Basel Zoo's new red titi monkey
BASEL, SWITZERLAND – The Basel Zoo has announced the birth of its latest monkey, a little red or coppery titi, born 27 December to mother Chica, age 9 and father Gunther, age 6.
The pair already have two offspring, unusual for red titis, not often born in captivity.
But as exciting as the news is, equally exciting is the zoo’s observation that the newborn’s two older brothers are carrying him on their backs.
The father traditionally carries his offspring on his back, but Hijo, age 2 and Hermoso, age 1, have been seen sporting their little sibling on their backs. It’s not yet known if the little one is female or male.
The zoo supports a research programme to study the animals in their natural habitat, in Peru.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Northern Peru was hit by a 7.0 earthquake Wednesday 24 August, centred in a remote and under-populated Amazon area. The quake was felt in the capital 600 km away and in southern Brazil. The extent of the damage is not yet known.
Scientists say there is no link between this week’s earthquakes in Peru, which has a history of strong earthquakes and on a smaller scale in Colorado in the western US and Virginia in the eastern US. The latter prompted officials to evacuate the Pentagon in nearby Washington DC, schools and several tourist attractions closed in some areas and the tall, thin, Washington monument suffered cracks at the top. It is closed to visitors indefinitely while engineers study how to repair it. The Minneapolis Star & Tribune reports that only about 5 percent of East Coast residents have earthquake insurance and that about one-third of the damages, which could be $200-300 million, are insured.
Links to other sites: CS Monitor, Denver Post, Minneapolis Star & Tribune, US government earthquake hazards programme,
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Peru’s new president, Leftist former army officer Ollanta Humala, was congratulated by his opponent, Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the country’s former president, Alberto Fujimoro, who is serving a jail term. Despite what appears to be a peaceful transition of power, shares fell in the capital, Lima, by more than 10 percent, reports the BBC. Internationally-traded shares but particularly Peruvian mineral and precious metals mining company shares also fell on Wall Street, which US business publications attribute to Peru’s shift to the left.
Humala appears to have won by about 3 percent in a runoff vote: neither of them gained a necessary 50 percent majority in the first round of voting, which eliminated the three centrist candidates.
Links to other sites: BBC, Business Week, Wall St Journal
Washington Post video
Yale University in the US has agreed to return treasures that were excavated at Machu Pichu in Peru nearly 100 years ago. The artifacts were part of the collection taken by Hiram Bingham and his team in 1912, and they have been the subject of a long-running dispute. The 20 November meeting between the two groups settled on the return of the items in 2011, in time for Machu Pichu’s centennial celebrations. CNN reports that there are “4,000 to 40,000 pieces, depending on how they are catalogued” but only a fraction, some 350 pieces, are museum quality pieces. They are now part of the collection of the Peabody Museum.
Links to other sites: Bloomberg, Guardian (2008, background)
Peru has rediscovered guano, a natural resource that was once its second-most famous export, after gold. Guano, from the Quechua “wano”, meaning excrement, is deposited by the millions of birds that inhabit 21 islands and 11 pensinsulas along the Pacific coast, now protected areas. In some places the guano is metres deep, and it is collected and put in 50kg bags for sale as an organic fertilizer rich in phosphates and nitrates, according to AFP.
Peru’s warm and dry coastal weather mean that the guano is dried and the nitrates are not leached out. Peru produces more than 23,000 tons per year, mostly for domestic consumption by the one million or so orgnaic farmers. In the late 19th century Peru exported 200,000 tons a year.
Links to other sites: AFP, Romandie News (Fre)
Four British tourists died when their Cessna 185 plane crashed while flying over the Nasca geoglyphs in southern Peru 2 October. The plane was piloted by two Peruvian pilots, both of whom also died. Initial reports said the plane’s engine malfunctioned.
The Nasca lines are gigantic lines scored into the desert floor 400km southeast of the capital Lima in the shape of animals or geometric figures and are best seen from the air. In February, seven people died in a similar crash and in 2008 five French tourists also died in a plane crash over Nasca.
Links to other sites: Andina News Agency (Spa) CNN, Daily Mail
A moderate 5.9-point magnitude earthquake has struck southern Peru, in the province of Puno, about 125km northwest of the city of Juliaca on the border with Cusco province. Damage and injuries have not been reported.
The earthquake was registered at 02:15 local time (+ 6h) early 13 September, and the US Geological Service (USGS) says the epicentre was 180km below the surface.
The region has been rocked by seismic activity in recent months, the latest a 6.1 magnitude earthquake in central Chile 9 September.
Links to other sites: El Comercio (Spa), Romandie News, USGS site
Four convicted spies, Russian citizens accused of working for western governments, have been pardoned by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and 10 Russians are being deported from the US, in a spy swap deal that ends a short-lived nouveau Cold War scare which at times has verged on the farcical. The 10 Russians admitted to spying in a New York court and are being put on a plane, but it’s unclear where they are headed, with speculation rife that they will be part of a swap in Vienna. Their real names were read out in court. One of them, who grew up in Peru, is being sent there, reports Ria Novosti. The convicted spies in Moscow may or may not be leaving Russia, with information fuzzy about a link between the 10 spies in the US and the Moscow prisoners’ requests for pardons.
Links to other sites: Aljazeera, BBC, NPR, Ria Novosti, Xinhua
Peruvian news report say a 22-year old Dutchman, who was once a suspect in the disappearance of an American teen in Aruba, has confessed to killing a young Peruvian woman in his Lima hotel room.
Joran van der Sloot’s is believed to have killed 21-year-old Stephany Flores on May 30 after she found out he had been questioned in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, 18. Holloway is presumed dead. The teen was celebrating her high school graduation in Aruba when she met van der Sloot a former Aruba resident.
Van der Sloot was arrested in Chile and extradited to Peru after authorities found Flores’ body in his hotel room. That same day, the man was charged in the United States with trying to extort $250,000 from Holloway’s family in exchange for disclosing the location of her body and describing how she died.
Flores died five years to the date of Holloway’s disappearance.
Further details: Associated Press
[Video, El Comercio] Domingo Pianezzi has spent weeks teaching his pet alpaca, Pisco, to ride the waves off the shores of Peru. Pianezzi, who also teaches dogs, cats, and other animals including a hamster to surf, was inspired by seeing kangaroos and koalas surf in Australia, he told Peruvian newspaper El Comercio. Pisco doesn’t appear to have mastered the big waves yet, however. As for learning to hang ten, he has only four toes, which might make it a tricky maneuver.
Title: Peruvian music concert
Location: Geneva
Description: Charango and Hatun
interpreted by Maestro Federico Tarazona
Where: Salle de Faubourg, Rue Terreaux du Temple 8, 1208 Geneva.
Start Time: 19:30
Date: 2010-03-20
Machu Picchu in 2009 (photo ©2009 Claude Vedovini)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland and the United Nations Development Programme will work with Peru to improve weather monitoring around the ancient Incan site of Machu Picchu, following a disastrous series of 40 mudslides due to heavy rains. The rains continue and the Cuzco department, where the site is located, was declared a disaster area Monday 1 February, by the regional president, Hugo Gonzales.
An estimated 25,000 people have been left homeless and another 37,000 have lost at least part of their property in the past two weeks. Some 4,000 tourists were airlifted out of the area last week, and Machu Picchu itself will be closed for at least two months while broken rail and road links are repaired.
Peru’s government has begun the evacuation of two thousand tourists stranded at the country’s main tourist attraction, the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, near the city of Cuzco. The famous ruins have been cut off for three days by a landslide, caused by torrential rains, which has blocked the only railway linking Machu Picchu and Cuzco. The government of Cuzco has declared a 60-day state of emergency.
Two people were killed when a landslide destroyed their home, and an Argentine tourist and a tour guide were killed by mudslides Monday 25 January. The rains have destroyed cropland, a colonial building in Cuzco, and parts of other pre-colonial sites in the area.
Links to other sites: BBC, CBS, El Comercio
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Nineteen countries have now secured their places in the Fifa World Cup finals to be held in South Africa in 2010 after the penultimate games in the qualification series. In the African group Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire are through and six places are up for grabs. Australia, Japan and the two Koreas take the Asian places with one more team entering a playoff with New Zealand. Seven of the 13 European places are decided:
Two army soldiers and four armed rebels died in an ambush in a remote mountain area in the Peruvian department of Junin, east of Lima. The Peruvian army is fighting remnants of Peru’s Maoist Shining Path rebel group who have allied with drug traffickers in the Apurimac river vally, one of Peru’s most important coca growing areas, the BBC reports. In Colombia twelve native Americans were massacred in their houses by armed men wearing uniforms in Nariño department, southern Colombia. The area is also a drug-growing area and leftist rebels of the Farc movement and right-wing paramilitaries are contesting the area. BBC, El Comercio (Spa), El Tiempo (Spa)
Former president Alberto Fujimori of Peru was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison 20 July for paying his former intelligence chief $15 million to leave the country. His defense argued that the money was repaid and therefore no crime was committed. In April 2009 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for abuse of authority, wrongful death and authorizing death squads to kill civilians. The sentences run concurrently in Peru. Fujimori served as president from 1990 to 2000, when he went abroad to attend an international conference, and resigned by fax. CNN, El Comercio (Spa), La Republica (Spa)
Peru’s parliament voted in favour of suspending a controversial “legislative decree” 9 June and agreed to review the laws with increased input from native peoples of the Amazon region.”We hope to find the necessary consensus with the native communities and to be able to incorporate our international obligations as soon as possible”, said trade minister, Mercedes Araóz.
The laws had provoked major disturbances in the Amazon region north of the capital Lima over the past two months, culminating in deadly clashes between protesters and the police late last week. The laws were implemented in order to comply with provisions in Peru’s free trade agreement with the US, which was recently ratified by the US Congress. BBC, El Comercio (Spa), CNN
President Alan Garcia of Peru has named leftist Yehude Simon, a regional governor, as prime minister in a move seen as an attempt to boost his popularity after most of his cabinet resigned to protest corruption charges. Most of the cabinet posts went to former cabinet members. BBC
