Cameron leads British hunt for business in Brazil

British Prime Minister David Cameron had oil and sports on his mind when he visited Brazil this week seeking business opportunities in the South American nation that overtook Britain last year to become the world's No 6 economy. With the European Union in a slump, Cameron has turned to emerging BRIC nations - Brazil, Russia, India and China - as alternative markets for British exports and investments, with little to show so far. 

With executives from 45 leading British companies in tow, Cameron met on Friday with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who invited British businesses to invest in Brazil oil and gas, defence, mining and financial services industries. "I think we can do a lot better," Rousseff said of growing but still negligible trade and investment flows between the two countries.

Mexican authorities arrest 'El Taliban,' top Zetas cartel leader

US Consulate warns US citizens of increased violence:

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico -

Piedras Negras, across the Rio Grande from its sister city of Eagle Pass, is bracing for more violence as the Zetas cartel tries to fend off rival cartels and the Mexican military.

"Some of the Zeta leaders are being captured. Their hierarchy is crumbling," said Lt. Moses Pena with the Eagle Pass Police Department.

The Meixcan Nay's latest capture was a Zetas founder known as "El Taliban."

It was a major blow for the cartel already racked by in-fighting.

Lt. Pena said federal and local authorities on the U.S. side remain on high alert as a precaution.

The U.S. Consulate also issued a travel advisory urging Americans there to exercise caution.

Costa Rica courts Chinese tourists, investment

Five years after the establishment of bilateral ties, Costa Rica is looking to boostrelations with China in the investment and tourism sectors, Costa Rican Ambassador to ChinaMarco Ruiz said Thursday.

Calling the present "an era of development" for bilateral ties, Ruiz expressed Costa Rica'shopes to diversify exports to China, as well as attract more Chinese tourists and investment, inorder to turn Costa Rica into a platform for China to enter other central American countries.

"If the first three, four years were meant for consolidating the diplomatic bond established in2007, starting now, we are getting ready to embrace the enormous opportunities that thisfriendly and mutually beneficial cooperative relationship presents," Ruiz said in an exclusiveinterview with Xinhua.

Costa Rica is working to bring more investment to its infrastructure sector in accordance with adevelopment plan established during Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla's state visit toChina in August, he said.

UN: $2.79 billion pledged toward Haiti released

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The United Nations Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti said Tuesday that more than half of the $5.33 billion pledged by donors to help the Caribbean nation rebuild after the 2010 earthquake has been released.

An analysis of pledges made at a donors' conference shortly after Haiti's 2010 earthquake revealed that $2.79 billion, or 52.3 percent of the approximate $5.33 billion pledged by 55 donors for recovery activities between 2010 and 2012, has been disbursed.

The bulk of that money, or almost three quarters, were grants awarded to the Haitian government, non-governmental groups and private contractors.

Another 10 percent went toward grants that supported the U.N., Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank. The rest went toward loans and budget support to the Haitian government.

The U.N. Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti is run by former U.S. President Bill Clinton. The bureau has been tracking the pledges made at an international donors' conference in New York that came two months after Haiti's massive earthquake in January 2010. The disaster displaced more than a million people, toppled thousands of buildings in the capital and other southern cities, and killed an estimated 314,000 people.

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Belize Government Grants Tax Break To American Sugar Refining Company For Purchase of Belize Sugar Industries

The Government of Prime Minister Dean Barrow today convened a Special Sitting of the House of Representatives to legislate tax concessions for American Sugar Refining (ASR) in order to enable the company to gain control of the country’s only sugar cane processing facility Belize Sugar Industries Limited. The move has been under negotiation for several months after BSI ran into financial problems following allegations of mismanagement and bad investments in an allied electrical generation project BELCOGEN Ltd. The Belize government first attempted to promote the sale of BSI to Honduras’ Banco Atlantida but this failed. A purchase offer from Belize’s cane farmers, who supply 90% of the factory’s sugar cane, was not entertained with much interest by the government.

Jamaica Signs Treaties at UN

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator the Hon. A. J. Nicholson on Sept. 25 signed two treaties at the United Nations.

They are: the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biodiversity; and Amendment to Article 8 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity is an international agreement which aims to ensure the safe handling, transport and use of living modified organisms (LMOs) resulting from modern biotechnology that may have adverse effects on biological diversity, taking also into account, risks to human health.

Adopted in Montreal in January 2000, the Convention is as a supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity and was entered into force on September 11, 2003.

A second generation human rights instrument, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was adopted and opened for signature by the UNGA on December 21, 1965, and entered into force on January 4, 1969.

It commits members to the elimination of racial discrimination and the promotion of understanding among all races.As of October 2011, it had 86 signatories and 175 parties.

Minister Nicholson is attending the 67^th Session of the UNG in New York and returns to Jamaica on September 28.

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China, Cuba to intensify trade as Havana meets debt payments

HAVANA — Cuba will intensify its economic ties with China, having met payments on its debt with Beijing, its second largest trade partner, Vice President Ricardo Cabrisas announced on Thursday.

Speaking on state-run television, Cabrisas said Cuba is committed to "strict compliance of our financial obligations with China, including those related to the rescheduling of our debt."

Cuba says ending U.S. embargo would help both countries

HAVANA (Reuters) - Both the United States and Cuba would benefit if Washington would lift its longstanding trade embargo against the island, but U.S. President Barack Obama has toughened the sanctions since taking office in 2009, a top Cuban official said on Thursday.

The embargo, fully in place since 1962, has done $108 billion in damage to the Cuba economy, but also has violated the constitutional rights of Americans and made a market of 11 million people off limits to U.S. companies, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told reporters.

"The blockade is, without doubt, the principal cause of the economic problems of our country and the essential obstacle for (our) development," he said, using Cuba's term for the embargo.

"The blockade provokes suffering, shortages, difficulties that reach each Cuban family, each Cuban child," Rodriguez said.

He spoke at a press conference that Cuba stages each year ahead of what has become an annual vote in the United Nations on a resolution condemning the embargo. The vote is expected to take place next month.

Last year, 186 countries voted for the resolution, while only the United States and Israel supported the embargo, Rodriguez said.

Lifting the embargo would improve the image of the United States around the world, he said, adding that it would also end what he called a "massive, flagrant and systematic violation of human rights."

Guatemalan President Argues Drug Legalization and Calls Out US Anti-Drug Effort

New York –  While touting himself as one of the most popular leaders in Latin America, the newly elected President of Guatemala, Otto Perez Molina, defended the legalization of drugs as part of his new "iron fist" approach toward fighting drug violence during a one-on-one interview with Fox News Latino.

"It?s the first time that a president in power dares to say that other routes have to be found for the war on drugs," Perez Molina said in Spanish. "And that?s part of what we always said: the iron fist is character, it?s firmness, it?s determination and it?s the political will to want to do things."

Perez Molina and other Latin American leaders harped on the war on drugs and the need for a candid conversation about new ideas for the war on drugs in their speeches to the United Nations General Assembly.

OAS monitors gang truce in El Salvador

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – Adam Blackwell, the secretary of the Organization of American States’ Multidimensional Security, will verify there’s been a six-month truce between the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs during his visit to the nation’s capital, which began on Sept. 25.

Blackwell met with Military Chaplain Fabio Colindres and former rebel commander Raúl Mijango, who served as mediators during the gangs’ truce talks.

Blackwell also met with Salvadoran Defense Minister José Atilio Benítez.

Under the mediation of Colindres and Mijango, Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 agreed on March 9 to cease hostilities in a conflict that placed the country as one of the most violent in the world.

After the deal, the daily average of 14 homicides dropped to 5.5, according to official figures.

On Sept. 24, leaders of both gangs celebrated 200 days of their truce by asking Salvadorans to support the gangs’ mission for a lasting peace agreement.

Posted By: Josue Morejon 

China Signs $506 Million Agreement to Build Guyana Hydro Plant

       A $506 million contract was signed this week by a Chinese state-owned company to build the planned hydro power plant at Amaila Falls.
The engineering procurement and construction agreement was signed in China Monday, and the project should begin by 2013, according to Guyana’s government.

At full capacity, the plant is projected to supply 165 megawatts of power.

President Donald Ramotar called the agreemnet “historic.”
The contract was signed by Sithe Global and China Railway First Group. Singh was on hand in China, along with Guyana Power and Light Chairman Winston Brassington and other officials.
“This transformational project is the single-largest investment in Guyana, and will allow Guyana, in one single step, to move from being almost entirely dependent on costly fossil fuels to being supplied almost entirely by renewable energy,” Singh said. “We are delighted to have such credible partners recognize the importance of the project and be ready to invest private capital in Guyana.”

Guyana, Venezuela accused of cleaning out Suriname fishing grounds

      (de Ware Tijd) PARAMARIBO – Suriname’s fishing grounds are being cleaned out on a large scale by dozens of Venezuelan and Guyanese boats while Suriname’s Navy cannot take effective action. It is unimaginable what these boats are carrying away, says Navy commander Marino Acton.

Strengthening and expansion of the patrol fleet is needed, because the foreigners sometimes use illegal methods and equipment. The Navy can barely patrol the extensive area with just two seaworthy vessels. In addition, only some of the perpetrators are caught. In the past two months, the Navy has confiscated six illegal fishing boats and arrested the crews, including a Venezuelan boat and a Guyanese last weekend.

Acton explains that the Venezuelan boats usually operate in groups of 12 to 15 in a certain area at the same time, particularly in deeper waters in a zone between 80 and 120 miles off the Surinamese coast in order to catch commercially very attractive tuna. While the Navy approaches one boat, the others flee. “We can’t pursue them, as our boats are not that fast and are not patrol boats,” Acton says. “We’ve started regular patrols and are currently in the area off the Coppename River,” commander Acton states.

U.S. business groups urge Ecuador trade benefits be cut

              * Ecuador's ambassador asks U.S. to maintain, extend trade benefits
* Ecuador only country left in U.S. program for Andean nation
WASHINGTON, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Major U.S. business groups are stepping up pressure on President Barack Obama's administration to suspend longtime trade benefits for Ecuador, citing the Andean country's mistreatment of Chevron Corp as proof of a deteriorating investment climate.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Foreign Trade Council, the U.S. Council for International Business and the Emergency Committee for American Trade each filed separate comments this month asking that Ecuador be suspended.

"Ecuador has repeatedly failed to respect the rule of law, private property, and the sanctity of contracts in ways that impact a wide variety of companies in numerous sectors," Jodi Bond, a vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a letter to the U.S. Trade Representative's office.
Chevron has been involved in a long-running legal battle in Ecuador over pollution blamed on Texaco, which Chevron purchased in 2001.
An Ecuador court ruled against Chevron in February 2011 and in August damages stemming from that hotly contested decision were increased to $19 billion from $18.2 billion.
Chevron says Texaco had settled the case with Ecuador in 1998 and the new ruling against it was obtained by fraud.
The company also accuses Ecuador of ignoring an international tribunal's interim ruling that directed it to suspend efforts to collect damages in the case.
"The president should promptly withdraw or suspend Ecuador's beneficiary country designation," Edward Scott, Chevron vice president and general counsel, said in a letter to USTR.
Ecuador now receives U.S. duty-free treatment for most of its exports to the United States under the Andean Trade Preference Act, which dates back to the early 1990s.
Congress created the program to help U.S. drug-fighting efforts and originally included four Andean nations.
However, Ecuador is now the sole beneficiary since Colombia and Peru have negotiated free-trade pacts with the United States. Bolivia was kicked out in 2008 on the grounds that it was not cooperating in the U.S. war on drugs.
Ecuador already faces losing its benefits in July 2013, since that is when the Andean program is set to expire and it is not certain that Congress will renew it.
In a Sept. 17 letter to the U.S. Trade Representative's office, Ecuador's ambassador to the United States Nathalie Cely asked the Obama administration to maintain current benefits and to push Congress for renewal of the Andean program.
She said "Ecuador has an unblemished record of satisfying every monetary arbitration award against it." She added that the issues that Chevron contends are settled are not yet settled.
Cely defended the Ecuadorean court system's handling of the Chevron case, saying "there is no basis to conclude that the courts acted in bad faith."

Posted By: Eunice N

Colombia's Santos wants peace with FARC by 2013

       (Reuters) - Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said Wednesday he is "cautiously optimistic" that his government can reach a peace deal with Marxist rebels.
In New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly, Santos said he wants to return to the city next year and announce that his conflict-battered country has signed a peace agreement.

Peace negotiations are set to begin with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in Norway next month. In a speech to the Americas Society, Santos said he hope to come back to New York in 2013 and say, "There is peace in Colombia."

"I am optimistic, cautiously optimistic," he said on Wednesday. "I think the conditions are there."
While Santos has not set a deadline for completion of the peace talks, he has said he wants the process to take months, not years.
"If we are successful, imagine what Colombia would look like," Santos said.

Reliance Industries keen on taking project in Venezuela's heavy crude belt

        NEW DELHI: Years after it dropped out of a ONGC-led consortium for developing Venezuela's giant oil fields, Reliance Industries is keen on taking a project to produce heavy oil in the South American OPEC nation.

RIL wants to partner Venezuelan state oil monopoly Petroleos de Venezuela, or PdVSA, to develop a project in the Orinoco extra heavy crude belt, industry sources said.

It has expressed interest in Boyaca 4 block and a separate section in the Ayacucho area of the Orinoco belt. Both these areas can produce 200,000 barrels per day (10 million tons a year) each.

Venezuela Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez in Caracas on Tuesday indicated of RIL's interest and his government will "review the development plan and see if they can participate in it."

This followed RIL signing a new agreement to buy more crude oil from Venezuela. It had in 2008 signed an agreement to buy 150,000 bpd of oil, which was gradually raised to 270,000 bpd at present. Under the new 15-year agreement, the South American country would sell between 300,000 bpd and 400,000 bpd.

Caribbean Islands Brace for Challenges of Climate Change

       Coastal erosion threatens a roadway on the south coast of Antigua. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, Sep 26 2012 (IPS) - Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas remembers how quiet – even uneventful – this tiny twin-island federation was for the first four decades of his life.
But over the past 10 years, St. Kitts and Nevis, as well as the rest of the Caribbean, have seen radical climatic shifts. There is no question in Douglas’s mind that these changes are the direct results of climate change.
“Growing up, I knew nothing of hurricanes, (but) in the last decade St. Kitts and Nevis has felt the wrath of hurricanes like never before,” said Douglas, who has been the head of government here for the last 17 years.

Yet the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis are “hardly unique” in experiencing these hurricanes, Douglas said. “We can remember only too well the brutality of  (hurricanes) Ivan and Emily” in Grenada in 2004 and 2005, despite the fact that at the time, Grenada was considered “very safely nestled in the more southerly reaches of our archipelago”, he told IPS.

Canada names Guy Saint-Jacques as new ambassador to China

OTTAWA — Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird on Wednesday officially named veteran diplomat Guy Saint-Jacques as Canada’s new ambassador to China.

The appointment comes at a critical time in Canada’s political and economic relationship with China.

The two countries are pursuing closer trade ties and just signed a foreign investment promotion and protection agreement, while the Harper government is also reviewing a takeover bid of Canadian energy producer Nexen by a Chinese state-owned oil giant.

Most recently Canada’s climate-change ambassador, Saint-Jacques is fluent in Mandarin and quite familiar with the emerging superpower.

The appointment is his fourth posting to the People’s Republic of China, having previously served in Hong Kong and twice in Beijing.
Baird said the appointment comes at a “very important time” in Sino-Canadian relations, and called Saint-Jacques one of the exceptional public servants of his generation.

“He’ll have close links right to the top, both with me and the prime minister, senior leadership of the public service and business communities here in Canada,” Baird told reporters in his office on Parliament Hill, where the two posed for a photo-op.

“The relationship with China is obviously a growing one,” he added, calling the posting “an important political and security position in that part of the world.”

Chile's SQM wins local lithium concession

SANTIAGO, Sept 24 (Reuters) - World No. 1 lithium producer SQM has won a tender to develop a lithium concession in Chile, which produces around 40 percent of the metal, used widely in hybrid vehicles and computer and smartphone batteries, the Mining Ministry said on Monday.

Bolivian tin miners clash in La Paz, seven hurt

LA PAZ, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Rival miners from Bolivia's No. 2 tin mine, Colquiri, hurled sticks of dynamite and rocks at each other in the city of La Paz on Tuesday, injuring at least seven people in an hour-long street battle.

Leftist President Evo Morales had seized control of the mine in June in a bid to end a conflict between unionized workers and independent miners.

Argentine Growth Halts as Fernandez Tightens Controls

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s efforts to stem capital outflows and extend her control over South America’s second-largest economy has brought growth to a standstill.

Gross domestic product was unchanged in the second quarter from a year earlier and shrank 0.8 percent from the first quarter, the national statistics agency reported today. Economists had forecast year-on-year growth of 0.5 percent, according to the median estimate of 10 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. This was the first time GDP hasn’t grown annually since a 0.3 percent contraction in the third quarter of 2009.

Brazil’s Itapoa Port to Get $371 Million Expansion

Logz Logistica Brasil SA and Alianca Navegacao e Logistica Ltda., along with other companies, plan to spend 750 million reais ($370.7 million) to quadruple the size of Brazil’s southern Itapoa port, newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported.

The expansion will begin next year and take four years, the Sao Paulo-based newspaper reported, citing Patricio Junior, the dockyard’s chief executive officer. The port will have an annual handling capacity of 2 million twenty-foot equivalent units, a standard measure for containers, up from 500,000 now.

Posted By: Shawn Huyck

Mexico sends troops to Mexico City suburb

Mexico has sent soldiers to patrol a suburb of Mexico City for the first time to combat a rise in drug-related violence that is beginning to encroach on the capital.

From late Wednesday, a combined force of around 1,000 soldiers, federal police and local police took to the streets of Nezahualcoyotl on Mexico City's eastern flank, which has suffered from a dispute between two rival drug cartels.

President Felipe Calderon's fight against drug gangs has overshadowed his administration, and the deployment in Nezahualcoyotl brings the conflict into the home state of his successor Enrique Pena Nieto, who takes office in December.

132 tunnel out of Mexico prison near US border. The local government's request for troops in the sprawling municipality in the State of Mexico follows the murder there this weekend of Jaime Serrano, a local state congressman and member of Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Some Nezahualcoyotl residents told Reuters they had been extorted by criminals identifying themselves as members of the La Familia drug gang.

"Things are getting worse and worse here," said one local man, who asked not to be named. "People here have got used to paying these people (the cartels). If you don't, they say they're going to kill you and your family."

Mexico City and its immediate surroundings have been among the areas least affected by the bloody turf wars between drug gangs and their clashes with security forces, which have killed around 60,000 people over the past six years.

The national death toll from the drug violence has eased somewhat in 2012, according to a tally by newspaper Reforma.

But the bloodletting has crept up in Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico, where just over half of the population of the capital's urban area live.

Reforma data showed deaths related to the drug war had reached 550 in the two regions by mid-September, putting the toll on course for a jump of around 15 percent from last year.

Kidnappings in Mexico City and the State of Mexico were also up in the first eight months of 2012, police figures show.

Argentines head to Uruguay to bypass dollar restrictions

For Felipe, an Argentine freelancer who works in the media, opening a bank account recently meant catching the ferry across the River Plate to Uruguay.

“I’m losing 40 per cent of my salary just because of the exchange rate,” he says. “That could pay a month’s quota at my daughter’s school or a small mortgage.”

As we have noted before Argentines now have to navigate what is essentially a multiple exchange rate system where the peso is artificially strong, faith in the currency is weak and barely a day goes by without some loophole to accessing dollars being closed to clamp down on capital flight.

Among the latest measures, Argentines are being stopped from transferring money between domestic PayPal accounts and converting it into dollars at a favourable rate in the process. Argentine PayPal users will now only be able to use the service for international purchases, which will be subject to a new 15 per cent tax applied to payments made with Argentine cards or Internet purchases.

Argentines also fear limits will be imposed on bank safety deposit boxes to dissuade people from saving outside the banking system.

If Felipe needs to buy imported equipment for his job, he is charged in dollars – but at the unofficial exchange rate, which is currently around 37 per cent higher than the official exchange – some 6.3 pesos per dollar, compared with 4.6. And this in a country where inflation is widely believed to be in the mid 20s per cent – more than double the government’s 10 per cent statistic.

“I felt sad when I signed the papers in the bank,” says Felipe. “But I have to put my wallet first.” And that means being able to do what he likes with the money he earns and on which he pays his taxes.

Brazil’s leader says deep cuts coming in energy costs for industry, consumers

SAO PAULO — Brazil’s president has announced new efforts to boost the nation’s sagging economy, this time targeting energy costs for both industry and residential customers. President Dilma Rousseff says that cuts to federal levies on energy production will result in a 16 percent drop for consumer energy costs — and a cut of up to 28 percent for some in the industrial sector. Details of the plan will be announced next week. 

 Posted By: Shawn 

Canada Wants To Sell Nuclear Reactors To India

 

NEW DELHI – Canada wants to sell nuclear reactors to India. Putting behind a troubled nuclear history with India, Canadian foreign minister John Baird said, “We have turned the page with India. India is a very different country today.” With Canada emerging as an energy superpower, buoyed by a thriving economy, the minister said, “We value and welcome Indian investment in natural resources and energy.” Baird is in New Delhi to meet foreign minister S M Krishna and prepare for a November summit visit by Canadian PM Stephen Harper.

A nuclear deal between Canada and India signed in 2010 is yet to be operationalized, waiting for a follow-up end-user agreement. After meeting Baird on Wednesday, Krishna said, “We also look forward to early completion of negotiations on Appropriate Arrangements for the bilateral Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement signed in 2010.”

Acknowledging that the agreement was “actively discussed”, Baird said, “We’re readying an end-user pact with India, same thing we have with 42 countries. We’re not asking for or imposing any additional obligations on India.”

 

Drug war leans to military: Mexico's new president gives hints of strategy

Mexico's incoming President Enrique Peña Nieto has said reducing drug violence is one of his top priorities, but it's not clear yet how he plans to achieve it.

Peña, who takes the oath of office Dec. 1, said during his election campaign that he wants to create a national gendarmerie (militarized) police force of up to 40,000 to battle organized crime.

He hired Oscar Naranjo, a retired Colombian general, to advise him on security matters. His transition team stated this month that Peña wants Mexico's military to continue assisting civilian police on the streets.

Recently released government figures place Mexico's total homicide tally from 2007 to 2011 at 99,632, a number that will easily surpass 100,000 by the time President Felipe Calderón ends his term.

Authorities attributed the majority of the slayings to drug-related violence, although the preferred term is now "organized crime." The next largest number of homicides was 99,505 reported during the administration of Carlos Salinas, who served from Dec. 1, 1988 to Nov. 30, 1994.

According to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, thousands more disappeared during the recent cartel wars, including in Juárez.

George Grayson, professor emeritus at the College of William & Mary and author of several books on Mexico and the drug cartels, said Peña's appointments of high-level security and military officials will provide clues on how Mexico's federal government will proceed in its wars against drug cartels.

Grayson, a former lawmaker in Virginia, said the new president faces enormous challenges, including the impact of the Zetas drug cartel on large swaths of Mexican territory.

"We have the 'Zetanicasion' of the country, the brutal style of violence exerted by this group and its influence on others," Grayson said. "For example, the Sinaloa cartel used to operate as a business, but some of its members now are beheading people. And, even if the government were to end drug-trafficking, the country would still need an outlet for the criminals who would find themselves out of a job."

America's refusal to extradite Bolivia's ex-president to face genocide charges

In October 2003, the intensely pro-US president of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, sent his security forces to suppress growing popular protests against the government's energy and globalization policies. Using high-powered rifles and machine guns, his military forces killed 67 men, women and children, and injured 400 more, almost all of whom were poor and from the nation's indigenous Aymara communities. Dozens of protesters had been killed by government forces in the prior months when troops were sent to suppress them.

The resulting outrage over what became known as "the Gas Wars" drove Sanchez de Lozada from office and then into exile in the United States, where he was welcomed by his close allies in the Bush administration. He has lived under a shield of asylum in the US ever since.

The Bolivians, however, have never stopped attempting to bring their former leader to justice for what they insist are his genocide and crimes against humanity: namely, ordering the killing of indigenous peaceful protesters in cold blood (as Time Magazine put it: "according to witnesses, the military fired indiscriminately and without warning in El Alto neighborhoods"). In 2007, Bolivian prosecutors formally charged him with genocide for the October 2003 incident, charges which were approved by the nation's supreme court.
Bolivia then demanded his extradition from the US for him to stand trial. That demand, ironically, was made pursuant to an extradition treaty signed by Sánchez de Lozada himself with the US. Civil lawsuits have also been filed against him in the US on behalf of the surviving victims.
The view that Sánchez de Lozada must be extradited from the US to stand trial is a political consensus in Bolivia, shared by the government and the main opposition party alike. But on Friday night, the Bolivian government revealed that it had just been notified by the Obama administration that the US government has refused Bolivia's extradition request:

Venezuela drops arms trafficking charges against U.S. ship crew -

-- The crew of a U.S.-flagged cargo ship, held more than a week and accused of arms trafficking, is expected to set sail Monday or Tuesday from Venezuela after authorities dropped charges against them.

"While we haven't left yet, it looks like a positive solution has been reached," a crew member, who asked to remain anonymous because of security concerns, said in an e-mail to CNN on Sunday night.

He said the charges were dropped for the captain and the 14 crew members.

A U.S. State Department official confirmed Sunday the charges were dropped, but Venezuela's Ministry of Communications told CNN they had no information regarding the case.

The Ocean Atlas docked at the port of Maracaibo, Venezuela's second-largest city, on August 29, according to the crew member. A few days later, the crew was told the ship was under investigation for arms trafficking, and last Wednesday, the captain and crew were charged.

 

Chavez looks to change his image

Mauricio Claver-Carone: Cuba's American Hostage

By MAURICIO CLAVER-CARONE

Since December 2009, American development worker Alan Gross has been imprisoned by the Castro regime for trying to help Cuba's Jewish community connect to the Internet. For that Mr. Gross—who was in Cuba as a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development—was arrested, convicted in a sham trial and sentenced to 15 years.

The White House and State Department have repeatedly called for Alan Gross's "immediate release." The Gross family's legal team urged the family to keep a low profile, thinking it could negotiate his release. (The family ended that representation earlier this year.)But Fidel and Raúl Castro don't typically react to discretion and haven't felt much U.S. pressure on this case. Even after Mr. Gross was seized, the administration sought rapprochement with Havana and continued talks in 2010 and 2011. It also has continued to ease U.S. sanctions on Cuba.

BP to Sell Oil Assets in Gulf of Mexico for $5.6 Billion

By STANLEY REED

7:09 a.m. | Updated
LONDON - BP agreed on Monday to sell stakes in a group of Gulf of Mexico oil fields to the Plains Exploration and Production Company of Houston for about $5.6 billion.

The announcement comes as Robert W. Dudley, chief executive of BP, is raising money to pay cleanup costs and potential fines resulting from a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

He is also trying to use the divestitures to slim down the company and focus more on what he thinks it does best: high-risk, high-return frontier exploration and production, including deepwater fields. The British company has said it is in talks to sell its 50 percent stake in its Russian affiliate, TNK-BP.
A sale of older, smaller assets in the Gulf of Mexico would be in keeping with this effort to sell mature fields.
"While these assets no longer fit our business strategy, the Gulf of Mexico remains a key part of BP's global exploration and production portfolio," Mr. Dudley said in a statement.