News stories by Ángel Páez, page 3

Indigenous children under five in Peru's highlands regions still bear the brunt of chronic malnutrition, even though local authorities in those areas received millions of dollars worth of taxes between 2006 and 2010 from the mining companies operating there.

During his nearly five years in office, Peruvian President Alan García has earmarked 620.5 million dollars to the 'Glass of Milk' Programme (PVL), the backbone of the policies aimed at reducing malnutrition levels in the country. But the results of the nutritional supplement programme are poor.

A decade after the end of Peru's 20-year counterinsurgency war was officially declared, the army broke its silence, to give its own version of events.

'It’s not surprising for the United States to cooperate with military or government officials in Peru about which it has information linking them to serious crimes,' said activist Ricardo Soberón, referring to contradictions revealed in cables released by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.

A prosecutor in Peru clarified that Wong Ho Wing, a Chinese businessman in prison in this country since 2008 on charges of customs tax fraud, will not be released despite an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights decision to accept his case, which was filed to prevent his extradition to China, where he could face the death penalty.

The triumph of a left-wing candidate, Gregorio Santos, as governor of the region of Cajamarca, one of Peru's richest mining areas, has raised concern among mining companies operating there in a climate of tension and conflicts with local communities.

A U.S. appeals court has given the green light to the extradition to Peru of retired Peruvian army officer Telmo Hurtado, who fled to Miami in 2002 to escape trial for the Aug. 14, 1985 massacre of 69 people in the southern Andean village of Accomarca.

When Susana Villarán is sworn in as mayor of the Peruvian capital on Jan. 1, she will face tough challenges, such as a meagre budget for public works, 1.5 million city residents without clean water and a mismanaged nutritional supplement programme.

Poor, rural, Quechua-speaking women in the Peruvian province of Anta who were victims of a forced sterilisation programme between 1996 and 2000 have filed a new lawsuit in their continuing struggle for justice.

'My son Javier received eight bullets, one for each year of his life. That pain can't be erased by a sentence,' Rosa Rojas, who lost her husband and young son in the 1991 Barrios Altos massacre in Peru, told IPS.