Latin America

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The new coronavirus pandemic could send economies tumbling by 4.6% this year across Latin America and the Caribbean, forcing governments to take ownership stakes in struggling major businesses, according to a World Bank report issued Sunday.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Interns and resident doctors at a public hospital on the outskirts of Mexico’s capital say that 26 of them have tested positive for the COVID-19 disease and request personal protective equipment and better training for all of the hospital’s staff.

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno unveiled an emergency economic plan Friday aimed at rescuing the South American nation hard hit by the new coronavirus and then dealt a second blow when two large pipelines broke, halting critical crude exports.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A teenager from the Yanomami indigenous tribe has been killed by the new coronavirus in Brazil, the Health Ministry said Friday, raising alarm about the spread of the virus into protected lands.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The U.S. Court of Appeals issued a key ruling on Friday that allows anyone from Puerto Rico to apply for Supplemental Security Income at a time when the U.S. territory is mired in a 13-year recession.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — In Mexico, beach towns have begun blocking off roads —in some cases, constructing barricades of rubble across roadways— to seal themselves off from the outside world in a bid to stop the new coronavirus from entering.

The estimates announced this week are eight times higher than the number of confirmed cases of the disease in the country.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Mexico City government is sending out teams to help the home-bound and the homeless during the shutdown declared to combat the coronavirus, officials said Thursday.

President Juan Orlando Hernández warned of tougher days to come, saying “this is only the beginning” of the coronavirus crisis in Honduras.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — International health officials are warning that the Nicaraguan government’s perplexing weekslong refusal to take measures to control the spread of the new coronavirus is heightening the risk of an epidemic in Central America even as neighboring countries take tough action.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala’s government said Wednesday it will resume receiving deportation flights from the United States next week. It had suspended the flights during Holy Week after three deported Guatemalans later tested positive for COVID-19.

SÃO PAULO (AP) — In home isolation just months after his release from jail, Brazil’s former leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Wednesday that President Jair Bolsonaro needs to change his dismissive approach to the new coronavirus or risk being forced from office before the end of his term in December 2022.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Alfonso Cedeño died at a crowded hospital in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil, where the only bed doctors could offer was an ambulance stretcher. Two weeks later, his family doesn’t know where his body is.

Correa and others faced accusations that between 2012 and 2016, they accepted $8 million in bribes from companies seeking government contracts.

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — An Ecuadorian court found former President Rafael Correa guilty of corruption Tuesday and sentenced him to eight years in prison, further sullying the legacy of one of the nation’s most enduring and polemic political leaders.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala announced Tuesday that a third deportee has tested positive for COVID-19 after being flown home by the United States.

MIAMI (AP) — Until a month ago, Diana Leticia Hernández sold face cream door to door in Miami. Her husband painted houses. The money fed their family and at least six relatives in Honduras.

Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to block 3M from exporting the masks last week, arguing they should be reserved for U.S. medical care. 

MIAMI (AP) — They whiled away the week on a sex- and drug-fueled romp: dancing on white-sand beaches and frolicking on a paradisaical Caribbean island with prostitutes from Europe, some snapping selfies with famous reggaetón artists.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — As Colombia continues with a nationwide lockdown to control the new coronavirus, some of the millions of Venezuelans who have gone abroad in recent years are deciding they are better off back in their homeland.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Sunday there will be no huge economic stimulus program as the country faces the threat of coronavirus-induced crisis almost certainly unlike any it has seen in the past century.