South America

SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela (AP) — Nicolás Maduro’s government on Monday banned gasoline sales in two states as part of a broader lock-down to stem panic buying by Venezuelans accustomed to hoarding basic goods whenever there’s a hint of turmoil.

But his orders, which explicitly prohibit lines outside gas stations, were largely ignored in the western city of San Cristobal. At one gas station, tensions boiled over as motorists, some of whom had been stranded four days waiting to fill up, vowed to stay put until sales resumed.

TOLEMAIDA AIR BASE, Colombia (AP) — Under a covered pavilion near a steaming runway at Colombia’s Tolemaida Air Base, dozens of American paratroopers lie sweating on a concrete slab. Green and brown camouflage face paint drips from their brows.

The soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division can’t move much — they’re loaded down with rifles and nearly 100 pounds of gear. In less than an hour, it will all drop out of a C-130 aircraft moving 150 mph.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — When a re-energized opposition leader Juan Guaidó returned to Venezuela from a world tour that saw him meet President Donald Trump, he turned to a well-worn page in the opposition’s playbook for ousting socialist President Nicolás Maduro —- he called a street protest.

But after only a modest number of supporters showed up Tuesday and they were scattered mid-march, ducking tear gas fired by heavily armed security forces, analysts say it is time for Guaidó and his international backers to refine their approach.

10 March 2020; AFP: Argentina has finalised a proposal to restructure some $69 billion of the country's massive public debt, the government said Tuesday, hoping to delay the maturity of some institutional loans and reduce the amount owed to private creditors.

Since taking office in December, President Alberto Fernandez's administration has insisted it will not be able to pay off its creditors if its recession-hit economy fails to resume growth.

CARACAS, March 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Venezuela’s elections council said that a fire over the weekend destroyed most of the voting machines stored in its main warehouse in the capital, Caracas, potentially complicating parliamentary elections scheduled for this year.

Nearly 50,000 voting machines and almost 600 computers went up in flames as a result of the fire that broke out on Saturday, said elections council chief Tibisay Lucena.

“There was little that could be rescued,” Lucena said in a statement broadcast on state television.

RIO DE JANEIRO, March 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro called on his backers to take to the streets next weekend to show their support for him, even as critics said such a demonstration would be anti-democratic.

“This is not a movement against the Parliament or the judicial branch, but for Brazil,” Bolsonaro said in northern Boa Vista state before heading to Florida for a dinner meeting with Donald Trump at the US president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

CARACAS, March 7. /TASS/: The United States is hatching a plan for war against Venezuela, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said at a meeting with governors and mayors in Caracas on Friday.

"They (the US authorities - TASS) have decided to make a plan to bring war and terrorism to Venezuela, to destabilize it, to fill it with violence, to trigger an armed conflict and to excuse military intervention in our country," Maduro said at the meeting telecast on government-run TV.

Maduro said that the United States had chosen Brazil as its supporter in this scheme.

7 March 2020; AFP: International observers on Friday called on Guyana President David Granger not to claim victory until election results can be verified, due to "credible" allegations of fraud.

Granger's ruling Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change had a clear lead in partial results published Thursday from the oil-rich South American country's largest region.

But international observers say giving out partial results is illegal and have implored the government to respect the law.

BRASILIA/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - The World Economic Forum (WEF) has postponed a Latin America conference set to be held in Brazil at the end of April as a precautionary measure, with the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country rising on Friday to 13.

Public events are being called off around the world as the coronavirus spreads and people seek to avoid gatherings that could provide a venue to spread the disease.

5 March 2020; AFP: The Brazilian economy slowed in President Jair Bolsonaro's first year in office, according to official data released Wednesday, disappointing news for markets that bet on the far-right leader to engineer an economic take-off.

And the outlook for Latin America's biggest economy is not much better for this year, given the damaging impact of the new coronavirus, analysts warned.