Early kick-off

A CAMPAIGN that officially lasts just three months should mean that Brazil’s next presidential election, due in October 2014, feels far away. In fact it seems almost imminent. On February 16th Marina Silva, who came third in 2010 as the Green Party’s candidate, launched a new party, the Sustainability Network, thus declaring her intent to run again. Three days later the president, Dilma Rousseff, announced increased welfare payments to 2.5m poor Brazilians in a speech widely interpreted as launching her bid for a second term. The main opposition, the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), is considering primaries that its bigwigs have designed to bolster Aécio Neves, their preferred candidate. Eduardo Campos, the governor of Pernambuco state who heads a fast-growing centrist party, is mulling a run, too.

The not-so-strong bolívar

AFTER years of postponing the inevitable, the Venezuelan government made a modest concession to economic reality on February 8th by cutting the price of the national currency, formally known as the “strong” bolívar, by 32%. In the seventh devaluation during the presidency of Hugo Chávez, the official rate weakened from 4.3 bolivares to the dollar to 6.3. Since he took office in 1999, the cost of the dollar in bolívar terms has risen more than tenfold—though even the new rate is still around three times stronger than the value of the currency on the black market.
The collapse of the bolívar is perhaps the most striking statistical indicator of Mr Chávez’s economic mismanagement. His constant stream of expropriations without fair compensation has caused Venezuela’s private sector to wither, and his transformation of PDVSA, the state energy company, into a vehicle for patronage has led oil production to plummet. As global petroleum prices have soared during Mr Chávez’s presidency, Venezuela has become ever-more dependent on imports.
In 2003 the government tried to stem capital flight by imposing stringent exchange controls. Since then, ordinary Venezuelan citizens and businesses have faced limits on the amount of foreign currency they can acquired at the heavily subsidised official rate, while the well-connected have made fortunes by exploiting the system. To meet the rest of their foreign-currency needs, many Venezuelans have had to turn to a flourishing black market, where the bolívar has traded at a fraction of its official value. These restrictions have contributed to ever-worsening shortages of essential goods.

International Raid Targets Illegal Timber Trade

Brazil has an environmental police force tasked with cracking down on illegal logging



Interpol has announced that it arrested nearly 200 people in a wide-ranging international operation against illegal logging and the trafficking of timber.

The three-month effort spanned 12 Central and South American countries, and $8m (£5.2m) worth of timber was seized.

Interpol says the illegal logging trade could be worth up to $100bn world-wide.

It has also been linked to a rise in murders and corruption, as criminal groups move into remote forest areas.

Interpol said officials had checked lorries, ships and containers, as well as retailers and individuals, seizing a total of 50,000 cubic metres, or about 2,000 lorry-loads, of illicit timber.

More than 100 people remain under investigation.

Murderous trade

The head of Interpol's environmental crime programme, David Higgins, said the raid, dubbed "Operation Lead", was just the first step in the organisation's fight against the illegal timber trade.

He said the international nature of the trade made prosecutions difficult, but that in the long term Interpol would try to help countries apply the law in a more uniform manner.

Mr Higgins said co-operation between forestry officials, customs and border agents and the police would be crucial to fight the timber trafficking.

Over the past years, dozens of anti-logging activists have been killed in Brazil in attacks believed to be linked to their activism.

In Colombia, police say illegal and rebel groups are increasingly turning to illegal logging as a source of revenue.

And in Venezuela, there have been clashes between indigenous groups and loggers who have invaded their land.

Grenada Opposition Wins Clean Sweep In General Election

Preliminary results of the general election on the Caribbean island of Grenada suggest a landslide win for the opposition New National Party (NNP).

Election supervisors said the preliminary figures showed the NNP had won all 15 seats.

The governing National Democratic Congress admitted defeat.

Grenada's failure to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Ivan was one of the election issues

If the results are confirmed, Keith Mitchell, who served three terms as prime minister between 1995 and 2008, will return to power.

The main theme during the election was the economic crisis.

Grenada has a 30% unemployment rate and the Caribbean Development Bank recently warned Grenada that it had unsustainable debt levels.

During his campaign, Mr Mitchell promised to make job creation his priority.

After the preliminary results came in, catapulting his party from fours seats to 15, he said he would also strive to unite the country.

"The victor is the one who has to reach out, the one who lost can't be expected to reach out; national unity will be a serious platform," he said.

He asked Grenadians "to have patience" with the new government, and to give it a chance to implement policies he said would revive the stalled economy.

The country has been struggling to recover from major destruction caused by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Dozens of people were killed and 90% of the island's buildings were damaged or destroyed. Grenada's main export crop, nutmeg, was also devastated.

Source: BBC

HRW: Mexico Security Forces Colluded In Disappearances

Relatives of the disappeared have been marching across the country to demand the authorities do more to find the missing

The pressure group Human Rights Watch says Mexico has failed to properly investigate human rights abuses committed by the security forces.

The group has documented almost 250 disappearances during the term of former President Felipe Calderon.

It says evidence suggests that in more than half of the cases the security forces participated either directly or indirectly in the disappearances.

HRW has called on the new government to find the missing.

'Arbitrary detention'

In a report published on Wednesday, HRW says "state agents participated directly in the crime [of disappearances], or indirectly through support and acquiescence" in more than 140 of the cases they investigated.

In the remaining cases, their researchers were not able to determine whether state actors may have participated.

HRW says the majority of the cases of enforced disappearances it investigated followed a pattern, in which members of the security forces "arbitrarily detain individuals without arrest orders or probable cause".

"In many cases, these detentions occur in victims' homes, in front of family members; in others, they take place at security checkpoints, at workplaces, or in public venues, such as bars," the report alleges.

The report says that the administration of former President Calderon ignored the mounting problem and failed to take steps to address it, thereby contributing to it becoming "the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades".

Nationwide efforts

An estimated 70,000 people are believed to have been killed in Mexico since December 2006, when Mr Calderon came to power and declared war on the country's powerful drug cartels.

Some human rights groups say the deployment of the military has contributed to the violence

Mr Calderon deployed the army in an attempt to curb the violence, but human rights groups say the levels of human rights abuses against civilians has risen as a result.

Mexico's interior ministry has not yet commented on the report.

Human Rights Watch says it hopes the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto will develop a national strategy to tackle the growing number of disappearances.

According to HRW, the creation of a national database documenting disappearances and unidentified remains would be an invaluable tool for investigators and relatives trying to trace the missing.

Shortly after coming to office on 1 December 2012, Mr Pena Nieto announced the creation of a new national police force which he said would be better trained and better equipped to fight crime.

Source: BBC

Venezuela's Chavez Returns Home From Cuba

Supporters of Hugo Chavez celebrate in Caracas after the president vows to finish cancer treatment in his country.

 

 

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has returned home to Venezuela after more than two months of medical treatment in Cuba after cancer surgery.
Chavez, 58, announced his return in a series of messages on Monday on his Twitter account, and aides confirmed the news.
They were the first messages to appear on the president's account since November 1.
"We have arrived back in the Venezuelan fatherland. Thanks, my God! Thanks, my beloved people! Here we will continue the treatment," Chavez said via Twitter.
"I'm clinging to Christ and trusting in my doctors and nurses," he said in another tweet.
"Onward toward victory always!! We will live and we will triumph!!"
There had been speculation that Chavez was not well enough to travel despite wanting to return to his homeland for continued treatment for the disease he was first diagnosed with in mid-2011.
Upon his return, he was immediately taken to the military hospital in Caracas, where the Venezuelan government had set aside an area in front of the hospital so that people could "be close to Chavez".
Al Jazeera's Andy Gallacher, reporting from Caracas, described jubilant scenes outside the military hospital.
"About 150 Chavez supporters have gathered here at the hospital, which is the closest they've come to their beloved leader in just over two months. But this was no jubilant return; under the cover of darkness, just tweeting that he was back on Venezuelan soil. Nobody has actually seen the man himself."
Fireworks celebration
Fireworks could be heard going off in some neighbourhoods of Caracas as the news spread and celebrations begun among Chavistas.
Venezuelan ministers were jubilant, one singing "He's back, he's back!" live on state TV.
Henrique Capriles, the opposition’s de facto leader who lost to Chavez in the October elections, welcomed the president back to Venezuela.
"Let’s hope that the president’s return means that [Vice President Nicolas] Maduro and the ministers get to work, there are thousands of problems to solve," he tweeted.
Chavez named Maduro as his successor before he left Venezuela for his operation, and the vice president has been in charge of the country since then.
Given that ministers said the president wanted to return when he was well enough to travel, Chavez's arrival implied some improvement in his condition, at least enough to handle a flight of several hours.
But aides have emphasised in recent days his state remains "complex".
Chavez underwent a six-hour operation in Cuba on December 11 - his fourth for the cancer first detected in his pelvic area in June, 2011.
He had not been seen or heard in public since then until photos were published of him on Friday, showing him lying in hospital.
Officials said he was breathing through a tracheal tube and struggling to speak.

Source: AlJazeera

Rights Group Faults Mexico Over Abductions

Report by Human Rights Watch accuses military and police of abducting and killing dozens during six-year drug war.

Dozens of people were abducted and killed by Mexican security forces over the past six years, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch.
The report, released on Wednesday, said that the disappearances of 149 people, many of them civilians, followed a pattern in which security forces detained them without warrants at checkpoints, homes or workplaces, or in public.
When families ask about their relatives, security forces deny that they were detained, or urge family members to look at police stations or army bases.
The group criticised former president Felipe Calderon for ignoring the problem, calling it "the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades."
The report was a grim reminder of the dark side of the war on drug cartels that killed an estimated 70,000 people during Calderon's six-year presidency. Enrique Pena Nieto, Mexico's current president, has pledged to take a different approach and focus on reducing violent crime and extortion rather than attacking the cartels directly.
A culture of impunity
The government last month introduced a long-delayed law to track victims of the drug war and compensate the families, and says it is moving ahead with plans to roll out a genetic database to track victims.
"There exists, in theory, a database with more than 27,000 people on it," said Lia Limon, deputy secretary of human rights at Mexico's interior ministry. "It's a job that's beginning."
Still, impunity remains rife: The armed forces opened nearly 5,000 investigations into criminal wrongdoing between 2007 and 2012, but only 38 ended in sentencing, according to Human Rights Watch.
Last year, a civic group released a database which it said contained official information on more than 20,000 people who had gone missing in Mexico over the past six years.
The group, Propuesta Civica (Civic Proposal), said the information was collected by the federal attorney general's office while Calderon was in office. The missing include police officers, labourers, housewives, solicitors, students, businessmen and more than 1,200 children under the age of 11.
They are listed one by one with such details as name, age, gender and the date and place where the person disappeared.
Among the examples cited by Human Rights Watch is evidence suggesting that marines detained about 20 people in three northern border states in June and July of 2011. Though it denied abducting the victims, the navy later acknowledged it had contact with some before they disappeared.

Source: AlJazeera

Russian PM in Brazil seeking arms, nuclear technology deals

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev met with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Wednesday on a visit to Brazil aimed at sealing defense and nuclear technology dealswith a fellow member of the BRIC bloc of emerging nations.

Hugo Chávez returns home to Venezuela

Hugo Chávez returned to Venezuela early on Monday after more than two months of medical treatment in Cuba following cancer surgery.

Authorities search for Nuevo Laredo police chief

(CNN) -- The police chief of the violent Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo has been missing for days, and state authorities are trying to find him, the Tamaulipas Attorney General's Office told CNN early Tuesday.

Human rights report: Mexico disappearances during drug war 'a crisis ignored'

MEXICO CITY - A Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday calls Mexico's anti-drug offensive "disastrous" and cites 249 cases of disappearances, most of which show evidence of having been carried out by the military or law enforcement.

More of the same, please

IN THE decade to 2006, all three men elected as president of Ecuador failed to finish their terms in office. Following a resounding victory in an election held on February 17th, it now appears that the country will have just one president for the entire subsequent decade. With over half the ballots counted, Rafael Correa, the leftist incumbent, had received nearly 57% of the vote—more than twice the total of the runner-up, and six percentage points higher than his mark from 2009. He is the first Ecuadorean president to win two consecutive elections without facing a run-off vote, and assuming he completes his second four-year term, he will amass the longest uninterrupted time in power in the country’s history.

The price of justice

JORGE ANTONIO BARRIOS was just nine years old in 1998 when the Aragua state police came looking for his father, Benito. He watched as the officers beat him and took him away. Later that day Benito died from multiple gunshot wounds. The police said they shot him in self-defence after he opened fire on them. As is customary in Venezuela, no one was prosecuted. The country has one of the world’s highest murder rates, and according to academic studies, 96% of homicides go unpunished.

Many murders are committed by security forces, and the Aragua state police are among the worst offenders. Between 2000 and 2008 the public prosecution service registered over 7,000 extra-judicial killings, around half involving state police forces. The Barrios family case, however, is exceptionally horrific.

Five years after Benito’s death, his brother Narciso had a violent row with a state policeman who reportedly had refused to pay for drinks. The police later raided the homes of four family members, stealing possessions and in two cases starting fires. Two weeks later they arrested Narciso’s nephew. After Narciso protested, they shot him dead. Despite being warned to drop the case, the family began an arduous search for justice in Venezuelan courts. Their woes were just beginning.

Over the nine years since Narciso’s death, another seven men in his family have been fatally shot. The latest was Jorge Antonio, who was killed by an unknown assailant on December 15th while riding a motorcycle. There is no proof that state police are behind the murders, but the Barrios clan says police have threatened, arrested and beaten family members. And the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has found that “in the majority of these acts, members of the same police force of the state of Aragua appear to be clearly implicated.”

The IACHR has directed the national government to provide official protection to family members, and says it has not complied. “The Barrios family is being exterminated in the face of inaction by the State, which has ignored the [IACHR’s] entreaties, decisions, recommendations and orders”, the commission said in a statement on January 18th. Venezuela’s public prosecutor, Luisa Ortega Díaz, insists that the government did order protection for the family—even though Hugo Chávez, the president, announced last year that the country would withdraw from the regional human-rights system, which he accuses of “complicity with Washington.” Even once the withdrawal takes effect this August, the government must still fulfil its legal obligations in existing cases.

Unstoppable?

“BRAZILIANS! You’ve just been taken for fools!” So wrote the organisers of an online petition calling for the impeachment of Renan Calheiros, who was elected president of Brazil’s Senate on February 1st. And on February 11th, though Carnival was in full swing, the petition notched up more than 1.36m signatures, 1% of the electorate. That gives its backers the right to present their demand to Congress, though they will have to wait until after February 19th to do so: whereas other Brazilians get three days off for Carnival, lawmakers enjoy two full weeks.

Mr Calheiros, a wheeler-dealer of the sort who excels in Brazil’s fragmented coalition politics, was president of the Senate from 2005 to 2007. But he resigned after allegations that a lobbyist had paid maintenance on his behalf to a lover with whom he had had a child, and that he then faked receipts for the sale of cattle to try to prove that he could have afforded to pay her himself. He denies all wrongdoing and has since stayed active in politics, but only behind the scenes. His allies in the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), Brazil’s largest, evidently judged it was time for him to return to centre-stage.

Return of Chavez is no sure thing

Outside the military hospital in Caracas where Hugo Chavez is continuing his treatment for cancer, chants of "Viva Chavez" fill the streets as passing drivers beep their horns loudly in celebration.
But there is not a huge throng of supporters here, where only a hardy few have set up camp.
That does not reflect a lack of support for the 58-year-old president, his many supporters are overjoyed but people here need to keep working and earning their recently devalued currency.
Some basic foods like rice, sugar and flour are now hard to come by, and still there is one central question; is Hugo Chavez well enough to lead?
According to officials, Chavez is facing a long and complex recovery, breathing through a tube but still reportedly running the country.
For opposition leaders that is not good enough, they want an honest conversation, and no matter how confident Chavez sounds via his Twitter account, his future, and that of the entire country, remains precariously mired in uncertainty.

Hold on tight

WALK down Calle Gamarra in Lima’s La Victoria district and you might imagine you are in Kowloon. For a dozen blocks, Gamarra and its side streets are packed with multitudes and lined by high-rise buildings, the older ones of rough and ready brick, the newer ones of glass. At ground level every square metre is occupied by shops and galleries selling clothes. The buildings above are an anarchic mixture of offices and workshops.

Gamarra is the humming heart of the rag trade in Peru, a country blessed with top-quality cotton as well as alpaca and vicuña fibre. It is home to more than 15,000 separate businesses. Since at least part of the industry is informal (ie, not legally registered), nobody knows how much Gamarra turns over, but estimates range from $1.3 billion to $3 billion a year. Not long ago La Victoria was known for crime, grime and chaotic poverty. Now Gamarra is pedestrianised and patrolled by municipal police. Nearby, investors are planning an $80m shopping centre combined with new workshop space, according to Carlos Neuhaus, who is advising them.

Never too late

GUATEMALA’S civil war, which ran for 36 years until 1996, was one of the darkest episodes in Latin America’s recent history. A UN-sponsored truth commission estimated that 200,000 people were killed during the conflict, most of them Mayan villagers, who in many cases were killed by the state security forces. Some of the worst butchery took place in 1982 and 1983, during the dictatorship of Efraín Ríos Montt, an army general who led the country for 17 months.

Past and future

WITH Europe prostrate and much of Latin America rising fast, you might have expected what was once the junior partner in a transatlantic “strategic association” to be calling the shots. But no: at a biennial summit with the European Union in Chile’s capital, Santiago, on January 26th and 27th and at a get-together of CELAC, the community of Latin American and Caribbean nations, on the following day, the Latins seemed determined to display both internal divisions and their addiction to the gesture politics of the past.

A night from hell

BRAZIL was supposed to be celebrating this week: the first of the stadiums for next year’s football World Cup staged a debut match and a party was planned to mark 500 days till kick-off. Instead the country is in mourning, the party cancelled. Early on January 27th a fire in a nightclub, Kiss, in Santa Maria, a university town in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, killed 235 people, mainly students. Most of the more than 100 injured are in a critical condition. President Dilma Rousseff, visibly upset, rushed back from a summit in Chile and declared three days of national mourning.

A catalogue of negligence caused Brazil’s most lethal fire for more than 50 years. It was started by a spark from a flare lit by the band performing in the early hours. That set light to soundproofing foam on the ceiling. Flames spread fast, releasing toxic fumes and short-circuiting the power supply, casting the venue into darkness. Security guards stopped the first to flee, apparently believing they were trying to bunk without paying: in Brazil, club patrons run up tabs and pay on the way out.

Venezuela Officials: Hugo Chavez's Health 'Improving'

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is making gradual but clear progress as he recovers from cancer surgery in Cuba, Venezuelan officials say.

National Assembly Speaker Diosdado Cabello said he had visited Mr Chavez in hospital, and that the president's health was "clearly improving".

The Venezuelan leader has not been seen or heard in public since he had surgery almost eight weeks ago.

The nature of his cancer has not been revealed.

In address broadcast on TV, Mr Cabello said he had visited Mr Chavez in Cuba on Friday.

The fact that all the updates on the president's health are delivered by members of his party rather than the medical team treating him has fueled speculation within Venezuela and abroad about the president's state.

The opposition has demanded clarity about who is running the country after Mr Chavez missed his own inauguration for a fourth presidential term on 10 January.

The Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled that he could be sworn in at a later date.

But the opposition argues that in the continuing absence of President Chavez, Mr Cabello should take over and elections called within 30 days.

Mexico Hunts Acapulco Spanish Tourist Rape Gang

Mexican authorities say they are determined to capture those responsible for the rape of six Spanish women near the holiday resort of Acapulco.

Masked gunmen burst into a rented beach house on Monday, tied up and held at gunpoint six Spanish men as they attacked the women for several hours.

A seventh woman escaped after telling the attackers she was a Mexican.

Acapulco is one of Mexico's most famous beach resorts, but it has recently suffered from drug-related violence.

"The attack will not go unpunished, as we are committed to catching those responsible," said a statement from the government of Guerrero state which includes Acapulco.

"The government is in constant communication with the victims and the Spanish consular authorities to offer help," the statement added.

'Strong evidence'

Most of the Spanish women are reported to be residents of Mexico who had travelled to Acapulco - on the Pacific coast - for a weekend break.

No-one has been arrested in connection with the attack on Playa Bonfil, but officials said they had leads to pursue.

"Fortunately we have strong evidence that will lead us to those responsible for this reprehensible act," Guerrero state Attorney-General Marta Garzon told Mexican radio.

Acapulco Mayor Luis Walton has apologised for causing offence after he said the attack could have happened "anywhere in the world".

The rapes are being seen as a blow to Mexico's attempts to boost its reputation as a tourist destination.

In recent years Guerrero state has been the scene of a bloody feud between rival drug trafficking gangs, but BBC Mexico correspondent Will Grant says Acapulco and its beaches have been considered relatively safe.

In the 1950s and 1960s Acapulco was a world-famous resort that attracted celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and US President John F Kennedy, who spent his honeymoon there.

These days it mainly attracts Mexican holiday makers

Source: BBC 

Mexico Says Pemex Blast Caused by Gas Buildup

Attorney general says no trace of explosives found after blast at national oil company that killed 37 people.

A buildup of gas in the basement of the headquarters of the national oil company caused a blast that killed 37 people and wounded dozens earlier this week, Mexico's attorney-general said Monday.

Attorney general Jesus Murillo Karam said an investigation by Mexican, Spanish, US and British experts found no evidence of explosives in the blast that collapsed several lower floors of the Petroleos Mexicanos administrative building on Thursday afternoon. He said they believed that an electrical fault had caused a spark that detonated the leaking gas.

There was scant evidence of the burn marks typical in a bomb blast, he said. There was also no sign of a crater like that typically left by an explosive device.

Murillo said officials had yet to discover the source of the gas, which is believed to have been methane that leaked from a number of ducts and tunnels that passed under or connected to the building, built up from the sewer system.

The announcement late Monday ended days of silence about the potential cause of the company's worst disaster in a decade.

The blast fueled debate about the state of Pemex, a vital source of government revenue that is suffering from decades of underinvestment and has been hit by a recent series of accidents that have tarnished its otherwise improving safety record.

Until now, virtually all the accidents had hit its petroleum infrastructure, not its office buildings.

Source: AlJazeera

Garbage Homes - Bolivia

We follow one woman who is on a mission to build homes for the poor from the only resource she can find in abundance.

Ingrid Vaca Diez is on a mission to build better homes for the poor.

With few funds and little support, she uses the only resource she can find in abundance - empty plastic bottles.

Her own life in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, is one of relative comfort but she is shocked by the rising level of poverty she sees around her.

Though completely self-taught, she designs and builds new homes using recycled plastic bottles filled with dirt as the "bricks". So far, she has built 10 of these homes.

The people she is trying to help are rural, indigenous migrants, often living in single room, dirt floor shacks.

Ingrid picks her projects based on the urgency of a family's need. It is through her work that we will observe the broader social and economic problems facing the poor in Santa Cruz.

Bolivia remains one of the poorest countries in South America with roughly 50 percent of the population living below the poverty level according to 2010 estimates. Conversely, it is one of the richest countries in South America in terms of natural resources, especially in mining and natural gas reserves. For the poor, housing is one of the most critical issues. This is an especially acute issue as more and more rural residents continue their migration into the major population centres of La Paz and Santa Cruz. Statistics show that out of the total population of approximately 10 million people, a majority of families live in sub-standard housing conditions in which many structures have no more than a dirt floor.  Source: BBC

Paraguay Candidate Lino Oviedo Dies in Helicopter Crash

Paraguayan presidential candidate Lino Oviedo has died in a helicopter crash.

Mr Oviedo, 69, was running for Paraguay's third largest party in April's presidential election.

A retired general, he had been involved in politics for decades, helping lead the coup which overthrew the military ruler Alfredo Stroessner in 1989.

He was returning from a rally when his helicopter crashed north of the capital, Asuncion. An inquiry into the cause of the crash is under way.

The pilot and Mr Oviedo's bodyguard also died. Police found their bodies in the province of Presidente Hayes.

Defence Minister Maria Liz Garcia said residents had heard a single explosion and the aircraft disintegrated. A storm had been reported along the flight path.

President Federico Franco has declared three days of mourning.

Lino Oviedo was arrested in Brazil in 2000 after fleeing arrest in Paraguay

Rocky career

Lino Oviedo was running for the National Union of Ethical Citizens party (Unace) in the presidential elections due on 21 April.

As an army colonel he played a prominent part in the uprising which overthrew Gen Alfredo Stroessner in 1989, delivering the news that he was under arrest.

In the aftermath of the coup, he rose quickly through military ranks, becoming brigadier-general and, by 1993, army chief.

His continued political campaigning, however, was criticized by then-president Juan Carlos Wasmosy, who asked him to step down as army chief in 1996 - an order he ignored.

He eventually stepped down and ran as a candidate for the Colorado Party in the 1998 presidential election.

However before the election he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for plotting to overthrow President Wasmosy. His running mate, Raul Cubas, was elected instead and ordered Mr Oviedo's release.

But the killing of Vice-President Luis Maria Argana in 1999 and accusations by his relatives that Mr Oviedo had been behind the killing sent him into exile.

In 2004 he returned to Paraguay, where he was convicted over his 1996 insubordination. The conviction was overturned in 2007, allowing him to run in the 2008 election, which he lost.

Seen as a populist, he often switched between Spanish and Guarani during his speeches.

Source: BBC

US keeps drone base in Saudi Arabia

The CIA conducts lethal drone attacks against targets in Yemen from a base inside Saudi Arabia, according to the New York Times newspaper, including the attack that killed American-born Anwar al-Awlaki.
The existence of the base has been reported before, but its exact location has been withheld by various news outlets at the request of the Obama administration.
The base was first used in 2011, the Times reported, to launch the drone strike that killed Awlaki, a key ideologue in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Any operation by US military or intelligence officials inside Saudi Arabia is politically and religiously sensitive. AQAP and other groups have used the kingdom's close relationship with the US to recruit new members, and to stir internal dissent against the Saudi government.
Disclosure of the base's location comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of US drone operations in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.

Fidel Castro votes in Cuba election

Ailing Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has made a surprise appearance in Havana to vote in parliamentary polls, expressing confidence in the revolution despite a decades-long US trade embargo.

Castro's visit to the voting precinct in Havana's El Vedado neighbourhood was the main event in Sunday's elections, during which Cubans chose 612 members of the National Assembly as well as deputies of local legislatures.

The 86-year-old is said to have spent up to an hour talking to other voters and the media after casting his vote.
About 8.5 million Cubans took part in the polls that featured no opposition candidates.

Authorities billed the event as a celebration of Cuban democracy, "which is different" from those in other countries.
Cuban dissidents dismissed the vote as a farce, however.

When the Music Stopped

THERE’S a special sort of melancholy that arises from reflecting upon the death of young people who just wanted to have fun. The calamity in Santa Maria, a college town in southern Brazil, where a nightclub caught on fire and killed at least 235 people on Sunday (the number has been changing daily), has, like other tragedies, revealed the best and the worst of Brazilian society.

Offers to donate blood to the victims in Santa Maria, about 180 miles from here in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, have poured in from all over Brazil and protesters have taken to the streets demanding justice. Our neighbors have helped, too. Argentina — which suffered a deadly nightclub fire in 2004 that killed close to 200 people — quickly sent over a shipment of skin grafts for burn victims.

But the fire also revealed the country at its worst. Tasteless Facebook users engaged in a perverse relativism to say that hundreds of people die every day in Africa because of poverty. Fools joked that the nightclub fire was a kind of divine retribution, since the students at the nightclub were attending a “sertanejo” concert — a sort of melodramatic form of country music that is considered corny. I suppose that, for some, dark and twisted humor can be a coping mechanism.

Firm Denies Deception in Big Check Tied to Iran

CARACAS, Venezuela — When German customs agents at the Düsseldorf airport found a check for the equivalent of nearly $70 million in Venezuelan currency in the carry-on bag of a former Iranian economy minister last month, it seemed like the elements of an international thriller.

But an Iranian construction company contended on Tuesday that the reality was much more mundane: the money, it said, was meant to pay wages and buy concrete and other materials as part of a project to build 10,000 apartments in Venezuela.

“They’re buildings, not bombs, not missiles,” said a lawyer for the company, Kayson Venezuela, mocking speculation here that the company’s construction projects were a front for more sinister activities.

The lawyer, interviewed at the company’s offices in Caracas, refused to give his name, citing company policy.

The unusual courier was Tahmaseb Mazaheri, a former Iranian economy minister and Central Bank governor, according to the lawyer and a second employee, Khosro Mobasser, the company’s director of Latin American business development.

Gangster's paradise: prisoners make mockery of Venezuela's jails

On visiting days, the general penitentiary of Venezuela looks more gangster's paradise than penal institution: along the main corridor, rows of tables display cocaine, ecstasy, pot and crack in precisely arranged quantities.

PEMEX explosion, a test for Pena Nieto's administration and Mexico

Last Thursday’s PEMEX explosion that killed 34 people at the company’s headquarters in Mexico City will prove to be a test for the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto. What caused the blast will ultimately not be as significant as how the administration actually handles the investigation, and works to restructure the government oil giant, either through privatization or purging it of corruption and making an efficient company that benefits Mexico’s 112 million people.

Candidate for President of Paraguay Dies in Crash

RIO DE JANEIRO — Lino Oviedo, a candidate in Paraguay’s presidential election and one of the country’s most polarizing political figures, was killed in a helicopter crash on Saturday night while returning from a rally in northern Paraguay, government officials said Sunday.

Mexico’s drug violence epidemic moving closer to capital

MEXICO CITY — The murderous stain that has spread through entire regions across the country is inching its way into the nation’s capital, raising fresh concerns even as the new administration is saying little about it, hoping to change the nation’s narrative.