EL TIEMPO, SEMANA (Colombia) MILENIO (Mexico) Worldcrunch BOGOTÁ– Colombia’s Justice Minister announced a government proposal to decriminalize personal use of synthetic drugs such as ecstasy and methamphetamines. If the proposal, as laid out by Justice Minister Ruth Stella Correa this week, passes Congress, it will authorize the carrying and consumption of what are known to […]
Tag: colombia
Two decades after the Sicilian Mafia killed magistrate hero Giovanni Falcone, crime networks have shifted drug trafficking from bases to Russia, Colombia, Burma…and beyond.
A book by a longtime friend of the Colombian legend includes never-before-released letters from when Garcia Marquez was writing his epic “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
EL ESPECTADOR, EL MUNDO, EL TIEMPO (Colombia) Worldcrunch BOGOTA- Colombia’s FARC rebels have announced the end of a two-month unilateral ceasefire after the Colombian government refused to join the truce. Photo: FARC flag via Wikipedia The FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, declared the ceasefire when peace talks with the government began on Nov. […]
BOGOTA – According to legend, Colombia is blessed with coffee thanks to sinners. The legend comes from Francisco Romero, the priest of Salazar de las Palmas in the Santander province, who had a strange penance for residents who confessed their sins: to sow coffee seeds. The priest wasn’t naive – it was yet another push […]
-Analysis- SANTIAGO – After presenting their closing arguments, Peru and Chile are now awaiting the verdict of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague on a maritime border dispute dating back to the 1980s. While the verdict is not expected for several months, how both countries respond to the ruling when it is […]
EL UNIVERSAL, EL TIEMPO, EL COLOMBIANO (Colombia), EUROPA PRESS (Spain) Worldcrunch RICAURTE– In the deadliest exchange since peace talks began in October, the Colombian army reports that it has killed 20 FARC rebels, including Guillermo Pequeño, leader of the mobile unit of the group, Colombian daily El Universal was reporting Monday. Commander of the Colombian […]
BOGOTA – If Latin America were a game of Monopoly, we would be watching as one player put all his chips in the bank. That is the big offensive of Colombian banks, which have expanded from 35 international branches in 2007 to 175 last March. In 2007, Bancolombia bought the Banco Agricola conglomerate in El […]
BOGOTA – Last month marked the third time in a half-century of armed conflict that the FARC rebels and Colombian government started a bona fide peace process. Colombia faces more than one threat to public safety, but the fight against the FARC insurgence is the most burdensome for the military budget, which surpassed 3.7% of […]
EL COLOMBIANO, EL TIEMPO (Colombia), BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch POPAYAN – Six police officers were killed while on patrol in the South West province of Cauca, reports BBC News. The ambush took place in a rural zone between the towns of Puerto Tejada and Villa Reca, reports El Tiempo. The investigation has shown that the […]
Tanja Nijmeijer joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) when she was barely out of her teens. Now, at 34, the Dutch woman is negotiating for the Marxist rebels in the peace talks with the Colombian government that began this week in Oslo. With her long, dark-blonde hair, brown doe-eyes and engaging smile, Nijmeijer […]
TAMAQUITO II – When a new baby is born in Tamaquito II, a Wayúu indigenous settlement in La Guajira, in northern Colombia, the child’s family digs a hole near its pichi (hut) and buries the umbilical cord. The Wayúu practice this ancestral ritual as a way to connect to the land, to remind themselves where […]
SANTIAGO – It’s July of 1990, and the two Germany’s have just united, marking the end of the Cold War, and capped with West Germany’s soccer World Cup victory over Argentina. As the images of the defeated players travelled the world (who can forget Diego Maradona’s tears?), in New York, a Latin American company was […]
BOGOTA – In the middle of July, as the Colombian government was presenting a bundle of measures to reform the health-care industry, 5,000 people congregated in the Plaza de Bolivar in Bogota to hold a “White March.” One block away from the president’s office, the protest was led by a group of women in black, […]
-Analysis- LIMA – The negotiations that are set to begin formally in October are by no means the first attempt to demobilize members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and incorporate the guerilla organization into the political process. There’s no guarantee, therefore, that these talks will succeed where others have failed. And yet […]
Since June, it is possible to witness the extent of deforestation, in quasi-real time, with just a few clicks. This is thanks to Terra-i, the first satellite deforestation detection and surveillance tool in Latin America. Presented at the Rio +20 conference, Terra-i is based on calculation algorithms bio-inspired and developed at the Vaud School of […]
MERCO PRESS (Uruguay), TELESUR (Venezuela), BBC (UK), AP, REUTERS Worldcrunch Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos rejected a proposal by FARC rebels for a bilateral ceasefire during talks next month aimed at bringing an end to half a century of war, reports MercoPress. The call for both sides to put down their weapons while talks are […]
AMERICA ECONOMIA (Chile) SANTIAGO – With the World Cup coming to South America in 2014, the soccer-crazed continent is already worrying who will qualify, and who will be forced to stay at home and watch the others soak up the glory. Well, if you are an Argentinian, Chilean, or Uruguayan, your team is going to […]
EFE, EL COLOMBIANO (Colombia) MEDELLIN – The luxurious “prison” that infamous Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar built for himself and lived in for a year starting in the summer of 1991 is now going to become a home for the poor elderly, EFE reports. The palatial “prison,” called La Catedral, boasted splendid rooms, a gym […]
In Colombia, caught between the army and guerrillas who have been fighting each other for 60 years, the Nasa people are asking the warring parties to go fight somewhere else. It is resonating across the country.
EL COLOMBIANO, EL LIBERAL (Colombia), EMOL (Chile) Worldcrunch Something akin to the suburban cry of “Not In My Back Yard!” (NIMBY) can be heard this week in the Colombian jungle. Indigenous leaders in the southwestern town of Toribio have demanded that both the Colombian security forces and the FARC rebels take their longstanding fight elsewhere, […]
Colombia is a paradox, with rising economic growth concentrated in urban areas and apparent progress in fighting both leftist guerillas and drug cartels. But there’s a dirty little secret that won’t go away: more internally displaced peo
EL PERIODICO (Spain), NOTICIAS CARACOL (Colombia) BOGOTA – Colombian police say they have evidence FARC rebels are using teenagers as suicide bombers, reports El Periodico. In a video shot by Colombian police and showed by television station Noticias Caracol, we see an alleged 14-year-old rebel, “loaded with explosives, half-naked and painted green.” She was wounded […]
CARACOL RADIO (Colombia) FLORENCIA – Among the first to react to the release Wednesday of Roméo Langlois, a French journalist who was captured in late April by members of Colombia’s FARC, was one of the guerilla army’s old nemeses: ex-President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010). But rather than celebrate the handover, Uribe used the opportunity to question […]
EL TIEMPO (Colombia) FLORENCIA – UPDATE: The operation was carried out successfuly, with a smiling Roméo Langlois freed in the remote village of San Isidro. See the first video images of the released reporter: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/6Yib9n-u6ug expand=1] Earlier in the day, reports circulated that operations were currently underway in Colombia to free Langlois, a French […]
EL TIEMPO (Colombia) BOGOTA – Nearly 25 years after being axed by DC Comics, “Snowflame,” a cocaine-snorting comic book villain (who also happens to be Colombian), is back – and still ruffling feathers. DC Comics artists Steve Englehart and Joe Stanton created Snowflame in 1988. “Cocaine is my God – and I am the human […]
EL TIEMPO (Colombia) BOGOTA – For the first time in the country’s history, a top Colombian court has awarded adoption rights to a homosexual man. The court made the landmark decision Tuesday, allowing American journalist Chandler Burr to leave Colombia with two boys – aged 10 and 13 – he legally adopted there in early […]
Analysis: Homicides have soared in Central America as local street gangs are fed by Mexican drug cartels, which have taken over drug trafficking routes once handled by Colombians.
On the 10th anniversary of the abduction of Ingrid Betancourt, the Marxist guerillas, although weakened militarily, continue to sow trouble in Colombia. They survive thanks to drug trafficking — and refuse the government’s conditions for negotiation.
Colombia, already the fourth-largest oil producer in Latin America, is hoping to reach the million-barrel-a-day mark by Christmas. The holiday wish may come true, but there are still major obstacles in Colombia’s path to oil riches.
Over the past 10 years, Colombia has enjoyed a huge change in fortunes. The economy is humming, drug-related violence is down and security forces have corralled the rebel FARC guerillas. From infrastructure to corruption, however, some serious problems pe
Scared off by security concerns and enticed by urban employment, Colombia’s rural coffee pickers simply aren’t around for this year’s harvest. Local governments are having to get creative in their efforts to bridge the labor gap.
Sexual violence against women and girls has been a common, though rarely talked about, practice in Colombia’s decades-old civil war. A new report by Amnesty International highlights the problem, and urges Colombian leaders to end the impunity.
Colombia‘s drug barons are going underwater, with million dollar submarines that can ship up to eight tons of cocaine per load.
Colombian-born French designer Haider Ackermann may replace John Galliano at Dior, or take over at Givenchy. The publicity-shy 40-year-old’s approach? Pure instinct.
Judge freezes assets of former Presidential candidate, in divorce proceedings. The marriage never recovered from her six years in captivity. Ingrid Betancourt (Fabiogis50) EYES INSIDE – LATIN AMERICA When Íngrid Betancourt was brought to Bogota, Colombia in July 2008 following a daring rescue operation, she was greeted at an air base by her family, including […]