Blog, Latin America: Week in Review
Accident in Haiti Kills at Least 29 and Injures more than 60
January 18, 2012 By Staff
Today in Latin America
Top Story — A dump truck carrying gravel collided with a bus in Port-au-Prince, Haiti late Monday night, killing at least 29 people and injuring 67 more, according to officials. The bus crashed into a sidewalk on Route Delmas where vendors and pedestrians were gathered and the ensuing chaos was broadcast live from the scene of the accident, just in front of national television headquarters. Doctors Without Borders, on hand to help treat the injured along with the national police and Brazilian peacekeepers, said the organization treats an average of 300 people every week injured in vehicle accidents in three Haitian hospitals. Haitian President Michel Martelly’s office released a statement saying that the president had gone to the scene of the crash with Prime Minister Garry Conille.
Read more from the Miami Herald.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- Mexican police said Monday that a Canadian citizen was shot dead in the state of Sonora while seven suspected gunmen were killed in Morelos in a shootout with police.
- The Mexican Navy seized 14 shipping containers full of material used to make methamphetamine that was bound for Guatemala and Nicaragua.
- Federal deportation hearings in Denver and Baltimore will resume this week after more than a month of review by prosecutors to determine which cases are lower priority because defendants have no criminal records.
- A Gallup Poll released Tuesday says that more than 4 out of 10 Americans wish that there were fewer foreigners coming into the country.
Caribbean
- Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, presumably under house arrest since his return to Haiti in January 2011, is enjoying high-profile public appearances and resurgent popularity in his native country.
- Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, says that Cuba will consider legalizing same-sex civil unions in 2012.
Central America
- Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes apologized Monday for the Salvadoran miliary’s massacre of some 1,000 people in the village of El Mozote in 1981.
- Despite international pressure to protect the human rights of gay and lesbians, at least 62 people in Honduras’ LGBT community have been murdered since 2010.
- About 6,000 laborers working on the Panama Canal expansion project went on strike Monday for higher wages.
Andes
- Venezuela announced Monday that it was withdrawing its consulate personnel from the U.S. due to threats by exiles with links to terrorism.
- Peruvian lawmakers said that Peruvian Vice President Omar Chehade will attempt to hang onto his seat in Congress despite corruption charges and calls to step aside.
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez disputed allegations Monday that his new defense minister, Henry Rangel Silva, aided drug traffickers and FARC rebels.
- Colombia’s head prosecutor is investigating cost overruns of $1 million for the $2.5 million Under-20 World Cup in Colombia last August.
- The last of eleven World War II-era U.S. bombs in the Galapagos Islands are expected to be destroyed by the Ecuadorian government on Tuesday.
Southern Cone
- A U.S. appeals court threw out an $185 million award for BG Group Plc after the company claimed that the Argentine government’s freezing of natural gas prices drove a group it controlled into bankruptcy.
- Chilean President Sebastián Piñera is predicting an energy deficit within the next three years as demand for energy outpaces supply.
- Brazil is modernizing its Navy with new French-built submarines and expanding its role to patrol lakes and rivers.
- The Rio de Janeiro police department said that it is investigating allegations that a contestant on Brazil’s Big Brother reality TV show sexually assaulted another.
Image: gina_vince @ Flickr.
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