South America

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The morning after a Brazilian Senate committee recommended criminal indictments for President Jair Bolsonaro over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bruna Chaves, who lost her mother to the disease, was venting her pain in an emotional grief support group session.

“It wasn’t my mom’s time to go,” she told the others Wednesday inside an ecumenical chapel in Rio de Janeiro. “Somebody needs to be blamed.”

QUITO, Oct 25 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) – At least four people were killed yesterday, by an avalanche on the Chimborazo volcano, in central Ecuador, said the country’s Integrated Security Service, ECU 911.

The avalanche fell on a group of 12 hikers, as they were climbing the volcano, at an altitude of about 6,100 metres, the agency said in a statement.

LIMA, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Peru's opposition-led Congress pushed back a confirmation vote on the country's new Cabinet until next Thursday, in order to mourn the death of a lawmaker who suddenly died on Monday.

Lawmaker Fernando Herrera Mamani, who belonged to the official Free Peru party, died of a heart condition, Congress said.

The delay caused by Herrera Mamani's death will prolong the uncertainty over the fate of the new Cabinet, the second to be nominated by Socialist President Pedro Castillo in less than three months in office.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 25 (Reuters) - Facebook (FB.O) late on Sunday removed a video by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro from its platforms, in which the far-right leader made a false claim that COVID-19 vaccines were linked with developing AIDS.

"Our policies don't allow claims that COVID-19 vaccines kill or seriously harm people," a Facebook spokesperson said on Monday.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombian security forces have captured the country’s most wanted drug trafficker, a rural warlord who stayed on the run for more than a decade by corrupting state officials and aligning himself with combatants on the left and right.

President Iván Duque likened the arrest Saturday of Dairo Antonio Úsuga to the capture three decades ago of Pablo Escobar.

Colombia’s military presented Úsuga to the media in handcuffs and wearing rubber boots preferred by rural farmers.

QUITO, Oct 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Ecuador’s attorney general’s office said it has opened a preliminary investigation against President Guillermo Lasso for tax fraud, after an opposition leader presented allegations against him linked to the Pandora Papers leak.

Former presidential candidate and indigenous leader Yaku Perez called for an investigation into Lasso’s finances and tax contributions after offshore companies owned by Lasso were mentioned in the Pandora Papers.

BRASILIA, Oct 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro and his Colombia counterpart Ivan Duque said they would head to the next UN climate summit “united” in defence of the Amazon.

The COP26 climate conference begins in Glasgow on Oct 31 and will last two weeks.

“We will arrive in Glasgow untied to tackle a very important and dear affair for all of us: our dear, rich and desirable Amazon,” said Bolsonaro following his meeting with Duque in Brasilia.

BRASILIA, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Wednesday confirmed plans for a new welfare program that boosts spending, but insisted it would not violate the government's constitutional spending limits, contradicting reports a day earlier that roiled financial markets.

Bolsonaro told an audience in the state of Ceara that the new welfare program, called 'Auxilio Brasil', would pay 400 reais ($72) per month to poor families, but the government has the "responsibility" to make it fit the spending cap. He provided no details about how that would happen.

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazilians will turn their focus on Wednesday to the Senate, where a report six months in the making will recommend President Jair Bolsonaro be indicted on criminal charges for allegedly bungling the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and pushing the country’s death toll to second-highest in the world.

Oct 18 (Reuters) - Alex Saab, a businessman accused of laundering money on behalf of Venezuela's government, will be arraigned in Florida federal court on Monday, in a case that pits the United States against the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

U.S. prosecutors in 2019 charged Saab in connection with a bribery scheme linked to Venezuela's state-controlled exchange rate. The United States also sanctioned him for allegedly orchestrating a scheme that enabled him and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to profit from a state-run food distribution program.