Ecuador

SAQUISILI, Ecuador -- The indigenous people cling to the high Andes Mountains, coming down as deliberately as the glaciers from the nearby 19,348-foot Cotopaxi volcano.As they have for generations, the Quechua-speaking descendants of the Incas herd sheep on wind-swept hills. They grow crops on terraced slopes of fertile lava turned to soil. At times they descend the 2,000 feet to go to market in this town in the Central Highlands.The hardy mountaineers endure harsh sunlight near the equator and cold, stormy nights.

Memo to Steve Sampson, U.S. national men's team coach, who's visiting Baltimore tomorrow to help sell the U.S.-Ecuador exhibition at Memorial Stadium on Aug. 7:Give the Dallas Burn's Dante Washington another shot -- up top, where he's played all his life, where he's scored regularly for every team he's been on, including for the United States in the Pan American Games and Olympic qualifiers.It's not as if your 2-5-5 '97 team has a surfeit of forwards, especially now that Eric Wynalda is out with a groin injury and no one else effective seems in sight.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Files provided by Colombian officials from computers they say were captured in a cross-border raid in Ecuador on March 1 appear to tie Venezuela's government to efforts to secure arms for Colombia's largest insurgency. Officials taking part in Colombia's investigation of the computers provided The New York Times with copies of more than 20 files, some of which also showed contributions from the rebels to the 2006 campaign of Ecuador's leftist president, Rafael Correa.

SOUTH America's evolution from military juntas to electoral democracy began 21 years ago in Ecuador, when the army declared free elections. Few people want to see the trend reversed there. It is too soon to tell whether that has happened. Events last week, following authoritarian tendencies in the elected presidents of Peru and Venezuela, cause grave concern. It was revolution in the mathematical sense: drastic change, moving in a complete circle, ending where it began. Despite oil and banana exports, Ecuador, a country of 12.4 million, has been in the grip of depression, inflation and bank failure, its GNP shrinking and its people getting poorer.

QUITO, Ecuador -- The president of Congress was elected interim president of the nation last night for the second time in a week -- this time after some constitutional maneuvering intended to keep him in the job.Legislators elected Fabian Alarcon by a 57-2 vote in what appeared to be the product of overt political deal-making rather than popular pressure, unlike the congressional session Thursday night.That night, Congress declared the elected president, Abdala Bucaram, "mentally incompetent," as hundreds of thousands throughout the country clamored for his removal.

WASHINGTON - Throughout two decades of revolt, murder and drug production along the Andean spine, Ecuador has remained a surprising haven of peace and relative order. Its indigenous tribes are as poor and disenfranchised as those of its neighbors. Its high yunga valleys are just as friendly to the coca shrub that produces cocaine. Its government is as precarious and prone to corruption. But somehow Ecuador has avoided the coups, insurgencies and extensive cocaine production that have racked Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.

The U.S. national men's soccer team will play Ecuador at Memorial Stadium on Aug. 7 in an exhibition game that will help both squads prepare for approaching World Cup qualifiers.The international match will be only the second appearance in Baltimore for the U.S. men's team. The first was just under 25 years ago -- on Aug. 29, 1972 -- a 2-2 draw with Canada in a World Cup qualifier."We're very excited about bringing this game to Baltimore," said Emilio Pozzi, managing director of events for the U.S. Soccer Federation.

"Crude" sounds like the standard "this is an outrage" environmental degradation documentary, the latest in a line that includes "An Inconvenient Truth" and films about the deaths of the oceans, the evaporation of water, the murder of dolphins, even the disintegration of dirt. "Crude" fits that bill, but it is something considerably more interesting as well. The outrage in question is the subject of a class action suit filed by 30,000 residents of Ecuador against Chevron, the world's fifth-largest corporation, alleging that 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater were dumped into the Amazon between 1972 and 1990, fatally poisoning the land and water and sickening inhabitants.

Five stowaways on a merchant ship, who spent two weeks inside a steel container lashed to the deck, were captured yesterday at the South Locust Point Marine Terminal, where they emerged thinking they had arrived in New York City.One of the stowaways broke a leg and suffered internal injuries when he jumped off a stack of cargo containers. He was listed in critical condition at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore.All five stowaways were from Ecuador, where they climbed inside the empty 40-foot steel box on a pier at the port of Guayaquil sometime in early June, federal officials said.

SANTO DOMINGO, Ecuador -- Rene Rubianes was dropping his car 8,000 feet down the Andes."I know every curve," he said on the two-lane road from Aloag to Santo Domingo.Good thing. He was sometimes one-handing it on the wheel and passing dozens of heavy trucks near curves at speeds from 5 to 55 miles an hour. Horns are on this trail.Rubianes, a Quito accountant at Catholic Relief Services (CRS), based in Baltimore, was cautious passing buses. "Better to stay friends with bus drivers. They're in the most accidents."