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Bolivia
Dismissals wave
Several companies announced, on Wednesday, the 8th, the dismissals wave in the principal mining region of Bolivia after the landslide of prices of the minerals on the international market, attributed to the world financial crisis. The prices fall is severer in the zinc, which there represent 60 per cent of the mining exports and with his current price of 64 cents the thin pound sterling "many companies paralyzed and began to deliver letters of notice (dismissal)", affirmed the president of the businessmen of Potosí, Roberto Emilio Valda.
Colombia
8 military men die
Eight military men died on having entered a field mined by supposed rebels of the FARC. The fact happened in a remote region of the Colombian south-west, reported on Wednesday, the 8th, the army. The military men died in a rural area of the department of Barbecues, in the department of Nariño and to approximately 570 kilometers to the south-west of Bogota, indicated the Brigade 29 in one press release spread by e-mail.
Uruguay
Peasants ask to "matter"
The senator tupamaro José Mujica proposed to bring "poor peasants" of Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador to compensate the demographic deficit of Uruguay. Mujica, who is in the center of the political attention for his possibilities of being a candidate for president for the leftist coalition of the Wide Front, said in a television program that his proposal attacks "the most serious problem that has the Uruguay, which is the demographic one".
El Salvador
It is alert for rains
The government decreed a yellow alert, on Wednesday, the 8th, for possible evacuations after intermittent rains provoked by a system of low pressure that threatens with more downpours. "The yellow alert has been decreed. We are going to have abundant rains, but until now we have no victims, there nor are rivers overflowings", said the general manager of Civil Protection, colonel Jorge Barahona.
Costa Rica
Vice-president resigns
The vice-president and minister of Justice, Laura Chinchilla, resigned on Wednesday, the 8th, to prepare the throwing of his pre-candidacy for the presidential elections of 2010. "The circumstances and the juridical arranging force me to move away from the government. My heart and my beginning keep on being with you and with the struggles that we have freed", told Chinchilla on having spoken to the president Oscar Arias in his farewell speech.
Argentina
Reciprocal migratory valuation
The Secretary of the Interior announced on Wednesday, the 8th that Argentina will begin to receive a migratory valuation from the tourists of the United States and of another 21 countries who receive visa from the Argentinians. "It is a justice act. It is not just that from an Argentinian who travels to Miami receive 131 dollars. It is an avant-garde measurement", supported Randazzo. The new valuation will come into force on January 1, 2009 and will be applied, between other countries, to the visitors of the United States, Canada, Australia, China, Cuba, India, Russia and Syria. Also it includes Puerto Rico, the associate free state of the United States.
Rep. Dominican
Doctors protest
Tens doctors ask for an interview with the president, Leonel Fernández, to claim a wage increase that leads them to gaining approximately 1.700 monthly dollars of them between 500 and 1.000 dollars that they earn at present.
Guatemala
Military presence
The army of Guatemala announced that it has received at least 80 requests to open military detachments in different points of the country and that he evaluates to how many of the requests he can attend. "There are all kinds requests, so that we open detachments and military areas and we see which and how many we can open with the resources that we have", said the spokesman of the army, colonel Jorge Ortega.
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| Audios uncovers supposed department in oil-bearing tender |
Scandal threatens to knock down the whole office in Peru |
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| The government of the Peruvian president (left) Alan García is re-rocked by a political scandal that Jorge del Castillo (right) threatens the ministerial office headed by the premier. |
Lima, Peru
Agencies
At the end of this edition the shade of an entire change of the ministerial office was hovering on the government of the president Alan García, as a result of a scandal of supposed corruption on payments departments for the authorization of oil-bearing lots that re-rocked the country and provoked the resignation of the minister of Energy and Mines, Juan Valdivia.
All the political opposition forces demanded the resignation of the ministerial office in its entirety.
Four widely used audio tapes, the night of Sunday, the 5th for the program "the Fourth Power" of Channel 4, revealed dialogues between the vice-president of the state company PerúPetro, Alberto Químper, and the ex-minister of García, Rómulo León Alegría, on the payments that would receive if the Norwegian company Discover Petroleum was gaining the authorization of petroleum lots in the tender process.
Discover Petroleum gained in September, associated with another state company Petroperú, the authorization of four lots to explore oil in the continental socket and in the region of God's Mother.
On Monday, the 6th, the president Alan García announced to have accepted the Valdivia resignation for being responsible for the awkward sector, and that of the president of Petroperú, César Gutiérrez, because he should have observed "major alertness". Nevertheless it allowed to make out that he was trusting in the innocence of both.
It pointed out that one proceeded to dismiss immediately Químper. Also the government suspended any contract with Discover Petroleum.
There are still not known the whereabouts of Rómulo León Alegría, who is as runaway.
On Thursday, the 9th it was known that all the ministers of the office, headed by the prime minister, Jorge del Castillo, put his charges at the disposal of the president García.
The decision took after a new widely used audio was known on Wednesday, the 8th, in which one involves the prime minister Jorge del Castillo.
“ It is a treachery to the homeland”
The chief reacted publicly on Wednesday, the 8th and claimed severe sanctions for the involved ones in the scandal.
" Here my commitment and oath before (admiral Miguel) Grau is that the corrupt ones are sanctioned all, all the dweebs and the traitors, because the corruption is today a form of treachery to the homeland", showed García in a speech during a ceremony owing to 129 anniversary of the Naval Combat of Angamos (during the war against Chile in 1979) and homage to the national hero.
" I ask for help to all the parties and to the parliament itself so that we should start of root the rottenness that makes doubt our people. They are enough three or four of these felons, these Pharisees, to destroy a construction that it advances", continued García.
Meanwhile, the District attorney's office initiated the investigations on supposed payments departments in the process of tender of petroleum lots, to determine if the Norwegian company Discover Petroleum turned out to be benefited irregularly.
The Norwegian company has denied the accusations saying that "the postulation process (to the tender) has been completely open and transparent, and it could not have been influenced by any bribe".
| Breach alleges innocence and remains free on bail |
Mexico extradites ex-president of Guatemala
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| Alfonso Portillo, ex-president of Guatemala, surrounded with police officers, leaves the Courthouse of Guatemala on Tuesday, the 7th, after being extradited from Mexico by corruption charges. |
Juan Carlos Llorca
Guatemala / AP
A judge stopped on Tuesday, the 7th at large conditionally and fixed a deposit to the ex-president Alfonso Portillo, who accepted to be extradited of Mexico to face corruption accusations in his native Guatemala.
The judge Gerónimo Xitumul decided that Breach should wait for his judgment at large, although he arranged that he must pay a deposit equivalent to approximately 133.000 dollars. It prohibited him to go out of the country and it must appear to the court monthly.
Breach made sure that the process that it faces is a product of a political pursuit. "They mounted a spectacle for four years and a half (from the past government of Oscar Berger), chased me in a wild and indiscriminate way", he said Breach
Now, "I have faith that there is no government that presses the judicial system. I believe in the honorableness of the justice", added the ex-leader (2000-2004) journalists before giving his first judicial evidence.
The district attorney general Amílcar Velázquez Zárate expressed that against Breach they weigh accusations of "peculation, which is to remove or to allow to avoid goods of the state and on having exhausted his resources against the extradition, the Mexican authorities delivered it".
The Attorney general's office of the Republic of Mexico informed in a bulletin that "the last third of October, Breach Bad-tempered presented (a) writing for which it showed his express assent in being extradited to Guatemala".
Breach expressed to Xitumul that "I am present to face an accusation that did the Public department, not with tests but with references".
In the hearing to which he met after arriving to the Guatemalan capital in a plane of the Mexican Attorney general's office of the Republic, the judge determined that there is no risk that Breach escapes therefore it dictated conditional freedom.
To Breach the Guatemalan justice was looking for it since during his government he authorized a transference of approximately 16 million dollars for the Department of Defense, funds that then were embezzled by officials of the army, according to the process. The crime has a sorrow from three to ten years and one fines from 66 to 660 dollars.
Breach, in a press conference at the end of the hearing, made sure that he hopes to assemble the money to pay the deposit and this way to be able to go to house of his mother, in an exclusive sector of this one of the Guatemalan capital. |
