Daily Headlines: August 12, 2016

* South America: The presidents of Colombia and Venezuela agreed to a gradual and partial reopening of their shared border one year after Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro ordered the shutdown of several crossings.

* United States: A new poll of Latino voters found two-thirds of respondents prefer Hillary Clinton as the next president while 82% view Republican rival Donald Trump unfavorably.

* Haiti: A nationwide doctor’s strike that has entered its fourth month has exacerbated a public health crisis that has included a cholera epidemic and the spread of the Zika virus.

* Brazil: Brazilian energy giant Petrobras recorded its first quarterly profit in nearly a year though it was nearly one-third less than earnings in the second trimester of 2015.

YouTube Source – BBC News (From July 2016: “Colombian officials say 35,000 Venezuelans have crossed the border into their country over 12 hours to shop for basic supplies. Venezuela is suffering a severe economic crisis which has caused mass food shortages.”)
 
Online Sources – Bloomberg, Reuters, Fox News Latino, Humanosphere

Daily Headlines: May 17, 2016

* Peru: Presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori has come under fire roughly three weeks prior to a runoff over allegations that a close ally of hers is under investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

* Brazil: Beleaguered Brazilian state-run oil giant Petrobras, which last week reported a first quarter loss of $358 million, has dropped from having been a “major player” in the floating production systems market.

* Haiti: The African Union next month will admit Haiti as the bloc’s first non-African member in a move expected to boost the economy of the Caribbean nation.

* Mexico: A second Mexican judge approved the extradition request from U.S. prosecutors to possibly extradite imprisoned drug cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

YouTube Source – CCTV America (Video uploaded last April).
 
Online Sources – teleSUR English, MercoPress, The Latin Americanist, GlobalPost, The Guardian

Petrobras Hit with $358 Million Quarterly Loss

As he begins his first day as Brazilian acting president, Michel Temer, will have to face numerous political and economic challenges in the 180 days when he replaces suspended leader President Dilma Rousseff. Recession, growing unemployment, rising inflation are some of the obstacles in front of him though one more can be added today.

The state-run oil giant posted a $358 million net loss in the first three months of 2016, which comes one year after it earned some $1.5 billion in quarterly profits. Analysts surveyed by Reuters anticipated over $1 billion in earnings during the first trimester this year but ultimately the company sunk to a third consecutive quarter in the red. 

Petrobras also reported in its securities filing that net revenue dropped by 5.4% to nearly $20.2 billion, while the EBITDA margin that helps measure operating profit, dipped 2% to around $6 billion.

Much like other oil firms around the world, Petrobras has been hurt by the low prices of crude in recent months. But the company has also been hit by decreased oil and natural gas production purportedly stemming from increased maintenance at promising offshore sites. The refinery division that had helped Petrobras gain profits over a year ago has stagnated amid declining demand.

On the political side of the equation, Petrobras is the key business entity in the middle of the “Lava Jato” corruption scandal where an estimated $5.3 billion in bribes and kickbacks exchanged hands. Though the impeachment charges against Rousseff are not linked to “Lava Jato”, many figures of Brazil’s political elite have been implicated including ally-turned-adversary Temer:

Daily Headlines: November 4, 2015

* Mexico: According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, about 150 journalists were murdered in Latin America since 2010 while roughly one in three cases occurring in Mexico.

* Brazil: Brent crude futures jumped by 3.6% to $50.70 on Tuesday partly due to worries over decreased oil production from Brazilian state-run film Petrobras.

* Argentina: Credit agency Moody’s improved Argentina’s credit rating in an apparent sign that the national economy will improve regardless of who wins the presidential runoff later this month.

* Ecuador: Ecuador’s government received another legal victory over the oil industry after arbitrators reduced from $1.77 billion to $1 billion a compensation owed to Occidental Petroleum.

YouTube Source – AJ+ (“Mexican photojournalist Rubén Espinosa was found dead in his Mexico City apartment (last July), along with 4 women”).

Online Sources – Benzinga, Reuters, teleSUR English, NBC News

Daily Headlines: August 26, 2015

* Guatemala: The Guatemalan Supreme Court gave the green light for impeachment proceedings against President Otto Perez Molina, while another tribunal ordered former dictator Efrain Rios Montt to face a retrial on genocide charges.

* Argentina: Police clashed with protesters in the Argentine province of Tucuman over allegations of ballot burning following last Sunday’s gubernatorial election.

* El Salvador: El Salvador’s Attorney General claimed to have uncovered a plot by street gangs to detonate explosives against his office and other government agencies.

* Puerto Rico: The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, which is in more than $8 billion in debt, cut its ties to Brazilian state-run oil firm Petrobras as part of a move to save costs.

YouTube Source – Al Jazeera English (Efrain Rios Montt was found guilty of ordering the massacre of over 1700 indigenous Guatemalans in 1982 but the conviction was overturned in 2013).
 
Online Sources – CNN, Business Insider, Voice of America, ABC News, Yahoo News

Daily Headlines: August 21, 2015 (Updated)

* El Salvador: A U.S. federal court delayed Spain’s extradition request for Col. Inocente Orlando Montano, a retired army officer allegedly involved in the 1989 massacre of five Jesuit priests in El Salvador.

* Guatemala: Former Vice President Roxana Baldetti was arrested today on charges relating to one of the corruption scandals affecting President Otto Pérez Molina’s administration.

Update: Guatemalan prosecutors and investigators on a U.N.-backed panel recommended impeachment proceedings to begin against Pérez Molina over his alleged role in the "La Linea" customs fraud scandal.

* Brazil: Brazilian prosecutors filed charges against ex-President Fernando Collor de Mello and the current Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies related to the Petrobras bribery affair.

* Puerto Rico: The head of Puerto Rico’s Chamber of Commerce claimed that a coalition of twenty private sector firms urged the U.S. Congress to allow the commonwealth to declare bankruptcy.

YouTube Source – AP Archive (“Salvadorans are commemorating the sixth anniversary (in 1995) of a massacre of Jesuit priests by members of the military”.)
 
Online Sources including Update – Inside Costa Rica, BBC News, The Huffington Post, The Latin Americanist, NBC News, INternational Business Times

Daily Headlines: August 19, 2015 (Updated)

* El Salvador: At least 28 people died during a violent 24-hour span in El Salvador according to data from the Attorney General’s office.

* Colombia: Representatives of Colombia’s FARC rebels once again expressed their willingness to meet with Pope Francis during his trip to Cuba in September.

Update: Vatican spokesman Ciro Benedettini on Wednesday said that the pope doesn't have any plans to meet with FARC envoys next month.

* Latin America: The capitals of Argentina and Chile – Buenos Aires and Santiago – were named by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the best Latin American cities to live in.

* Brazil: Former Petrobras executive Nestor Cervero was sentenced to twelve years in prison in relation to one of the corruption scandals that has hurt President Dilma Rousseff’s administration.

YouTube Source – Al Jazeera English

Online Sources including Update – Catholic News Service, CNN, Latin American Herald Tribune, The Guardian, Colombia Reports

Daily Headlines: August 3, 2015 (Updated)

* Brazil: Jose Dirceu, the former chief of staff to then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has become the latest political figure arrested over the Petrobras bribery and corruption scandal.

* Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico will most likely fall into default on its $72 billion pubic debt by the end of today if officials cannot make a $58 million payment to creditors.

Update: It's official - Puerto Rico has fallen into default for the first time in the commonwealth's history.

* Cuba: Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton publicly proposed eliminating the decades-long U.S. trade embargo against Cuba though it remains to be seen if Congress will be amenable to her suggestion.

* Colombia: Representatives of Colombia’s FARC rebels proposed meeting with Pope Francis during the pontiff’s visit to Cuba next month.

YouTube Source – CCTV America (Video uploaded in April 2015).

Online Sources including Update – Bloomberg, Financial Times, NDTV, Reuters, Voice of America

Daily Headlines: July 21, 2015

* El Salvador: Salvadoran deputy police chief Howard Cotto ruled out negotiating with street gangs despite a call for dialogue in order to reduce high rates of violence.

* Brazil: Three executives of Brazil's Camargo Correa construction became the first figures to receive prison sentences in relation to a major bribery and corruption scandal that has rocked the South American country.

* Puerto Rico: Could statehood serve as a viable solution to alleviate Puerto Rico’s $73 billion debt?

* Uruguay: Alcides Ghigga, the Uruguayan game-winning goal scorer in the World Cup upset over Brazil known as the Maracanazo, died on the 65th anniversary of that game.

YouTube Source – wochit Latin America (“The month of June saw 677 murders in El Salvador. That's more than in any other single month since the end of the country's civil war.”)
 
Online Sources – Rappler, Deutsche Welle, The New York Times, Fox News Latino

Daily Headlines: June 23, 2015

* Panama: The expansion of the Panama Canal is about 90% complete after engineers this week began filled water on the Pacific locks of the project.

* Latin America: The number of billionaires in Latin America increased by 38% last year, which was more than any other region in the world.

* Brazil: A pair of Singaporean shipbuilders could be involved in a widening corruption scandal involving Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras.

* Venezuela: Facing mounting pressure from international observers and opposition activists, Venezuelan electoral officials set December 6th as the date for the country’s congressional vote.

YouTube Source – Financial Times (Video uploaded in March 2015).

Online Sources – American Journal of Transportation, Bloomberg, Voice of America, teleSUR English

Daily Headlines: June 19, 2015

* Brazil: Police arrested twelve individuals including the head Latin America's largest engineering and construction company as part of a corruption probe at state-run oil firm Petrobras.

* Bolivia: The Bolivian government announced plans for oil exploration at eight national parks and the finding of the first domestic oilfield since 1992.

* Mexico: Mexico's Southern Border Program has been credited as the main cause behind the deportation of nearly 93,000 migrants between October 2014 and April 2015.

* Colombia: A new U.N. study found that Colombia has the world’s second highest number of refugees and individuals displaced by armed conflict.

YouTube Source – CCTV America

Online Sources – Reuters, Fox News Latino, U.S. News and World Report, The Miami Herald

Daily Headlines: April 27, 2015

* Brazil: Petrobras reported a $16.8 billion write-down and an approximately $8 billion loss in 2014 that wiped out profit made by the state-run oil company in its previous four years.

* Argentina: Visiting Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner signed numerous agreements with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin as part of an “all encompassing strategic partnership” between both countries.

* Bolivia: Bolivia has reportedly become the country with the greatest number of dinosaur footprints with more than 10,000 of them found in the landlocked nation.

* Venezuela: Antonio Ledezma, the former Caracas mayor detained on charges of allegedly plotting a coup against President Nicolás Maduro, successfully underwent a hernia surgery yesterday.

YouTube Source – France 24 English

Online Sources – Fortune, Fox News Latino, MercoPress, Rappler

Brazilian President Faces Abysmal Approval Amid Growing Discontent

According to a new poll a miniscule 13% of Brazilians approval the work of President Dilma Rousseff as she tries to weather a maelstrom of problems facing her administration.

The Datafolha survey showed that 62% of the 2842 respondents disapproved of Rousseff while nearly one in four considered it as regular. As a result, her approval rating dropped ten points compared to February while her levels of disapproval leaped from 44% last month to 62%.

Interviewees also gave the second-term leader an average grade of 3.7 out of 10, which represents her worst grade since the early months of her presidency in 2011.

Her minuscule approval rating is the lowest a Brazilian president has seen since the brief rule of Fernando Collor de Mello in 1992. Coincidentally, both leaders faced near single digit approval ratings under an increased popular clamor for impeachment amid political corruption and economic turmoil. The conservative Collor de Mello resigned prior to his impeachment trial it seems highly unlikely that the ex-Chief of Staff under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will do the same. That didn’t stop over one million people from taking the streets across Brazil on March 15th in anti-government rallies.

Rousseff has gone into damage control in the days since the protests; first, she promised on Monday to engage in dialogue with her critics and soon presenting a “wide-ranging political reform.” The latter occurred on Wednesday evening when she announced a series of measures that she deemed as “a decisive step to expand the government's capacity and power to prevent and combat corruption and impunity.”

Daily Headlines: March 13, 2015

* Haiti: Haiti's electoral council announced the dates for legislative and municipal elections that have been delayed since 2011 due to political bickering between President Michel Martelly and the opposition.

* Brazil: The probe into a major bribery scheme at state-run oil firm Petrobras has expanded to include investigations of three former governors.

* Latin America: According to a World Bank report published this week 130 million residents in Latin America and the Caribbean live in “chronic poverty” though there are variations between countries.

* Venezuela: The European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the Venezuelan government to free opposition figures and student protesters “arbitrarily detained” in anti-government marches last year.

Video Source – YouTube use Reuters (From New Year’s Day 2015: “Thousands of Haitians protest in Port-au-Prince, marking their independence day and calling for their leader to resign.”)

Online Sources – Yahoo News; Fox News Latino; Reuters; ABC News

Daily Headlines: March 11, 2015

* Venezuela: An irate President Nicolás Maduro said that he will lead a Venezuelan defensive military exercise this weekend in light of the diplomatic crisis between his country and the U.S.

* Brazil: The office of the comptroller general opened a case against ten construction firms connected to the scandal-ridden oil giant Petrobras.

* Guatemala: Two members of the media and local journalist rights activists were murdered in southern Guatemala.

* Colombia: President Juan Manuel Santos ordered the one-month suspension of military bombings on FARC camps in recognition of the progress made in peace talks with the government.

Video Source – YouTube user Reuters (“Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares support in a letter to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro following U.S. measures against Venezuela.”)
 
Online Sources – teleSUR English; NBC News; Reuters; BBC News; The Latin Americanist

Daily Headlines: December 30, 2014

* Brazil: The Aurelius Capital hedge fund that was reportedly ‘a leading member of a group of investors that refused to accept a debt restructuring with Argentina” is now campaigning for Petrobras to fall under default.

* Argentina: If you believe that Argentina’s president became the godmother of a Jewish baby to stop him from becoming a werewolf then there’s a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in buying.

* Venezuela: According to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, the South American country ranks only behind Honduras for the highest number of homicides in 2014.

* Chile: President Michelle Bachelet submitted to Congress a labor reform package aimed at promoting unionization and expanding the use of collective bargaining in contract negotiations.

Video Source – YouTube user FRANCE 24 English

Online Sources – New York Daily News; The Guardian; NBC News; Zee News; Reuters

Daily Headlines: December 17, 2014

* Brazil: The presidents of Guatemala and Costa Rica could be implicated in a multibillion-dollar bribery scheme allegedly carried out at Brazilian state-run energy giant Petrobras.

* Haiti: Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe may have resigned but that didn’t stop thousands of Haitians from participating in anti-government protests on Tuesday.

* Mexico: At least eleven people died in clashes between rival “self-defense” groups in Michoacán state.

* Panama: The World Bank’s International Finance Corp will provide $300 million in financing for construction of a Panama wind farm that will be the largest in Central America.

Video Source – YouTube user AFP
 
Online Sources – Reuters; Al Jazeera; Tico Times; euronews

Daily Headlines: November 17, 2014

Note: Before we list some of the main stories from the Americas, we would like to apologize for not publishing this post earlier in the day. Unfortunately we were affected by technical difficulties.  Thank you for your kind attention.

* Colombia: The Colombian government suspended peace talks with the FARC after President Juan Manuel Santos blamed the rebels for kidnapping an army general.

* Mexico: The disappearance and possible massacre of forty-three university students is reportedly hurting tourism in the state of Guerrero.

* Brazil: The head of Petrobras claimed that the company would full investigate with the latest corruption scandal to rock the Brazilian state-run oil giant.

* Haiti: A one report found that Haiti is the country with the world's third-highest proportion of slaves compared to their population.

Video Source – euronews via YouTube
 
Online Sources – BBC News; The Latin Americanist; Christian Science Monitor; NPR; Reuters

Brazil: Ex-Petrobras Exec “Remains Silent” at Corruption Hearing

Mum was the word for a former leading executive of Brazilian state-owned energy firm Petrobras at a legislative hearing related to the latest major scandal to rock the South American country.

“I think it should be an open session but because it isn’t I have nothing to declare,” said Paulo Roberto Costa during testimony he provided to congressional investigators on Wednesday afternoon.

The ex-head of Petrobras' refining and supply unit also reportedly uttered the phrase “I reserve the right to remain silent” (or similar wording) dozens of times from questions by parliamentarians related to his allegations against numerous senior politicians who received bribes in exchange for votes favoring Petrobras.  Costa, who has been imprisoned since March and accused of money laundering, was allowed by the Supreme Court to provide evasive responses to the questions during the three hours of testimony.

In an interview given earlier this month to Brazilian newsmagazine Veja, Costa accused Energy Minister Edison Lobão, both heads of Congress, and some thirty legislators mostly from the ruling Workers Party (PT) for supposedly participating in the kickback scheme.  

Costa’s silence on Thursday did not sit well several legislators during the closed-door session, especially those opposed to President Dilma Rousseff and her attempt to win reelection next month.

"We have not had any progress here, absolutely nothing," said Vanessa Grazziotin while Mendonça Filho decried that “the state is being robbed.”  Yet PT Sen. Humberto Costa accused his opposition colleagues of engaging in “radical speeches for political use".

Daily Headlines: March 24, 2014

* El Salvador: Will Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered while celebrating Mass on this day 34 years ago, be granted sainthood by the Vatican within the next three years?

* Spain: Argentine soccer superstar Lionel Messi’s hat trick helped push Barcelona to a 4-3 victory against their traditional Spanish rivals Real Madrid.

* Brazil: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has reportedly come under fire over alleged irregularities in the costly purchase of a California oil refinery by Petrobras in 2006.

* Uruguay: President Jose Mujica of Uruguay said that his country would take in several Guantanamo Bay detainees in exchange for the U.S. freeing three Cubans convicted of spying in 2001.
 
Video Source – YouTube user interestmedia

Online Sources- The Pilot; SI.com; Forbes.com; Xinhua