Barack Obama held his first meeting with his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe, pledging to move ahead with a Free Trade Agreement—in spite of expressed concerns about ongoing rights violations.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime finds that coca cultivation declined 18% in Colombia last year, while it expanded 6% in Bolivia and 4.5% in Peru.
Salvatore Miceli, dubbed the “Mafia’s foreign minister,” will be deported to Italy after his capture in Caracas June 21 in a joint operation by Venezuelan and Italian police.
In a new report, a UN investigator accuses the Colombian military of killing hundreds of civilians during the past six years and falsely identifying the dead as guerilla fighters.
Colombia’s Supreme Court will not allow captured FARC operative Heli Mejia Mendoza AKA “Martin Sombra”—known as the guerilla army’s “jailer”—to be extradited to the United States.
Fox News warns in a headline, “Bolivia Becoming a Hotbed of Islamic Extremism, Report Concludes”—citing the findings of a recent study by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Human rights groups denounced the cultivation of biofuel crops in Colombia, charging their production is linked to land theft and atrocities by paramilitary groups.
Former Colombian Senator Teodolindo Avendaño was sentenced to eight years house arrest for not voting on the measure that allowed the 2006 re-election of President Alvaro Uribe in exchange for favors.
Colombian paramilitary operative Diego Alberto Ruíz was sentenced in Houston, TX, for trying to acquire anti-aircraft missiles and other powerful weapons for $25 million worth of cocaine.
A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed against Dole Food Co. on behalf of 73 people, survivors of murdered trade unionists and farmers in the banana-growing region of north Colombia.
Some 17,500 banana workers in Colombia ended a strike they began on May 8, winning raises in pay and benefits, but not a fund to compensate victims of company-sponsored paramilitary activity.
Venezuela’s economic growth is at a virtual stand-still, as the price of oil has dropped from an average of $87 per barrel last year to an average $42 per barrel so far in 2009.
