Coverage of the eruption of a volcano in Ecuador:
Four Ecuadorean villages are being evacuated after a volcano close to the country’s capital began spewing smouldering rock and billowing columns of ash.
The government is urging 700 people living beside the Tungurahua volcano near Quito to leave the area as soon as possible.
Discussion of one of Ecuador’s main exports:
Yesterday banana producers and exporters failed to agree to set the new box price for bananas.
The first party requested for the price to be set at USD $5.50 in 2012 while the other want it to be set at U.S.D $5.05.
Ecuador increases spending in new national budget:
Ecuador’s National Assembly late Monday approved the 2012 budget proposal, worth $26.11 billion.
The budget is 9% higher than the $23.95 billion approved for 2011.
Freedom of speech issues continue to be a point of contention in Ecuador:
Monica Chuji, Ecuador’s former communications minister under President Rafael Correa and well-known indigenous activist, was on Nov. 25 sentenced to one year in prison and a ordered to pay a $100,000 fine for “defamation” of Correa’s Minister of Public Administration, Vinicio Alvarado. However, after the sentence was imposed by the court at Pichincha penitentiary, Alvarado exercised his prerogative to pardon Chuji—an implicit admission that the move would have broken the remaining ties between Correa and the country’s powerful indigenous movement.
News about the development of Ecuador’s natural resources:
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa said on Thursday his government is “within days” of signing contracts with mining companies set to develop large copper and gold projects in the mineral-rich Andean nation.
Ecuador preparing to move forward with agreements on natural resource development:
Ecuador is close to signing contracts with Kinross and Ecuacorriente for two large mining projects with investment of $3 billion, a senior mining official said on Tuesday.
Leftist Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has had a tumultuous relationship with foreign investors since first taking office in 2007, revising oil contracts to better favor the government and defaulting on the nation’s debt.
Ecuador’s budget, heavily reliant on the export of domestic oil, forecast for the end of the year:
Ecuador will end this year with about an $850 million fiscal cushion, funds that will come in handy in 2012, but financing for next year could become tighter amid any fallout from the ongoing global financial crisis and a planned shutdown of the country’s main refinery, Ecuador’s Finance Minister said.
News about economic ties between China and Ecuador:
Ecuador´s non-oil exports to China exceeded 148 million USD in the first nine months of the year, when they increased over 130 percent, the Ecuadorian Embassy informed.
The increase is attributed to trade agreements and a stepped up promotion of the offer of Ecuadorian items in important events in China, according to a press release issued by the Head of the Ecuadorian diplomatic mission Leonardo Arizaga.
Ecuador president, Rafael Correa, threatens to nationalize fruit exporters that don’t fall in line with his policy:
Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, has threatened to nationalise Ecuadorian banana exporters that acquire fruit outside the official framework and fail to comply with the country’s official price.
At the site of the Chevron Ecuador trial we see:
Ecuador exported 8.63 million barrels of crude oil in December 2011, up 17% from 7.38 million barrels a month earlier, the Central Bank said.
All the oil was exported by Ecuador’s state-owned companies.
Revenue from Ecuador’s crude oil exports totaled $909 million in December, up 10% from $826 million the month before.
Another newspaper weighs in on freedom of speech issues in Ecuador, site of the Chevron Ecuador trial. The New York Times and The Washington Post also editorialized in recent weeks against President Rafael Correa’s actions:
An attack on freedom of the press anywhere is an attack on freedom everywhere.
Such an assault is under way in Ecuador, a nation ruled with a heavy hand by a lightweight dictator who seems to wish he were Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
The target: El Universo, a 90-year-old Guayaquil newspaper, one of the largest in Latin America and a leading voice for freedom and democracy in the region.
Government of Ecuador and Petroecuador, the country’s state owned and run oil company, sign agreement to increase oil output in the country where the Chevron Ecuador trial has taken place:
President Rafael Correa presided over the ceremony, in which Petroecuador head Marco Calvopiña and the representatives of the two winning consortiums inked the deals.
Ecuador state-run oil company Petroecuador late Tuesday signed 15-year contracts with both consortia, which will invest about $1.7 billion over the next five years.
“We condemn the latest reforms to Ecuador’s electoral law, which are so broad that they could, among other things, effectively prevent reporting on election matters for three months prior to the vote,” said Carlos Lauría, CPJ’s senior Americas program coordinator. “This deprives citizens of their right to stay informed on election news and represents the latest step in the deterioration of press freedom under Correa.”
Ecuador’s energy minister says U.S. and Argentine companies are investing nearly $1.7 billion to boost production in the country’s two main oil fields by 40,000 barrels a day.
The Lago Agrio judgment was procured through a corrupt and fraudulent scheme, much of which was captured on film and memorialized in the plaintiffs’ representatives’ own emails and correspondence. Their misconduct includes fabricating expert reports, manufacturing evidence, bribing and colluding with court officials, waging a campaign of intimidation against judges, and even ghostwriting parts of the verdict itself. Evidence of these crimes has been provided to Ecuador’s courts and prosecutors, but authorities there have taken no corrective actions.
Any uncertainty caused about potential liabilities regarding the recent Brazilian oil spill and Ecuador court cases is overdone.
Organizations like the Inter American Press Association, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers and Reporters Without Borders have asked President Correa to stop his assault on journalists and the media, like that facing the newspaper El Universo, which could set a dangerous precedent. Publications like The New York Times, Washington Post, Spain’s El País, El Espectador in Colombia, and La Nación in Argentina have also questioned Correa’s actions. Even Ecuador’s previous presidents have asked that Correa respect freedom of expression.
President Rafael Correa of Ecuador is leading a relentless campaign against free speech, harassing his critics, forcing independent broadcasters off the air and hijacking the nation’s courts in his bid to bankrupt the country’s largest newspaper.
Reporters are frequently assassinated in Mexico, and a populist government in Venezuela has driven some journalists into exile. But press freedom advocates say that no other country in Latin America is moving so fast and on so many fronts to restrain the media as tiny, banana-producing Ecuador.
President Rafael Correa, an American-educated leftist economist who has forged close alliances with Cuba and Iran, has filed a defamation lawsuit that might put the three directors of the country’s largest newspaper in jail and shutter their 90-year-old paper. The government has cobbled together a framework of laws and constitutional reforms to limit press independence, free expression groups say, while building a media conglomerate to disparage critics and counter independent media reports.
The appeal, read Chevron’s announcement, “establishes that the lower courts violated the Ecuadorian constitution by refusing to take any corrective action in response to the extensive fraud and corruption committed by plaintiffs lawyers and their representatives.”
Fadel Gheit, an analyst with Oppenheimer who follows the company, agrees.
“If I was ruling Chevron, I would fight until the very last minute of my job, and make sure the next guy behind me will not pay them anything,” Gheit said. “They are a bunch of scam artists.”
Gheit said Chevron has no choice but to fight the lawsuit to the end, because paying would set a precedent that other people across the globe could try exploiting.
Since taking office in 2007, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has been in a war of words with the media in his country. He’s used archaic libel laws to pursue criminal charges against the owners of El Universo and a columnist at the newspaper. His government has pushed through a law that severely restricts the media’s ability to cover political campaigns and elections; indeed, it goes so far as to ban any media reports that can benefit or hurt a candidate. And now he’s set his sights on international media observers.
U.S. oil giant Chevron Corp. said it would pursue another appeal of a multibillion dollar judgment against in Ecuador for environmental contamination.
The company said it has submitted a petition to have a review performed by Ecuador’s National Court of Justice, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
