LIMA, Peru - Peru's government declared a health alert along its northern coastline on Saturday and urged residents and tourists alike to stay away from long stretches of beach, as it investigates the unexplained deaths of hundreds of dolphins and pelicans.

At least 1,200 birds, mostly pelicans, washed up dead along a stretch of Peru's northern Pacific coastline in recent weeks, health officials said, after an estimated 800 dolphins died in the same area in recent months.

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The Health Ministry recommended staying away from beaches, though stopped short of a ban, and called on health officials to use gloves, masks and other protective gear when collecting dead birds.

The peak tourism season around Lima's beaches is over, though many surfers are still venturing into the waters near the capital.

The Agriculture Ministry said preliminary tests on some dead pelicans pointed to malnourishment. Oscar Dominguez, head of the ministry's health department, said experts had ruled out bird flu.

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"The Health Ministry ... calls on the population to abstain from going to the beaches until the health alert is lifted," the ministry said in a statement posted on its website, along with a photograph of a dead pelican.

The ministry said officials had so far checked 18 beaches in and around Lima for dead birds, but gave no details on any findings.

A mass pelican death along Peru's northern coast in 1997 was blamed at the time on a shortage of feeder anchovies due to the El Nino phenomenon.

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ICA, Peru -- Nine workers trapped inside an abandoned mine in southern Peru were rescued and brought to daylight early Wednesday after spending almost a week underground.

The men had been stuck about 656 feet below ground since the so-called "wildcat" copper-and-gold mine partially collapsed on Thursday. They had been receiving oxygen and liquids through a giant hose that was in place before the accident at the Cabeza de Negro site.

"All of them are healthy but obviously dehydrated and dizzy," President Ollanta Humala said. "They need to get used to the sun still, that's why they are wearing sunglasses."

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Miner Jesus Japatinta said he was overwhelmed after walking out alive.

"I spilled tears, happy tears," he said.

Humala, who witnessed the rescue operation, warned informal miners to stay away from abandoned mines like Cabeza de Negro, saying they were dangerous.

PhotoBlog: Peruvian miners rescued

The mine is located 4,400 feet above sea level on a mountainside about 175 miles southeast of Lima.

On Sunday, Peru's government appealed to mining companies for heavy equipment. Until then, several dozen rescue workers had used pickaxes and shovels to try to remove the 26 feet of collapsed earth and rock blocking the entrance of the mine.

The cave-in spurred calls to formalize Peru's vast informal mining sector, which generates as much as $2 billion a year in income, according to private estimates.

Mining is the main engine of Peru's economy, accounting for more than 60 percent of its exports. It is the world's No. 2 copper exporter after neighboring Chile and ranks sixth in gold exports.

According to official figures, 52 miners died in Peru last year in work-related accidents, a third of them in mine shaft collapses.

Reuters and The Associated Press contibuted to this report.

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Members of Peru’s leftist Shining Path rebel group kidnapped dozens of workers in Peru's natural gas industry on Monday, then freed some hours later, reports said.

A spokesman for Skanska, an international construction company headquartered in Sweden, told msnbc.com that 29 of its employees — all Peruvian nationals — were kidnapped on Monday, and that two women employees later were released. The spokesman, Edvard Lind, said the company could not provide any other detail at this time.

Regional police chief Col. Roland Bayona says the gunmen originally seized 30 Skanska workers overnight Sunday but later freed 23, The Associated Press reported. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.

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The kidnapping occurred at Kepashiato in the Camisea gas fields in southern Peru.

The motive for the kidnapping remained unclear, but it was the first large-scale kidnapping by the rebel group in nearly a decade.

The Shining Path is a leftist insurgency founded in the late 1960s with inspiration from China’s Communist leader Mao Zedong. The guerrilla group lost much of its strength after President Alberto Fujimori launched a major offensive against the rebels in the 1990s. It has been nearly a decade since the group conducted a large kidnapping operation.

"Shining Path rebels took them hostage early this morning in the village of Kepashiato,'' an official from the natural gas pipeline company said. "They took them from the hotel where they were sleeping.''

The pipeline, which carries gas from Peru's Camisea gas fields to Lima, is owned by a consortium including companies from Argentina, the United States, and South Korea. Skanksa is building a natural gas compression plant in the area, Lind said.

Neither the government nor Skanska has said whether they had intervened to free some of the workers, Reuters reported.

The leftists were engaged in a bloody battle with Peruvian government forces throughout the 1980s, resulting in a reported 70,000 deaths and human rights abuses on both sides.

The rebel group splintered after the capture of their leader Abimael Guzman in 1992 and many top deputies, destroying the group’s chain of command, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

A couple of factions of the Shining Path continue to be active, generating income through the illegal drug trade.

None had committed a major kidnapping since 2003, Reuters reported. In that case, the rebels abducted 68 employees of an Argentinian company — also doing work related to the gas pipeline — and three police guards.

President Ollanta Humala, a former military officer, has vowed capture the last remnants of Shining Path. In February, government forces caught Shining Path leader "Artemio," also known as Florindo Eleuterio Flores in the Huallaga Valley. He was the last high-ranking figure from the historical core of the insurgency still at large, Reuters reported.

After Artemio's arrest, the government said it would go after rebels in the Valley of the Apurimac and Ene rivers region, where they are led by Victor Quispe.

A high-ranking military official said the army was closing in on a group of rebels at the time of Monday's kidnapping.

"They took the hostages to halt our advance,'' the military official said.

Earlier the BBC reported the rebels had demanded the release of "Comrade Artemio" in exchange for the hostages.

A resident of Kepashiato village told RPP radio that 150 armed insurgents were in the area and about 80 of them carried out the kidnapping, Reuters reported.

In this week’s kidnappings, the workers were seized in a jungle region near the Apurimac-Ene valley, one remaining stronghold of the guerrilla group, according to the BBC.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Conservationists counted 615 dead dolphins along a 90-mile stretch of beaches in Peru, a wildlife group said Wednesday, and the leading suspect is acoustic testing offshore by oil companies.

"If you can count 615 dead dolphins, you can be sure there are a great many more out at sea and the total will reach into the thousands,” Hardy Jones, head of the conservation group BlueVoice.org, said in a statement after he and an expert with ORCA Peru walked the beaches.

Indeed, the head of a local fishermen's association told Peru21.pe that he estimated more than 3,000 dolphins had died so far this year, based on what he saw in the water and on beaches.

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BlueVoice.org stated that "initial tests ... show evidence of acoustical impact from sonic blasts used in exploration for oil."

The ORCA Peru expert, veterinarian Carlos Yaipen Llanos, said that while "we have no definitive evidence," he suspects acoustic testing created a "marine bubble" -- in essence a sonic blast that led to internal bleeding, loss of equilibrium and disorientation.

Another possibility is that the dolphins suffered from a disease outbreak, Yaipen Llanos said.

 

"It is a horrifying thought that these dolphins would die in agony over a prolonged period if they were impacted by sonic blast," said Jones.

Numerous dolphins first started washing ashore in January, with the largest amount coming in early February. Thousands of dead anchovies were also seen.

BlueVoice.org noted that the U.S. has suspended similar testing in the Gulf of Mexico due to recent sightings of dead and sick dolphins. The ban was set to last through the dolphins' calving season, which ends in May. 

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At least 300 nude cyclists hit the streets of Lima, Peru, on Saturday, protesting the reckless driving they say has killed thousands in their country, Reuters reported.

"I have gone naked because it's the way to raise awareness of our rights for example the bicycle lanes that are never free," said cyclist Milagro Esquivel. "There are always taxis parked, police sleeping."

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More than 3,000 people were killed in traffic accidents in Peru in 2009, according to the Latin American Herald Tribune.

(By contrast, 33,808 people were killed in car accidents in the United States during the same year. Adjusting for total populations of both countries, that was about the same proportion of people killed on the road.)

The cyclists, many of whom painted slogans on their bodies, are agitating for dedicated bicycle lanes. This is the seventh annual nude cyclist event.

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The most important leader of Peru's leftist Shining Path insurgency has been captured by security forces after being shot in a remote jungle rife with drug trafficking, President Ollanta Humala said on Sunday, announcing his first major victory against what remains of the rebel group.

Artemio, the nom de guerre of Florindo Eleuterio Flores, was seriously wounded and receiving medical attention, Humala said.

The rebel boss led a remnant group of several hundred guerrillas who went into the cocaine trade after the founder of the Maoist insurgency was imprisoned in the 1990s - all but ending a bloody war against the state that killed nearly 70,000 people.

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Though the rebels no longer pose a potent risk to the stability of the state, Artemio still claims allegiance to jailed Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman.

 

 

"We can tell the country today that the terrorists in the Huallaga Valley have been defeated, having captured alive Artemio," Humala said at a military base in the jungle.

Humala initially had said Artemio was dead.

Artemio was wounded early on Thursday and suffered a punctured lung and a severe wound to one of his hands that caused heavy bleeding.

Defense Minister Alberto Otarola said special forces attacked Artemio but gave no details about the operation. One local media outlet said Artemio had been shot by one or more members of the Shining Path who conspired with the government to turn against him.

After the shooting, some of Artemio's aides took him to a medical clinic and a nurse who was forced at gunpoint to bandage his wounds later said he was mortally wounded. His aides fled with Artemio as army helicopters chased them, but eventually they abandoned him on a riverbank, to weak to go on.

Peruvian anti-drug police tried for years to arrest Artemio and the United States two years ago offered a multimillion dollar reward for information leading to his capture.

Peru is the world's top grower of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine.

Humala, who fought against the Shining Path when he was a military officer in the 1990s, has vowed to step up efforts to catch what the government calls "narco-terrorists." His predecessor, former President Alan Garcia, failed to stamp out several hundred rebels, who have yet to surrender their arms.

"With this, I think we can now begin to pacify the Huallaga," Humala said referring to the major cocaine trafficking area.

Humala's approval rating rose 7 percentage points to 54 percent in January after he shuffled his cabinet to give it a more law-and-order bent and to crack down on protests against big mining projects.

In December, the reclusive Artemio emerged briefly from hiding to ask the government for a truce and for amnesty after years of fighting. His pleas were rejected and government officials said they would hunt him down.

Besides the Shining Path group in the Huallaga Valley, another faction of the rebels is active in a knotted bundle of river valleys in southeastern Peru known as the VRAE, which is the world's most densely-planted coca-growing region.

Security analysts say the group in the VRAE no longer espouses Maoist ideology and is basically a criminal enterprise engaged in the drug trade.

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HAMPSTEAD, Ontario -- Ten migrant farm workers from Peru were killed when a flat bed hit a passenger van in rural Canada on Monday afternoon, police and the workers' employer said. The truck driver also was killed.

Three other passengers were critically injured, The Globe and Mail reported.

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The crash, the deadliest in Ontario since 1999,  will leave at least 10 families in another country without a breadwinner, according to the Globe and Mail.

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Police said one survivor was airlifted to a hospital with life-threatening injuries, and two others were seriously injured.

"On behalf of 13 million Ontarians, I want to offer our deepest condolences to those who lost a loved one and to offer our most sincere prayers for those taken to hospital," Premier Dalton McGuinty said in a statement.

No names of the victims have been released. Albert Burgers, who owns the farm where the workers were Monday before the crash, said some had been with his crew for more than 10 years.

Police told the CEO of the truck company, Speedy Transport, that the van apparently went through a stop sign and was hit by the truck.

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The impact sent the van hurtling across a lawn before smashing into a house. The van's passenger side was nearly ripped off.

"I've been on the job for 28 years and I’ve never seen anything like it," Inspector Steve Porter told the newspaper as he stood near the scene after dark.

Msnbc.com staff and The Associated contributed to this report.

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LIMA, Peru -- A Peruvian court on Friday sentenced Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot to 28 years in prison for killing a woman in Lima in 2010, five years after American teenager Natalee Holloway disappeared in Aruba after spending time with him. 

The court also ordered van der Sloot to pay $75,000 in reparations to the family of the 21-year-old Stephany Flores.

The sentence was handed down two days after van der Sloot pleaded guilty to killing Flores. It also comes at a time when the family of Natalee Holloway, an 18-year-old from Alabama, is renewing efforts to bring him to the United States to face charges related to her 2005 disappearance.

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The prosecution had sought a 30-year sentence for first-degree murder and theft.

The judges said that due to time already served, van der Sloot's sentence would end in June 2038. But under Peru's penal system, Van der Sloot could become eligible for parole after serving half of the sentence with good behavior, including work and study.

Van der Sloot's lawyer argued that his client killed Flores in May 2010 during a fit of rage he blamed on psychological trauma from being hounded as the prime suspect in Holloway case.

Holloway's body has not been found.

An Alabama judge agreed Thursday to declare Holloway legally dead.

The Peruvian victim's father, Ricardo Flores, complained verdict that Van der Sloot was enjoying favorable conditions in a
Lima prison, where he has been living apart from the general population and foreigners with money can buy superior treatment.

Judge: Natalee Holloway legally dead

"A jail isn't a 5-star hotel," Ricardo Flores told reporters. "Let's hope the authorities take that into account and not just in our case."

"Since the first day we've been complaining about the excessive privileges" that Van der Sloot allegedly enjoyed in jail, the father said.

He said he would present evidence of this at a news conference on Monday.

Unconfirmed news reports denied by penal authorities say Van der Sloot has also had a television and video gaming console. 

Open case
The Holloway case remains open. Van der Sloot has been indicted in Alabama extortion charges for allegedly offering to lead a lawyer for Holloway's mother to her daughter's remains. He has never been charged in Holloway's death.

Van der Sloot long ago confessed the Flores killing, telling police he became enraged after the business student discovered his
connection to the Holloway disappearance on his laptop while they played poker online. Police forensic experts disputed that version, and the victim's family said Van der Sloot killed Flores in order to rob her.

The prosecution maintained Van der Sloot killed Flores with "ferocity" and "cruelty," concealing the crime and fleeing to
Chile, where he was caught two days after Flores' decaying body was found.

He took more than $200 in cash plus credit cards from the victim and made his initial getaway in her car, leaving it in a different part of Lima, prosecutors say.

Flores was slain five years to the day after Holloway, an 18-year-old from the wealthy Birmingham, Ala., suburb of Mountain Brook,
disappeared during a high school graduation trip to Aruba, where van der Sloot grew up.

Investigators have long worked from the assumption that the young woman died in Aruba, where the case was classified as a homicide investigation. That investigation remains open, though there has been no recent activity, said Solicitor General Taco Stein, an official with the prosecutor's office in Aruba.

NBC News, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.

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LIMA, Peru --  Joran van der Sloot, on trial in the murder of a young Peruvian woman Friday nearly seven years after he became the prime suspect in the unsolved disappearance of an American teenager on holiday in Aruba, appears to be on the verge of pleading guilty.

The 24-year-old Dutchman is charged with killing Stephany Flores, 21, in his Lima hotel room on May 30, 2010, after the two left a casino together in the day's early hours. 

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The slaying happened five years to the day after the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, a 19-year-old from Alabama who was celebrating her high school graduation on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba and was seen leaving a nightclub with van der Sloot.

Her body has never been found and he remains the prime suspect in that killing.

Van der Sloot shook his head as the prosecutor detailed the case against him in the Flores case. When asked how he would plead, he answered in rudimentary Spanish, "I want to give a sincere confession, but I don't agree with all the charges that has placed on me by the prosecutor. Can I have more time to think about this?"

Judge Victoria Montoya agreed to the postponement.

Van der Sloot entered the courtroom Friday morning in a blue blazer and faded blue jeans with a bulletproof vest beneath the jacket. He sported a crew cut and wore a long-sleeved gray shirt.

Defense attorney Jose Luis Jimenez told The Associated Press Friday that there was a 70 percent chance Van der Sloot will plead guilty, which could help him get a reduced sentence.

Flores' father, Ricardo Flores, told the AP Friday that the family would participate in the trial in hopes of ensuring that van der Sloot is also accused of robbery in connection with the killing,

Prosecutors are seeking a 30-year prison sentence on murder and theft charges.

But Jimenez has said he would argue that his client was in a state of emotional distress when he killed Flores and "seek to reduce the charge from first-degree murder to simple homicide." The latter carries a prison sentence of from eight to 20 years.

Police and Flores' family dispute Van der Sloot's version of her death. They say the defendant was hard up for cash and knew the Peruvian business student had been winning at the casino.

"We hope that throughout this process our attorneys can demonstrate the true motives for the killing of my daughter," Ricardo Flores said.

Van der Sloot has in several interviews described himself as a pathological liar. He has been in custody after his arrest in neighboring Chile just days after Flores' death.

Van der Sloot shares a cell with a Mexican and a Chinese inmate at the maximum security Miguel Castro Castro prison, separated from convicted prisoners, said Jimenez.

He said Van der Sloot spends his days making crafts and reading self-help books.

"His mood is super good," Jimenez said during a telephone interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday.

The defendant has granted several jailhouse interviews to media and was confronted there in September 2010 by Holloway's mother, Beth Holloway Twitty, when she accompanied a Dutch television crew. Her lawyer, John Kelly, said at the time that she was determined to get answers about her daughter.

Van der Sloot has told several people he was involved in Holloway's disappearance, only to later deny it.

U.S. law enforcement officials say he extorted $25,000 from Twitty after offering to lead Kelly to Holloway's body in Aruba, using the money to fly to Lima on May 14, 2010, just days after meeting with Kelly.

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The Associated Press and msbc.com staff conributed to this report.

Lori Berenson has returned to Peru from a holiday trip to New York well ahead of the court-set deadline for the American convicted of aiding leftist Peruvian rebels in the 1990s, her lawyer said Friday.

Berenson, 42, arrived Thursday night with her 2-year-old son, Salvador, said Anibal Apari, her attorney and the child's father.

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"She's at home now and is returning to a normal life," Apari told The Associated Press. He and Berenson met in prison and are amicably separated.

A court decision allowing Berenson to visit family in New York stirred controversy in Peru, including the objection of President Ollanta Humala.

Berenson told the AP when she left with Salvador on Dec. 19 that she had every intention of abiding by the court's decision that she must return by Jan. 11.

The 17-day trip was her first outside the country since her 1995 arrest.

Berenson was paroled in 2010 after serving 15 years for acting as an accomplice to terrorism by aiding the Tupac Amaru rebel group.

The former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, whose parents are college professors, is not permitted to leave Peru permanently until her sentence ends in 2015.

Berenson has acknowledged helping the rebel group rent a safe house where authorities seized a cache of weapons after a shootout with the group. She insists she didn't know guns were stored there and says she never joined the rebels.

The December decision by a three-judge appeals court to allow Berenson to travel overturned a lower court ruling and prompted an outcry among many Peruvians.

"I can't help but show my annoyance, my disappointment at this situation, in which terrorists are being allowed to leave the country while still on parole," Humala said while Berenson was abroad.

Peru's Congress unanimously approved legislation Wednesday night prohibiting courts from allowing trips outside the country for parolees convicted of terrorism.

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Journalists working with Peru's Legal Defense Institute (IDL) and The Guardian traveled deep into Peru's Amazon jungle to conduct a rare interview with 'Comrade Artemio', the most senior leader of the notorious Shining Path guerrilla group to remain at large.

The Guardian's Dan Collyns, who describes Artemio as "a folk legend: loathed and respected in equal measure," says that this is the first time that Artemio has agreed to allow his face to be shown. 

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The U.S. State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest or capture. 

The Associated Press reports from LIMA, Peru:

 One of two remaining leaders of the Shining Path guerrilla group in Peru said his troops will cease attacks and is calling for a truce to start peace negotiations with the government.

Known as Comrade Artemio, Jose Flores Hala told journalists Friday in his jungle hideout that he "isn't going to deny" that the government won.

Flores said his roughly 150 guerrillas wouldn't demobilize without a "process of frank and real negotiations." But, he told reporters, "We have no intention to brandish arms of war in armed struggle."

The Shining Path has shrunk since its 1980s heyday when it controlled large swaths of the Peruvian countryside. Troops captured leader Abimael Guzman in 1992 and his successor Comrade Feliciano in 1999. Read the full story.