South America

BRASILIA, July 9 (Reuters) - Brazilian Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco on Friday vehemently rejected any speculation that the 2022 presidential election may not take place, insisting that the constitution will be upheld and the wishes and expectations of the Brazilian people will be met.

Speaking to reporters in the Senate, Pacheco was responding to comments made by President Jair Bolsonaro earlier in the week that he may not accept the result of the election unless the voting system is changed.

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazil’s presidential election is 15 months away, yet barely a day passes without President Jair Bolsonaro raising the specter of fraud and warning that he will be entitled to reject the results unless Congress overhauls the voting system.

He has mentioned potential vote fraud more than 20 times in the past two months and even floated the idea of canceling the election altogether.

CARACAS, July 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — President Joe Biden reaffirmed US support for Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido in a letter Monday even in the midst of efforts to resume negotiations with President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

“Under your leadership and in coalition with civil society leaders you are preserving those ideals of freedom democracy and sovereignty,” Biden wrote in a letter addressed to Guaido and sent through the Office of Venezuelan Affairs in neighboring Colombia, an official in that office said.

SANTIAGO, July 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Delegates chose a woman from Chile’s majority indigenous Mapuche people to lead them in drafting the country’s new constitution – a dramatic turnaround for a group that is unacknowledged in the country’s present rule book.

LIMA, July 4 (NNN-Xinhua) — Peru’s security forces seized a shipment of 236 kilograms of cocaine at the port of the coastal province of Callao, the Anti-Drug Directorate of the National Police reported on Saturday.

According to the police report, the drugs seized were discovered inside a container at the port’s APM Terminals and were destined for the city of Antwerp in Belgium.

“Inside, four suitcases were found with a total of approximately 236 kilos of cocaine,” explained the Anti-Drug Directorate.

SANTIAGO, July 4 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Chile officially starts writing a new constitution Sunday to replace the one it inherited from the era of dictator Augusto Pinochet and is widely blamed for deep social inequalities that gave rise to deadly protests in 2019.

The country’s biggest protests in 30 years of democracy won Chileans a referendum last October in which a majority voted for a new constitution to be drawn up by a body of elected members.

LIMA, July 4 (NNN-TELESUR) — The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) of Peru extended the suspension of flights from India, Brazil and South Africa to limit the chances of spreading in its nation territory the new variants of COVID-19 originating in these countries.

The Ministerial Resolution 636-2021-MTC/01, published on Thursday, establishes the new extension that runs until July 15 and that at the end may be renewed in the case that the conditions in these countries continue to deterioriate.

SANTIAGO, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Chile will have access to the new submarine fiber optic cable Mistral, which will stretch to Guatemala and have connection points in Peru and Ecuador later this year.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Florencio Utreras, a researcher at the Mathematical Modeling Center of the University of Chile, explained that a submarine fiber optic cable allows light to be transmitted mainly through laser rays, which are emitted at the ends of communication devices, and which make it possible to transmit encrypted data.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Protests against President Jair Bolsonaro spread across Brazil on Saturday, a day after a Supreme Court justice authorized a criminal investigation into his response to allegations of potential corruption involving a vaccine deal.

Demonstrators gathered by the thousands in more than 40 cities to demand Bolsonaro’s impeachment or greater access to vaccines against COVID-19.

BRASILIA, July 2 (Reuters) - Brazil's prosecutor general has requested an investigation of President Jair Bolsonaro over his conduct in negotiations to acquire an Indian COVID-19 vaccine, which has been steeped in scandal, according to a copy of the request seen by Reuters.

The request from the prosecutor will have to be approved by Supreme Court Justice Rosa Weber and comes in response to a request from senators. The senators asked for an investigation over alleged corruption in the acquisition of vaccines.