Bogotá, Colombia
President has swine flu: Colombian President Álvaro Uribe is sick with the H1N1 flu. Uribe had to get medical attention while attending a town council meeting. So far, his case seems mild, and he has not been hospitalized. But concerns were raised that Uribe may have infected other leaders from the region; he was diagnosed just after returning from a South American summit in Argentina, where he met with 11 other national leaders. All of them have been warned to watch for symptoms. Cases of swine flu were first confirmed in Colombia in May. Since then the virus has killed 29 people there.
Los Reyes, Ecuador
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Indians attack: Ecuador said this week it would begin monitoring “uncontacted” tribes in the Amazon, after three people were killed in an attack apparently committed by Indians. The bodies of a woman and her teenage son and daughter were discovered last week with multiple 10-foot spears sticking out of them. Authorities suspect members of the Taromenane tribe, a small clan in a national park living near Los Reyes. Last year, several Taromenanes were killed by loggers; the new killings could have been an act of revenge. Uncontacted tribes are clans that, by choice or because of their remote location, live in isolation from the rest of Ecuadorean society.
Brasilia
Black gold for Brazil: President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva this week announced an ambitious plan to make Brazil one of the top oil producers in the world. The state-run oil company Petrobras recently discovered new offshore oil deposits that could more than quadruple the country’s proven reserves. Lula said the oil would be exploited under a shared-production regime, with Petrobras as the exclusive operator. “The premise is that the oil and gas belong to the state, which is to say that they belong to the entire Brazilian people,” Lula declared. He said money from the oil sales would go into a special fund for education and poverty relief.
