Liputra's Trends

HOUSTON (ICIS)--INEOS plans to boost ethylene capacity at its Chocolate Bayou complex in Texas by 6.5% in 2013, a company spokesperson said on Friday. "We will add new ethane cracking capacity and will also expand all associated infrastructure," said group...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haitian President Michel Martelly on Friday backed off a suggestion from an interview a day earlier that he might be open to a pardon for former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier. He said he meant only that he wanted an end to the internal conflict that has long afflicted his country. Martelly, speaking in a radio interview in Dublin, said that "I never proposed to pardon" the dictator known as "Baby Doc," who is under a judicial investigation for crimes committed during his brutal 15-year rule in the 1970s and 1980s. The judge is expected to rule soon on whether Duvalier will face trial on corruption and human rights charges. A day earlier, The Associated Press...

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — The defense lawyer for former dictator Efrain Rios Montt said Friday that a Guatemalan judge violated due process when she issued unprecedented genocide charges against Rios Montt for conduct during the country's bloody civil war. Danilo Rodriguez Galvez said Judge Carol Patricia Flores was supposed to issue her decision only after hearing testimony on allegations that Rios Montt was involved in hundreds of murders, human violations and the displacement of 29,000 during Guatemala's bloody, three-decade civil war. Flores charged Rios Montt with genocide and crimes against humanity late Thursday. It's the first time a Latin American court has charged former president with...

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba convicted six people of cutting down African mahogany trees in the National Botanical Gardens and sentenced them to eight and 10 years in prison, Communist Party newspaper Granma said Friday. The men felled nine trees on two occasions in December and harvested a total of $122 worth of wood, according to the court sentencing printed alongside the article. Mahogany sells for considerably more than that elsewhere, listing for $10 to $15 per board-foot on some U.S. websites. Angela Leiva, the director of the reserve, told Granma that the 30- to 40-year-old trees were important to the ecology of the gardens and their loss cannot be repaired in the short or medium term....

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez has been filling top posts in Venezuela's armed forces with hardline political loyalists, raising concerns among critics that the military leaders might not accept the results of this year's election if it goes against him. The man named defense minister this month, Gen. Henry Rangel Silva, has been the bluntest: "A hypothetical opposition government starting in 2012 would be selling out the country; the Armed Force is not going to accept that," he told a Venezuelan newspaper in 2010. Rangel had joined Chavez in a 1992 attempt to overthrow the president of the time, as did Chavez's newly appointed Military Aviation commander, Gen. Jose Gregorio...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Several Nobel prize laureates are joining the PEN International writers group in condemning attacks on journalists in Mexico. Mario Vargas Llosa and Toni Morrison are among those participating in a full-page ad in the newspaper El Universal, signed by 170 of the world's most acclaimed writers. It recognizes the courage of journalists in a country were attacks have increased dramatically with drug violence in recent years. Friday's ad says attacks on journalists "impede the ability to live a secure life free of censorship." Attacks on Mexican journalists generally go unprosecuted. Mexico's national human rights commission says 74 journalists were killed from 2000 to 2011....

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Authorities say a tourist bus has collided with a parked vehicle in the U.S. Virgin Islands, injuring at least 13 cruise ship passengers. Tourist Department spokeswoman Allegra Kean-Moorehead says one female passenger was hospitalized for a hip fracture while 12 others were released after being treated. She says all were passengers of the Serenade of the Seas cruise ship that docked Friday in St. Thomas. Their nationalities were not immediately clear. She says the Royal Caribbean ship is expected to depart late Friday without the injured passenger. Police spokeswoman Melody Rames said the group was on one of the open-air "safari buses" on a steep road near the...

REUTERS - Ivory Coast’s recent failures at the Nations Cup have had a profound effect on the West...

Judge rules that Guatemala's former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt must face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity Link to this video Human rights groups celebrated on Friday after a court in Guatemala ruled that the former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who presided over one of Latin America's bloodiest civil wars, will face trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Members of the Ixil tribe, which suffered horrific atrocities at the hands of the army, said they had waited decades for this moment but expressed disappointment that the retired general was placed under house arrest rather than jailed....

LONDON (ICIS)--US headquartered Eastman Chemical has bid to acquire speciality chemicals firm Solutia in a $27.65/share cash and stock offer valued at $4.7bn (€3.6bn), the companies said on Friday. The directors of both firms have supported the transaction which is subject to approval by US-based Solutia's shareholders. The acquisition would broaden geographical reach and...