Colombia Reports: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Saturday promised to return 6 million hectares of farmland that were stolen by paramilitary groups after displacing its original owners.

Honduras Photo Gallery: Police disperse demonstrators during clashes in Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras, Aug. 27, 2010. Demonstrators clashed with police as the government has not agreed to fulfill the former government's promise of raising minimum wage in some industries.

FM Bolivia: For the first time in its history, Bolivia will access a loan of $ 250 million of freely available funds that it will invest in social development and integration programs, said on Saturday President Evo Morales Ayma. (...) The loan from South Korea is for 40 years with a five-year grace period and just 0.1 percent interest annually; funds that are entering the country without any conditions. He said most of the loan will be invested in the construction of bridges over rivers that link the departments of East and West.

Chile, SANTIAGO, Aug 28, 2010 (IPS) - Controversial plans to build the Barrancones thermoelectric plant near a protected area in the northern Chilean region of Coquimbo were cancelled Friday, but not before reviving the debate on other projects for polluting coal-fired power stations. "Now Barrancones is being talked about as if it were the only project of its kind," Lorenzo Núñez, head of the Mother Earth Defence Committee (CODEMAT) in Tarapacá region, over 1,700 kilometres north of Santiago, told IPS.  For years CODEMAT has opposed the construction of two coal-fired thermoelectric plants close to the Chanavayita fishing cove, 54 kilometres south of Iquique, the capital of Tarapacá.

MIAMI - Forecasters say Earl has strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane as it barrels toward several islands in the eastern Caribbean. (...) The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami says Earl could make landfall over the Northern Leeward Islands as soon as Sunday night. It could become a major hurricane by Tuesday.