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Development: President Nicanor Duarte fired his interior minister and the head of the police force on 13 October after a 10-year old boy kidnapped two days previously was found dead outside Asunción .

Significance: Duarte's decision to fire Interior Minister Orlando Fiorotto and police chief Umberto Núñez was taken soon after the body of Aní­bal Amí­n Riquelme Seif Eddine was discovered. Fiorotto has been replaced by the current attorney general, Nelson Mora, while Núñez has been replaced by his deputy, Carlos Zelaya.

The chamber of deputies was united in demanding a purge of those responsible for Paraguay's security, and although Duarte did not blame Fiorotto and Núñez for the death of Amí­n, he conceded that 'recent events show that we have to act with greater solidarity and integration'. At the same time, state prosecutor Oscar Latorre (whose resignation legislators had also been demanding) announced a joint operation between the police and the army aimed at 'controlling vulnerable areas in various parts of the country and ensuring the presence of the state on the streets and highways'.

In this instance it does not appear that the police or the government were particularly to blame. Amí­n was kidnapped on the evening of 11 October, a crime which only became public the next day when the family asked the police and the press to stay out of the affair in order to ensure the negotiations with the captors went smoothly.

According to Amí­n's father, talks with the captors, who were demanding US$1m for his release, were going well until the third phone call, when he asked for proof his son was still alive. He was found the next day, having died of severe pulmonary oedema believed to have been produced when his kidnappers covered his mouth with some kind of chemical.

This was not the first time Amí­n's family had suffered a kidnapping; in November 2002 his elder sister was released the day after she was abducted when his family met the US$50,000 ransom. Police are not ruling out the possibility that the murder of Amí­n relates to this previous crime.

Even if the authorities were powerless to save Amí­n, Fiorotto and Núñez have also paid the price for the abduction of Cecilia Cubas, the 31-year old daughter of former president Raúl Cubas. She has now been held for three weeks.

Development: A bad-tempered debate over Interior Minister Jaime Damerval's proposal to cut the size of congress descended into chaos on 16 November, as a fight broke out which culminated in one deputy, Alfonso Harb, drawing a gun.

Significance: Following the opposition's failure to garner the votes needed to force the impeachment of President Lucio Gutiérrez, it seems that very little will be achieved before congress goes into recess at the end of November. The impeachment proposal and its subsequent abandonment have generated a serious amount of bad blood between the opposition and government-supporting legislators. Those in the opposition claim impeachment only failed because the government 'bought off' some of their number; the government's followers consider the opposition opportunistic wreckers, intent on bringing down the administration regardless of the cost to the country.

At 11 am, the opposition presented a motion condemning Damerval's threat, made on 14 November, to cut congress. Wilfrido Lucero, from the Izquierda Demócrata (ID), accused the government of 'continuing to celebrate the buying-off of deputies and the fact the government's bagman did all this with the knowledge of the president'. This was too much for Gilmar Guitérrez, brother of Lucio, to bear. He attempted to attack Lucero, but was punched first by another ID deputy, Guillermo Haro.

Other deputies joined in the fracas, until Harb, from the opposition Partido Social Cristiano (PSC), pulled a gun. He was immediately surrounded by the congress's guards and also, confusingly, by a protestor from the indigenous evangelical group Feine, who happened to storm parliament at the same time. Meanwhile, the police fired tear-gas at other members of Feine, who had succeeded in occupying part of the congressional building, causing breathing difficulties for the deputies in the main chamber. The president of congress, Guillermo Landázuri, eventually managed to calm the situation and end the day's session by 2 pm.

Development: In a televised address to the nation on the evening of 20 December, President Vicente Fox appealed for public support in his bid to veto congressional changes to 2005's US$160bn budget.

Significance: Fox's decision to appeal against the legislature's changes with the supreme court takes him, and the country, into uncharted constitutional territory. The move puts the executive back onto a collision course with the legislature. Congress argues (probably correctly, constitutional experts say) that the president has no right to interfere with the amendments it makes to the budget. Despite the fact that even the government's supporters concede that the supreme court is unlikely to decide on the point of constitutional principle before March 2005, Fox promised that there will be a budget by 1 January 2005, as he will only appeal against a small part of it.

Fox's decision to file an appeal with the supreme court came after legislators voted last week to ignore the president's suggestions to reverse some of the changes they made in the spending bill. They approved the budget without any changes by the ominously large margin of 332 to 146, with only Fox's Partido Acción Nacional opposing the measure. The president had tried to argue that the budget was unworkable. He returned the altered budget to congress citing errors that included missing funds for increasing government audits and a lack of funding to pay government debts. Fox also said that he had found mathematical errors that would affect the daily running of government.

The argument with congress is entirely over the spending side of budget: Fox's government claims that congress has changed too much and too arbitrarily. In fact, the government is complaining about just 2% of spending (M$38bn, US$3.4bn). The big switch has been from spending on administration to support for farmers. The biggest party in congress, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), is especially strong in rural Mexico.

Fox said he was taking the action in order to preserve the balance of power between the three branches of the government and to protect democratic institutions 'against those who try to ignore them', a pointed reference to congress. 'It is in the hands of the highest court to decide what powers correspond to the executive branch and to the congress when it comes to the final determination of the budget,' he said, adding that as the overwhelming majority of the budget will be passed on 1 January, the country's macroeconomic stability is not under threat.

'There are two reasons for these actions,' Fox said. 'The first is that the executive branch has a constitutional, historically recognised right to make observations regarding the spending budget the congress approves. For the first time in history, legislators have decided not to recognise this.' The second reason he gave was that the budget violates the constitution by interfering with the executive branch's duties.

Fox is taking a gamble by going to the supreme court. The president's term, which initially promised much, has produced little, and a ruling against him would be another nail in the coffin. The decision to appeal underlines growing political divisions in the country which are only likely to worsen, weakening the president yet further as the country gears up for presidential elections in 2006.

Development: Colombia and Venezuela announced on 28 January that the row caused by the abduction of Rodrigo Granda is over after the Colombian government apologised for its role in the affair.

Significance: Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez had demanded that Colombia apologise for kidnapping Rodrigo Granda, the so-called foreign minister for the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc), from Caracas in December. Colombia's apology was cloaked in diplomatic language but was an apology nonetheless. The government agreed to "look over the events which are public knowledge to make sure that, if they were inconvenient to Venezuela, they are not repeated".

The statement calling an end to the dispute was signed by both governments but released by Colombia. The statement also revealed that Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, will travel to Caracas on Thursday (3 February) for a meeting with Chávez . Chávez suggested on 31 January that he would not be ready to forgive Colombia completely until this meeting.

While Chávez is more reluctant than Uribe to draw a line under the incident, he is blaming the US for putting Colombia up to the kidnapping. While in Porto Alegre for the World Social Forum, Chávez said that the US was behind Granda's abduction, telling reporters: "The US was looking for a way to escalate [the crisis between Venezuela and Colombia] because they are looking for a way to intervene in Venezuela."

Arguably, the US has missed an opportunity to allow principle rather than partisanship to guide its foreign policy. The US consistently refused to criticise its Colombia even though Colombia itself admitted two weeks ago that it had paid for Granda to be seized in Venezuela and brought to Colombia. The US's ambassador to Caracas, William Brownfield, was conspicuous by his silence over the affair.

The end of the crisis was greeted with relief in Colombia, which had been suffering from Venezuela's trade embargo. Venezuela is Colombia's second biggest market, after the US. The apology may also have political repercussions: it looks very likely that the Colombian defence minister, Jorge Albert Uribe, will be the scapegoat for the kidnapping and the apology.

Development: Senior government officials from across Central America agreed on 3 March in Tegucigalpa to create a regional rapid-reaction force to tackle drug-trafficking in the isthmus.

Significance: The US has been applying pressure to Central American nations to coordinate security initiatives to deal with the threat of organised crime, terrorism and drug-trafficking. In a three-day meeting in San Salvador last month the FBI announced plans to create a new high-level task force to tackle the threat posed by the mara gangs, and to share intelligence and resources with Central American countries.

The meeting in Tegucigalpa was organised by the Central American Integration system (Sica). Attending the meeting were the defence and interior ministers from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, and senior ministers from Costa Rica and Panama. The Honduran defence minister, Federico Brevé, said that at least 100 tonnes of illicit drugs passed through Central America en route to the US every year. Brevé said that technical teams would discuss the details of the composition of the rapid-reaction force, how it will operate and the budget required to get it up and running. He said they would decide whether the force will become a permanent feature or only come together to confront specific crises or to take specific action. The ministers will meet again to discuss the proposals of the technical teams on 29 April.

Development: The president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, spoke out against the US embargo on Cuba, the national daily Folha de São Paulo reported on 9 April.

Significance: Lula's comments come as the US is struggling to muster support for what has become an annual ritual in April: a resolution by the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) in Geneva condemning Cuba for human-rights violations. Last year the resolution was proposed by Honduras and received support from Mexico and a few others. It narrowly passed with 22 votes in favour, 21 against and 10 abstentions. This year the US had to propose the resolution itself. Voting is expected to take place on 14 April.

“We have a lot to do for democracy in Cuba. We must help in the struggle against the US economic blockade. Brazil has a chance to help normalise Cuba's relations," Lula told Folha shortly after meeting the speaker for Cuba's National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcón, at Brazil's embassy in Rome.

Development: On 16 May President Hugo Chávez announced that Pdvsa, the state-run oil firm, will not reimburse contracted oil firms in dollars for their expenses.

Significance: The move, announced on Chávez 's weekly "Aló Presidente!" television programme, follows a series of measures designed to ensure the state benefits more from foreign oil companies operating in Venezuela. Oil companies are bracing themselves for tax increases and contract changes ordered by Pdvsa and the national tax office.

Up until 15 May Pdvsa paid oil firms with operating contracts in dollars for expenses in Venezuela such as vehicles, business trips and clothing. "Starting today (16 May) we won't pay one more cent in dollars to those transnational companies," Chávez said. The 32 operating contracts, which produce around 500,000 barrels a day, were signed in the 1990s under a previous administration. Chávez has repeatedly criticised the terms of the contracts, saying oil firms have "robbed" the country for years.

Development: On 19 June the Partido Revolucionario Institucional threatened to launch a campaign to prosecute Santiago Creel, the former interior minister, who is now competing for the Partido Acción Nacional's presidential nomination.

Significance: The PRI claims that Creel's decision was criminal. Just before he left office on 1 June, Creel apparently awarded 130 licences for slot machine and bingo parlours to companies controlled by the country's biggest broadcaster, Televisa, without any tenders or checks.  

The PRI said that Creel did not have the power to award the licences without checking with the consejo consultivo. The PRI points out that the licences are probably illegal since they do not specify the sites of the slot machine arcades, only the states in which they can operate.  

The fact that Televisa is the main beneficiary is likely to raise questions about Creel's judgment. As the country's dominant broadcaster, Televisa will play a pivotal part in the presidential elections due in July 2006. The country's other major national network, TV Azteca, is under a cloud as its main shareholder is under investigation by the financial authorities in both Mexico and the US.

Development: On 21 July the government presented to congress its proposals for reforming the country's institutions.

Significance: President Alfredo Palacio urged the 100 deputies in congress to put partisan interests aside and act in the best interests of Ecuador. The president, who took up the post on 20 April following the ouster of Lucio Gutiérrez, said that he had inherited a country in flames and not all of them had been put out yet. If congress ratifies the proposal, the government will put them to a referendum on 10 December.

Palacio's proposals are seven-fold and involve changes to all three branches of state. The reforms would see the creation of an electoral system based on districts, a return to a bicameral legislature, a new system of electing judges to the supreme court, changes to both the constitutional court and the supreme electoral tribunal, the devolution of autonomy to the provinces and a mechanism whereby public officials, including the president, could be voted out of office.

BRAZIL: The Weekly Consumer Prices Index (IPC-S), measured by the government, recorded record deflation of 0.33% in the third week of August. 

BRAZIL: The unemployment rate in the metropolitan region of São Paulo was stable at 17.5% in July in comparison to June, according to the trade-union-linked Dieese-Seade survey. Average income was up by 1.8% in the same period, yet 2.8% lower when compared to July 2004. 

BRAZIL: Mortgage lendings were up 86.7% in July when compared with the same month last year, informed the Sistema Brasileiro de Poupança e Empréstimos. Financing for housing construction was also up, by 152.4% in the same period. 

BRAZIL: Brazil's Congress on 23 August approved guidelines for 2006 spending with a budget surplus target, excluding interest payments, of 4.25% of GDP. 

CHILE: Chile's economy continued to impress in the second quarter, as real GDP registered a 6.5% year-on-year jump, the strongest result for a second quarter since 1996, when the central bank began reporting such data online.

CHILE: Chilean trade balance registered a US$ 384.7m surplus in the first fifteen days of the month, as informed by the Chilean Central Bank on Tuesday 23 August. Now, the balance has reached a US$589 bn surplus since the beginning of the year.

COLOMBIA: Colombia's industrial production, excluding coffee processing, rose 2.5% in the first half of the year compared with the same period in 2004, according to official data released 23 August.

MEXICO: Mexico posted a US $619m trade deficit for July 2005, the National Statistics Institute INEGI said on August 23, 2005. 

MEXICO: Mexican retail sales rose 6% in June, the government said on 23 August, as consumer spending kept fueling the country's economic growth. 

PANAMA: Panamanian economic activity grew by 6.1% in the first six months of the year, fueled by strong agricultural output, the government said on 23 August.

VENEZUELA: Venezuelan manufacturers saw growth of 12.4% during the second quarter of 2005, much slower than last year as imports continue to rise, a manufacturing trade group said 23 August. 

VENEZUELA: Venezuela's finance ministry has presented a proposal to lawmakers for a 1% reduction in the value added tax as soon as next month, the government announced on 23 August.

Development: Vice-President José Rizo Castellón resigned on 27 September to pursue the presidential candidacy of the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) for the elections in November 2006.

Significance: Rizo was a fierce critic of President Enrique Bolaños. His allegiance lies with Arnoldo Alemán, the leader of the PLC, whom Bolaños had imprisoned for corruption in 2003 but who is now out on probation. Rizo preferred to categorise himself as the "critical conscience of the government". The new vice-president is unlikely to be much more conciliatory since he will be appointed by the opposition-dominated national assembly. Names in the mix include Alfonso Ortega Urbina, the uncle of the leader of the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, Daniel Ortega, and two liberals: Oscar Moncada and Jaime Cuadra.

Rizo's decision to resign his post was not a surprise as he had always said he would stand for the PLC and to do so he was constitutionally bound to stand down a year in advance of the elections. His resignation comes at a crucial moment, though, with the power struggle between Bolaños and the national assembly growing tenser. Bolaños claimed on 27 September that the opposition was carrying out a coup and he would be forced to turn abroad for assistance to tackle "the injustice and absence of the rule of law" in Nicaragua.

Development: The impeachment drive against the mayor of Buenos Aires, Aní­bal Ibarra, for his alleged responsibility in the fire in a rock club that killed 193 people on 30 December 2004 fell apart on 31 October when three legislators on the congressional impeachment committee presented a report exonerating him.

Significance: The decision by the three legislators, all supporters of President Néstor Kirchner, means that congress will fall short of the two-thirds majority required to put Ibarra on trial. On 28 October centre-right and leftwing groups in the committee presented a report recommending Ibarra's impeachment. Relatives of the victims of the fire have been pushing for Ibarra to face criminal charges after it was discovered that the club's emergency exits had been locked in order to prevent any more people entering when it was already filled well above capacity. The club also failed to meet a number of safety requirements.

Separately, the city government's former justice and city security secretary, Juan Carlos López, was indicted on 31 October on charges of manslaughter with a lien of Arg$20m (US$67m) put on his assets. López is the highest-ranking official to be incriminated in the investigations into the fire. López's lawyer told the Argentine daily La Nación that the decision was farcical: "It is as if the interior minister were charged for what the two policemen on the door of the República Cromañón club failed to do," he said.

Significance: Cabeza de Vaca is directly contradicting his top anti-drug official, José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, who made the accusation after a DVD was shown on the website of the Dallas Morning News. Mexican TV networks then broadcast the "narco video" on 1 and 2 December.

The video showed people torturing four men who described themselves as killers employed by the Gulf drug smuggling gang. At least one of the self-confessed killers was shot during the video. Vasconcelos alleged that federal agents were involved and eight were arrested. Five were released almost immediately.

Cabeza de la Vaca said there was no evidence that any federal agent was involved in the torturing and killing. Vasconcelos had alleged that the federal agents had been freelancing for the bit of the Sinaloa gang headed by the Beltrán Leyva brothers. The Sinaloa gang as whole is run by Joaquí­n "El Chapo" Guzmán who escaped, very easily, from a federal prison in January 2001.

Development: President Vicente Fox started another political row on 16 January by saying that the left would not win in Mexico's elections on 2 July.

Significance: Clearly, President Fox still wants to stop Andrés Manuel López Obrador becoming president. He tried last year to knock him out of the race on a legal technicality, but eventually had to back down. The danger now is that he may not act, as his predecessor President Ernesto Zedillo did, as an independent umpire in the elections. If Fox and the government interfere in the election, they could affect the result and more importantly, the Mexican people's perception and acceptance of the result. The more Fox tries to influence what is likely to be a close election, the greater the chance of a post-election conflict. Most local political analysts had assumed that the days of dirty elections and post-election disputes had passed.

The main leftwing party, the Partido de la Revolución Democrática, immediately said that Fox's comments were a very serious breach of the rules laid down by the Instituto Federal Electoral to ensure fair play. Gerardo Fernández, the PRD spokesman, said that the PRD would not sign any agreement with the government for the elections because of the government's attitude and partisanship. The PRD claims that the government is favouring the Partido Acción Nacional candidate, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, who is running second in the opinion polls, behind the PRD candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Fox made his comments in a strange interview in a supplement of the daily newspaper, "El Universal". He argued that Mexico's electorate had outgrown leftwing populism. He implicitly compared what López Obrador and the PRD are offering with what President Luis Echeverrí­a (1970 to 1976) did. Echeverrí­a has a poor reputation in Mexico and the Fox government, unprecedentedly, allowed the independent inquiry into the dirty war in Mexico to try to prosecute Echeverrí­a.

Fox's knowledge of recent Mexican history looks shaky. Echeverrí­a was an archetypal president from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional. The PRD, accurately, claimed that Echeverrí­a had nothing to do with the left and it was sheer ignorance of Fox to confuse the left with Echeverrí­a.

To be fair to Fox, he mentioned neither the PRD nor López Obrador in his comments. He argued that it was a media conceit to talk of a political pendulum in Latin America that was now swinging to the left, epitomised by the wins for Evo Morales and Michelle Bachelet in Bolivia and Chile respectively.

Separately, the candidate ranked third in the polls, Roberto Madrazo, is beginning to pep up his campaign team. The most high profile arrival is Bernardo de la Garza, who had been the presidential candidate from the Partido Verde Ecologista de México. He will handle the congressional and legislative aspects of Madrazo's campaign: that looks like a job which sounds good but means nothing. Madrazo has made an interesting choice to head his campaign's links to business, Angélica Fuentes, who runs the gas company, Grupo Imperial. It supplies about 14% of Mexico's gas.

The campaign has also set up committees to target particular states. Humberto Roque Villanueva, infamous for the Roque Señal, when he (effectively) put two fingers up at the opposition in congress when an emergency economic package, that increased VAT, was pushed through congress by the PRI, will head the campaign in PAN controlled states: Jalisco, San Luis Potosí­, Aguascalientes, Querétaro, Guanajuato, Tlaxcala, Morelos, and Yucatán.

Development: Today, 21 February, could be a decisive day in the design of the constituent assembly that the government wants to call to rewrite the constitution.

Significance: The government of President Evo Morales does not have complete control of congress, so it will probably have to make some concessions to get the bill enabling the elections for the constituent assembly through congress. The big issue is whether the members of the constituent assembly should be chosen according to constituency (which would weaken the representation of the anti-government east of the country) or by department, which would, arguably, over-represent the east and under represent the Altiplano and Cochabamba.

A congressional subcommittee is currently going through the 11 proposals for how the constituent assembly should be chosen. The subcommittee's job is to find the maximum number of points of agreement and then come up with a draft bill which should meet with the greatest support. The deadline for proposals to the subcommittee is 9am today. The subcommittee will issue its proposal to the constitutional committee which will then make a proposal to the full congress.

Development: The presidential candidate for the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, Roberto Madrazo, was filmed on 23 March greeting a thug who had beaten a retired teacher to death two years ago.

Significance: Madrazo was quick to claim that he did not know who the thug was. The media immediately pointed out that Madrazo's campaign team knew exactly who Jacinto Pineda was. He was pictured beating a retired teacher, Serafí­n Garcí­a, to death in the southern state of Oaxaca in 2004. Pineda was never prosecuted.

The governor of Oaxaca in 2004, José Murat, now runs Madrazo's campaign in 15 states. Even more tellingly, Patricia Villanueva, who investigated Garcí­a's murder and refused to put the murderers into preventative custody, despite the overwhelming evidence, is now standing for the federal congress, in Oaxaca, for the PRI.

Development: Brazil's two largest labour unions, the CUT and Força Sindical, held different views of President Lula da Silva's administration during the 1 May celebrations attended by 2.5m workers in São Paulo.

Significance: According to the CUT's leaders, President Lula da Silva and his Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) "have nothing to be ashamed of" despite the corruption allegations pending against former members of the government. For the CUT, the fact that the minimum-wage is at its highest level in over 20 years is enough for workers to celebrate the Lula administration. The CUT leadership is expected to announce its formal support for Lula's re-election in June, hoping Lula will advance with his plans of a labour reform which had to be abandoned following the discovery of the PT's illegal schemes.

On the other side of town, the leaders of the Força Sindical could not have taken a more different view of the current government. The stage was taken by opposition politicians who criticised the government's economic policies and attacked "the PT's frauds". According to the Roberto Freire of the Partido Socialista, the Lula administration "transformed Brazil into a republic for bankers" at the cost of workers' interests. The Força's national president, Paulo Pereira da Silva, criticised the government for increasing taxes and keeping interest rates high, undermining production and leading to unemployment.

Lula did not participate on any march but attended the traditional 1 May mass in the ABC (the metropolitan region of São Paulo). Once again Lula gave hints that he is ready to run again, declaring that he expects to be "judged in the ballot box".

The president also took the opportunity to criticise the leftwing purists in his PT for their opposition to his intended electoral alliances with right-of-centre parties, denouncing it as "lack of maturity". Lula has postponed the official announcement of his candidacy because this would prevent him from attending official inaugurations and other events sponsored by the government. The opposition candidate, Geraldo Alckmin, snubbed the invite from Força to participate in the celebrations and went to campaign in the northeast of Brazil, where Lula leads the opinion polls.

Development: Former president Luis González Macchi was sentenced to six years in prison on 5 June for corruption.

Significance: González Macchi, president from 1999-2003, was convicted of embezzling US$16m from two bankrupt banks (the privately owned Unión and Orienta) and investing it in the US. The accusations first emerged in 2000; in January 2006 a judge in New York ordered the money to be returned to Paraguay from a high-yield account at CitiBank.

Prosecutors had wanted González Macchi to serve ten years in jail, the maximum sentence that could have been handed down. The former president, who as head of the senate replaced Raúl Cubas in office after he resigned in the wake of the assassination of Cubas' vice-president Luis Marí­a Argaña, said he would appeal the court's ruling. If unsuccessful, González Macchi will serve his time in the Tacumbú prison in Asunción .

BRAZIL: The number of Brazilian towns recycling waste increased from 81 to 327 between 1994 and 2006. The cost of recycling fell from US$240 per ton to US$151 per ton in the period, a fall of 37%. 

BRAZIL: Analysts reduced their 2006 inflation forecast from 3.96% to 3.81%. The government's target for the year is 4.5%. 

BRAZIL: Brazil posted a US$1.69bn trade surplus in the first week of July. Exports reached a record US$3.56bn in the period. 

BRAZIL: Beef exports were up 16% in the first half of the year in comparison to the same period in 2005 despite outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease. 

COLOMBIA: The government collected Col$26.6tr (US$10.6bn) in taxes during the first six months of 2006, a 19% increase from the year-earlier period, according to the national tax office.

MEXICO: Vehicle sales rose to 533,596 units for the first half of 2006, compared with 527,511 units for the same period last year, according to the Mexican automotive association.

PERU: Imports rose 30.6% year-on-year to US$1.296bn in June, according to the tax authority Sunat.

URUGUAY: Beef exports increased by 38.1% year-on-year in the first half of 2006 to US$498.3m according to the government.

VENEZUELA: The Communication Ministry announced on 10 July that Venezuela will increase the amount of oil it sells to China by 45%, to 300,000 barrels per day from 168,000 at present. Officials did not say when the increase would take effect, but did say that it would not affect supplies to the US.

Development: The online gambling company, BetOnSports, announced it was ending its operations in Costa Rica on 11 August, leading to the loss of hundreds of jobs.

Significance: The company's decision to close its doors in Costa Rica follows a US court order restricting its operations after the arrest of its founders, David Carruthers and Gary Kaplan, on charges of postal fraud, tax evasion and racketeering. Under the ruling, issued two weeks ago, BetOnSports was banned from accepting bets from US citizens, the main source of income for the company.

The decision affected over 1,400 employees in the company's offices in San José, which dealt with the US share of business. Costa Rican authorities have protested over the US court ruling and maintain that the company's operations complied with both Costa Rican and international laws.

The provision of offshore internet services, including online gambling, is one of Costa Rica's most important economic activities and employs thousands of people. The US had previously complained about lax rules regulating this sort of activity in Costa Rica. Costa Rican authorities fear that the tightening of rules in the US will have a damaging impact on the economy, forcing more companies to close their doors.