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WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The United States on Tuesday urged authorities in Colombia to act with “utmost restraint” to avoid more deaths during anti-government protests that have resulted in at least 19 fatalities. Protesters in Colombia have called for fresh mass rallies after more than 800 people were wounded in clashes during five days of demonstrations against a proposed tax reform. “We urge the utmost restraint by public forces to prevent additional loss of […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — The UN rights office condemned Tuesday the “excessive use of force” by security officers in Colombia, after numerous deaths during days of protests against a proposed tax reform. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights voiced “profound shock” at the latest incident overnight in the city of Cali in which police are alleged to have “opened fire” on demonstrators, reportedly killing and injuring a number of people. […]
BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) — At least 17 people died and more than 800 were wounded in clashes that broke out in Colombia during five days of protests against a proposed government tax reform, authorities said on Monday. The Ombudsman’s Office said 16 civilians and one police officer died in violence during the protests that began throughout the country on April 28, while 846 people, including 306 civilians, were injured. Authorities have detained 431 people while […]
BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) — Rescuers were working against the clock to rescue 11 people trapped in a flooded illegal goldmine since last week, Colombian authorities said Monday. The group has been trapped since last Friday in a 17-meter (55-foot) deep shaft flooded in a heavy downpour. According to the National Mining Agency (ANM), rescuers were using electric pumps to remove water from the mine. “Eleven people are still missing,” Luis Velasquez, governor of the northwestern […]
BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) — Colombia became the first country in the Americas Monday to receive a delivery of coronavirus vaccines through the global Covax scheme that aims to ensure poorer countries are not left behind in the global immunization drive. “Today is a very important milestone,” said Colombia President Ivan Duque. With more than 50 million confirmed cases and over 1.2 million deaths, countries of the Americas have experienced the worst impact of the Covid-19 […]
BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) — Floods caused by a particularly intense rainy season have killed at least five people and left six others missing in northwestern Colombia, authorities said Wednesday. A ravine near the city of Cucuta had overflowed and caused flooding “that devastated everything in its path,” the South American country’s disaster risk agency said. More than 200 nearby homes, mostly in poor neighborhoods, were damaged. The flooding brings the death toll from more than […]
by Luis Bravo with Margioni Bermudez in Caracas Agence France-Presse MARACAIBO, Venezuela (AFP) — Cheap gasoline smuggled over the border from Venezuela once flooded eastern Colombia. These days, as desperate Venezuelans run out of fuel, the contraband is moving in the other direction. For the first time Colombian gasoline is cheaper and is being smuggled across the border to fuel vehicles in western Venezuela. “It’s a lifeline,” says Roger, a fruit-and-vegetable vendor in Santa Cruz […]
BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) — Colombia lost 159,000 hectares of forest — an area the size of Brazilian megacity Sao Paulo — to deforestation in 2019, according to an official report presented on Thursday. Although considerable, it represents a 19 percent reduction in deforestation compared to the 197,000 hectares destroyed in 2018. In 2017, that figure was 219,000. “We’ve managed to control a growing trend of deforestation,” said Maria Claudia Garcia, the deputy minister for the […]
CALI, Colombia (AFP) — Emaciated with a vacant gaze and without the strength to stand upright, 20-year-old lion Jupiter’s life is in danger. But authorities are acting to try to save him after he was discovered in a “critical state.” Leading attempts to restore Jupiter to full health is the woman who rescued him from the circus where he was born and brought him up as her “son” from the age of three months. Ana […]
BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) — Pablo Escobar’s most notorious hitman, known by the nickname Popeye, died on Thursday at age 57 after a life of crime he celebrated on YouTube, Colombia’s prison authorities said. Jhon Jairo Velasquez had boasted of killing hundreds of people for his “boss” Escobar, the infamous drug lord killed by Colombian police in 1993 while on the run to avoid extradition to the United States. Velasquez spent 23 years in prison after […]
BRASILIA, Brazil (AFP) – Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in northern Brazil soared 85 percent in 2019, compared with the previous year, official data showed Tuesday. The 9,166 square kilometers (3,539 square miles) cleared was the highest number in at least five years, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. In 2018, the deforested area was 4,946 square kilometers. The sharp increase overlapped the first year in office of President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate […]
BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) — At least seven people were killed and another three injured when a small plane crashed in southwestern Colombia on Sunday, a firefighter said. “Nine people were on board the plane. Seven died, while two are seriously injured,” Juan Carlos Ganan, the commander of firefighters in the area, told AFP. The third person injured was a child on the ground in the area where the plane crashed, Ganan said. Firefighters were trying […]
