Semana Magazine of Bogotá remarked on “the indifference of congress” toward President Juan Manuel Santos’ draft health care reform. 

Víctor Cáceres Encina wrote in ABCColor of Asunción that seven of Paraguay’s sixteen prisons are overcrowded, with Tacumbú Penitentiary in the worst shape, according to a recent report by the Mecanismo Nacional de Prevención de Torturas.  Tacumbú is 1,605 beyond capacity, followed by the prison of Ciudad del Este, which has 692 more inmates than

Prensa Libre of Guatemala City related how a group of Guatemalan girls asked their congress to pass a law raising the minimum age for marriage to eighteen,

El Comerico of Lima reported that despite the priority that the government of Ollanta Humala has given the concept of social inclusion, Perú dropped three positions and placed seventh in Latin America according to the Social Inclusion Index 2013 of Americas Quarterly magazine. 

El Siglo of Panama City reported that passengers waiting for the bus in the 24 of December township often have to do it standing in raw sewage.

The Buenos Aires Herald reported that two of Brazil’s most popular opposition leaders have joined forces in an unexpected alliance that could have a big impact on next year’s election, perhaps presenting a major challenge to President Dilma Rousseff in the context of a weakening economy. 

Alejandro Gertz Manero wrote of “hurricane corruption”  in El Universal of Mexico City.  He noted the old Mexican political saying that if there is someone to blame, then any scandal can be survived. 

El Mercurio of Santiago noted that the presidential candidate of Chile’s New Majority Party, former President Michelle Bachelet, issued a call to her followers to make an effort to win the election in the first round on November 17. 

Joaquin Samayoa, in La Prensa Gráfica of San Salvador, assigned Salvadoran voters “some homework.”  The “exam will be on February 2nd” and the only question is: who should be the next president of El Salvador?

In Fohla de São Paulo Sergio Malbergier proclaimed that socialism’s “good intentions of creating a just and equal society in an unjust and unequal world is the siren that seduces many mariners and invariably leads, sooner or later, to disaster.”