Cocaine production polluting Peru rivers, says government

September 24th, 2009 Peru grants cleanup extension to US-owned smelterLIMA, Peru — Peru's congress has granted the financially troubled U.S.-owned Doe Run Peru smelter a two-and-a-half year extension to reduce toxic emissions, allowing the company to miss a second deadline to clean up the Andean town of La Oroya. Doe Run closed the plant in June after lenders cut credit lines amid sagging metals prices.

September 15th, 2009 LIMA - The cocaine chain starts in the mountainous jungles of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, where peasants sell their coca leaf crop to criminal gangs. It ends on the streets of the US and Europe.

September 10th, 2009 LIMA - Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva has confirmed that a pre-Inca citadel has been found in Zana river's upper basin, between the departments of Lambayeque and Cajamarca in Peru. According to a report in 'Living in Peru', it would be an archaeological complex belonging to the Cajamarca culture, from the early Christian era.

September 3rd, 2009 Peru rebels down air force helicopter, kill 3LIMA, Peru — Drug-funded Shining Path rebels shot down an air force helicopter in Peru's coca-growing highlands, killing three troops and wounding five, Peru's joint command said Thursday. Peru's fight against the insurgency has flared up in the past week, with guerrillas ambushing army patrols and attacking an army base.

August 25th, 2009 Peru police seize cocaine sewn inside live turkeysLIMA, Peru — Peruvian police expecting to find a shipment of cocaine hidden in a crate holding two live turkeys were surprised to discover the drug surgically implanted inside the birds. Acting on a tip, officers stopped a Turismo Ejecutivo SRL bus outside the city of Tarapoto in the central jungle state of San Martin, officials said Monday.

August 2nd, 2009 Peruvian rebels suspected in attack that kills 5LIMA, Peru — Peruvian authorities say attackers believed to be Shining Path rebels killed three police officers and two women in an assault on a remote police post in a coca-growing region. Police Maj. Quispe Gonzales tells The Associated Press that three more officers were wounded in the raid that ended in the early hours of Sunday.

July 12th, 2009 Magnitude 6.0 earthquake hits southern PeruMEXICO CITY — The U.S. Geological Service is reporting that an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.0 has struck southern Peru.

July 12th, 2009 Magnitude 5.3 earthquake hits southern PeruLIMA, Peru — An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.3 has struck southern Peru. The country's seismic institute says there are no immediate reports of damage or injury.

July 3rd, 2009 Peru bus collision kills 23 near Lake TiticacaLIMA, Peru — Two buses crashed head-on Thursday on a mountain road near Lake Titicaca in Peru, killing at least 23 people and injuring 50 more, police said. The morning crash occurred in the Santa Lucia district, about an hour's drive from Lake Titicaca high in the Andes, a Puno state highway police officer told The Associated Press by phone.

June 24th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Worldwide production of cocaine and heroin dropped in 2008, with the sharpest reductions in Colombia and Afghanistan, the UN said in a report Wednesday. Cultivation of opium poppies - from which heroin is derived - fell by 19 percent in Afghanistan, which is the largest producer of the drug.

June 19th, 2009 UN: Colombia coca crop down; Peru and Bolivia upBOGOTA — Colombia's coca crop shrank by nearly a fifth last year while cultivation of the bush that is the basis of cocaine rose for a third straight year in Peru and Bolivia, the world's two other coca-producing nations, the United Nations said Friday. The U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said the 18 percent reduction in Colombia, the world's top cocaine producer, from 2007 owed in part to record manual eradication — as opposed to aerial herbicide spraying — of 96,100 hectares (371 square miles) of the crop.

May 6th, 2009 US citizen Berenson, imprisoned in Peru, has sonLIMA, Peru — The parents of New Yorker Lori Berenson say she has given birth to a baby boy while serving a 20-year sentence in Peru for collaborating with leftist guerrillas in the 1990s. The 39-year-old is married to ex-Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement member Anibal Apari, whom she met in jail.

April 30th, 2009 LIMA - Peru suspended from Thursday all flights to and from Mexico over the ongoing flu epidemic, in a decision that Prime Minister Yehude Simon described as 'painful but necessary'. 'We have the right to protect the country,' Simon noted.

February 2nd, 2009 LIMA - An earthquake measuring 6 on the Richter scale hit southern Peru Monday, authorities said. The Geophysics Institute of Peru (IGP) said that the earthquake occurred at 12.53 p.m.

December 28th, 2008 LIMA - Drug traffickers have destroyed nearly two million hectares of forests in Peru in order to grow coca, the raw material for cocaine, EFE news agency reported Monday, quoting the country's Environment Minister Antonio Brack. 'The traffickers invaded protected areas and cleared forests for land to grow coca,' the minister said, adding that this activity has destroyed 'nearly two million hectares of forest' in the country.