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La Poderosa, the Peruvian company which owns the gold mine at which the men worked, said they had been kidnapped by "illegal miners colluding with criminals" on 26 April.

They were working at a gold mine owned by Peruvian mining company Poderosa, which is based in Pataz province, north of the capital Lima.

A Peruvian navy vessel has collided with an oil platform in the Amazon River, killing at least two people and leaving one missing.

The roots of his presidential campaign date to 1987, when amid a spiraling economic crisis, the Peruvian government proposed nationalizing banks.

At first sympathetic to left-wing ideas, he grew disillusioned with Latin America's revolutionary causes, eventually running unsuccessfully for the Peruvian presidency with a centre-right party in 1990.