Four-year-old dog named Efruz ‘loves the sea’, according to his owner, and often perches on a surfboard to ride waves
Clad in a yellow vest, little Efruz balances himself on the front of the surfboard as waves foam around him and his companion as they skim over the Pacific waters off Peru.
Efruz is a four-year-old Jack Russell terrier and he is a common sight these hot days of the southern hemisphere summer.
Continue reading...Daniel Noboa designates nearly two dozen gangs as terrorist groups after wave of violence across country
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, said on Wednesday that his country was “at war” with drug gangs who are holding more than 130 prison staff hostage and who briefly captured a TV station live on air, in a wave of violence that has left city streets deserted.
At least 10 people have been killed, including police officers, in the attacks.
Continue reading...The 85-year-old was pictured leaving prison in Lima where he was serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses
Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s former strongman leader, was freed from jail after a ruling from the country’s highest court granted him a humanitarian pardon, despite a request from the regional Inter-American Court of Human Rights to delay his release.
Looking frail and wearing a face mask, the 85-year-old was received by his lawyer, two of his children Kenji and Keiko Fujimori – his political heiress and three-time presidential candidate – and helped into a waiting vehicle amid cheers from his supporters, who waved banners, honked horns and chanted “Fujimori Libertad”, or “Fujimori freedom”.
Continue reading...Country’s highest court orders freeing of Alberto Fujimori as Inter-American court points to conviction of human rights crimes
Peru risks being ranked alongside authoritarian states like Venezuela and Nicaragua, lawyers have warned, if it flouts international law by freeing former president Alberto Fujimori from jail after its highest court ordered his “immediate release”.
In the latest chapter of a drawn-out legal saga, Peru’s constitutional court ruled on Tuesday to free the former authoritarian leader who, since 2009, has been serving a 25-year sentence for corruption and ordering massacres committed by an army death squad in the early 1990s.
Continue reading...Lucha Reyes was compared to Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf. Now, fifty years after her death, her songs are released for a new audience
On a late spring morning 50 years ago this week, 30,000 people gathered outside the baroque facade of the church of San Francisco in central Lima to weep, sing and say goodbye to the young woman whose coffin was hoisted on to the crowd’s shoulders and carried, for three hours, to El Ángel cemetery a few kilometres away.
Lucha Reyes, who had died the previous day from a heart attack brought on by diabetes, knew her end was approaching. In keeping with the raw and pained songs and performances that had made her Peru’s darling, the 37-year-old singer had even commissioned a valedictory waltz. Called Mi última canción, or My Last Song, it was written in a funeral parlour.
Continue reading...Secrecy and lax oversight mean illegal loggers and miners in Amazon can park billions in real estate and other assets
Secrecy and lax oversight have made the US a hiding place for dirty money accrued by environmental criminals in the Amazon rainforest, a report says.
Illegal loggers and miners are parking sums ranging from millions to billions of dollars in US real estate and other assets, says the report, which calls on Congress and the White House to close loopholes in financial regulations that it says are contributing to the destruction of the world’s biggest tropical forest.
Continue reading...Nobel prize-winning Peruvian author still plans to write an essay on Sartre that ‘will be the last thing I write’
Peru’s best-known living writer, the Nobel prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, has announced that his seven-decade literary career is coming to an end and that his latest novel will be his last.
In a postscript to the new book, Le dedico mi silencio (I Give You My Silence), the 87-year-old novelist writes: “I think I’ve finished this book. I’d now like to write an essay on [Jean-Paul] Sartre, who was my teacher as a young man. It will be the last thing I write.”
Continue reading...Malaysian foreign ministry says 43 of its citizens were freed in Lima after being forced to take part in ‘Macau scam’
More than 40 people from Malaysia have been rescued by police in Peru after they fell victim to a human trafficking syndicate operating a telecommunication fraud.
The Malaysians were forced to participate in the so-called “Macau scam”, making calls to companies in Malaysia and Taiwan to demand money while posing as banks, police or justice officials.
Continue reading...Peruvian film-makers outraged over legislation to revitalise industry after film chooses Colombia as shooting location
New legislation to revitalise Peru’s film industry has been proposed after the makers of the British comedy Paddington in Peru chose Colombia as the filming location for the section of the movie in which the bear finally returns to his home country.
The initiative, put forward by rightwing lawmaker Adriana Tudela, cited the “lack of incentives and the high number of national and local bureaucratic barriers to filming in Peru” as the principal obstacle to the mislocation of the third Paddington movie due out in 2024.
Continue reading...Suspect, arrested in Peru, allegedly threatened schools after failing to ‘sextort’ nude photos from schoolchildren
A Peruvian man was arrested in Peru for sending more than 150 fake bomb threats to US schools, airports and a synagogue.
Eddie Manuel Núñez Santos, 33, was arrested by Peruvian officials on Tuesday in Lima, according to a press release from the justice department.
Continue reading...Deal revives agreement from 20 years ago and will allow intelligence and training support for Peru’s air force
Peru announced an air security agreement with the US on Saturday in what the government described as a push to stop planes belonging to drug gangs from entering the South American country’s airspace.
The deal revives a bilateral security cooperation pact with the US from 20 years ago, according to a government statement, and will permit new intelligence and training support to flow to Peru’s air force.
Continue reading...Fossils found in Peru from extinct species show it may have had body mass of 85-340 tonnes – heavier than blue whales
The fossilised bones of an ancient creature that patrolled coastal waters 40m years ago belong to a newly discovered species that is a contender for the heaviest animal ever to have existed on Earth.
Fossil hunters discovered remnants of the enormous and long-extinct whale in a rock formation in the Ica desert of southern Peru. Fully grown adults might have weighed hundreds of tonnes, researchers believe.
Continue reading...Virus has spread around the world, with 200,000 wild birds dead in Peru alone and concerns Australia could be next
Millions of wild birds may have died from bird flu globally in the latest outbreak, researchers have said, as the viral disease ravages South America, with 200,000 deaths recorded in Peru alone.
The highly infectious variant of H5N1, which gained momentum in the winter of 2021, caused Europe’s worst bird flu outbreak before spreading globally. The disease reached South America in November 2022, and has now been reported on every continent except Oceania and Antarctica.
Continue reading...Brazilian government warning comes as UN report says that flourishing organized crime groups are driving a boom in environmental devastation
The Brazilian government’s drug policy chief has admitted that the rapid advance of drug factions into the Amazon rainforest has produced a “a very difficult situation” in the region, as a UN report warned that flourishing organized crime groups were driving a boom in environmental devastation.
Marta Machado, the national secretary for drug affairs, said the previous administration’s intentional dismantling of Brazil’s environmental and Indigenous protection agencies had created a dangerous vacuum in the Amazon which had been occupied by powerful crime syndicates from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Continue reading...Peruvian eateries have been a fixture in top 50 list for close to a decade and now one has claimed the crown
While Peru’s archeology heritage began in the 20th century to attract millions of tourists to locations such as Machu Picchu and the Nazca Lines, the country’s cuisine remained one of South America’s best-kept secrets.
But in the last two decades, Peru’s food – a product of its rich range of crops, ecosystems and a particular history – has become a global brand, with restaurants opening in cities from San Francisco to Sydney.
Continue reading...Authorities denied pregnant Indigenous girl her legal right to an abortion and ‘re-victimised’ her, UN child rights committee says
Peru violated the rights of a 13-year-old girl who had been repeatedly raped by her father by denying her an abortion after she became pregnant, the UN has ruled.
The United Nations child rights committee found this week that the Peruvian authorities had violated the rights to health and life of the girl, known by the pseudonym Camila, by failing to provide her with information and access to legal and safe abortion.
Continue reading...Death toll mounts in northern Piura region after torrential rain and floods lead to worst ever epidemic
In a stream of white, mourners walked behind an ivory-coloured, shoulder-borne coffin as neighbours, heads bowed and hands clasped, peered out of doorways on the narrow street in Castilla, a middle-class suburb in Piura, northern Peru.
At the gates of the San José de Tarbes school, dozens of girls wearing grey skirts and white shirts with red ties awaited the cortege, holding white balloons and roses. It was a farewell for their schoolmate Priscila Quispe, seven, who died of dengue in the Santa Rosa public hospital last week.
Continue reading...Joran van der Sloot, already serving 28-year sentence, faces fraud and extortion charges linked to Alabama teen missing since 2005
Peruvian police have handed over a convicted Dutch murderer to US FBI agents for transfer to the United States, where he faces extortion and fraud charges related to the killing of the Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway two decades ago.
Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch national from the Caribbean island of Aruba, is set to face charges in the United States related to the mysterious disappearance and presumed murder of Holloway, an 18-year-old from a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, who vanished during a high school graduation trip to Aruba in 2005.
Continue reading...Drugs found in shipment said to be destined for Belgium also had the name Hitler printed on them
Peruvian anti-drug police have seized 58 one-kilo packages of cocaine destined for Belgium bearing a picture of a Nazi flag on the outside and the name Hitler printed in low relief.
The discovery occurred in the port of Paita, on Peru’s northern Pacific coast close to its border with Ecuador.
Continue reading...Hundreds, mostly Venezuelans, hope to cross into Peru to flee harsh immigration protocols and growing xenophobia in Chile
The wind sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean buffets makeshift tents made of blankets and scraps of fabric, as sheltering migrants peer out, squinting against the whipped-up sand and fierce sun overhead.
This desolate stretch of the Atacama desert has been home for days – and in some cases weeks – to hundreds of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, fleeing harsher immigration protocols and growing xenophobia in Chile and hoping to cross its northern border into Peru.
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