LatinNews Daily - 13 January 2022

On 12 January, Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary cybersecurity laboratory at Canada’s University of Toronto, and US-based digital civil rights NGO Access Now, published an investigation which revealed “extensive hacking of media and civil society in El Salvador” with Pegasus, a sophisticated spyware programme.... Read More

On 12 January, three members of Colombia’s military were injured in an attack attributed to dissident members of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group, just one day after the dissidents claimed responsibility for the murder of two police officers.... Read More

* Colombia’s national federation of coffee producers (FNC) has reported that the country’s coffee harvest declined for the second year running in 2021, amounting to 12.6m sacks (1 sack = 60kg).... Read More

On 13 January, international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) launched its annual World Report 2022, in which it warned that President Jair Bolsonaro represented a threat to democratic rule in Brazil.... Read More

* The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Eclac) has released its annual report Preliminary Overview of the Economies 2021, in which it forecasts that the region will suffer a slowdown in economic growth in 2022, with Brazil to see the slowest growth of all.... Read More

* Cuba’s economy & planning ministry (MEP) has approved 98 new micro, small and medium-size enterprises (MSMEs) and one non-agricultural cooperative.... Read More

On 12 January, Mexico’s interior minister, Adán Augusto López, defended the appointment of Javier May Rodríguez as the new director of the Fondo Nacional de Fomento al Turismo (Fonatur), which oversees the government’s flagship Tren Maya railway project.... Read More

* Mexico’s finance ministry (SHCP) has stated that the exit of US multinational investment bank and financial services corporation Citigroup Inc from consumer banking in Mexico raises “delicate matters for the finance and regulatory authorities”, notably “a fundamental issue regarding concentration”.... Read More

Argentina and China have agreed to sign a new memorandum of understanding (MoU) on nuclear collaboration, according to an announcement made on 12 January at the Expo International trade fair in Dubai.... Read More

* Chile’s mining ministry has awarded two lithium contracts, each with an estimated annual production of 80,000 tonnes, to China’s BYD Chile SpA and the Chilean company Servicios y Operaciones Mineras del Norte SA, for US$61m and US$60m, respectively.... Read More