Daily Headlines: September 6, 2016

* Mexico: Several thousand people lined the streets outside of Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes yesterday to pay their last respects to famed singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel who died last week at the age of 66.

* Venezuela: Oilfield services company Schlumberger announced it would scale back operations in Venezuela including laying off workers and withdrawing from projects.

* Cuba: Dissidents believe the Cuban government has been censoring text messages by removing missives with phrases like “human rights” and the names of opposition activists.

* Colombia: Coca-Cola, Chiquita and Drummond are some of the major multinational firms that could face charges over financing Colombia’s former AUC paramilitary group.

YouTube Source – Associated Press  
 
Online Sources – Reuters, Seeking Alpha, Endgadget, Colombia Reports

Daily Headlines: July 15, 2014

* Cuba: Cuban authorities arrested at least ninety members of the Ladies in White protest movement over the weekend who were commemorating the deaths of thirty-seven migrants who died a sea in 1994.
 
* U.S.: Germany’s World Cup final win over Argentina was the most watched soccer match in U.S. television history with an estimated 26.5 million people viewing ABC and Univision.

* Mexico: President Enrique Peña Nieto signed into law a major telecommunications reform that he claimed, “will promote greater competition, more and better conditions, better coverage and service quality, as well as lower prices and costs.”

* Argentina: Argentine companies and provinces are reportedly hopeful that an agreement can be reached between debtors and the government before the end of the month.

Video Source – Reuters via YouTube (Cuba’s Ladies in White protesters participating in a 2010 march).

Online Sources – UPI; Fox News Latino; The Latin Americanist; Businessweek; Reuters

Daily Headlines: July 9, 2014

* Mexico: Mexican legislators passed a major telecommunications reform package that could diminish the control of America Movil and Televisa over the phone and TV industries, respectively.

* Brazil: A record 35.6 million tweets on Twitter were sent during the humiliating elimination of Brazil from the World Cup by Germany on Tuesday.

* Argentina: Former Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo claimed that Argentina’s current debt repayment crisis could be worse than the country’s economic collapse that he presided over in 2001.

* Puerto Rico: Will the U.S. Congress provide a lifeline to the financially troubled Puerto Rican island?

Video Source – CCTV America via YouTube
 
Online Sources – Bloomberg; LatinFinance; USA TODAY; Reuters; The Latin Americanist

Daily Headlines: March 12, 2013

* Mexico: Mexico’s three main political parties have reportedly backed a proposal from President Enrique Peña Nieto to enact major reforms to the telecom industry.

* Venezuela: The State Department ordered two Venezuelan diplomats to leave the U.S. in a retaliatory action done several days after a pair of U.S. officials was expelled from Venezuela.

* U.S.: A poll found that most Latinos support gun control measures including 84% of respondents who endorse requiring criminal background checks before gun purchases.

* Cuba: Timothy Roche, consul general at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, said that the U.S. immigration policy toward Cuba would not change despite recent travel reforms by the Castro administration.

Video Source – YouTube via Bloomberg (The excommunication reform proposed by the Mexican government would likely affect businesses run by the world’s wealthiest man, Carlos Slim).

Online Sources- Reuters, Los Angeles Times, Xinhua, Newser, The Latin Americanist

Daily Headlines: April 2, 2010

* Bolivia: The Andean country is closer to launching its first telecommunications satellite after working out a deal with China.

* Colombia: In a week when the FARC freed two troops the rebels also handed over the remains of a soldier who died while held in captivity.

* Puerto Rico: As part of a Clean Air Act settlement oil giant Shell will have to upgrade its Puerto Rican refinery.

* Argentina: National soccer team coach Diego Maradona was discharged from a Buenos Aires clinic after one of his dogs bit him in the lip.

Image – BBC Mundo
Online Sources- MSNBC, Reuters, The Latin Americanist, AP, Canadian Press

Weekend World Watch: Gesundheit

* U.S.: President Barack Obama has declared the swine flu a national emergency aimed at a possible surge in new cases.

* World: Several thousand demonstrations from hiking atop Antarctica’s tallest mountain to diving off the Great Barrier Reef were held in order to raise awareness on climate change.

* Palestine: Tensions have gone up between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas selected January 24th as Election Day.

* Africa: A U.N. report found that cell phone usage has boomed across Africa by a whopping 550% between 2003 and 2008.

Image- BBC News
Online Sources- CNN, Voice of America, Guardian UK, Reuters

Fast but not yet free

A Miami-based company announced plans to lay the first optical communications fiber between the U.S. and Cuba. Execs at TeleCuba Communications claimed that they received special permission from the Treasury Department to install the cable which would be operational by 2011.

The only hurdles against the TeleCuba plan is getting the final okay from the Cuban government as well as constructing it faster than a similar cable planned between Venezuela and the island.

The move represents the gradual thawing of the political freeze between Washington and Havana, yet it would hardly benefit most Cubans:

Only about 2.1% of Cubans have regular access to the global internet and 11.5% to the Cuban intranet, according to the Washington-based democracy and human rights organization Freedom House.

"Bloggers can go online at government-owned internet cafes, at universities and hotels," it says.

Additionally, Cuban bloggers tend to be unduly harassed by the island’s regime. In the latest incidence, blogger Yoani Sanchez has been forbidden from traveling to the U.S. to receive a journalism award from Columbia University (CU). "The Cuban government ought to value Ms. Sanchez's work as a sign that young Cubans are ready to take Cuba into a better future,” said the dean of CU's Graduate School of Journalism to Reuters.

There could be a vast improvement in U.S.-Cuba ties by the time the TeleCuba cable is finished. Hopefully by that time the island’s people including its bloggers can have sufficient freedom of expression to take advantage of such a technological improvement.

Image- Miami New Times
Online Sources- Miami Herald, AP, BBC News, Reuters, The Latin Americanist

Daily Headlines: July 27, 2009

* Spain: Congrats to Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador who won comfortably won the Tour de France over Luxembourg’s Andy Schleck and teammate Lance Armstrong.

* Mexico: Four men were arrested by Mexican police as suspects in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent last week.

* Colombia: Military officials said that at least 16 FARC guerillas were killed during weekend attacks on rebel camps.

* Cuba: The Florida-based relatives of a man executed in Cuba in 1960 are suing several U.S. telecom firms who have ties to Cuba’s state-run phone company.

Image- New York Times
Online Sources- BBC Sport, ABC News, Xinhua, UPI

Daily Headlines: October 30, 2008

* Venezuela: A jubilant Hugo Chavez looked on as Venezuela’s first telecom satellite was sent into space after being launched from China.

* Latin America: Major regional stock indexes posted modest gains during trading on Wednesday.

* Chile: The country’s health minister resigned after the government did not notify several people who had tested positive for HIV.

* Ecuador: Two Jesuit priests, including one from Ecuador, where found murdered in a Moscow apartment.

Image- Xinhua (“A Long March 3II rocket carrying a Venezuelan telecommunication satellite blasts off from the launch pad at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Oct. 30, 2008”.)
Sources- MarketWatch, BBC News, MSNBC, AP