Testimony began Thursday in the impeachment trial of suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, amid occasional shouting matches and mutual accusations between opposing lawmakers, The Wall Street Journal reported. “From now on, you will be judges,” Ricardo Lewandowski, the chief justice of Brazil’s Supreme Court, said in his opening remarks, reminding senators of the role they will play in a trial that is expected to conclude by next week. But from the start, the process took on overtly political overtones. Senators who have publicly supported Ms.

An international arbitration tribunal has ordered Venezuela to pay a Vancouver-based mining company more than $1.2 billion ($1.5 billion Cdn.) for expropriating its gold mines. Venezuela took over Rusoro Mining’s investments in the country as part of a nationalization of the gold industry in 2011, the Toronto Star reported on a Canadian Press story. Rusoro Mining Ltd. said Tuesday the money is due immediately and it expects that Venezuela will comply with its international obligations.

Thousands of Chileans took to the streets nationwide on Sunday to demand a dismantling of a private pension system criticized for providing retirees with low payouts, The Wall Street Journal reported. The backlash against the system follows years of accolades by multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, which held up Chile’s pioneering use of individual savings accounts as an alternative for countries with costly state pensions considered unsustainable because of aging populations.

A Rio judge ruled Wednesday that the local Olympic organizing committee could be bailed out with public funds, a setback to prosecutors who had sought transparency in the committee’s budget first, The Wall Street Journal reported. Federal Judge Guilherme Couto de Castro lifted an injunction that had been in place since Friday and upheld on Monday blocking the Rio 2016 committee from receiving taxpayer funds unless it opens its books.

Banks and bondholders accounting for more than half of Oi SA's debt of 65.4 billion reais ($20 billion) are considering proposing a 5-year grace period and lower borrowing costs to speed up the Brazilian phone carrier's in-court reorganization, a person with direct knowledge of the talks said on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro’s decision to reopen the border with Colombia grants his countrymen a lifeline of crossing into frontier towns to buy what they need. Five border crossings opened Saturday under a plan announced by the presidents of both countries to gradually normalize movement. Cars will be allowed to cross in a month. But for now, traffic is limited to pedestrians, meaning for many of 54,000 Venezuelans who crossed over, how much they take home depends not only on what they can afford, but also how much they can carry.

Sete Brasil Participações SA presented a draft reorganization plan on Friday that includes seeking up to $5 billion in funding and downsizing business, three months after the Brazilian rig leaser sought court protection against 18 billion reais ($5.7 billion) in looming debt payments. Rio de Janeiro-based Sete Brasil is asking creditors, which include some of the world's leading shipbuilders and Brazil's largest lenders, to endorse a plan to help build between eight and 12 rigs, down from an original target of 28, Chief Executive Officer Luiz Eduardo Carneiro said in an interview.

State development bank BNDES, Brazil's main source of long-term credit for companies, posted a net loss in the second quarter, reflecting the burden of soaring loan-loss provisions as corporate defaults and bankruptcies hit all-time highs. In a Friday statement, Rio de Janeiro-based BNDES said that it had lost a net 2.174 billion reais ($689 million) in the first six months, reversing profit of 3.515 billion reais a year earlier. The number implies a second-quarter shortfall of 3.772 billion reais, according to Thomson Reuters calculations.

With Venezuela's economy veering into depression and Venezuelans scrambling to find basic goods, the government's decision to keep servicing the country’s $68bn in external bonds has been called everything from “crazy” to “a crime against humanity.” Putting bondholders above Venezuelans, these critics argue, is just morally wrong, Bloomberg News reported. But such charged rhetoric is no substitute for a sober analysis of Venezuela's debt predicament. Seen in that light, the wisdom of defaulting is less clear cut.

Oi SA is expected to burn less cash this quarter thanks to a June petition to win court protection from creditors, which is temporarily sparing Brazil's largest fixed-line phone carrier from paying debts, executives said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Chief Executive Officer Marco Schroeder told analysts on a conference call that planned changes in industry rules under discussion in Congress could help improve the outlook for Oi's operations. The company released weak quarterly results earlier on Thursday.