlined by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development chief Angel Gurria even though they had blasted him for comments made following the Panama Papers leak.

* Brazil: The lower chamber of the Brazilian Congress began three days of debating today over whether President Dilma Rousseff should be impeached over money laundering allegations.

* U.S.: The crisis hitting newspapers in the U.S. might lead to the end of El Diario/La Prensa, the longest-running Spanish-language daily and in circulation for 102 years.

* Puerto Rico: The Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to the surviving Puerto Rican soldiers of a U.S. Army regiment known as the “Borinqueneers” who fought both World Wars and the Korean War.

YouTube Source – BBC News (Video uploaded on April 3, 2016).

Online Sources – Deutsche Welle, the Latin Americanist, USA TODAY, Fox News Latino, CNN

Daily Headlines: October 8, 2014

* Brazil: Aécio Neves' bid to win in the upcoming presidential runoff against current leader Dilma Rousseff received a boost from several allies of defeated candidate Marina Silva.

* El Salvador: A Spanish court ruled that Spain has the jurisdiction to investigate the 1989 Jesuit Massacre of eight people in El Salvador.

* Latin America: A new World Bank report concluded that economic growth for Latin America and the Caribbean this year will be less than initially estimated.  

* Mexico: Ten Mexican states were ranked as the worst places to live in among the thirty-four member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Video Source – euronews via YouTube

Online Sources – JURIST; LAHT; World Bank; The Latin Americanist; BBC News

Daily Headlines: December 9, 2010

* Bolivia: Japan’s government agreed to help in the development of Bolivia’s potentially lucrative lithium industry.

* Latin America: Latin America’s education performance is below average compared to most member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development according to a study by that body.

* Peru: A U.S. appeals court ruled that a case by indigenous plaintiffs from Peru against Occidental Petroleum should be heard in Los Angeles instead of Peru.

* Colombia: A U.S. diplomatic document revealed by Wikileaks showed that despite his tough-guy rhetoric former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe tried to secretly negotiate with the FARC guerillas.

Image – Mercopress (“The spectacular Uyuni salt lake that holds world’s largest lithium deposits.”)
Online Sources- Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, ABC News, KansasCity.com, LAHT

Daily Headlines: January 12, 2010

* Guatemala: DNA samples and text messaging are the latest tools being used to identify the remains of thousands of Guatemalans “disappeared” during last century’s bloody civil war.

* Mexico: Saturday was a very gruesome day of violence in Mexico, while the country’s National Human Rights Commission blasted authorities for not doing more to protect journalists.

* Chile: On Monday, Chile became the second Latin America country to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

* Brazil: Conservative sectors such as the military and Catholic Church are peeved at a government-backed plan to establish a truth commission.

Image – daylife.com (“A man looks at pictures of people disappeared during Guatemala’s internal conflict (1960-96) in the National Congress in Guatemala City, on July 09, 2008.”)
Online Sources- BBC News, MSNBC, Xinhua, IPS, New York Times

Daily Headlines: April 13, 2009

* Peru: The White House’s diplomatic offensive ahead of this week’s Summit of the Americas continued on Friday when President Barack Obama spoke with Peruvian counterpart Alan Garcia.

* Mexico: Mexican immigration agents caught 88 Central American migrants trying to illegally cross the border.

* Chile: In order to counteract the worst economy in nearly a decade Chile’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate for the fourth time this year.

* Latin America: Days after being placed on a tax haven blacklist by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Uruguay, Costa Rica and two other countries were removed from it.

Image- esmas.com
Online Sources- The Latin Americanist, Voice of America, LAHT, Bloomberg, BBC News

OECD: Costa Rica on tax haven blacklist (Updated)

Update:

The OECD removed Uruguay from its blacklist one day after it was placed there. Uruguay was subsequently bumped down to the "grey list" where it joined fellow South American country Chile. (Link via Economic Times.)

Original Post:

In the aftermath of the $1 trillion deal reached by G20 leaders yesterday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) placed Costa Rica and Uruguay on its tax haven blacklist.

Along with Malaysia and the Philippines, these four countries have been targeted by the OECD for not doing enough to aoid being tax havens. According to an OECD statement, Costa Rica and Uruguay are two “jurisdictions that have not committed to implement the internationally agreed tax standard(s).”

Uruguay’s president denied being blacklisted by the OECD:

"In Uruguay, we are not a tax haven," President Tabare Vazquez said.

"Uruguay may not be a monastery, but it is not a casino," he added.

Chile, meanwhile, was placed in a separate "grey list" of countries that have partially improved their tax standards.

These classifications along with a third "white list" were completed after the G20 agreed to crackdown on international tax havens. "The time of banking secrecy has passed," French President Nicholas Sarkozy said after him and Germany’s Andrea Merkel campaigned hard against tax havens during the G20 summit.

Image- travelcostaricaonline.com (Costa Rican currency)
Online Sources- BBC News, AFP, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy Passport, the Latin Americanist, OECD

Report: Mexican income gap among OECD’s worst

Question: what do the U.S. and Mexico have in common besides a common border?

Answer: Vast income inequality and high poverty rates.

Only two of 30 nations, Mexico and Turkey, are ahead of the United States for income inequality and poverty rates, or the gap between rich and poor, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report was released by Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development of its 30 member-nations, most of which are developed countries.

In terms of Mexico, the OECD study found income gaps shrinking over the past five years. Yet 22% of children and nearly 30% of Mexicans over the age of 65 live in households with an income below the poverty line. Furthermore, the average income of the poorest 10% is approximately 25 times less than the top 10%.

OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria warned that governments in developed and underdeveloped countries must be more active against the problems of inequality. “Growing inequality is divisive. It polarizes societies, it divides regions within countries, and it carves up the world between rich and poor," he said.

Image- Diario La Verdad
Sources- Bloomberg, ft.com, AFP, AHN