Dwight Sagaray was given 20-year sentence after being stripped of diplomatic immunity following the crime
A Kenyan court has sentenced a former Venezuelan diplomat to 20 years in jail over the 2012 murder of the Latin American nation’s acting ambassador at her home in an upmarket Nairobi neighbourhood.
Dwight Sagaray, who was the first secretary at the embassy, was convicted in January, along with three Kenyan nationals, over the murder of the ambassador Olga Fonseca.
Continue reading...Group tell of determination to fulfil American dream after compatriots were killed when SUV driver drove into bus stop
After a tragic start to the week and a night of thunderstorms, a group of migrants in south Texas woke up newly determined to fulfill their American dream.
Equipping themselves with soapy water, buckets, rags and a lot of spirit, about 30 Venezuelan men on Tuesday began operating a donation-based car washing service in a gas station right next to the border that divides Brownsville, Texas, from Matamoros, Mexico.
Continue reading...Hundreds, mostly Venezuelans, hope to cross into Peru to flee harsh immigration protocols and growing xenophobia in Chile
The wind sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean buffets makeshift tents made of blankets and scraps of fabric, as sheltering migrants peer out, squinting against the whipped-up sand and fierce sun overhead.
This desolate stretch of the Atacama desert has been home for days – and in some cases weeks – to hundreds of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, fleeing harsher immigration protocols and growing xenophobia in Chile and hoping to cross its northern border into Peru.
Continue reading...Agreement designed to curb increase of people arriving into US marks dramatic precedent for two countries, experts say
An agreement between the United States and Mexico designed to curb the surge of migrants arriving at the US doorstep marks a dramatic new precedent in relations between the two countries, analysts said, warning that the deal could further overwhelm border cities already struggling to cope.
Under the agreement announced in a joint statement on Tuesday, Mexico will continue accepting migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua who are turned away from the US.
Continue reading...Guaidó lands in Miami after failed bid to attend summit hosted by leftwing president, with return to Venezuela looking unlikely
Venezuela’s best-known opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, has touched down in the United States after being unceremoniously ejected from Colombia while attempting to gatecrash a summit about the political future of his crisis-stricken homeland.
Guaidó shot to fame in early 2019 and for a brief moment looked poised to topple Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, with the support of dozens of foreign governments including the US, UK and Brazil.
Continue reading...Legislation would force organisations to provide financial records to government with threat of bans for political or security reasons
New legislation proposed by the Venezuelan government to regulate civil society groups would kill the last functioning remnant of the country’s democracy and take it a step closer to a police state, leading NGOs have warned.
The bill passed its first reading in the country’s legislature on Tuesday and, if approved in a second reading, will obligate NGOs to provide the government with all their financial records so that their political agendas and funding can be scrutinised.
Continue reading...Election results elsewhere have boosted Nicolás Maduro but humanitarian crisis is far from over
As Venezuela crumbled and its people began to starve, pastor Jesús Campo founded a sanctuary for hunger-stricken refugees across the border in Brazil. He called it Vila Esperança – the Village of Hope. More than 7 million Venezuelans have fled their country’s economic meltdown in recent years and scores of them found shelter in his ramshackle shantytown in the border town of Pacaraima, cobbling huts together from recycled wood, scrap metal and mud.
But a decade after Vila Esperança was born on a hilltop near the frontier, Campo sees cause for optimism once again – this time back in his decaying homeland. “Little by little, our country is rising up,” the 76-year-old preacher said one recent morning as he sat in a shack built from black plastic and branches.
Continue reading...Despite an abysmal environmental and human rights record, Venezuela’s president is back on the international stage
It is unclear whether Cop27 will have any real impact on efforts to halt climate change but one leader is likely to return from the international summit feeling that the trip to Egypt was well worth it: the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro.
After years of being frozen out of international relations the Latin American dictator used Cop27 to clearly – if controversially – demonstrate that he is back on the international stage.
Continue reading...Heavy rain and rising waters continue to take a deadly toll in countries including Nigeria, Thailand and Vietnam
It has been a drenched 2022 for many parts of the world, at times catastrophically so. A year of disastrous flooding perhaps reached its nadir in Pakistan, where a third of the country was inundated by heavy rainfall from June, killing more than 1,000 people in what António Guterres, the UN secretary general, called an unprecedented natural disaster.
While floods are indeed natural phenomena, a longstanding result of storms, the human-induced climate crisis is amplifying their damage. Rising sea levels, driven by melting glaciers and the thermal expansion of water, are increasingly inundating coastal areas, while warmer temperatures are causing more moisture to accumulate in the atmosphere, which is then released as rain or snow.
Continue reading...More than 150,000 fleeing poverty have reached Panama so far this year in pursuit of American dream
The humanitarian crisis in Darién Gap has reached new heights as medical NGOs are overwhelmed by the record numbers of people risking their lives to cross the lawless strip of jungle in Latin America en route to the US.
An exodus of Venezuelans fleeing socioeconomic collapse has led to more people embarking on the perilous journey across the only land bridge connecting South and North America so far this year than in the entirety of 2021, Panamanian authorities say.
Continue reading...City’s new facility has to find shelters for those without alternative after a 40-year beacon of refuge shuttered earlier this year
Chairs and tables lined El Paso’s new Migrant Welcome Center in west Texas, where families who have crossed the US-Mexico border without immigration papers were meeting with volunteers and city employees, or making phone calls to loved ones elsewhere in the United States.
Children amused themselves in a designated play area, while their parents worked out where the next steps of their journey would take them and how they would get there.
Continue reading...At least 52 missing as military and rescue personnel searched for survivors
At least 25 people died and 52 were missing after five small rivers in central Venezuela flooded due to heavy rains, the government said.
The downpour on Saturday night swept large tree trunks and debris from surrounding mountains into the town of Tejerias, 67km south-west of the capital, Caracas, damaging businesses and farmland, according to the vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez.
Continue reading...Start date for dialogue with the National Liberation Army will be announced after first week of November
Colombia’s government and the nation’s largest remaining guerrilla group have announced that they will restart peace talks next month for the first time since 2018.
After meeting in Caracas, representatives of the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army issued a statement saying a start date for the peace talks would be announced after the first week of November. The statement added that Norway, Venezuela and Cuba would be “guarantor states” in the talks, and that the participation of civil society groups would be “essential” for the peace talks to succeed.
Continue reading...Exchange of Maduro nephews for seven Americans is unusual gesture of goodwill from socialist president but Washington denies any change in policy
Venezuela has freed seven imprisoned Americans in exchange for the US releasing two nephews of President Nicolás Maduro’s wife who had been jailed for years on narcotics convictions.
The swap of the Americans, including five oil executives held for nearly five years, follows months of back-channel diplomacy by senior US officials – secretive talks with a major oil producer that took on greater urgency after sanctions on Russia put pressure on global energy prices.
Continue reading...Fact-finding mission reports brutal massacres and sexual slavery in gold-rich arc where armed gangs fight for control
Struggling to get by amid Venezuela’s runaway inflation, widespread shortages and rampant unemployment, a young woman left the city of San Félix for the promise of a job deep in the forests of Bolívar state.
The offer made on Facebook promised a good salary in exchange for working in a booming mining town.
Continue reading...Government says country ‘moving ahead’ with ceasefire as new leftist president Gustavo Petro promises ‘total peace’
At least 10 armed groups in Colombia, including the Gulf Clan crime gang and dissident members of the Farc rebels who rejected a peace deal have agreed to participate in unilateral ceasefires, according to the government.
President Gustavo Petro, who took office in August, has promised to seek “total peace” with armed groups, fully implementing a 2016 peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and meeting with dissidents and gangs.
Continue reading...United Nations mission says President Nicolás Maduro and others ordered ‘grave crimes’ including torture to stifle opposition
Venezuela’s intelligence agencies are committing crimes against humanity as part of a plan orchestrated at the highest level of government to repress dissent, UN experts have concluded.
A team tasked with investigating alleged violations in Venezuela said it had uncovered how members of intelligence services implemented orders by President Nicolás Maduro and others in a scheme to stifle opposition.
Continue reading...Former national security adviser to Donald Trump says US Capitol attack was not a coup because it was not carefully planned
John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Donald Trump and before that ambassador to the United Nations under George W Bush, said on Tuesday he helped plan coup attempts in other countries.
Speaking to CNN after the day’s January 6 committee hearing, Bolton said it was wrong to describe Trump’s attempt to stay in power after the 2020 election as a coup.
Continue reading...Virgilio Trujillo Arana, who led community defense from criminal groups and illegal mining, was gunned down in broad daylight
Virgilio Trujillo Arana knew that he was risking his life by defending the Amazon lands on which his Indigenous Uwottuja community had lived for centuries.
“Whatever happens, happens,” he said, in a video recorded before his death. “[But] without land, we disappear. That’s why we defend our territories.”
Continue reading...Virgilio Trujillo Arana, a 38-year-old indigenous Uwottuja man, was shot in the head three times in the city of Puerto Ayacucho
A Venezuelan indigenous leader who was an opponent of armed groups and illegal mining has been shot dead in the Amazonas state capital, a non-governmental organization and three people with knowledge of the case said.
Virgilio Trujillo Arana, a 38-year-old indigenous Uwottuja man, was a defender of the Venezuelan Amazon and had set up community groups to act as guardians of the Autana municipality of Amazonas.
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