Today in Latin America

Top Story — Chile became one of the first countries to hand over highly enriched uranium (HEU) from its nuclear reactors to the United States for safe storage. The Associated Press reported the story yesterday, the same day that President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev signed a nuclear arms control treaty.

The U.S. will also hold a nonproliferation summit next Monday in Washington, where Obama is expected to ask countries to work with the U.S. in removing weapons-grade HEU from reactors, as Chile did.

“We are happy to see it go,” Fernando López of the Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission told The Associated Press. “Countries normally don’t want to be loaded with waste from other countries,” López added. “To put it in a safe place is valuable for everybody.”

U.S. and Chilean engineers worked last month to remove the 40 pounds of HEU before it was shipped out of Chile under U.S. Coast Guard supervision, through the Panama Canal, to Charleston Weapons Station in South Carolina.

The United States is the only country in the world to dispose of uranium and many countries, including Russia, rely on the U.S. for this process. This disposal process is part of Obama’s strategy of focusing concerns of nuclear nonproliferation to rogue states and terrorists and away from former Cold War adversaries.

“For the first time, preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism is now at the top of America’s nuclear agenda,” Obama said, according to the Associated Press.

For more information, view the AP video below.

Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch

• Beyond Borders: A local-federal partnership to enforce immigration law needs clarity, according to a recent study.
• From the Blog: Six people were killed in Peru on Sunday, as police disbursed a wildcat miners’ protest.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• A 5.3 magnitude aftershock struck near Guadalupe Victoria in Northern Baja California, Mexico, days after the region was hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake on Easter Sunday.
• Mexican authorities found the bodies of 12 people, allegedly killed by drug traffickers, near the town Xalisco in the border state of Nuevo León.

Caribbean

• The Obama administration lifted the prohibition against traveling to Cuba to provide aid to government opponents and pro-democracy activists.
• The Cuban government plans to use its May Day march as a show of support for the government, in order to deflect recent criticism over the country’s human rights record.
• Haiti’s signature rum producer, Rhum Barbancourt, is poised to resume shipping again, despite suffering about $4 million in losses from the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Central America

• Ecopetrol S.A., the Colombian oil company, might bid on exploration rights for areas in Guatemala.
• Costa Rican President Óscar Arias said the Catholic Chruch should end celibacy vows for priests, arguing that forbidding sexual relations goes against nature.
• Defender Deris Umanzor from Club Deportivo Águila of El Salvador was acquired by the Major League Soccer team, the Chicago Fire.

Andes

• Colombian police arrested Héctor José Buitrago, an alleged paramilitary leader who refused to surrender in 2005 when 30,000 paramilitaries demobilized. He was wanted on 21 warrants for alleged killings and drug-trafficking.
• Colombian presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos said that if he won next year’s elections he would foster better ties with neigboring Venezuela.
• Wildcat miners in Peru ended their roadblock Wednesday in response to a government promise to hold a joint commission to study the dispute over the effects of regularizing informal mining.
• 120 countries and international organizations confirmed that they will attend the World People’s Conference on Climate Change on April 19-22 in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Southern Cone

• In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, bodies continue to be dug from the debris resulting from landslides that ravaged the city in recent days.
• Ford Motor Co. announced Thursday it will invest $200 million in Brazil over the next five years to develop the EcoSport small SUV, already a top-selling vehicle in Brazil, for the global market. Ford will invest an additional $250 million in Argentina over the next two years for development and production of a new vehicle, which is intended for Ford’s Latin American markets.
• Argentina’s stocks and bonds sunk Wednesday after the U.S. declared the country’s Central Bank is indistinguishable from the government and creditors can seize assets for debt repayment.
• Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera wants to deepen free market reforms and encourage the country’s return to international bonds to help pay for damage from February’s 8.8 magnitude earthquake. The government is responsible for $8 to $10 billion of an estimated $30 billion of reconstruction costs.
• Presidents of Chile and Argentina said Thursday in Buenos Aires that ideological differences will not keep them from working together.
• Uruguay’s President José Mujica strengthened ties with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez when the two signed accords to strengthen trade and energy relations between the two countries. Venezuela will help Uruguay expand an oil refinery and supply it with crude oil.
• Uruguay’s unemployment rate rose sharply from 6.3 percent in January, to 7.5 percent in February.

Image: BlatantNews.com @ Flickr.

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Venezuelan Presient Hugo Chávez met with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday.

Today in Latin America

Top Story — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Venezuela this weekend on a trip to strengthen bilateral ties.

Putin and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez signed a number of accords, covering a range of subjects including energy, defense, transportation, education and technology.

“Russia and Venezuela are on that path and we’ll be more united every day,” Chavez said, according to EFE.

One agreement reached between the two world leaders concerned joint oil ventures in the Orinoco region of eastern Venezuela. In regards to this agreement, Putin said a consortium of five Russian firms will pay $1 billion for the right to help develop the Junín 6 block in the Orinoco belt.

The two leaders also signed several memoranda on the development of gas and oil tankers, studies into the installation of an electric plant and other energy-planning projects. Venezuela is currently suffering from a severe electricity crises.

The goal is “to make the world more democratic, balanced and multi-polar,” Putin said.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• A shootout in a nightclub between rival gangs left seven people dead late Friday evening in the Mexican city of Tampico.
• The parents of the 4-year old Mexican girl found asphyxiated in her bedroom were freed from detention Sunday but police said they were still under investigation.
• A 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Baja California, Mexico, on Sunday, killing two people.
• Elton John played a concert for 6,000 people Saturday at the Mayan pyramids of Chichén Itzá in Mexico. Three workers were injured Friday when the concert’s stage collapsed during its installation.

Caribbean

• Cuban head of state Raúl Castro said his country would not back down in the face of pressure from foreign countries to release political prisoners, which Cuban authorities view as common criminals paid by the U.S. to undermine the revolutionary government.
• Haiti is using rubble from the Jan. 12 earthquake to rebuild the country.

Central America

• 36 people died of gunshot wounds in separate incidents during Holy Week in Guatemala, according to the country’s Vice Minister of the Interior.
• The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the recent killing of journalists in Honduras and called on Honduran authorities to put an end to the violence.
• The French bank BNP Paribas ceded its wealth management business in Panama, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands to the Canadian bank, Scotiabank.

Andes

• Early television polls indicate that Evo Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism (MAS, in Spanish) won in five out of nine of the country’s governorships in Bolivia’s regional elections on Sunday. Official results will not be available for two to three weeks. (Spanish))
• Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos attacked the European Court of Human Rights for not pushing Russia to extradite a convicted Israeli terror suspect to Colombia.
• Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa named Katiuska King as the country’s new economic policy minister.
• A mudslide in Peru Friday killed at least 28 people in the country’s Huanuco region. Friday’s mudslide followed one of Thursday which killed five people in the town of Cancejos.

Southern Cone

• A plane performing aerobatics at an air show on Friday in Lages, Brazil, crashed and exploded, killing the pilot. The incident was caught on video.
• An unruly group of soccer fans were arrested in Argentina on Friday. A total of 30 passengers of a LAN Airbus were taken into custody upon landing. The group reportedly assaulted a flight attendant and threatened to set the plane on fire.
• Chile and Turkey intend to sign a free trade agreement by the middle of this year.
• A recent poll shows that most Uruguayans have good expectations for the José Mujica government.
• Uruguay’s debt shot up by 31.5 percent in 2009, and is now set at 69 percent of the GDP, according to recent data released by the Central Bank.

Image: Globovisión @ Flickr.

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Today in Latin America

Top Story — Russia signed a deal with Venezuela to jointly develop an oil field in the country’s Orinoco River region, according to Business Week.

Work in the Junín-6 field could begin this year and is reported to have the potential to produce 450,000 barrels of oil per day, according to Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin.

Russia’s National Oil Consortium would take a 40 percent share of the project, while Venezuela’s state-owned Petroleos would take the remaining 60 percent. Up to $20 billion in investments could be put into the project and if completed could see oil from the field being shipped to United States markets, Sechin said.

“After today’s agreement is ratified by the parliament of Venezuela, the consortium of Russian firms will transfer a bonus amounting to $600 million,” said Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who presided over the signing ceremony.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• The Mayor of Ciudad Juárez José Reyes Ferriz said there was “no logical explanation” for the massacre of 16 people, mostly teenagers, that took place in his town over the weekend.
• Paraguayan soccer player Salvador Cabañas told his father he will play in the World Cup, a week after being shot in the head in the bathroom of a Mexico City bar.

Caribbean

• Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive called a group of U.S. missionaries who were arrested while trying to remove 33 children from Haiti “kidnappers” who knew “what they were doing was wrong.”
• The Cuban government declared a two-month amnesty for illegal gun-owners to register them without penalty.

Central America

• Colombian President Álvaro Uribe met with newly elected Honduran president Porfirio Lobo, in the first step toward renewing ties between the countries.
• Honduras awaits the resumption of foreign aid, now that it has a new president.
• The Panama Canal’s administrator said the toll will increase for ships passing through the canal, despite complaints that it will further aggravate the shipping market crisis.

Andes

• The Peruvian government declared that five regional departments were in a state of emergency after heavy rains. More rain is expected.
• Venezuela and Russia signed a joint deal to develop an oil field in the Orinoco River region.

Southern Cone

• The Brazilian government awarded an environmental license to a controversial plan to build a hydroelectric dam in the Amazon at Belo Monte.
• Argentine president Christina Fernández de Kirchner may seek changes to the country’s central bank charter in an effort to use the bank’s reserves to create more jobs.
• Uruguay’s president-elect José Mujica wants former Argentine soccer star, current national team coach and recovering cocaine addict Diego Maradona to work on an anti-drug campaign.

Image (Wikicommons): Vladimir Putin.