Reuters: Ecuador’s ruling party tapped a former vice president and ally of leftist President Rafael Correa as its candidate for president on Saturday in an election to be held in February. Lenin Moreno, 63, was Correa’s vice president from 2007 to 2013 and is currently a United Nations special envoy on disability and accessibility. Moreno will campaign with current Vice… Read more »
Reuters: A month-long strike by Brazilian bank workers has become the longest in 12 years, underscoring the impasse between employers and staff amid the nation’s harshest recession in eight decades. In a Tuesday statement, leaders from the Sindicato dos Bancários de São Paulo, Osasco e Região, the nation’s biggest banking industry union, said almost 10 rounds of negotiations have yielded… Read more »
CNBC: For decades, jobs at Venezuela’s state-run oil giant PDVSA were coveted for above average salaries, generous benefits and cheap credit that brought home ownership and vacationing abroad within reach for many workers. Now, in Venezuela’s asphyxiating economy, even PDVSA employees are struggling to pay for everything from food and bus rides to school fees as triple-digit inflation eats away… Read more »
UPI: Talks with Russian officials this week could add additional weight to an oil production agreement reached last week in Algeria, Venezuela’s president said. State-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, known also as PDVSA, said through its official Twitter account that President Nicolas Maduro aims to carry a message to Russia about cooperating on production arrangements “It is very certain that we have… Read more »
CNN: After pouring billions into Venezuela over the last decade, China is cutting off new loans to the Latin American nation. It’s a major reversal of relations between the two nations, experts say. It also comes at the worst time for Venezuela, which is spiraling into an economic and humanitarian crisis. “China is not especially interested in loaning more money to Venezuela,”… Read more »
UPI: The governor of Venezuela’s Táchira state has said some drivers next week could begin to pay gas stations with Colombian pesos or U.S. dollars. Táchira Gov. José Vielma Mora said gas stations under the new currency program- aimed at Colombian drivers- will be jointly operated by Colombian companies and Venezuela’s government-owned Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, oil company. The… Read more »
REUTERS: President Barack Obama on Tuesday nominated career diplomat Jeffrey DeLaurentis to be the first U.S. ambassador to Cuba in more than five decades, setting up a fierce confirmation battle with Republicans in Congress opposed to Obama’s opening with the communist-ruled island.
REUTERS: President Michel Temer has not managed to convince Brazilians his government is better than that of his ousted predecessor Dilma Rousseff, and his popularity remains low, according to a poll on Tuesday.
BBC NEWS: A judge in El Salvador has reopened an investigation into the 1981 El Mozote massacre – considered one of the worst atrocities in the civil war. The judge accepted a request put forward by three human rights groups to re-open the case based on a Supreme Court ruling in July.
Al Jazeera: Just last week, western media was praising the Colombian peace agreement. Four years of negotiations in Cuba, commentators noted, had finally put an end to a 50-year conflict between the government and the left-wing rebel movement Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and involving various right-wing paramilitary groups and narco cartels that had claimed an estimated 200,000 lives,… Read more »