Peru

Protests by indigenous communities over oil drilling and mining in the Peruvian Amazon region turned violent Friday, leaving at least 13 people dead in clashes with police and subsequent rioting. According to local officials, nine police officers and four Indians were killed in an early morning confrontation on a road between Jaen and Bagua in northern Peru and in the protests that followed. The Bagua public defender's office said 45 people were injured.

Former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru made an impassioned plea of innocence at his human rights crimes trial in the Peruvian capital, portraying himself Friday as the leader who rescued his country from anarchy, not the man prosecutors have cast as a "Frankenstein" monster. "Rather than prove my guilt, the prosecution has merely shown the inconsistency of its accusations," Fujimori said, alleging that prosecutors fabricated evidence in their effort to make an "iceberg from a piece of ice."

A Peruvian lawyer says Venezuelan opposition leader Manuel Rosales has requested political asylum in Peru. Rosales is a leading opponent of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and has been charged with corruption in Venezuela. Rosales says his trial there would not be fair. Lawyer Javier Valle-Riestra said the asylum request for Rosales was made Tuesday. He said a group of Rosales' allies contacted him 10 days ago about the case.

Riot police used tear gas Thursday to turn student protesters away from Peru's Congress as thousands nationwide marched in support of Amazon Indians resisting oil and natural gas exploration on their land. At least 20,000 students, labor union members and indigenous Peruvians from the country's Andean highlands to its jungle lowlands joined mostly peaceful protests. In Lima, riot police fended off several hundred students, some of whom threw rocks and Molotov cocktails.

As hundreds of angry earthquake survivors blocked Peru's main highway demanding new homes, many hailed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as a savior -- and condemned their own president, Alan Garcia. The slow pace of the Peruvian government's reconstruction efforts since the Aug. 15, 2007, quake killed over 500 people and wrecked up to 75,000 houses has only highlighted Chavez's relatively small contribution of 100 quake-proof plastic houses to Chincha Alta's homeless. All told, only 2,000 houses have been rebuilt here in this town at the center of the quake zone, according to the international aid agency CARE.

The Nazca people of Peru -- famous for their huge line drawings on an arid plateau that are fully visible only from the air -- set the stage for their demise by deforesting the plain, allowing a huge El Niño-fueled flood to ravage the Ica Valley about AD 500, researchers have found. "They died out because they destroyed their natural ecosystem," said archaeologist Alex J. Chepstow-Lusty of the French Institute of Andean Studies in Lima, coauthor of a paper in the current issue of Latin American Antiquity.

Shining Path rebels shot down an air force helicopter in Peru's coca-growing highlands, killing three troops and wounding five, Peru's joint command said Thursday. Peru's fight against the insurgency has flared up in the last week, with guerrillas ambushing army patrols and attacking an army base. Five military personnel have been killed and 10 wounded. The military says three rebels have been arrested and four killed, though the deaths are unconfirmed. The rebels shot down the helicopter with machine-gun fire late Wednesday in Sinaycocha, a mountain village along a drug-smuggling corridor in Junin province.

A flood of high-quality counterfeit U.S. money from Peru is perplexing federal authorities, who say the shadowy networks that are responsible are also engaging in other criminal activity that poses a threat to national security. Over the last year, authorities and banks have recovered at least $7.8 million in fake notes across the United States that they believe were manufactured in Peru, according to Secret Service statistics. In addition, $446,280 in fake U.S. cash from Peru was seized before it was spent during that same period, and more than $18.2 million more in raids in the South American country, the Secret Service said.

A recent surge in arrests and cocaine seizures in Peru points to an increased presence of Mexican drug cartels, counter-narcotics officials say. The cartels have also contributed to more drug-related violence in Peruvian cities, ports and in remote valleys in this Andean country where coca, cocaine's base material, is grown, the officials say.

Gerry Wolfe, the Canadian-born president of a Chinese mining company, has a pretty good explanation for why Beijing isn't hunkering down like everyone else during the global financial crisis: "The Chinese have more cash than anyone else right now." That's one reason Chinalco Mining Peru, a unit of China's state-owned Chinalco, is continuing with a project announced two years ago to open a $2-billion copper mine in the Peruvian Andes by 2012, Wolfe said in an interview in this capital Friday.