Peru

LIMA, April 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Peru will release under amnesty about 3,000 prisoners including those who are particularly at risk from the coronavirus pandemic, the justice minister has said.

The disease has killed at least seven inmates, and infected more than 40 in Peru’s overcrowded prisons along with 26 wardens.

“We are going to amnesty approximately 3,000 detainees who fall into the groups vulnerable to the coronavirus,” Minister Fernando Castaneda said on the ATV channel.

He said the government would issue a decree on Thursday formalizing the measure.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Seated in a wheelchair at one of Peru’s oldest hospitals, 84-year-old Emma Salvador struggled for each breath, aided by an oxygen mask pinching her face. Her son fanned her with folded sheets of paper, wishing he could do more.

“Seeing her in such pain is what overwhelms me,” said José Gonzalez, 57, who confessed fearing that the worst outcome awaited his mother, while encouraging her to drink some water.

13 April 2020; AFP: Police in Lima on Sunday arrested a Chinese citizen for illegally conducting rapid COVID-19 tests on the public with newly-delivered kits stolen from Peru's health ministry.

Tianxing Zhang, 36, was arrested in the Brena district of Lima as he was about to take samples from two women at the door of their house, police said.

He "was proceeding to carry out rapid tests for COVID-19 that he had stolen" from the Lima Sur health authority where he worked, according to a police statement.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Pushing a shopping cart with two children, César Alegre emerges from the large, deteriorated house near Peru’s presidential palace that is shared by 45 families to search for food. Sometimes he begs in markets. Sometimes he sells candies.

It is a task that was hard at the best of times, but with a month-long quarantine that has forced 32 million Peruvians to stay home and closed restaurants and food kitchens, it has become much harder.

LIMA, April 3 (Xinhua) -- Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra announced on Friday an economic plan to aid companies that have been affected by the state of emergency, currently in place to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country, where 1,595 infections and 55 deaths have been reported.

The legislative decree "Reactiva Peru," or "Reactivate Peru," approved under the exceptional powers granted by Congress to the president, seeks to provide liquidity to companies that have been affected by the quarantine.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the two-term United Nations secretary-general who brokered a historic cease-fire between Iran and Iraq in 1988 and who in later life came out of retirement to help re-establish democracy in his Peruvian homeland, has died. He was 100.

His son, Francisco Pérez de Cuéllar, said his father died Wednesday at home of natural causes. Current U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the Peruvian diplomat a “personal inspiration.”

LIMA, Feb 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The death toll from the explosion of a gas tanker in Lima last month has risen to 30, Peru’s ministry of health said.

Two women and a man were the most recent to succumb to burns from a fireball that occurred when the tanker truck carrying 10,000 liters of liquefied gas exploded on Jan 23.

Initially only two people were killed and 50 injured, but the death toll has continued to rise due to the severity of their burns.

LIMA, Jan 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Peru’s Keiko Fujimori-led opposition suffered a crushing blow at legislative elections on Sunday, losing dozens of seats in the Congress it had dominated since 2016, according to early results.

According to a rapid count by the Ipsos research firm, Fujimori’s Popular Force party’s share of the vote has dropped from 36.3 percent in 2016 to just 6.9 percent.

LIMA, Dec 9 (NNN-XINHUA) — Peruvian authorities have arrested 27 members of the military, including high-ranking officials, on suspicion of stealing fuel between 2013 and 2018, local media reported Sunday.

An investigation led to the preliminary 10-day arrests of generals Augusto Villarroel, Carlos Mayca and Moises Chavez, and 24 other officers and army men, state news agency Andina said.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Supporters cheered late Friday as once-powerful opposition leader and two-time Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori left the prison where she had been held while being investigated for alleged corruption. Peru’s Constitutional Tribunal approved her release.

Smiling broadly, the daughter of jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori walked out of the women’s prison in the Lima district of Chorrillos and was handed a bouquet of roses by her husband, Mark Villanella, who had been on a hunger strike demanding her release.