The U.N. says extreme violence committed by criminal gangs inside jails highlights problems with Brazil’s penal system.  In other news, the State of Rio de Janeiro is the first in the country to plan for refugees. 

On the second day of meetings with local authorities and businessmen in Beijing, the Argentine delegation signed a bilateral agreement for the building of the Atucha III power plant using Chinese investment funds.  And other Latin America nations have their eyes on the growing Chinese market. 

Venezuela’s government has quietly secured the backing of nations in Latin America and the Caribbean to obtain a diplomatic trophy that long eluded the late Hugo Chávez: a seat on the United Nations Security Council. 

The country sent nurses, epidemiologists, and infection control experts who will focus on Sierra Leone. 

Many of the arguments against raising the minimum wage are a clear example of how the ideology of the “free market” works to dismiss the misery suffered by millions of people for the sake of fidelity to an intellectual orthodoxy that mainly exists to aid the class interests of the rich. 

Many observers have declared President Ollanta Humala a very lame duck, and Peruvians are looking for options.  

A plant in São Paulo produces about 500,000 mosquitoes a week to help annihilate Aedes aegypti, the principal vector of dengue. It is the first factory in the world of its kind. Brazil is the country most affected by the disease. 

Thousands of parrots, monkeys, iguanas, toucans, turtles and other rain forest animals are kept as exotic pets in the Central American country, and experts say that’s not good. 

The Guatemalan government estimates that 200,000 families are threatened with starvation due to the deficit of rainfall in the rainy season.  A state of public calamity was declared for a month, during which the government aims to get the necessary assistance to the victims. 

A trade mission of 23 employers in the pharmaceutical sector in India met with 85 Guatemalan companies to negotiate generic formulas on active ingredients in herbal and traditional medicines. And the Venezuelans announced the awarding of a contract to China.