LatinNews Daily - 09 August 2018

Development: On 8 August Argentina’s federal senate voted against giving final congressional approval to a bill that sought to decriminalise abortion in the country.... Read More

Development: On 8 August Colombia’s new President Iván Duque paid a visit to the San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina archipelago.... Read More

Venezuela: Venezuela’s supreme court (TSJ) has ordered the arrest of the national deputy Julio Borges of the opposition Primero Justicia (PJ) party, so that he can be investigated in relation to the 4 August suspected assassination attempt targeting President Nicolás Maduro.... Read More

Development: On 8 August, the local press calculated that with the alliance of nine political parties behind his presidential bid, Geraldo Alckmin, the presidential candidate of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB) in the 7 October general election, and his allies will receive R$828m (US$220m) from the new public fund created to pay for political campaigns in the country, 48% of the total R$1.72bn contained in the fund.... Read More

*Brazil’s national statistics institute (IBGE) has released new figures, which show that the national inflation rate stood at 0.33% in July.... Read More

Development: On 8 August the Partido Acción Ciudadana (PAC) government led by Costa Rica’s President Carlos Alvarado launched a new security strategy.... Read More

El Salvador: Francisco Rodríguez Arteaga, a former head of the institutional financial unit (UFI), a government agency, under the former president Tony Saca (2004-2009), and Jorge Herrera Castellanos, a former treasurer of the presidency, also under Saca, are reportedly collaborating with authorities in order to receive shorter prison sentences.... Read More

Development: On 8 August a federal court absolved Elba Esther Gordillo, the former leader of the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE) Mexico’s main teachers’ union, of the money laundering and organised crime charges levelled against her.... Read More

*In a recent poll carried out by Citibanamex, the local unit of US-based financial giant Citigroup, analysts increased their predictions for inflation for 2018 in Mexico to 4.25%, up from 4.16%.... Read More

Uruguay: Uruguay’s President Tabaré Vázquez has told a local radio station, Radio Sarandí, that the mining company Aratirí, a subsidiary of Zamin Ferrous (which was set up by an Indian magnate), has formally filed a lawsuit against Uruguay for US$3.53bn.... Read More