MUMBAI: The yet to be launched 24-hour international English news and current affairs channel -- Al Jazeera International, headquartered in Doha, has announced the appointments of two renowned journalists Lucia Newman and Mariana Sanchez for the Buenos Aires, Argentina bureau and the Caracas, Venezuela bureau.

Lucia Newman joins the channel from CNN, where she was most recently CNN’s Havana bureau chief and correspondent, since the bureau was opened in 1997. Prior to her Havana posting, Newman was CNN’s senior correspondent in Latin America, and bureau chief in Mexico during the 1993 to1997, Chile from 1989 to1993, Nicaragua from 1985 to1989 and Panama in 1987.

Mariana Sanchez, a former news anchor for Panamericana Television, ATV and stringer for the Los Angeles Times in Peru, has freelanced extensively for many international news organisations, including The Wall Street Journal Americas, CNN Espanol, UNIVISION and Agence France Presse, among others.

In a statement issued, Washington DC bureau chief Will Stebbins said, “In English language broadcasting, there is no more experienced journalist in Latin America than Lucia Newman, which is why we are overjoyed that she has agreed to come on board.”

As for Mariana Sanchez, she “has a unique perspective that is both local and international, gained from news anchoring in her native Peru, and covering major events from Kosovo to East Timor, which makes her the perfect candidate for the way in which we plan to cover Latin America,” says Stebbins.