Living in Peru : your everyday companion

In Peru Protest, Women Urge Action on Food Prices

More than 1,000 women protested outside Peru’s Congress on Wednesday, banging empty pots and pans to demand that the government do more to counter rising food prices, which are squeezing the poor worldwide. The women, some toting small children on their hips, run food kitchens, known as eating halls, for the poor. (Reuters - click here to read complete article)


Peruvians ditch the dollar, move savings to soles

Max Campos, one of hundreds of money changers who works the street corners of Lima, Peru's capital, spent years trying to get his hands on U.S. dollars. Now he dumps them for the once beleaguered Peruvian sol. Campos, 32, has become part of a sea change of savvy consumers helping to break the Peruvian economy's link to the dollar faster than the government expected. (Reuters - click here to read complete article)


Peru's Coffee Output to Rise 9% as Farming and Prices Improve

Peru's production of coffee, the country's biggest agricultural export, will rise 9 percent in the year through March 2009 as farming practices and prices improve, the U.S. Agriculture Department said. Output will increase to 4.3 million bags from an estimated 3.95 million in the year ended March 31, the U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service attache said in a report prepared by Gaspar E. Nolte and posted on the USDA's Web site. (Bloomberg - click here to read complete article by Ron Day)


Oxygen-poor ocean zones are growing

Oxygen-starved waters are expanding in the Pacific and Atlantic as ocean temperatures increase with global warming, threatening fisheries and other marine life, a study published today concludes. Most of these zones remain hundreds of feet below the surface, but they are beginning to spill onto the relatively shallow continental shelf off the coast of California and are nearing the surface off Peru, driving away fish from commercially important fishing. (LA Times - click here to read complete article by Kenneth R. Weiss)