Daniel Noboa, who is seeking re-election, announced the partnership with Erik Prince, a supporter of Donald Trump
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, has announced a “strategic alliance” with the Donald Trump-supporting founder of the private military firm Blackwater to supposedly reinforce his controversial “war” on crime.
Noboa, the rightwing heir to a South American banana empire, announced the partnership with Erik Prince on social media on Tuesday night.
Continue reading...Daniel Noboa fails to achieve anticipated victory over leftist rival Luisa González, forcing them to repeat 2023’s election
Ecuador’s conservative president, Daniel Noboa, will face the leftist former congresswoman Luisa González in an election runoff on 13 April after a better than expected first-round performance by his challenger.
With more than 92% of the ballot boxes counted, Noboa was on 44.31%, just ahead of González, with a difference of only 45,000 votes in an electorate of 13.7 million registered voters.
Continue reading...Voters who have become victims of crime wave linked to cocaine trade will determine outcome of presidential election
Ecuadorians are voting in a presidential election that has shaped up to be a repeat of the 2023 race, when they chose a young, conservative millionaire over the former leftist president’s protege.
Luisa González and the incumbent, Daniel Noboa, are the clear frontrunners in the pool of 16 candidates. All have promised to reduce the widespread crime that pushed the country into an unnerving new normal four years ago.
Continue reading...Beatification ceremony for Clare Crockett, former party girl from Derry, draws more than 100 people to Madrid
A nun from Northern Ireland who was killed in an earthquake while she was teaching music in Ecuador has taken a step closer to sainthood.
A ceremony on Sunday afternoon started the process of beatification for Clare Crockett, who died in Portoviejo, Ecuador during an earthquake in April 2016. The 33-year-old had been working in the country as part of her work as a nun, which had also taken in placements in Spain and the US.
Continue reading...Sixteen air force personnel who apprehended boys being held in custody as inquiry into deaths continues
Ecuador’s attorney general’s office has confirmed that incinerated bodies found on Christmas Eve belong to the four children missing since early December, in a case posing a severe challenge to President Daniel Noboa’s “war on drugs”.
The four boys – all black, aged between 11 and 15, and residents of Las Malvinas, a poor area in the country’s largest city, Guayaquil – were returning from a football game on 8 December when they were apprehended by 16 air force soldiers.
Continue reading...Protests have erupted nationwide after disappearance of boys not seen since they were approached by soldiers
The disappearance of four boys in Ecuador after they came into contact with the armed forces is posing a severe challenge to President Daniel Noboa’s “war on drugs”.
The four – all black, aged between 11 and 15, and residents of Las Malvinas, a poor area in the country’s largest city, Guayaquil – were returning from a football game near their homes on 8 December when 16 air force soldiers approached them.
Continue reading...Petition to Ecuador’s copyright office is first legal attempt to recognise an ecosystem’s moral authorship
A forest in Ecuador could be recognised as the co-creator of a song under a groundbreaking legal proposal.
A petition is to be submitted to Ecuador’s copyright office to recognise the Los Cedros cloud forest as the co-creator of the composition Song of the Cedars. The action by the More Than Human Life (Moth) project is the first legal attempt to recognise an ecosystem’s moral authorship of a work of art.
Continue reading...Villavicencio was killed last year and a man and woman, described as instigators, have each been sentenced to more than 34 years in prison
Five people have been jailed over the assassination of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who was killed by gunmen on motorcycles last year.
Villavicencio, 59, was a former journalist and killed on 9 August as he left a school in Ecuador’s capital, Quito, after a campaign rally. Thirteen people were injured.
Continue reading...Ruling, based on constitutional rights for natural features like Quito’s Machángara River, appealed by government
A ruling described by activists as “historic,” a court in Ecuador has ruled that pollution has violated the rights of a river that runs through the country’s capital, Quito.
The city government appealed the ruling, which is based on an article of Ecuador’s constitution that recognizes the rights of natural features like the Machángara River.
Continue reading...Power was restored on Wednesday afternoon, after the outage caused confusion on the streets of Quito as traffic lights ceased working
Power was nearly fully restored in Ecuador, hours after a nationwide electricity outage left the country of about 18 million in the dark, including the capital’s subway system.
Public works minister Roberto Luque said in a post on X that 95% of service had been restored by late Wednesday afternoon.
Continue reading...Eight tonnes of cocaine seized and 40 people arrested after four-year investigation led by Spain’s Guardia Civil
• How big is Europe’s cocaine problem – and what is the human cost?
Forty people have been arrested and eight tonnes of cocaine have been seized as a result of a four-year international police operation targeting a criminal network that trafficked large quantities of the drug from South America to Europe via west Africa and the Canary Islands.
The long-running investigation – which was led by Spain’s Guardia Civil force and coordinated by Europol’s operational taskforce – discovered that a Balkan cartel was using logistical hubs in west Africa and the Canaries to smuggle cocaine from Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador into EU countries.
Continue reading...Sweeping security measures designed to empower police and armed forces against organised crime
Ecuadoreans will vote on Sunday in a referendum on a raft of unprecedented security measures designed to empower the police and armed forces in the fight against spiralling violence and organised crime.
Voters must accept or reject 11 questions, mostly about security, in the plebiscite, which is being seen as a test of support for Ecuador’s popular young president. Daniel Noboa who took office in November on the pledge to combat the surge in violent crime, put forward the poll to push through proposals to retake control of prisons and tame soaring homicide rates.
Continue reading...El Niño weather phenomenon depletes reservoirs and limits output at hydroelectric plants
Ecuador has begun to ration electricity in the country’s main cities as a drought linked to the El Niño weather pattern depletes reservoirs and limits output at hydroelectric plants that produce about 75% of the nation’s power.
“We urge Ecuadorians to cut their electricity consumption in this critical week,” the ministry of energy said in a statement late on Monday. “And consider that each kilowatt and each drop of water that are not consumed will help us face this reality.”
Continue reading...Ecuadorian police forced their way inside embassy in Quito to arrest former vice-president who was seeking asylum in Mexico
Mexico is demanding that the United Nations expel Ecuador from the world body as part of a complaint to the top UN court over a police raid last week on the Mexican embassy in Quito.
Tensions between Mexico and Ecuador have soared since late last week when Ecuadorian authorities forced their way into the diplomatic mission to arrest Ecuador’s former vice-president Jorge Glas who had been holed up there seeking asylum in Mexico.
Continue reading...Andrés Manuel López Obrador condemns assault by Ecuadorian officers, who dragged out ex-vice-president sheltering in mission
The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has condemned what he described as a “despicable authoritarian” assault on his country’s embassy in Quito and released dramatic images showing Ecuadorian security forces dragging the country’s former vice-president from the building.
Jorge Glas, Ecuador’s vice-president from 2013 until 2018, sought shelter at the Mexican mission in December claiming he was suffering political persecution. But the 54-year-old politician was arrested there on Friday after Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, took the extraordinary step of ordering a raid on the embassy.
Continue reading...Jorge Glas brought to naval hospital from maximum security prison three days after his controversial capture in Mexican embassy
Ecuador’s former vice-president Jorge Glas has reportedly been taken to hospital from the maximum security jail where he was being held – three days after the politician was captured inside Mexico’s embassy in Quito during a police raid that drew outrage across Latin America.
Glas, 54, was sent to the Alcatraz-inspired prison La Roca (the Rock) in Guayaquil on Saturday, one day after being detained by Ecuadorian security forces inside the Mexican mission where he had sought asylum.
Continue reading...António Guterres voices ‘alarm’ as Latin American governments sharply criticise Quito’s move to arrest former vice-president
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has added his voice to a torrent of criticism of Ecuador’s decision to storm the Mexican embassy in Quito in order to arrest the former vice-president Jorge Glas.
“The secretary general is alarmed at the forced entry of Ecuadorian security forces into the premises of the Mexican embassy,” Guterres said through his spokesperson on Sunday, adding that violations of the sanctity of diplomatic and consular property “jeopardise the pursuit of normal international relations”.
Continue reading...Ecuadorian police forcibly enter the embassy in Quito to detain former vice-president Jorge Glas
Mexico has suspended diplomatic ties with Ecuador after police forcibly broke into the country’s embassy in Quito to detain former Ecuadorian vice-president Jorge Glas, deepening a diplomatic rift between the two countries.
Glas, convicted twice for corruption, had been holed up in the embassy in Quito since seeking political asylum in December, arguing he was being persecuted by the attorney general’s office.
Continue reading...Police arrest two after César Suárez killed in brazen daylight attack in Guayaquil amid dramatic recent surge in violence
The public prosecutor who was leading the investigation into the on-air assault on an Ecuadorian television station has been shot and killed in a brazen daylight attack in the crime-ridden city of Guayaquil.
César Suárez, who focused on cases involving organized trans-national crime in Guayas province – one of the country’s most violent areas – was ambushed in the north of the city on Wednesday afternoon.
Continue reading...Just a few years ago it was one of the most peaceful countries in Latin America. But last week drug gangs stormed a live TV broadcast and unleashed a wave of terror. Tom Phillips reports
Compared with its fellow Latin American countries Colombia and Mexico – which for decades have been destabilised by violent drug gangs – Ecuador was calm and peaceful. But a wave of terror last Tuesday showed just how quickly things have changed.
After the prison break by an infamous drug baron, chaos erupted. Masked men and boys interrupted a live TV broadcast and held journalists at gunpoint. Elsewhere, police officers and prison guards were taken hostage, explosions were heard and violence spread.
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