South America

ALTO RIO GUAMA INDIGENOUS RESERVE, Brazil (AP) — They hunt with bows and arrows, fish for piranhas and gather wild plants, while some watch soap operas on TV or check the internet on phones inside thatch-roof huts.

They paint their faces with dyes from seeds to prepare for battle and also use video technology to fight illegal loggers and other threats.

Daily life in the remote Tembe indigenous villages in the Amazon jungle of Brazil mixes tradition and modernity.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- Brazil and Argentina signed on Thursday a free trade agreement for the automotive sector in Montevideo, Uruguay.

The deal, which was agreed upon last month, foresees free trade of vehicles starting from July 1, 2029. Brazil and Argentina will gradually phase out trade tariffs for each other in the automotive sector.

BUENOS AIRES, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Argentine government inaugurated a solar park built with Chinese funding and technology, with an eye to illuminating more than 160,000 homes.

Cauchari Solar Park, located atop a remote mountain peak 4,000 meters above sea level, was opened Tuesday near Cauchari, a town in the province of Jujuy, which borders neighboring Chile and Bolivia.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Inside a colonial-era mansion that has seen better days, leaders of Peru’s Fuerza Popular movement gathered for an urgent meeting Thursday, scrambling for ways to save their party’s once-dominant place in politics.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — A struggle between Peru’s president and congress over who will govern threatened to become a lengthy and destabilizing legal battle as each side dug in Tuesday amid the deepest constitutional crisis in nearly three decades, though one rival claimant to the presidency dropped out of the fight late in the day.

BRASILIA, Oct 1 (NNN-MERCOPRESS) — An oil spill has contaminated beaches and coastline across eight Brazilian states, the country’s environment agency said, although authorities are still stumped as to its origin.

Environmental agency Ibama said that beaches along a 3,000-kilometer coastline of Brazil’s Northeast region had been hit by the spill. It said some oil-coated birds and sea turtles had been washed up and were being treated.

CARACAS, September 28. /TASS/: Two planes with Russian military specialists arrived in Venezuela to render technical support to the country, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Friday.

"Several days ago, two planes landed with personnel, rendering military and technical support. They are in Venezuela. Those who arrived in the beginning of the year, flew away, a new team arrived," Maduro said in a broadcast released via Twitter.

MONTEVIDEO, Sept 25 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) – Uruguay will withdraw from the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, also known as the Rio Pact, because it is being wrongly used against Venezuela’s government, Uruguayan Foreign Minister, Rodolfo Nin Novoa, said.

The announcement came a day after 16 of the 19 pact members voted to employ the pact to impose sanctions against Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, accusing him of criminal activities including drug trafficking and money laundering.

CARACAS, September 22. /TASS/: More than 13 million Venezuelans have signed the petition to protect national sovereignty against US economic sanctions, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced on Saturday.

"I extend my congratulations to the great anti-imperialistic march of our people that filled the streets of Caracas with a beautiful act of love and patriotism to deliver 13,287,742 signatures for peace and national sovereignty," the Venezuelan leader said via Twitter.

It is noted that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will receive all the signatures.

CONCEPCION, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivian volunteer firefighters, exhausted from battling blazes sweeping rapidly across the country’s lowlands, are starting to lose hope and retreat from the front lines of some infernos in the drought-stricken region.

The fires this year are Bolivia’s worst in at least two decades, with the size of burned land across the country nearly doubling in under three weeks, destroying swaths of biodiverse forest and ranches and farms that sustain thousands of people.