Daily Headlines: December 30, 2015

* Cuba: President Raul Castro said that plummeting earnings from key exports like sugar and nickel led the Cuban government to slash its 2016 economic growth estimate from 4% to 2%.

* Central America: The foreign ministries of Guatemala and El Salvador expressed serious reservations over the rumored plan in January to raid and deport thousands of recently arrived Central American migrants from the U.S.

* Paraguay: The head of the Paraguayan disaster response agency said that water levels of the heavily flooded the Paraguay River should lower in the next two months but could rise again this March.
 
* Venezuela: The opposition could lose its supermajority in the next federal legislature after the ruling PSUV filed legal motions to dispute the election of eight congressmen.

YouTube Source – Vox

Online Sources – Reuters, Independent Online, Vox, BBC News

Daily Headlines: December 16, 2015

* Mexico: At least seventeen corpses were found abandoned in a ravine days after Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto proposed two new legal initiatives in the battle against disappearances and kidnappings.

* South America: The former head of South America’s soccer federation, Juan Angel Napout, pled not guilty to charges related to the “FIFA-gate” corruption scandal while Paraguayan officials allowed the extradition one of Napout's predecessors, Nicolas Leoz, to the U.S. for questioning.

* Venezuela: U.S. investigators will reportedly charge Venezuela’s National Guard chief Néstor Reverol with cocaine trafficking as part of a widening probe aimed at Venezuelan military officials.

* Latin America: According to the Inter-American Development Bank exports from Latin American and Caribbean will drop by 14% this year and the outlook for 2016 may not be much better.

YouTube Source – teleSUR English (“Data just released by Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office indicates that 185 mass graves containing over 500 corpses have been found in the country in the last five years.”)

Online Sources – NDTV, InSight Crime, New York Daily News, Fox News Latino, MercoPress