Manta, Ecuador News

The recent crash landing in Ecuador of a light aircraft with one million dollars in cash tied to Mexican drug cartels highlights once again the high price some Latin American populations are paying for their government's lackluster counter-narcotics cooperation with the United States.

'This is nothing like the Rainforest Cafe," cracks my boatmate. He's right. Rather than the cacophony one might expect, the sounds of the Ecuadorian jungle are surprisingly ordered at dawn on the Napo River, the Amazon tributary from where Francisco de Orellana first navigated the full length of South America's great river.

Via El Universo : Cuatro cepas del dengue atacan en todas las provincias . [Four strains of dengue attack in all provinces] Excerpt, with my translation: En Ecuador se ha confirmado la circulaciA3n de los cuatro serotipos de virus dengue.

Via El Universo , a report datelined Portoviejo-Machala: Se hacen mingas contra dengue; mA s enfermos se hospitalizan .