OPEC Rejects Venezuelan Call for Oil Production Drop (Updated)

Venezuelan voters headed to the polls on Sunday in local elections that are expected to flip the National Assembly to opposition control for the first time since 1999. (Update: The opposition did indeed retake majority control of the legislature and could even reach a "supermajority" that would give them greater say in economic policy).

The ruling party's loss of the legislature would be the second major setback in less than a week for President Nicolás Maduro following disappointment at the latest OPEC talks.

Last Friday, members of the global oil cartel could not reach an agreement over how to boost plunging prices of crude. Venezuelan led a group of countries including Russia, Nigeria and Ecuador calling for a 5% cut in oil production despite the possibility of decreased revenue. Oil minister Eulogio del Pino advocated the move that he believed was preferable to allowing oil prices to continue tumbling.

“The overproduction we have from OPEC is going to produce a catastrophe in the price,” del Pino mentioned prior to a closed-door meeting of the group in the Austrian city of Vienna.

Ultimately, however, del Pino and his cohorts were allegedly rebuffed by nations who believe that allowing prices to fall will hurt non-OPEC entities such as U.S. shale oil firms.

Following OPEC's decision the price of Venezuelan oil slid down to $34.93 per barrel, which is the lowest price since 2009. The average price in 2014 for Venezuela's mix of heavy and medium crude was $88.42. One year later it has been reduced by almost 50% to $45.87.

Oil is the main export of Venezuela and accounts for 95% of the country's export earnings.  Its plunging value has exacerbated the country's economic difficulties including shortages of basic goods like food and medicine as well as deepening poverty rates. This has in turn led to greater pessimism with the government including 85% of Venezuelans dissatisfied with the Maduro regime based on a recent Pew Research Center study.

Daily Headlines: December 4, 2015

* Latin America: A court in El Salvador ordered former President Francisco Flores to stand trial on corruption charges days after an Argentine tribunal sentenced ex-leader Carlos Menem to four-and-a-half years in jail for embezzlement.

* Ecuador: Police in Quito clashed with protesters angry over the National Assembly’s decision to approve a series of constitutional amendments including eliminating presidential term limits starting in 2021.

* U.S.: The U.S. Department of Justice named sixteen Latin American soccer confederation executives including the current presidents of the regional CONCACAF and CONMEBOL entities as part of its widening investigation.

* Brazil: Stocks in Brazil tumbled this week reportedly due to investors worried that “the process to impeach President Dilma Rousseff may take months and involve several votes in Congress.”

YouTube Source – teleSUR English (“Former Salvadoran President Francisco Flores has been ordered detained and held for trial on charges of misappropriating US$15 million in Taiwanese aid donations.”)
 
Online Sources – ESPN, BBC News, Bloomberg, teleSUR English, Latin American Herald Tribune

Daily Headlines: November 19, 2015

* Mexico: A new study found that the first year of Mexico’s Southern Border Program has led to a spike in the capture of migrants but also increased violence and “widespread abuse.”

* Honduras: Honduran migration officials affirmed that the six Syrians detained yesterday for carrying stolen Greek passports do not belong to any terrorist or extremist groups.

* Puerto Rico: Legislators will be convened to an emergency session in the first week of December to discuss an $8.2 debt-restructuring proposal for Puerto Rico’s main electric utility.

* Ecuador: President Rafael Correa rejected running for reelection in 2017 but that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from attempting to remove presidential term limits.

YouTube Source – teleSUR English

Online Sources – Reuters, teleSUR English, Bloomberg, CBS News

Daily Headlines: August 28, 2015

* Guatemala: Tens of thousands of protesters rallied in Guatemala City on Thursday and businesses closed shop in order to call for the resignation of scandal-hit President Otto Perez Molina.

* Puerto Rico: Tropical Storm Erika hit Puerto Rico this morning as the commonwealth faces one of its worst droughts in more than a century.

* Ecuador: President Rafael Correa claimed that Ecuador’s economy, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar, has caused oil production to outpace earnings from sales of crude.

* Brazil: Brazil’s largest telecommunications firms are reportedly campaigning to place more regulations against popular messaging tool WhatsApp.

YouTube Source – EFE
 
Online Sources – Fox News Latino, Reuters, USA TODAY, NBC News, ZDNet

Daily Headlines: March 20, 2015

* Colombia: “Look at the irony of life, all my life I spent in the military fighting terrorism…and now in a place totally remote from Colombia it takes my wife and son,” said a retired Colombian army general whose relatives were killed in a museum attack in Tunisia.

* South America: At least ten people were killed in a plane crash in Uruguay while Argentine officials earlier this week identified the remains of a deadly helicopter collision on March 9th.

* Dominican Republic: A Catholic priest identified only as Wojciech G. offered to serve seven years in prison over charges of sexually abusing minors in Poland and the Dominican Republic.

* Ecuador: Thousands of Ecuadorans took to the streets on Thursday in order to march in opposition to a plan that would end term limits for the presidency including current leader Rafael Correa.

Video Source – YouTube via Zip News
 
Online Sources – ABC Online; Deutsche Welle; ABC News; SBS; NBC News

Daily Headlines: September 12, 2014

* Argentina: Argentine legislators approved a debt restructuring plan that could be at odds with a U.S. court ruling that led the country into default.

* Venezuela: President Nicolás Maduro announced a three-month extension to the closing of traffic across the Venezuelan border into Colombia during the late night hours.

* U.S.: A Floridian man was charged with allegedly helping to smuggle Yasiel Puig from Cuba in exchange of a percentage of the superstar ballplayer's Major League contract.

* Ecuador: “People are dying from bad food, not a lack of food,” said President Rafael Correa who proposed a new tax against fast food with the aim of lowering Ecuador's growing obesity rates.

Video Source - YouTube via AFP

Online Sources - Reuters; The Latin Americanist; The Globe and Mail; The Independent

Daily Headlines: June 27, 2014

* Venezuela: A group of university students have sewn their mouths shut as part of a hunger strike since June 20th to protest the detention of over 100 students involved in anti-government protests.

* Cuba: The wife of U.S. contractor Alan Gross claimed that his health is rapidly deteriorating and that he is losing faith of being released from a Cuban prison.

* Ecuador: Ecuador's Constitutional Court has forty-five days to decide how to go forward with a series of reforms that could allow for the indefinite reelection of President Rafael Correa.

* Puerto Rico: Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla proposed a plan to restructure about $22 billion in debt owed by public entities on the cash-strapped commonwealth.

Video Source – CCTV America via YouTube

Online Sources – El Universal; CNN; ABC News; The New York Times

Daily Headlines: October 11, 2013

* U.S.: Latin American finance ministers urged the U.S. government to fix its fiscal impasse and warned that a potential debt default would lead to “devastating consequences” throughout the region.

* Venezuela: President Nicolás Maduro said that the Venezuelan central bank could auction off more than $900 million every week as a measure in order to boost an economy with a 49.4% annual inflation rate.

* Ecuador: Human Rights Watch blasted Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa for “his abuse of power to suppress those he sees as his enemies (that) has reached new and alarming heights”. 

* Mexico: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s name has been used in ads as part of a campaign opposed to a proposed tax on soft drinks in Mexico.
 
Video Source – YouTube via the Associated Press

Online Sources- NBC News; Reuters; Fox News Latino; Human Rights Watch

Daily Headlines: October 4, 2013

* Mexico: Mexico City police clashed with several of the thousands of people who marched on the 45th anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre to protest against President Enrique Peña Nieto’s economic plans.

* Ecuador: The Ecuadorian legislature overwhelming approved a controversial proposal made in August by President Rafael Correa to allow oil drilling in the Yasuni National Park.

* Brazil: Ten members of a Brazilian police unit aimed at addressing crime before the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games have been accused of torturing and killing a construction worker.

* Colombia: Representatives of the FARC rebels claimed that peace talks with the Colombian government have achieved “modest progress.”

Video Source – YouTube via Univision Noticias

Online Sources- Deutsche Welle; CNN; The Latin Americanist; Bloomberg; The Guardian

Ecuadorian President Calls for Boycott Against Chevron

The President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, called for an international boycott against U.S. oil giant Chevron.

“We will not allow to an abusive, corrupt and polluting company to fool the world,” declared Correa regarding the company that has been accused of polluting Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest region.

“Thirty years later, Chevron said it cleaned up the contamination, but what it did was to damage the jungle even more by using the worst methods. That was not a solution, but a cover-up of the contamination with layers of earth,” said Correa on Tuesday during a visit to an oil well in the province of Sucumbios.

It was in Sucumbios where a court ruled last year that Chevron was liable for environmental damage caused by Texaco when it operated from 1964 to 1990 and prior to its purchase by Chevron. 
The court fined Chevron $18 billion, which the company has yet to pay for despite losing judicial appeals in the U.S.

The plaintiffs accused Texaco of causing higher rates of illnesses like cancer among locals by dumping drilling waste in unlined pits. Chevron rejected the accusations and blamed state-run Petroecuador for causing pollution at sites after Texaco left the country.

Ecuador: Protesters March Against Oil Drilling Plans

Tuesday marks the second day of an agrarian strike in Colombia while thousands of Mexican schools have yet to reopen due to demonstrations by teachers.  In Ecuador, meanwhile, protesters marched against government plans to allow oil drilling at a nature reserve.

Approximately two hundred people participated in demonstrations in Quito on Sunday and Monday to express their opposition to President Rafael Correa’s proposal regarding the Yasuni National Park.

Some seventy cyclists gathered at a public park in front of the Carondolet presidential palace yesterday as part of a peaceful protest.  Much like a protest on Sunday, the police tried to impede the advancing cyclists from entering the El Ejido park.  After reportedly meeting with one of the protest organizers, however, the cyclists were permitted to gather in the park and continue their peaceful rally.

Other protests were held since Correa’s announcement last Thursday when he said that he would set aside his Yasuni-ITT initiative to persuade wealthy countries to pay not to drill for oil in the reserve.  In the southwestern city of Machala, for example, marchers held banners and signs expressing their ire with Correa including “No to Oil, Yes to Life”.

 “We’re in favor of maintain unchanged the Yasuni reserve, which is one of the lungs of the world,” claimed local animals rights activist Daniela Crow.  “It would be an unrealistic to claim that we don’t want any foreign oil firms” but the virgin forest of the Yasuni should remain untouched, added Crow.

More protests are planned for later this week including one by El Oro Popular Front who also suggested that the government pursue tax evading firms and collect funds from them.

Several indigenous activists said that the future of the park, which was designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1989, should be decided by a nationwide referendum.  Hence, there is a campaign currently underway to collect at least 571,000 signatures that would permit allow voters to soon decide the fate of the Yasuni-ITT initiative.

Daily Headlines: August 14, 2013

* Latin America: At a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota blasted a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program monitoring Latin America that “runs the risk of casting a shadow of distrust over our work.”

* Ecuador: Human Rights Watch urged President Rafael Correa to revoke a decree that “grants far-reaching powers to the government to oversee and dissolve nongovernmental organizations.”

* Cuba: Numerous Cuban media outlets commemorated former leader, Fidel Castro’s 87th birthday yesterday though he continues to keep a low profile since stepping down in 2006.

* Chile: Researchers believe that the deaths of twenty condors can be blamed on “poisoning after they were exposed to insecticides used for agriculture.”

Video Source – YouTube via user telesurenglish (“The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (on Monday)…and defended the U.S. spying program as defense against attacks like that which happened on September 11th.”)

Online Sources- The Latin Americanist; Bloomberg; GlobalPost; Huffington Post; The Guardian

Daily Headlines: July 1, 2013 (Updated)

* Ecuador: President Rafael Correa of Ecuador said yesterday that the fate of U.S. intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden is up to Russia to decide even though Snowden has requested asylum in the South American country.

Update: In an interview with The Guardian on Monday, Correa claimed that Ecuador is not considering Snowden's asylum request unless he were to travel directly to that country.  Correa also admitted that "it was a mistake on our part" to grant the former intel contractor a temporary travel pass that he used to move from Hong Kong to Russia.  

* Chile: Ex-leader Michelle Bachelet easily won Chile’s presidential primary among center-left candidates and is the favorite to win the general election in November.

* Argentina: Prosecutors will open an investigation against former Interior Minister Carlos Vladimir Corach regarding the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

* Latin America: The summit of the Petrocaribe trade bloc ended last week with representatives of the 19 member states agreeing to create a special economic zone.

Video Source – YouTube via euronews (Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa mentioned on Saturday that he had a “cordial” telephone conversation with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden regarding the Edward Snowden affair).

Online Sources including Update - The Guardian; Reuters; Washington Post; The Guardian; Jerusalem Post

Ecuadorian Expats in Spain Backed Correa Reelection (UPDATED)

Several days ago Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa easily won reelection in the first round partly thanks to the number of expats who overwhelmingly voted for him.

Much like he did among the Ecuadorian electorate, Correa had little trouble beating his rivals in several Spanish cities.  According to figures from the Ecuadorian embassy in Spain, Correa won between 75 and 80% of the vote in Madrid while at least four out of every five voters in Valencia voted for him.

In Barcelona Correa received the backing of 9300 of the 13,200 expats who participated in Sunday’s election.  The second-most popular option was not another candidate but votes counted as null (966) followed by opposition candidate Guillermo Lasso and business magnate Álvaro Noboa (639).

Approximately half of eligible Ecuadorian voters in Spain went to the ballots even. Ambassador Aminta Buenaño praised the “great enthusiasm” among the electorate in Spain that led to a 50% voter turnout.  (Voting is obligatory in Ecuador though it’s voluntary outside of the South American country.)

Expats in Madrid waited on lines nearly two kilometers long to go vote while hundreds of others were turned away.  Buenaño claimed that officials were overwhelmed by large numbers of voters who decided to head to the polls at the last minute.

Since taking office in 2007, Correa has sought to improve relations with his countrymen living abroad.  In March 2012, for instance, Correa held one of his weekly televised town hall meetings with Ecuadorians in the Spanish city of Murcia.  In addition, Ecuador extended health benefits to expats who are uninsured; thus, aiding those living in Spain whose insurance was under danger due to deep spending cuts enacted by Mariano Rajoy’s government.

Daily Headlines: February 11, 2013

* U.S.: Juanes, Lila Downs and Quetzal were some of the winners in the Grammys' Latin categories that were awarded yesterday.

* South America: Parts of Peru, Chile and Bolivia have been hit hard by flooding and landslides caused by torrential rains.

* Mexico: According to a new federal government report over 1100 people were killed in violent incidents last month.

* Ecuador: Recent poll results indicated that President Rafael Correa appears poised to win reelection in next Sunday’s elections.

Video Source – YouTube via user Marlow Rosado (Marlow Rosado y La Riqueña upset Romeo Santos to win the 2013 Grammy for "Best Tropical Latin Album.")

Online Sources- Billboard.com, BBC News, LAHT, Reuters

Daily Headlines: February 6, 2013

* Haiti: An International Crisis Group report warned that “Haiti is in a race against time to convince its own people, donors and potential investors that progress and stability are achievable”.
 
* South America: Is a controversial under-20 soccer match between Bolivia and Argentina and played in 2010 under the scrutiny of European gambling investigators?

* Nicaragua: Money transfers to Nicaragua reached a record high of over $1 billion in 2012 according to the country’s Central Bank.

* Ecuador: President Rafael Correa claimed that an attack against supporters at a pro-government rally on Monday was not politically motivated.

Video Source – YouTube via euronews (Dozens of protests like the one seen here could sink the presidency of Michel Martelly and hamper Haitian progress according to the International Crisis Group).

Online Sources- Miami Herald, NBC Sports, Prensa Latina, Chicago Tribune

Daily Headlines: January 4, 2013

* Argentina: British Prime Minister David Cameron rejected Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez' latest push for Argentine sovereignty over the disputed Falkland Islands.

* Puerto Rico: In his inauguration speech on Wednesday new governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla vowed to fix Puerto Rico's economic woes and combat the island's high crime rates.

* Chile: The widow of folk singer Victor Jara called on the U.S. government to extradite a former Chilean military official charged with murdering her husband in 1973.

* Haiti: The Haitian government is none too pleased with the recent strengthening of travel warnings by the U.S. and Canada to the Caribbean country.

Daily Headlines: December 25, 2012

* Uruguay: President Jose Mujica requested last week that legislators delay voting on a proposal that would legalize and regulate marijuana use.

* Colombia: Peace talks held in Cuba between the FARC rebels and the Colombian government have been put on hold until January 14th.

* Argentina: Former minister Jaime Smart became the first civilian to be sentenced for crimes against humanity committed during the repressive Dirty War era.

* Ecuador: President Rafael Correa proposed raising the minimum wage by 9% so that workers can receive a “dignified salary”.

Video Source – YouTube via the Washington Office on Latin America 

Online Sources- BBC News, Fox News Latino, Reuters, Christian Science Monitor

Ecuador: Police Free Presidential Password Infiltrator

Police in Ecuador freed a blogger who was able to infiltrate into “secure data” belonging to President Rafael Correa.

“I’m free.  Many thanks to everyone,” Paul Moreno mentioned via his Twitter account on Monday after he was released from approximately three days of police custody.  He subsequently tweeted a photo of him accompanied by his parents outside of the jail where he was held.

Moreno “did not commit any 'hacking' activity or intrusion into global information” of the DatoSeguro national dignity database said a statement from Ecuador’s Public Information Registry.

The forty-two-year-old professor gained access to Correa’s personal information by creating a fake account under the president’s name in the DatoSeguro database.  He reportedly used online searches in order to obtain two key pieces of information: Correa’s date of birth and a national identification number.  Moreno got passed the third safeguard, a set of two numbers from an identity card, in order to read Correa’s private data such as bank account numbers and criminal infractions.

According to Wired.com’s Gadget Lab blog, Delgado posted on his website screenshots from the DatoSeguro site proving his claims and wrote how shockingly easy it was to gain access to Correa’s confidential information:

Daily Headlines: November 12, 2012

* Guatemala: A 6.5-magnitude earthquake shook off the Guatemalan coast days after a stronger tremor killed at least fifty-two people and was felt as far away as Mexico City.
 
* Ecuador: President Rafael Correa officially launched his bid for reelection during a rally with thousands of his supporters in Quito.

* Cuba: Five hundred rabbis from around the world wrote a letter to Cuban president Raul Castro urging the release of imprisoned U.S. contractor Alan Gross on “humanitarian grounds.”

* Paraguay: Suspected Bolivian drug capo Marco Antonio Rocca Ali was nabbed by Paraguayan authorities along with over 3700 pounds of cocaine.

Video Source – YouTube via Al Jazeera English

Online Sources- USA TODAY, Reuters, AFP, ABC News