CURITIBA, Brazil – Vera wanted to sing, but she lost her breath every time she tried to raise her voice. As one of the 24 inmates in the Águia News Choir, at the Women’s Work Release Center (CRAF) in Curitiba, Paraná, it took a month of music for her to give up a 17-year addiction [...]
Maracaibo, Venezuela – Coromoto Torres can’t wait for her first trip overseas. Her bags are packed, her airline tickets are purchased and several years of savings have given her a purse full of bolívares. All her passport needs is a departure stamp. But she can’t take her first trip outside South America because she doesn’t [...]
MANAGUA, Nicaragua and GUATEMALA CITY – The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) has made it perfectly clear to Central America: It must do a lot more to stop the rise of the trafficking and consumption of synthetic drugs. That’s because synthetic drugs such as LSD, speed and ecstasy have displaced cocaine and heroin throughout [...]
Argentina is said to have a long history of instability with regards to politics and this has been the situation since the World War II. Argentina had almost went into a coma during its economic crisis in 2001 but it was able to rebound from this situation soon enough. During the economic crisis in 2008, [...]
Guatemala City – The nation’s levels of air pollution are alarming and the problem gets worse each year, according to the Annual Report on Air Monitoring. Authored by the Universidad de San Carlos (USAC) since 1995, the report concludes the main cause of poor air quality is exhaust from vehicles, specifically those used in public [...]
Guatemala City – The government is taking its fight against narco-trafficking to the sky. The C4i (Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence) system will have the ability to take aerial shots, which will assist law enforcement officials to identify areas that are hotbeds for drug activity. But it also will assist meteorologists because the system [...]
Lima, Peru – The government is determined to employ a multidisciplinary strategy to prevent young people from joining gangs, as more than 12,000 belong to the about 430 gangs in the capital city of Lima and nearby El Callao. Councilman Federico Tong Hurtado, an analyst on youth issues, said the number of young people involved [...]
Monterrey, Mexico – Authorities in the Mexican state of Nuevo León intend to recruit 11,000 officers in the coming years to bolter a recently created police force after acknowledging the existing one has been corrupted and infiltrated by organized crime. “It’s a real challenge to recruit new police officers at such a complex time,” said [...]
Washington, D.C., U.S.A. – Latin America and the Caribbean are the world’s cleanest regions when it comes to energy sources. Renewable sources meet 30% of the demand for primary energy – transport, industry and commerce – in the region, well above the worldwide average of 13%, says Arnaldo Vieira de Carvalho, a senior energy specialist [...]
San Jose, Costa Rica, October 21 (ECLAC/FAO/IICA). Despite the current context of volatility and high food prices, in the long term, the agricultural sector in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) will be able to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by having available land – albeit concentrated in a few countries- a relative abundance of [...]
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