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By Irene Caselli Disabled people in Ecuador were once marginalised, shut up in their homes and considered unemployable. Since 2007, a single government initiative has transformed many of their lives. Before his accident, Angel Quevedo worked as a house painter in...
A cumbersome and demanding bureaucracy is an attack on the rights of Ecuadorians, President Rafael Correa said Saturday in his weekly televison broadcast. He said his government is developing a top to bottom plan to improve “customer service” to citizens, from a...
A group of investors in the failed Cuenca financial cooperative Coopera have called off Monday’s efforts to meet with President Rafael Correa in Quito. A spokesman for the group said the plan to demand a meeting at the presidential palace would conflict with larger...
A study by an environmental research center says Cuenca has Ecuador’s best drinking water. It also reports that more than 65% of the country’s population boils its water even though it’s not required in most cases. The Quito-based National Environmental Reseach...
By Jim Wyss Ecuador is killing an ambitious conservation program intended to leave more than 800 million barrels of oil beneath a pristine swath of the Amazon. But on Friday it was clear that the Yasuní-ITT Initiative, as it’s known, won’t die easily. A coalition of...
Claiming that “the world has failed us,” President Rafael Correa said Thursday night that he is giving up on a plan to persuade the world’s rich countries to help Ecuador protect a pristine section of the Amazon rainforest from oil drilling. He said that the country...
Scientists from the U.S. Smithsonian Institute have discovered a new carnivorous mammal in the highland jungles of Ecuador and Colombia. It is the first new carnivore species found in the western hemisphere in 35 years. Called the olinguito (oh-lin-GHEE-toe), the...
The U.S. Department of Commerce has slapped a 13.5% tariff on Ecuadorian shrimp imports, claiming the industry is subsidized by the government. Ecuador’s Coordinating Minister of Production, Employment and Competitiveness, Ricardo Espinoza, rejected the decision...
By Jim Wyss When you spin the radio dial in Quito you could almost be anywhere. The airwaves are crowded with the likes of Beyoncé, Shakira and Pitbull, just like you were cruising a highway in Miami or Manhattan — rather than tooling through the snow-capped Andes....
By Gerard Alvarez Patricio Matute is building his dream house in the Ecuadorian Andean mountains near Cuenca, thanks in part to the 10 years he spent working at a boat canvas factory in Ronkonkoma, New York. The two-story, Swiss-chalet-style house will have a swimming...
The Cuenca municipal transit authority plans to install new pedestrian street-crossing signals in several locations and is conducting a study for future installations. The new signals will stop vehicular traffic in all directions to allow pedestrians to cross. A...
A new submarine fiber optic cable scheduled to be connected by late 2014 will increase Ecuador’s Internet capacity and speed by a factor of 160. The new cable, being installed by Pacific Caribbean Cable System and paid for by a consortium of Internet, telephone...
Back in February, when Rafael Correa was re-elected to his second full term in office --in 2006, he had been elected to a two-year term before the constitution was changed to allow a president two full terms-- he dedicated his victory to Hugo Chavez, saying that the...
Although Vilcabamba and Loja Province have long been considered home to the longest-living Ecuadorians, the country’s real longevity capital may be Cuenca. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Census, Cuenca has the highest percentage of...
The U.S. and the European Union are keeping a wary eye on changes to drug laws in Latin America. Legislation to make the government of Uruguay the producer and provider of legal marijuana appears headed for passage in the country’s national assembly, giving President...
Details of the second phase of payouts to Coopera depositors were annouced yesterday by the government. Coopera was shut down June 12 after its top officials were arrested for alleged money laundering and embezzlement. According to the Superintendency of Popular and...
In a television interview with Teleamazonas, Cuenca Mayor Paul Granda says the city is building a transportation system he believes will be a model for all of Latin America. At the heart of the system, says Granda, is the quarter-billion dollar light rail system, or...
By Jim Wyss Waving away a cloud of gnats, biologist Phyllis “Lissy” Coley scours the Amazonian underbrush for inga shrubs, whose young leaves are loaded with powerful toxins and chemicals that might be useful in medical research. Coley and her team from the University...
President Rafael Correa announced Saturday that the government will end subsidies for LP gas by 2016, when new hydro electric projects go online. He said that consumers will be encouraged to replace gas hot water heaters, stoves, clothes dryers and other gas...
Construction of Cuenca’s new planetarium on the south side of Parque de la Madre should be complete by early October but officials have not set an opening date for the facility. The planetarium, designed in the shape of the planet Saturn, complete with the ring, will...
