Chile

SANTIAGO, Nov 20 (Reuters) - For many Chileans, Plaza Baquedano, a broad rotary in central Santiago that for decades served as a center of social protest, has become a powerful symbol of hope.

For two years, city residents have regularly gathered here to protest pensions that are too low, public transit fees that are too high and, more generally, an old-guard political class that just does not get it.

The statue of a nineteenth-century general that sat at the plaza's center has been removed, and its plinth is now covered in left-wing political literature.

SANTIAGO, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Chile's centrist presidential candidates are lagging behind the polarized favorites on the right and left ahead of Sunday's election, but could play roles as kingmakers in an expected second-round run-off.

Yasna Provoste, 51, a former teacher, sits in third place in opinion polls for the powerful center-left Christian Democratic party, behind hard-right front-runner Jose Antonio Kast and leftist former student protest leader Gabriel Boric.

SANTIAGO, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Chile's capital Santiago braced for protests on Monday to mark the second anniversary of the start of months of riots against inequality that left around 30 people dead and a trail of destruction around the city.

The 2019 protests - a mix of large, peaceful marches and smaller, violent riots - triggered a powerful social shift in the Andean country and led to the formation of a representative assembly to redraft the market-oriented constitution.

SANTIAGO, Oct 5 (NNN-MERCOPRESS) — An operation codenamed ‘Frontera Norte’ has allowed Chile’s Criminal Investigations Police (Policía de Investigaciones – PDI) to arrest nine suspected members of a migrant smuggling ring following an investigation supported by INTERPOL and law enforcement across South and Central America.

SANTIAGO, Oct 2 (NNN-MERCOPRESS) — Chilean authorities have lifted the curfew imposed over a year and a half ago as a part of the sanitary measures against the COVID-19 pandemic effective Oct 1, it was announced.

 The return to pre-pandemic ways of life could be noticed from the very beginning, according to local media reports, although 895 new coronavirus infections had been detected Thursday, according to Health Ministry sources.

SANTIAGO, Sept 24 (NNN-MERCOPRESS) — Chilean migration authorities expelled 49 migrants who were found guilty of human trafficking in addition to carrying weapons illegally, the Department of Migration and International Police of Tarapacá reported.

The measure was adopted as a commutation of sentence, Miguel Ángel Quezada, presidential delegate to Tarapacá explained. The 40 Bolivian and nine Peruvian were arrested in areas near the borders with their countries of origin.

SANTIAGO, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Latin American and Caribbean region will see economic growth of 5.9 percent in 2021 amid a pandemic that has exacerbated longstanding structural problems in the region, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has said.

In its report titled "Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean 2021: Labor Dynamics and Employment Policies for a Sustainable and Inclusive Recovery Beyond the COVID-19 Crisis," the organization projected a slowdown for 2022, with an expansion of 2.9 percent.

SANTIAGO, Aug 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Chilean Senate is debating a bill whether to make voting in national elections mandatory, a highly controversial issue since lawmakers of the ruling coalition are against the initiative while the opposition insists in approving it to increase the participation percentage.

A few Senators managed to establish their positions but finally the debate was suspended until the next session.

SANTIAGO, Aug 23 (NNN-TELESUR) — Chile’s President of the Senate Yasna Provoste won the Social-Democrat Primary Elections with an overwhelming majority of 62.2 percent of the votes and will represent the Constituent Union alliance in the Nov 21 Presidential Elections.

“This country cannot think the next government will come to experiment, to make trial-and-error tests. We cannot either think we will change from one Sebastian to another. We have to offer a better destiny to our country,” Provoste said after the election result was published.

SANTIAGO, Aug 8 (NNN-Xinhua) — Chile continued to register below 1,000 daily cases of COVID-19 after reporting 940 infections in the last 24 hours.

“940 new cases have been reported, with a positivity of 1.4 percent in the last 24 hours nationwide,” Health Minister Enrique Paris told the press.

However, the official stressed the importance of continued vigilance against the virus.