Lima, Feb 4 - The Oscar nomination of Peru's "La Teta Asustada" (Milk of Sorrow) has generated a lot of excitement in the Andean nation, media reports said.

Claudia Llosa's "La Teta Asustada" became Peru's first film to be nominated at the Oscars in the foreign language category. The film was one of the five nominees in that category.

"Peru in the Oscars", "Peru on Display" and "Nominated to Make History", were some of the headlines splashed on Lima dailies Wednesday.

Lima, Dec 8 :Five people were killed Monday in an explosion and subsequent fire at their home in Lima that was apparently caused by fireworks, police said.

The home in a slum of Lima's San Juan de Miraflores district was apparently being used to store gunpowder set to be sold over Christmas and New Year's.

Fireworks are typically used in Latin America, as in other parts of the world, during year-end celebrations.

The victims, who included a three-year-old girl, were reportedly part of the same family.(DPA)

Lima - Peru was in shock over allegations that a criminal gang killed people - perhaps as many as 60 - with the motive of rendering the fat from their bodies for sale to companies that make cosmetics.

Some experts have cast doubts on the horror story.

Human fat, once prized for cosmetics and medicinal uses, was collected in past centuries from the bodies of executed prisoners, a dark piece of history that may have inspired the gang.

Lima (Peru), November 9 : An archaeological excavation has uncovered the mummy of a young priestess, a member of the elite, with several precious items dating from the period of 300-450 AD in Cahuachi, Peru.

According to a report in Travel Culture History News, the mummy was found inside a series of rooms between the Great Pyramid and what is known as the Orange Pyramid.

The building would have formed a small temple that had 4 columns holding up its roof.

Giuseppe Orefici, director of the Nasca Project, said that the archaeologists had to remove a layer or reeds and ropes that covered the burial.

The body appeared to have been painted and found with an additional vertebra added.

Lima (Peru), November 9 : An archaeological excavation has uncovered the mummy of a young priestess, a member of the elite, with several precious items dating from the period of 300-450 AD in Cahuachi, Peru.

According to a report in Travel Culture History News, the mummy was found inside a series of rooms between the Great Pyramid and what is known as the Orange Pyramid.

The building would have formed a small temple that had 4 columns holding up its roof.

Giuseppe Orefici, director of the Nasca Project, said that the archaeologists had to remove a layer or reeds and ropes that covered the burial.

The body appeared to have been painted and found with an additional vertebra added.

Lima  - Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was sentenced Wednesday to six years in prison for illegal wiretapping and embezzlement during his 2000 re-election campaign.

Fujimori, 71, had pled guilty Monday on all charges related to the embezzlement, the attempted bribery of politicians and journalists and illegal wiretapping during the campaign. The move prevented further details of the crimes from coming out during testimony.

Lima - Two Peruvian soldiers were killed when members of the Maoist Shining Path rebel group shot down down an air force helicopter, the Ministry of Defence in Lima said Thursday.

The incident happened over a densely forested area on Wednesday, some 400 kilometres east of the capital, as the aircraft was engaged on a mission to rescue soldiers injured in an earlier firefight.

One further soldier was injured, the ministry said.

Lima - An assault on a police station Sunday in Peru left at least five people dead.

Peruvian police blamed the attack on members of the Maoist guerilla group Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, acting in the employ of narcotics traffickers.

The one-hour firefight occurred in a forested part of the southern province of Huanta, a hotbed of drug activity.

Lima - At least 16 people were killed in a bus accident Friday in Peru, police said.

The bus, carrying 56 passengers, plunged down a ravine in Cusco Province. A number of other passengers were injured.

Police said they could not rule out finding more bodies in the ravine. It was not known why the driver lost control of the bus.

Frequent bus accidents in Peru are often blamed on technical deficiencies in the vehicles.(dpa)

Lima - The Peruvian capital Lima, where it almost never rains, was struggling Tuesday on the third day of downpour that has sent cars sliding and pedestrians tumbling.

The rains started on Sunday, and show no signs of letting up until Friday, challenging the 8 million people living in the Pacific coastal city to deal with slippery streets and sidewalks.

The last time the city saw so much rain was in the 1970s, the Peruvian weather service reported.

Lima - Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was on Monday sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on corruption charges.

Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000, was found guilty of using government funds to pay his intelligence advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos, 15 million dollars.

At the trial, Fujimori admitted to having given Montesinos the money. However, the former president - who holds both Peruvian and Japanese citizenship - refused to acknowledge his conduct as criminal.

Lima - Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was in hospital to undergo cardiological and oncological tests, Peru's National Institute for Neoplastic Illnesses
(INEN) said Tuesday in Lima.

Doctors were trying to bring under control Fujimori's apparent hypertension.

Lima (Peru), July 13 : A team of archaeologists has discovered an Inca road in Peru, which was unknown until now and apparently held sacred, leading to the citadel of Machu Picchu.

According to a report in Today's News, the discovery was made by archaeologists from the Peru National Culture Institute and technicians from Jaume I University in Castellon, Spain.

The Inca road is made of stone masonry approximately 1 meter (3 1/4 feet) wide, with sustaining walls along the way rising some 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 feet) high, according to a communique from the Project Ukhupacha.

Several stretches of the road have collapsed that began at what is now the Wuarqtambo archaeological premises.

Lima - Peruvian President Alan Garcia was on Thursday looking to appoint a new Cabinet chief, after Prime Minister Yehude Simon resigned hours earlier.

Education Minister Jose Antonio Chang, a 51-year-old industrial engineer of Chinese descent, was being mentioned as Simon's most likely successor, although Garcia refused to confirm it.

"I don't know anything. That is what newspapers are saying, but I still haven't heard anything," Garcia laughed and said, when reporters asked him about Simon's replacement.

Lima  - A head-on collision between two buses in Peru killed at least 23 people on Thursday, the police said.

A further 30 passengers were injured in the crash in the Lampa region of southern Peru.

One of the buses entered the opposite lane at high speed and hit a bus coming from the other direction.

The force of the collision ripped one of the buses in half. (dpa)

Lima (Peru), July 2 : In a new study, a team of scientists have determined that the success of the Inca was boosted by a period of global warming that lasted more than four centuries.

The new study is called "Putting the Rise of the Inca within a Climatic and Land Management Context" and was prepared by Alex Chepstow-Lusty, an English paleo-biologist working for the French Institute of Andean Studies, in Lima, Peru.

Lima - At least 20 people died when two riverboats collided in Ucayali, an Amazonian province of Peru, RPP radio reported Tuesday.

There were no passenger lists, and the death toll was being estimated from the number of survivors. Witnesses said that the two boats were carrying a total of more than 100 people, most of whom were able to safely escape after the mishap.

The accident occurred near San Jose de Pacache. (dpa)

Lima - Peruvian Prime Minister Yehude Simon overcame Tuesday a vote of no confidence in Congress after violent protests by indigenous communities earlier this month.

Only 56 legislators voted in favour of the opposition-sponsored no confidence motion, which was based on the allegation that Simon made wrong decisions that caused the violence.

Sixty-one votes were needed for it to pass. Thirty-two legislators voted against it, with 11 abstentions.

Lima  - The Peruvian Congress on Thursday revoked the decrees that native communities had opposed in protest for more than two months that left at least 34 people dead.

The decrees gave foreign investors access to the Amazon's mineral wealth and forests in a way that the natives said damaged their claims on land. The laws had been enacted without any consultation with indigenous communities.

The Peruvian Congress moved to revoke the legislation by a vote of 82-12.

Lima - The Peruvian government and indigenous communities who have been demonstrating for more than two months over land rights finally started talks aimed at ending the conflict in the Andean country.

Prime Minister Yehude Simon met late Tuesday in Lima with representatives of the Amazonian Indios who have been protesting over controversial decrees on foreign investment in the Amazon region, which they say impacts their claims on land.