Daily Headlines: December 10, 2015

* Mexico: Mexican health officials approved the world’s first vaccine against the dengue fever, which would be applied to individuals “between ages 9 and 45 who live in areas where dengue is endemic.”

* South America: Colombia’s Independiente Santa Fe captured the Copa Sudamericana crown and, thus, broke the recent hegemony of Argentine teams in South American soccer club tournaments.

* Cuba: Some 4500 Cuban migrants continue to be stuck in limbo in Costa Rica while Central American countries continue to figure out what to do with them.

* Brazil: Stronger public pressure has reportedly led to greater scrutiny of cases of alleged abuse and extrajudicial killings by military police in Brazil.

YouTube Source – Journeyman Pictures

Online Sources – NPR, ESPN FC, Fox News Latino, GlobalPost, The Latin Americanist

Daily Headlines: December 9, 2015

* Guatemala: The Guatemalan Constitutional Court tossed out an appeal by the attorneys representing Efrain Rios Montt and stated that the ex-dictator’s genocide trial will go on as scheduled for next month.

* U.S.: A new report found that Latino neighborhoods need greater access to healthier food options sold in markets while Latino youth are more likely to be bombarded by ads promoting unhealthy snacks and drinks.

* Cuba: As part of the diplomatic rapprochement between Cuba and the U.S., envoys from both countries discussed competing claims of billions of dollars in owed assets.

* Mexico: Investigators with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said that they found another inconsistency in the Mexican government probe over 43 students from Ayotzinapa missing since September 2014.

YouTube Source – NTDTV (Guatemalan high court judges are expected to resume the genocide and crimes against humanity trial of former strongman Efrain Rios Montt more than two years after the original verdict was overturned).
 
Online Sources – ABC News, The Guardian, USA TODAY, NBC News

Daily Headlines: December 8, 2015

* Mexico: Coca-Cola has come under fire after airing a Christmas-themed ad depicting a “group of young, white Mexicans traveling to an indigenous town…to ‘help‘ wide-eyed locals by giving them bottles of Coke and a giant Christmas tree.”

* Venezuela: Nearly three out of four Venezuelans eligible to vote participated in Sunday’s legislative elections won by the opposition coalition with a potential “supermajority.”

* Colombia: Representatives of the FARC traveled to the Colombian town of Bojaya to ask for forgiveness for the massacre of some eighty residents in 2002.

* Cuba: The Cuban government is reportedly close to reaching a deal with the Paris Club of creditors to restructure a $16 billion debt.

YouTube Source – Diario de Mexico TV (Parody video poking fun at a Mexican Coca-Cola commercial criticized as racially insensitive and offensive against indigenous people).
 
Online Sources – Fusion, Xinhua, Colombia Reports, Voice of America

Daily Headlines: December 7, 2015

* Colombia: The Colombian government claimed to have found the world’s largest sunken treasure, a 300-year-old vessel carrying an estimated $17 billion, though the question of who owns the spoils could become a costly legal battle.

* Mexico: Seven countries including the U.S., Canada and France issued travel warnings to visitors journeying to Mexico after authorities believed that two missing Australian surfers were killed in Sonora.

* Nicaragua: “We do not want to be accomplices to the death, damages and destruction that a 3C or 4C world will represent,” declared Nicaragua’s representative to the COP21 summit after the Central American state became the first to publicly reject a global blueprint to combat climate change.

* Chile: President Michelle Bachelet reportedly signed a decree eliminating marijuana from a list of hard drugs in anticipation of an expected Congressional debate to reform Chile’s narcotics laws.

YouTube Source – euronews (“Colombia claims to have discovered what's been described as the 'holy grail' of shipwrecks of the coast of Cartagena”.)
 
Online Sources – teleSUR English, Financial Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor

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: December 3, 2015

* Brazil: Lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha gave the go-ahead for impeachment proceedings to begin against President Dilma Rousseff for allegedly breaking fiscal laws.

* Central America: Some 4000 Cuban migrants are still in limbo in Central America amid heated diplomatic tensions between neighbors Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

* El Salvador: Human rights group Amnesty International blasted El Salvador’s total ban on abortion for “treat(ing) women as little more than human vessels.”

* Mexico: Archaeologists discovered a passageway at Mexico City's Templo Mayor ruin complex that could lead to the cremated remains of ancient Aztec rulers.

YouTube Source – AFP (“Pro-impeachment demonstrators (last October) set up a giant balloon caricature representing Dilma Rousseff outside the Congress, where a new petition to remove her was submitted.”)

Online Sources – Bloomberg, teleSUR English, JURIST, Business Insider

Daily Headlines: December 2, 2015

* Colombia: Colombia’s traditional vallenato music was selected by UNESCO as a “Cultural Patrimony for Mankind” but the agency warned that the genre is in danger of disappearing.

* Cuba: Cuban authorities have reinstated restrictions against medical professionals seeking to work in foreign countries in order to halt a “brain drain” of doctors leaving the island.

* Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico paid $354 million on its debt to prevent defaulting but officials warned that they might not be able to pay $1 billion due on New Year’s Day.

* Argentina: A former Argentine political prisoner was reunited with his son that was the 119th offspring identified by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo as having been illegally adopted during military rule from 1973 to 1990.

YouTube Source – Discos Fuentes Edimusica

Online Sources – USA TODAY, BBC News, Fusion, teleSUR English 

Progress Made in Americas Against Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV

Today marked the seventeenth annual observance of World AIDS Day, which raises awareness of the pandemic caused by the disease as well as remember those lost over the last few decades.
New data presented on Monday from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and World Health Organization (WHO) has shown that some progress is being made in Latin America and Caribbean to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS.

According to a joint PAHO/WHO study, seventeen counties and territories in the Americas have mostly eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. Among the nations credited in the report are Chile, Puerto Rico and Cuba, the last of which was certified by the WHO as the world's first country to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis. (Sixteen other countries including Costa Rica and Uruguay are seeking this validation). New HIV infections in children have dropped by approximately 50% in Latin America and Caribbean as a result of efforts in the entities cited in the study.

The key to reducing transmission of HIV from mother to offspring has been more widespread prenatal check-ups of expectant moms. In 2010, 94% of women in the region received pre-natal care and only 54% were examined for HIV. Four years later, the former increased by 2% but the latter grew by a notable 21% so that three in four pregnant women are tested for HIV.

Latin American and Caribbean governments, civil society and health groups agreed last year on an ambitious “90-90-90” plan to eliminate AIDS in the region by 2030. Yet the PAHO/WHO report noted that approximately 2500 infants in Latin America and Caribbean contracted HIV in 2014. Furthermore, the organizations claims that roughly 30% of the estimated two million people in the region with HIV are unaware that they are infected. These obstacles must be overcome in order to fulfill the pledge made last year:

Daily Headlines: December 1, 2015

* Guatemala: Gang violence was blamed for the deaths of at least sixteen inmates at a Guatemalan prison that is at approximately 500% overcapacity.

* Brazil: Brazil’s recession worsened in the third trimester of 2015 and posted a 1.7% quarterly drop along with a worrying 4.5% annual decline.

* El Salvador: San Salvador Archbishop Bishop Jesus Delgado apologized to victims of sexual abuse by clergy amid a crackdown by the archdiocese against suspected pedophiles.

* Venezuela: Authorities arrested three suspects in the murder of Venezuelan opposition politician Luis Diaz during a recent campaign event to rally support prior to Sunday’s legislative elections.

YouTube Source – Associated Press

Online Sources – iTV News, Reuters, UPI, Yahoo News

Daily Headlines: November 30, 2015

* Nicaragua: Construction on a controversial $50 billion interoceanic canal in Nicaragua that was supposed to begin this December will be postponed for up to a year.

* Argentina: “Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters,” declared Pope Francis at a mosque in the Central African Republic as he nears the end of a six-day trip to Africa.

* Peru: The son of former military leader Juan Velasco Alvarado cold join the daughter of imprisoned ex-President Alberto Fujimori in the race for Peru’s next president.

* Mexico: Mexico could be barred from participating in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro due to the government probing possible corruption in national sports federations.

YouTube Source – France 24 English (Video uploaded on June 2015).
 
Online Sources – Yahoo News, Peru Reports, Voice of America, Newsweek

Weekend Headlines: November 29, 2015

* Cuba: Several hundred protesters demonstrated outside of the Ecuadoran embassy in Havana after the South American country imposed new visa restrictions on visitors from Cuba.

* Venezuela: The death of Venezuelan opposition politician Luis Diaz by unknown gunmen last Wednesday has added to an already tense political climate prior to next Sunday’s legislative elections.

* Haiti: Presidential candidate Jude Célestin could drop out of the December 27th runoff amid allegations of fraud during the October 25th election.

* Chile: Jovino Novoa, described as a “founding member of Chile's largest party and former collaborator of late dictator Augusto Pinochet”, was found guilty as part of a corruption investigation.

* Brazil: President Dilma Rousseff will order a freeze of some $2.65 billion in spending in order to comply while the government tries to tackle a budget crisis.

* South America: Will South American neighbors Argentina and Uruguay launch a joint bid to host the soccer World Cup in 2030?

YouTube Source – EFE (Starting on December 1st, Ecuador will halt becoming the only Latin American nation without visa requirements for visitors from Cuba).

Online Sources – Deusche Welle, Reuters, ABC News, SBS, NDTV

Daily Headlines: November 26, 2015

* Brazil: The Australian Senate has called on mining firm BHP Biliton to provide compensation for the Brazilian community devastated by a “toxic” mudslide earlier this month.

* Panama: Work on the already beleaguered Panama Canal expansion was delayed over calls for an independent inspection of leaks in some of the locks.

* U.S.: The number of unaccompanied and undocumented child migrants entering via the U.S.-Mexico border spiked last month though it remains to be seen if it reaches the levels seen in mid-2014.

* Venezuela: Venezuela’s opposition claimed that Democratic Action party member Luis Diaz was “assassinated by gunshot” roughly two-and-a-half weeks before legislative elections.

YouTube Source – Wall Street Journal
 
Online Sources – Sky News Australia, JOC.com, The Independent, The Guardian, Reuters

Daily Headlines: November 25, 2015 (Updated)

* Brazil: The Brazilian Supreme Court ordered the arrest of Delcidio do Amaral, the ruling party’s top legislator in the Senate, over his potential role in the Lava Jato bribery scandal.

Update: Investigators also ordered the arrest of Jose Carlos Bumlai, a rancher who reportedly served as a close adviser on agricultural policy during the presidency of Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva.

* Chile: Ex-Chilean soccer federation chief Sergio Jadue refused to comment over rumors that he resigned from his post to become an FBI informant in the corruption probe against FIFA.

* Honduras: At least eight people in Honduras were killed when “heavily-armed” gunmen opened fire against a bus terminal in the northern city of Choloma.

* Venezuela: “Whoever betrays the legacy of Chavez destroys himself,” declared Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro who invoked the name of his predecessor at a rally prior to the December 6th legislative elections.

YouTube Source – teleSUR English (“Impeachment efforts are underway against the president of the the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, charged with corruption in the Petrobras scandal.”)

Online Sources including Update – Fox Sports, GlobalPost, The Latin Americanist, NBC News, Channel News Asia, MercoPress

Daily Headlines: November 24, 2015

* Cuba: Internet access is difficult for the average Cuban resident but social networking has been a vital resource for migrants attempting to make their way through Mexico and Central America.

* Latin America: Peruvian President Ollanta Humala issued decrees with the goal of halting violence against women, while a recent report revealed mixed results for Nicaragua in terms of gender equality.

* Venezuela: U.S. prosecutors accused the Venezuelan military of being involved in a shipment of cocaine seized in Haiti this month and leading to the arrest of the nephews of first lady Cilia Flores.

* Dominican Republic: Dominican officials issued arrest warrants against three French nationals accused of helping two of their compatriots escape drug smuggling convictions.

YouTube Source – AFP

Online Sources – Christian Science Monitor, NDTV, Quartz, MercoPress, RFI

Daily Headlines: November 23, 2015 (Updated)

* Argentina: At a press conference this morning, Argentine President-elect Mauricio Macri pledged that his government would overhaul the economic policies of outgoing President Cristina Fernandez.

* Update: More from Macri who said that he would push for Venezuela to get suspended from the Mercosur trade bloc.

* Guatemala: Legislators in Guatemala approved an "anti-coyote" law aimed at punishing smugglers who exploit migrants attempting to journey to the U.S.

* Colombia: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos issued a pardon for thirty FARC rebels who were reportedly imprisoned for non-violent crimes.

* U.S.: Undefeated Gennady Golovkin will likely be the next opponent for Mexican boxer Saul “Canelo” Alvarez after he beat Miguel Cotto of Puerto Rico in an exciting bout on Saturday.

YouTube Source – AFP (“Argentina’s conservative new president Mauricio Macri may come from a privileged background but he has managed to rally voices from different parts of the political spectrum to advocate for change.”)

Online Sources including Update – SI.com, Voice of America, Reuters, The Guardian