Peru’s president apologized for the 70,000 deaths from the country’s 20-year battle with the Shining Path insurgency, and promised to punish officers that a scathing report blamed for many of the worst abuses. Alejandro Toledo announced the government would spend $800 million in the next 2 1/2 years on public works in the areas hurt most by the fighting, from 1980-2000. But he didn’t offer individual reparations that victims and human rights groups had sought. The apology — the government’s first about the insurgency — came three months after the government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued a nine-volume report that said 70,000 people had died, and that military officers responsible for many of those deaths committed massive human rights abuses. Full Story