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(BBC) The Venezuelan government has announced it will replace the country’s highest-denomination banknotes with coins within 72 hours. It hopes swapping the 100-bolivar notes will help to stop smuggling and tackle shortages of food and other items. President Nicolas Maduro says gangs operating in border areas will not have time to repatriate the notes. His […]
Tributes have been paid to the Chapecoense players who died in a plane crash in Colombia on the final day of the Brazilian football season. The LaMia plane ran out of fuel and crashed near Medellin, killing 71 people, including most of the team. In stadiums across Brazil, fans from all the top division clubs […]
(BBC) Brazilian club Chapecoense have been awarded the Copa Sudamericana by South American football confederation Conmebol after most of their team died in a plane crash en route to the final. Seventy-one people, including 19 players and staff, were killed in last Monday’s crash on the way to Colombia for the first leg. Colombian […]
Venezuela is issuing new higher-value notes to help deal with some of the practical problems of soaring inflation. A backpack full of cash is often required to pay bills at a restaurant or supermarket. The central bank said that six new bills ranging from 500 to 20,000 bolivars would come into circulation on 15 December. […]
(BBC) A Brazilian Supreme Court judge has ordered one of the country’s most senior politicians, Renan Calheiros, to stand down as president of the Senate. Judge Marco Aurelio Mello issued an injunction saying Mr Calheiros’s position was untenable after the court ruled last week that he must face trial for alleged embezzlement. Mr Calheiros has […]
(BBC) The football world has rallied around a Brazilian club which lost most of its players in a plane crash in Colombia. Only six of the 77 people on the plane, carrying members of the Chapecoense team, survived Monday’s crash. The team were flying to what was billed as the biggest match in their history […]
(CNN) Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro has died at age 90, Cuban state media reported. “There are few individuals in the 20th century who had a more profound impact on a single country than Fidel Castro had in Cuba,” Robert Pastor, a former national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, told CNN in […]
(BBC) Mexican officials have ordered Dell Computers to honour the sale of laptops that had been mistakenly advertised online for just 679 pesos (£27; $33). The computers normally sell for up to 50,000 pesos (£1,990; $2,500). But because of an apparent software malfunction, only the shipping costs – 679 pesos – were included in an […]
(BBC) Two nephews of Venezuela’s first lady have pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges at a court in New York. Efrain Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas were arrested by undercover American agents in Haiti in November and taken to the US. They denied charges of conspiring to smuggle “five (11lb) or more […]
The mosquito-borne Zika virus will no longer be treated as an international medical emergency, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared. By lifting its nine-month-old declaration, the UN’s health agency is acknowledging that Zika is here to stay. The infection has been linked to severe birth defects in almost 30 countries. These include microcephaly, where […]
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