Crude oil discovered in Brazil's Potiguar Basin
Brazil's state-run petroleum company PETROBRAS announced on Monday that crude oil had been discovered in Potiguar Basin, in the country's Rio Grando do Norteprovince, in a joint exploitation with Portugal's oil company Partex.

Guillherme Estrella, director of Exploration and Production of the Brazilian firm, said the reserves will be figured out after new drillings are made.

He added that the total petroleum production in the region where the new oil field is located currently amounts to 260,000 barrels per day, a 10-percent increase over 2003.

The new discovery occurred five days after the announcement of another one in Esplanada, Brazil's Bahia province.

By now, petroleum reserves in Brazil have reached 13 billion barrels, including 400 million barrels discovered this year.

Estrella said that by mid-December, Brazil's oil production will reach a new level, exceeding last year's record of 1.64 million barrels per day.

Currently, the production is 1.57 million barrels per day.

With the scheduled start of the operation of the P-43 oil rig on Oct. 19, PETROBRAS' total production is expected to grow to 1.7million barrels per day by late December.
 

14 people killed in Colombia
A group of gunmen killed 14 people and injured five others on Sunday in a farmhouse in Candelaria, Colombia's Valle del Cauca province, local police said Monday.

Police said the victims included a three-year-old boy and a pregnant woman.

Mayor of Candelaria Oscal Lopez described the attack as a "horrible crime," but refused to comment on the motives behind the killings.

The perpetrators fled the estate on a pickup truck and a taxi. Two of them died later during a shoot-out with police chasing them.

Police said the victims, seemingly members of a single family, were involved in a dispute over a soccer match hours before the killing.

Other sources, however, blamed suspected drug dealers for the slaughter.

These sources said the people at the farmhouse gathered for a meeting of some sort when the assailants arrived and fired at them with automatic weapons.

Hundreds of people have been killed over the past year in the area as drug traffickers fight for control of the lucrative narcotics trade.

Colombia produces most of the world's cocaine and most of the heroin found in the United States.
 

French soldiers join military exercises in Venezuela
A group of French soldiers started joint military exercises with Venezuelan troops in the Guri area in Venezuela's southern state of Bolivar, the state-run news agency Venpres reported Monday.

The 29 soldiers, part of France's 152nd Mechanized Infantry Regiment, will be involved in jungle-combat training with Venezuela's 507th Special Forces Battalion "Domingo Montes" under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Wilmer Medina.

The drills are part of the continuous training plans of the Venezuelan army aimed at guaranteeing a high level of performance in any combat situation, Venpres reported.

Meanwhile, Venezuela has also sent 29 professional soldiers to France's Equatorial Jungle Training Center in French Guyana.

The soldiers will be able to test at the center their skills in survival, combat and defense in jungles, and learn the skills which the French army has developed in its military missions in South American rainforests and other continents.

Cuban Protester beaten, arrested, and charged
On Sunday, September 26, Daniel Orlando Gómez planted himself in front of the local Communist Party headquarters and started yelling for Fidel Castro to step down.

Yells like "Fidel, you have electricity and the rest of us don't", "Down with Fidel", and "Fidel has been fooling everybody for almost 50 years", prompted the lone official at party headquarters to lock himself in and call the police. Before they arrived, Gómez' friends had managed to quiet him down and take him home.

About half an hour later, a police car stopped in front of Gómez' home and two officers forced their way into the house, finding Gómez in bed. When they attempted to take him in, Gómez became agitated and started yelling again.

The officers handcuffed him and beat him with their truncheons. Gómez' wife tried to intervene, and they beat her too.

At some point Gómez went into convulsions, cramped up, and started turning purple, and the officers took him to the local polyclinic, where he remained overnight. Gómez, 22, has been previously diagnosed with a mitral-valve prolapse and been put on a waiting list for a transplant.

Upon his release Monday, police charged him with disrespect to the Commander in Chief. He faces up to four years in prison when - not if - convicted.