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CHÁVEZ TO PROPOSE REMOVING HIS TERM LIMITS
The New York Times
August 15, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 14 — President Hugo Chávez will unveil a project to change the Constitution on Wednesday that is expected to allow him to be re-elected indefinitely, a move that would enhance his authority to accelerate a socialist-inspired transformation of Venezuelan society.
The removal of term limits for Mr. Chávez, which is at the heart of the proposal, is expected to be accompanied by measures circumscribing the authority of elected governors and mayors, who would be prevented from staying in power indefinitely, according to versions of the project leaked in recent weeks.
Willian Lara, the communications minister, said Mr. Chávez would announce the project before the National Assembly, where all 167 lawmakers support the president. Supporters of Mr. Chávez, who was re-elected last year with some 60 percent of the vote, also control the Supreme Court, the entire federal bureaucracy, public oil and infrastructure companies and every state government but two.
POWERFUL QUAKE KILLS AT LEAST 48 IN PERU
The Washington Post
August 16, 2007
LIMA, Peru, Aug. 16 -- Peru was hit by a strong earthquake early Wednesday night, killing at least 48 people and injuring 200, according to early reports from civil defense units.
The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the 7.9 magnitude earthquake was centered about 90 miles southeast of Lima, the capital, and struck at 6:40 p.m. The town of Ica, about 175 miles south of Lima, appeared to be the hardest hit, though the temblor rippled streets and damaged buildings in Lima.
A tsunami warning was issued for Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia. Several coastal cities were preparing to evacuate Wednesday night as a result of the warnings.
More than 100 aftershocks continued to rattle the area by the end of Wednesday. Hernando Tavera, head of seismology at the Geophysical Institute of Peru, said Peruvians should be prepared for more.
"A great deal of energy is released during an earthquake. It is a process that does not end immediately, but will continue for some time," he said.
HUNDREDS DEAD IN PERU EARTHQUAKE
The Washington Post
August 17, 2007
LIMA, Peru, Aug. 16 -- Victims of Peru's deadliest earthquake in more than 35 years were pulled from the rubble of adobe huts and dust-covered buildings on Thursday, as tens of thousands of people displaced by the disaster sought shelter.
Authorities said 437 people had been killed and more than 800 injured in the 8.0-magnitude earthquake on Wednesday. The casualty figures were likely to rise as relief efforts spread out from urban areas and into the region's isolated mountainside communities.
More than 16,000 homes were seriously damaged in the quake, nearly all of them in the southern cities of Pisco and Ica.
The hardest-hit towns were without electricity and effectively cut off from the rest of the country. Sizable chunks of the Pan-American Highway, which travels along the Peruvian coast linking most of the country's major cities, were destroyed during the temblor. Relief workers said it could take days to reach some areas.
PERU MOBILIZES AFTER MAJOR EARTHQUAKE
The Christian Science Monitor
August 17, 2007
LIMA, PERU - Peru's government mobilized relief and rescue efforts Thursday as the death toll from Wednesday night's massive earthquake rose steadily.
At press time, Peru's civil defense agency reported that more than 300 people were killed and close to 1,500 injured as a result of the 8.0-magnitude earthquake, which was centered in the ocean about 90 miles south of the country's capital, Lima.
The hardest-hit areas were more than 150 miles south of Lima. Many of the deaths were registered in the city of Ica, where numerous buildings collapsed.
Nearly 200 people one of the cities closest to the quake's epicenter, Pisco, were trapped under the rubble of a Roman Catholic church, which crumbled during evening mass.
Pisco Mayor Juan Mendoza told the state news agency Andina that approximately 20 percent of buildings in his city were destroyed.
Crisostomo Palma, a housing contractor in the town of San Vicente de Cańete, which is also close to the epicenter, said people were confused immediately following the earthquake.
IN PERU, A GRIM PROCESSION AMID QUAKE'S RUBBLE
The Washington Post
August 18, 2007
PISCO, Peru, Aug. 17 -- Even the cemetery was in ruins, the tombstones cracked and the mausoleums skirted with piles of rubble.
Carlos Zuńiga and his granddaughter, Maria, 17, blankly watched as another parade of polished coffins passed by -- about the only objects in this city not filmed in a thick dust.
Two days before, Maria had been chatting on the second floor of her home with her mother and grandmother about buying a new dresser. The next thing she knew, she recalled, she was being pulled from under a sheet of concrete and everyone was telling her how lucky she was. But she didn't feel fortunate. Her mother and grandmother were dead under the same rubble, among the estimated 510 people killed by the earthquake that shook Peru's coast on Wednesday.
On Friday, she and her grandfather followed their relatives' coffins into Pisco's main cemetery, completing a grim journey that continues to be repeated here as more bodies are pulled from the debris, more coffins are filled, and more families try to restore some semblance of normality to their upended lives.
THOUSANDS IN PERU LACK FOOD, WATER
The Washington Post
August 19, 2007
LIMA, Peru, Aug. 18 -- Word leaked Friday night that several relief workers were sleeping in a seminary in the shattered town of Ica. The news instantly transformed the building into a tempting target for those desperate for supplies since Wednesday's 8.0-magnitude earthquake.
"The building was attacked twice during the night, but fortunately the windows were barred, so they weren't able to get in," Aaron Skrocki, emergency program manager for Catholic Relief Services in South America, said on Saturday. "Because of the lack of electricity here, it's difficult to tell whether the groups are five people or 50."
Such acts of desperation are complicating the already problematic delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid to areas most affected by the quake, which killed more than 500 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
Peru's president, Alan García, dispatched more military forces to the region Saturday to combat looting and theft and to ensure that supplies reach those most in need.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
DERAILING CHÁVEZ'S POWER GRAB
The Miami Herald
Aug. 19, 2007
ANow that Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez has shown his hand and officially announced that he will seek to become president for life, let me offer some suggestions on what the Venezuelan opposition, Latin American democracies and the United States should do to return democracy to that country.
Chávez, as you may know, announced last week that he will ask his 100 percent loyalist National Assembly to change the constitution and extend the presidential term from six to seven years and allow him to run indefinitely. In addition, he asked to end the autonomy of the Central Bank, and to create a ``popular militia.''
His plan to grab absolute power -- sweetened with a proposal to reduce the workday to six hours -- will go to the National Assembly, where it is likely to be approved by a near-unanimous vote and must be later ratified in a national referendum.
FEMA CHIEF PREPARES AGENCY FOR DEAN
The Miamii Herald
Aug. 20, 2007
WASHINGTON --
The government has contracts it can quickly take "off the shelf" for buses, ambulances and relocation camps and has improved communications should Hurricane Dean strike Texas, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Sunday.
As he urged Texas residents to prepare for a possible evacuation, FEMA head R. David Paulison told reporters that there would be no repeat of the problems that occured after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. "From my perspective, it's not going to happen," he said.
"Katrina was a wake-up call for all of us in emergency management and also for the federal government. We know we have to play together as a team, we know we have to respond as the federal government, not as individual agencies," said Paulison, who took over the agency in 2006 after his predecessor, Michael Brown, was sharply rebuked for the government's slow response to Katrina.
"I do not see this country allowing another Katrina-type event to happen."
The storm is on course for northern Mexico, but could shift and hit the region around Brownsville, Texas, Paulison said.
Of particular concern, he said, is the state's southeastern coast and its colonias, or immigrant shantytowns, that are prevalent a few miles from the Mexican border.
GOVERNMENT'S EARTHQUAKE RELIEF IN PERU NOT ENOUGH, SAY EXPERTS
The Christian Science Monitor
August 20, 2007
PISCO, PERU - Manuel Doroteo was on the road this weekend, leaving what was left of his home here on the Peruvian coast after it was leveled by last week's magnitude 8 earthquake.
Mr. Doroteo remained in Pisco, the city hit hardest by the quake, when the rest of his family quickly relocated 140 miles north to the capital, Lima.
But after going a few days without water or electricity and sleeping in a tent, Doroteo decided to pack up and join the family.
"This has been like a terror movie. There is nothing and I got tired of waiting for water to arrive. The government handed out beans and rice, but people have no way of cooking them," he said, waiting at three-hour traffic jam to get past a section of highway knocked out by the earthquake.
Like many of the nearly 100,000 people forced from their homes by Peru's worst earthquake in 37 years, Doroteo faults the government for not doing enough to get aid to victims.
CATEGORY 5 DEAN BEARS DOWN ON MEXICO
The Miami Herald
Aug. 20, 2007
TULUM, Mexico --
Tourists fled the Mayan ruins, shack dwellers in remote areas sought sturdier refuge and oil field workers turned off the spigots Monday night as a savage Hurricane Dean launched its attack on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.
A top-rank Category 5 terror, poised to deliver castastrophic damage early today under cover of darkness, Dean menaced a tourist region called the Maya Riviera, the city of Chetumal and one of the world's most crucial oil operations.
Its work was done in Jamaica, where at least two people died, many houses were shattered or flooded or both, and the cleanup was under way.
Now, it was Mexico's turn. Rain arrived around 5 p.m. EDT, the leading edge of genuine trouble.
''We'll take them out by force,'' Tulum Mayor Jorge Luis Cordoba Pech said of anyone who resists evacuation. Many residents of the coastal town live in tin-and-wood shanties. ``We can't let them lose their lives.''
YUCATAN VILLAGERS IMPLORED TO FLEE HOMES
The Washington Post
August 21, 2007
FELIPE CARRILLO PUERTO, Mexico, Aug. 21 -- Hurricane Dean roared early Tuesday into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where some campesinos refused to leave their thatch-roofed shacks in rural villages and brandished machetes at evacuation crews.
After battering the Cayman Islands with heavy rain and wind, Dean, which reached Category 5 strength Monday evening, lashed the Yucatan with 160 mph winds and even stronger gusts before dawn Tuesday. Torrential rains and storm surges up to 18 feet are forecast.
"It's as bad as it gets," meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said in a telephone interview from the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
The storm, which is blamed for eight deaths over the weekend on Caribbean islands, appeared to be veering away from the luxury resorts of Cancun and toward lightly populated areas at the southern end of the peninsula seldom visited by tourists. The region is known for its natural splendor, highlighted by the Sian Kaan Biosphere Reserve, and is rich with natural buffers, such as swamps, that can help deaden the impact of hurricanes.
9 GUATEMALA ADOPTION BABIES HOSPITALIZED
The Miami Herald
Tue, Aug. 21, 2007
GUATEMALA CITY --
Nine of 46 babies taken into custody by Guatemalan authorities after police raided an adoption home catering to Americans have been hospitalized with respiratory problems, officials said Tuesday.
Authorities have said the Casa Quivira adoption home, run by an American man and his Guatemalan wife, lacked the proper paperwork for the children and they are investigating whether any of the children were abducted or coerced from their parents.
Pediatrician Ramiro Molina of the Guatemalan welfare agency said the children were improving and could be released within days. He said the problems stem from respiratory illnesses the children suffered before police raided the home Aug. 11 and the agency started caring for them.
Casa Quivira owner Clifford Phillips of Florida and adoptive parents in the United States said in e-mails to The Associated Press that the government's caretakers failed to provide the babies with proper food, medical care and clean conditions.
IN YUCATÁN PENINSULA, BATTENING DOWN FOR HURRICANE DEAN
The Christian Science Monitor
August 21, 2007
PLAYA DEL CARMEN, MEXICO - The usually lively Playa del Carmen, on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, was silent and sober today as authorities evacuated tourists, shopkeepers boarded up windows, and families stocked up on food and water in anticipation of hurricane Dean, a Category 4 storm, making landfall.
Hurricane Dean is the first hurricane of the 2007 Atlantic storm season, and Mexican authorities warn that it could turn into a Category 5 storm upon landfall. After Dean passed south of Jamaica Sunday, it was expected to continue on a westward path and slam into Mexico some 125 miles south of Cancún and Playa del Carmen.
Although Jamaica avoided a direct hit, Jamaican authorities said 300,000 people were displaced by the storm but no casualties had been reported yet. Mudslides were reported across the island, and some main roads were blocked. Electricity remained off. Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller declared a monthlong state of emergency and called a cabinet meeting to discuss the potential impact on Aug. 27 general elections.
DEAN BEARS DOWN ON MEXICO'S OIL INDUSTRY
The Miami Herald
Aug. 21, 2007
MAJAHUAL, Mexico --
Hurricane Dean swept across the Yucatan peninsula Tuesday, toppling trees, power lines and houses as it bore down on the heart of Mexico's oil industry. Glitzy resorts on the Mayan Riviera were spared, but vulnerable Mayan villages were exposed to the full fury of one of history's most intense storms.
President Felipe Calderon said no deaths were immediately reported in Mexico, after Dean killed 13 people in the Caribbean. But driving rain, poor communications and impassable roads made it difficult to determine how isolated Mayan communities fared in the sparsely populated jungle where Dean made landfall as a ferocious Category 5 hurricane.
"It wasn't minutes of terror. It was hours," said Catharine Morales, 30, a native of Montreal, Canada, who has lived in Majahual for a year. "The walls felt like they were going to explode."
One of a handful people to ignore military orders to evacuate, she weathered the storm in her new brick-walled house with her husband and 7-month-old baby. Winds of 165 mph - with gusts of 200 mph, faster than the takeoff speed of many passenger jets - blew out windows and pulled pieces from their roof.
LAWMAKERS OK CHAVEZ'S REFORMS
The Miami Herald
Aug. 21, 2007
CARACAS, Venezuela --
Venezuela's congress, dominated by allies of President Hugo Chavez, gave initial approval Tuesday to constitutional reforms that would allow him to run for re-election and possibly govern for decades to come.
After about six hours of debate, National Assembly president Cilia Flores said Chavez's proposed changes to the constitution, including the lifting of presidential term limits, received "majority approval."
Flores did not say how many of the 167 lawmakers voted in favor of the reforms, saying only that they were approved with overwhelming support. Final approval is expected within two or three months, and the changes would have to be approved by voters in a referendum.
The National Assembly has been solidly pro-Chavez since the opposition boycotted a 2005 vote and had been expected to sign off on the changes proposed by Chavez in Tuesday's first reading. The reforms, if approved, would extend presidential terms from six to seven years and allow Chavez to run again in 2013.
Government opponents have attacked the reforms, saying they will weaken democracy by permitting Chavez to become a lifelong leader like his ally Fidel Castro of Cuba.
Chavez, a former paratooper who was re-elected by a wide margin in December on promises to steer the country toward socialism, says the changes will give Venezuelans greater decision-making power and aid the transfer of billions of dollars from Venezuela's foreign reserves into social programs.
JUDGE DEFENDS IMPARTIALITY IN CUBAN-CHILD CUSTODY CASE
The Miami Herald
Aug. 21, 2007
A week before she is to preside over one of the most controversial child-custody trials held at Miami's juvenile court, the judge at the center of the dispute vehemently defended herself Monday against allegations she might be susceptible to political pressure.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen, who has been on the bench since 1992 -- mostly in dependency court -- will decide whether a 4-year-old girl will return to Cuba to live with her birth father or be raised in the Coral Gables home of the foster parents who have cared for her the past 16 months.
Reacting to an e-mail sent last week to the attorney for the girl's birth father, the judge insisted in a hearing Monday that she would hear the case impartially, and would rebound and find a new legal challenge if the outcome of the case proved unpopular. Cohen is up for reelection in 2008.
''I am not worried about reelection; I am worried about doing the right thing for everybody involved,'' Cohen said. ``Anyone who thinks I would make a decision based on an election doesn't know me.''
MEXICO'S PEMEX EVACUATES RIGS FOR DEAN
The Miami Herald
Tue, Aug. 21, 2007
POZA RICA, Mexico --
Most of Mexico's offshore oil and gas production shut down Tuesday as a weakened Hurricane Dean swirled into the Gulf of Mexico. Skeleton crews kept oil flowing near the central coast, where Dean was expected to make landfall as a stronger storm Wednesday.
Normally, more than 1,000 workers extract oil from seven platforms in the northern region of Pemex's offshore oil operations. By Tuesday morning, no more than 10 were left on each rig, said Enrique Matus Bocanegra, a spokesman for Mexico's state oil company, Pemex.
The crews had orders to keep oil pumping and ride out the storm if possible. If not, they were to shut off the pumps and quickly make for the coast. While the platforms are built to withstand hurricanes, "there is always a risk," Matus said.
The platforms, a half-hour helicopter ride from the oil city of Poza Rica, are linked to 32 underwater wells that pump 18,000 barrels of crude each day under normal conditions.
Topping Pemex's concern was the main oil-producing zone just offshore and south of the city of Campeche, directly in the storm's path.
IS THE PARTY IN PANAMA OVER?
The Miami Herald
Aug. 21, 2007
PANAMA CITY, Panama --
Cement prices have doubled, and it's hard to get a truck to come to your building site. The situation is similar for steel, glass, bricks and all the guts of a high-rise condominium.
The real-estate business is having a party in Panama.
As of July, 380 tower projects were under way or announced, representing more than 40,000 condos and apartments. A year ago, it was 11,000 units.
The builders say Americans looking for the urban high life in retirement will snap up these buildings in a new Miami that's half the price of the real Miami.
''The baby boomers, simply put,'' wrote Roger Khafif, builder of the Trump Ocean Club in the Punta Pacifica shoreline neighborhood, in an e-mail about his target buyers. ``Without them, Panama's real-estate boom would bust.''
DEAN BATTERS MEXICO'S OIL INDUSTRY
The Washington Post
August 22, 2007
VERACRUZ, Mexico, Aug. 22 -- Mexico's rich offshore oil platforms came under assault early Wednesday as Hurricane Dean whirled through the Gulf of Campeche after downing trees and dumping heavy rain on the Yucatan Peninsula.
More than a day after the storm struck the Yucatan as a massive Category 5 hurricane, there still have been no deaths reported, but several small cities were bailing out after severe street flooding.
Mexico's state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, said early Wednesday that it would not know until later in the daywhether its drilling platforms have been damaged. The company evacuated 18,000 workers and shut down production, losing 2.7 million barrels of oil a day and 2.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
After missing the most heavily populated areas of the Yucatan, Dean once again headed for lightly populated areas on the mainland. The National Hurricane Center said the center of Dean made landfall near the town of Tecolutla in the state of Veracruz at about 11:30 a.m. CDT. The center said the hurricane was a Category 2 with winds estimated at 100 mph.
PERU FAMILY’S STRUGGLE REFLECTS HARDSHIPS AFTER QUAKE
The New York Times
August 22, 2007
PISCO, Peru, Aug. 21 — The chilly dawn came as a relief for Marlen Mayhua. She and her seven family members roused themselves from a fitful slumber on mattresses — and one fruit cart — laid on the dusty sidewalk in front of the crumbled remains of their home.
Last week’s devastating earthquake leveled the three-bedroom adobe structure, leaving Mrs. Mayhua’s family hungry and sleeping on the street. The relatives plan to stay there as long as it takes to rebuild the home their family has lived in for 45 years, and to restore their shattered lives.
On Tuesday Mrs. Mayhua, 32, took the first steps toward putting her family and 20 others on her block back on their feet, five days after the earthquake leveled this seaside town in southern Peru.
Despite planes full of aid arriving from countries around the world, Peruvians throughout the earthquake-ravaged zone are struggling to get the basic food and water they need to survive. Relief efforts have met with mixed success at best, with confusion reigning at some relief centers and sickness spreading.
EDITORIAL
MR. CHÁVEZ’S POWER GRAB
The New York Times
August 22, 2007
Newspeak is alive and well in Venezuela. Last week, President Hugo Chávez portrayed planned constitutional amendments that would allow him to be re-elected indefinitely as a step toward “participatory democracy.”
Mr. Chávez’s plan is just another step in the march to increase his government’s control over Venezuela’s politics and economy. Behind the Orwellian rhetorical tactics, his efforts to amass power and cling to it for as long as he can are undermining Venezuela’s democracy.
Mr. Chávez remains, at least technically, a democrat. He has repeatedly beaten Venezuela’s dysfunctional opposition in elections deemed fair by international observers. He won a landslide victory last December, extending his mandate until 2012. His proposed constitutional reforms must be submitted to a vote in the National Assembly and to a referendum.
HURRICANE DEAN
100-MPH DEAN MAKES LAST LANDFALL
The Miami Herald
Aug. 22, 2007
MAJAHUAL, Mexico --
Hurricane Dean restrengthened to Category 2 intensity Wednesday and swept Mexico's Gulf Coast with rain and 100-mph wind as its core slammed into land for the final time.
The second encounter with Mexico came near the town of Tecolutla, just east of Gutierrez Zamora and about 40 miles south-southeast of Tuxpan.
About 135,000 people live in the area around Tuxpan, including 79,000 within the city itself.
Troops and emergency workers already had ushered thousands of residents to inland shelters. More than 100 oil rigs and related facilities had been evacuated.
HURRICANE DEAN HITS MEXICO
The Miami Herald
Aug. 22, 2007
TECOLUTLA, Mexico --
Hurricane Dean struck the Mexican mainland Wednesday for a second time after battering oil platforms in the Gulf and forcing thousands to flee.
The sprawling storm made landfall near the port of Tecolutla in Veracruz state on the central Gulf coast as a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained winds reaching 100 mph.
It quickly weakened, with its winds falling to 85 mph and Category 1 status, as it pushed inland.
Dean's center hit the tourism and fishing town of Tecolutla just hours after civil defense workers in yellow raincoats loaded the remaining residents onto army trucks for a trip to inland shelters. But there was no escaping the sprawling storm's hurricane-force winds, which lashed at least 60 miles of the Veracruz coast.
RATTLED BY DEAN, JAMAICA MAY DELAY ELECTIONS
The Miami Herald
Aug. 22, 2007
KINGSTON, Jamaica --
As power and running water were slowly restored to some parts of Jamaica following Hurricane Dean's battering, the Electoral Commission on Tuesday proposed that parliamentary elections set for Monday be postponed.
The nine-member commission, appointed by both political parties, has asked the nation's governor general to postpone the balloting until Sept. 3, said Bruce Golding, leader of the opposition Jamaica Labor Party.
''We are expecting that the recommendation is going to be accepted,'' Golding said. As of Tuesday evening, Gov. General Kenneth Hall had yet to issue a decision.
READINESS PAYS OFF AS HURRICANE DEAN PASSES OVER YUCATÁN PENINSULA
The Christian Science Monitor
August 22, 2007
Playa del Carmen, Mexico - On his first day of kindergarten, young Eminem Jimenez went to school as planned. But instead of meeting classmates, he spent the night there with 30 other people, hiding from hurricane Dean.
Everyone had enough food and water as well as bedding – the result of careful planning by local officials here. With memories fresh of the destruction of hurricane Wilma, a Category 5 storm that struck in force just two years ago and caused $3 billion in damage, preparations by the civil-protection agency, the Red Cross, and the Army went into gear well ahead of Dean's arrival. And while the storm was not as forceful as originally anticipated, the advance preparation, as well as communication about taking shelter, helped the city weather the blast, officials say.
"Since the beginning of the year, we've been going around to schools and churches, informing people about hurricanes," says Luis Antonio Morales Ocańa, who works for the municipal civil-protection agency.
STORM MISSES TOURIST SPOTS AND WEAKENS
The New York Times
August 22, 2007
CHETUMAL, Mexico, Aug. 21 — Hurricane Dean hammered Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula with blistering winds and heavy rain on Tuesday, missing the prime tourist spots of the Mayan Riviera but causing damage in Chetumal, the state capital, before being downgraded to Category 1 from Category 5.
Roofs were ripped off homes, streets were flooded, power lines downed and trees snapped in two as Dean, the ninth-strongest hurricane on record in the Atlantic, with winds in excess of 165 miles per hour, passed overhead.
Although the storm crossed the Yucatán Peninsula by midafternoon, the threat was far from over for Mexico. Hurricane Dean was in the southern waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where vast offshore oil fields produce most of the nation’s petroleum.
Dean had 80-mile-per-hour winds late Tuesday night, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said, and was expected to hit Mexico’s gulf coast, somewhere north of Veracruz, on Wednesday afternoon.
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