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WORLD NEWSWednesday 27 December 2017

Guyana sugar cane production hits 27-year low Former Peruvian
leader apologizes
Associated Press State-run Guyana Sugar prepares to permanently have already been harvest- following pardon
GEORGETOWN, Guyana Corporation, known as shutter three of its six indus- ed and production won’t
(AP) — Sugar output in Guysuco, said over the try facilities and fire about climb significantly higher By FRANK BRICENO
Guyana is expected to fall holiday weekend that the 4,000 of its 15,000-mem- during the last week of the Associated Press
by nearly a quarter from nearly 140,000 metric tons ber workforce by Dec. 31. year. Sugar was once the LIMA, Peru (AP) — Former
last year, as the Caribbean produced in 2017 is the low- Guysuco, which was run by country’s largest source of Peruvian President Alberto
trade bloc’s largest sugar- est in 27 years. The decline Bookers Corp. in the United foreign exchange, with an Fujimori apologized to the
producing nation struggles comes as Guysuco strug- Kingdom before it was na- average of around 300,000 nation Tuesday for wrongs
with a decline in demand gles with a debt load of tionalized in 1976, said most tons produced yearly up to committed under his gov-
from the European Union. more than $500 million and of its sugar cane plants the early 1990s.q ernment in the 1990s, is-
suing a vaguely worded
Dark, desperate life without power in Puerto Rico statement two days after
he received a presidential
Doris Martínez receives supplies and water from municipal staff outside the City Hall in Morovis, are alternately despair- pardon that freed him from
ing, furious, resigned, and prison.
Puerto Rico. Over 30,000 residents of that mountain town wait for the restoration of electric power sometimes in disbelief that The 79-year-old Fujimori
the United States remains spoke in a videotaped
service, one of the last municipalities of Puerto Rico that remains completely in the dark more than unable to help restore message from a hospital
power to its citizens more in the capital. He received
three months after the passage of Hurricane Maria. than 90 days after a natu- the pardon after serving
ral disaster. less than half of a 25-year
(AP Photo/Carlos Giusti) A little after noon, Arelis Na- sentence for human rights
varro steps out of her nail abuses.
By DANICA COTO Her 53-year-old daughter neers estimated roughly 50 salon to restart her car. The “I am aware that the results
hood is open, and Navarro, during my government
Associated Press loaded her food and water percent of the island’s 3.3 38 weeks pregnant, has were well received on one
connected an inverter to side, but I recognize that I
MOROVIS, Puerto Rico into her car and drove off million people remained the battery and plugged have let down other com-
in a cluster of extension patriots,” the former presi-
(AP) — Three days before to the public housing com- without power. The U.S. cords, lights and a fan for dent said. “To them, I ask
her salon. for forgiveness with all my
Christmas, Doris Martinez plex where she would then Army Corps of Engineers “You have to make the ef- heart.”
fort because as you can Fujimori had not previously
and daughter Miriam Nar- have to wait with dozens of has said it likely won’t be imagine, I have debts to apologized, asserting even
pay, a daughter to main- during his sentencing hear-
vaez joined their neighbors other neighbors in another until May that all of Puerto tain and another one on ing that he was innocent.
the way,” she says as she He led the country from
in a line outside city hall in line to cook on one of six Rico is electrified. taps some powder on a 1990-2000, and was found
woman’s nails to prepare guilty for the killings of 25
Morovis, a town of 30,000 gas burners in the adminis- Local and federal officials them for an acrylic artificial people in a campaign
set. against the leftist Shining
people still living without trator’s office. blame the rough terrain Down the hill, past the Path terrorist group.
town’s plaza and up anoth- “He has to ask forgive-
electricity in the mountains “Things are not good,” Nar- and extensive damage for er hill, 50-year-old Maria Ri- ness from his victims, from
vera watches her husband the families of those who
of central Puerto Rico more vaez said as she headed delaying restoration of a and two friends remove were lost, who can’t spend
broken furniture and sog- Christmas with their fami-
than three months after toward home. power infrastructure that gy sheets from their home, lies,” Marisa Glave, a mem-
which was destroyed by ber of parliament, said on
Hurricane Maria battered This is life in Puerto Rico was in dire need of main- the storm. It is 2 p.m., and local television network
the three men toss the America.
the U.S. island. more than three months af- tenance due to Puerto debris into a truck one of Fujimori, who has been di-
them owns. City officials agnosed with arrhythmia
They waited two hours un- ter Maria destroyed the is- Rico’s 11-year-old reces- never showed up to clear and tongue cancer, also
the debris, and crews with thanked President Pedro
der the searing sun for their land’s electrical grid. Gov. sion. A growing number of the U.S. Federal Emergency Pablo Kuczynski for par-
Management Agency did doning him and sparing
twice-a-week handout — Ricardo Rossello promised Puerto Ricans say officials not come until this month him from serving another
to assess the damage. 14 years in prison, a deci-
24 bottles of water and a in mid-October to restore didn’t prepare for the hur- Tears moisten Rivera’s eyes sion that has prompted
as she gazes at what re- large protests across the
cardboard box filled with 95 percent of electric- ricane and didn’t activate mains of the home where country.
she lived for 19 years with The president said Fujimori
basic foods such as tortillas, ity delivery by Dec. 15, but a mutual aid agreement her husband and three chil- was let go for humanitarian
dren. “I haven’t been able reasons, but many believe
canned vegetables and normality remains far off. with power companies on to assimilate everything that it was part of a backroom
has happened,” she says, deal struck to protect Kuc-
cereal. Puerto Rico’s Electric Pow- the U.S. mainland quickly adding that she spends zynski from impeachment
most of the day bracing for on corruption charges.
Martinez, a 73-year-old can- er Authority says its system is enough. darkness. “When night falls, Human Rights Watch de-
you start growing anxious, clared it a “vulgar political
cer survivor, balanced the generating at 70 percent of Government crews recon- depressed.q negotiation.”q

water atop the food and normal but it has no way of nected a handful of areas

picked her way up a steep knowing how widely elec- in Morovis over the week-

hill to the home where she tricity is being distributed end for the first time since

lives alone, washing and because the system that the storm, but in the hun-

wringing out her clothes by measures that isn’t working. dreds of neighborhoods

hand and locking herself in A study conducted Dec. 11 and towns without power

at night, afraid of robbers. by a group of local engi- this holiday season, people