South America | featured news

Britain said on Sunday it remained committed to reaching a diplomatic solution to the presence of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Ecuador's London embassy, after both countries took steps to defuse a row over his action in taking refuge there.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange prepared to weigh into the diplomatic standoff between Britain and Ecuador on Sunday but may stay holed up in his refuge at the Ecuadorean embassy to avoid arrest as workmen prepared a balcony for his statement.

Ecuador cast its dispute with Britain over asylum for WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange as a struggle against colonialism on Saturday, drawing growing support from its neighbors in the international diplomatic saga.

The furor over WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's future entered stalemate mode Friday as he remained holed up in Ecuador's London embassy, his home for nearly two months, following an extraordinary display of brinkmanship between Britain and the South American country.

The snuffing out of the Olympic flame in London Sunday marks a conclusion for most, but for 2016 host city Rio de Janeiro it kicks off four years of pre-games jitters and a race against the clock to ready this notoriously laid-back beach city for the global sports showcase.

News that piranhas, which are native to the South American waters of the Amazon, have come to the Chinese city of Liuzhou, has compelled local authorities to offer a $150 reward to anyone who can land one of the fish, any way they can.

A massive herd of caribou grazes the Arctic tundra. Sea birds fatten up on shellfish along the Chesapeake Bay before flying thousands of miles to winter in South America. A pod of orca glide past Pacific islands blanketed in fir and cedar as they hunt for salmon.

For a country that’s faced the worst economic recession in a generation, the U.S. is doing marvelously well by comparison to every major economy except for maybe China. GDP growth, still around 2 percent and expected to end the year close to that, is better in the U.S. than it is in Brazil, a country which grew China-style in 2010 at 7.5 percent. Once the shining start of the Latin American economies, Brazil is now at stall speed.

Adults who want sex-change surgery or hormone therapy in Argentina will be able to get it as part of their public or private health care plans under a gender rights law approved Wednesday.

President Obama has spent part of the Summit of the Americas critiquing media coverage of issues involving the United States and Latin America. "I think that often times in the press the attention in summits like this ends up focusing on where are the controversies," Obama said at one point this weekend. "Sometimes those controversies date back to before I was born."