Bolivia encashes another $18-m bank guarantee from JSPL for not meeting contractual terms. Naveen Jindal-controlled Jindal Steel & Power’s ambitious Bolivian project to mine 20 billion tonnes of iron ore is at risk after the Bolivian government encashed yet another $18-million bank guarantee from the Indian firm for not meeting contractual terms.

President Evo Morales said Tuesday that he was rescinding a contract awarded to the Brazilian company OAS to build a road through the Amazon, casting further doubt on a project that set off fierce antigovernment protests last year. Mr. Morales partly halted work on the most controversial stretch of the road in September, seeking to ease tensions over the $415 million project, which met with strong opposition from his indigenous base. Brazil’s state development bank was to have financed about 80 percent of the project, which has been at the center of Bolivian politics for nearly a year. Mr.

Eight South American countries pledged Tuesday to boost cooperation to protect one of the planet’s largest natural reserves from deforestation and illegal trafficking in timber and minerals.

Representatives of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela gathered in Manaus, northern Brazil, also vowed to speak with one voice at next June’s UN conference on sustainable development in Rio.

The Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rainforest, is one of the world’s largest reserves of fresh water.

A strong 6.6-magnitude earthquake rattled Bolivia on Tuesday and was also felt in Peru and Chile, but the epicenter was deep underground and there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

The US Geographical Survey said the quake's epicenter was 345 miles (556 kilometers) underground and located 37 miles south-southwest of Trinidad, the capital of Bolivia's northern Beni region.

Indigenous protesters are targeting a new road in the Bolivian Amazon, reports the BBC. The 190-mile highway under construction in the Bolivian Amazon will pass through the Isiboro-Secure Indigenous Territory and National Park (Tipnis), a 4,600-square mile (11,900 square kilometers) preserve which boasts exceptional levels of rainforest biodiversity, including endangered blue macaws and fresh-water dolphins. Indigenous peoples who live in Tipnis are participating in a month-long protest march against the road, which they claim violates their right to self-governance.