FARC guerrilla unit marching in 1998. Wikimedia Commons Medellin, Colombia, Jun 4 (EFE).- Colombia's hardline ex-president, Alvaro Uribe, launched a nationwide signature-gathering campaign here Saturday against the peace agreements reached by the current government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which he says entail impunity for the guerrillas. Under the initiative...

(Photo: EFE via El Mundo) Colombian police Sunday said they had seized eight tons of cocaine from the country’s most active criminal syndicate, the Usuga clan. In a statement, police said they found the drugs hidden on a banana plantation near the border with Panama, in Colombia’s northwest Uraba region. "The biggest seizure of drugs in history. A hit against criminals," Colombian Presid...

FARC guerrilla unit marching in 1998. Wikimedia Commons Geneva, May 13 (EFE).- The UN Refugee Agency, or ACNUR, reported Friday that more than 6,000 people have fled their homes and another 7,000 are trapped by armed clashes in the Colombian region of Choco, one of the most violent in the country. The battles, according to UNHCR, are between illegal armed groups seeking control of this terr...

(YouTube / ODN) Spain’s Minister of Justice, Rafael Catala on Monday proposed leaving some US $4 billion to $17 billion worth of gold and silver on the seafloor off the coast of Colombia in order to avoid conflict over its ownership. The treasure is the cargo of the legendary galleon San Jose, a Spanish ship that was sunk in 1708 near the coast of Cartagena of the Indies, which was discover...

Source: Animal Defenders International Lima, Apr 30 (EFE).- A group of more than 30 lions rescued from circuses in Peru and Colombia have departed this capital for a natural sanctuary in South Africa, an operation known as "Spirit of Freedom" that was organized by the British-based non-governmental organization Animal Defenders International. "Simba is sleeping. The 'Spirit of Freedom' has ...

Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Apr 24 (EFE).- Colombian and U.S. authorities seized 1,850 kilograms of cocaine in two operations conducted in Guatemalan and Salvadoran waters, arresting four Ecuadorians and two Colombians, Bogota authorities reported Sunday. The first anti-drug operation was carried out in Guatemalan waters by Colombia's Dijin and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, suppor...

ARCHIVE/FILE: Some 1,700 tons of cocaine is expected to pass through Costa Rican territory in 2016. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) Eight members of a gang that smuggled up to two tons of cocaine per month through Central America and into the United States were arrested by police in an operation targeting four cities in Colombia, officials said Sunday. The gang's unident...

Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Mar 22 (EFE).- The top leader of Colombia's FARC on Tuesday described the meeting the day before in Havana between the rebel group's peace negotiators and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as historic, "unprecedented and unthinkable." "(It was) a historic meeting with the U.S. secretary of state, something unprecedented and unthinkable. We received support from hi...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Mar 11 (EFE).- Colombian authorities arrested in Bogota 10 employees of Avianca airlines as part of an international operation against drug trafficking and money laundering, the company said in a statement. Avianca said the 10 taken into custody as part of Operation Pajaro Azul (Bluebird) were turned over to the appropriate authorities, but gave no further ...

YouTube/Google under Creative Commons 2.0 Bogota, Feb 16 (EFE).- Deputy Interior Minister Carlos Ferro resigned on Tuesday a few hours after he was linked with an alleged male prostitution network extending into Colombia's National Police, official sources told EFE. Ferro's resignation was seen as part of an internal restructuring of the Interior Ministry, the sources said. Earlier Tuesd...

Washington, Feb 4 (EFE).- U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday announced the "Peace Colombia" plan, a new bilateral accord between Washington and Bogota for which he will ask Congress for some $450 million in the fiscal 2017 budget, substantially more than the $296 million authorized for that country this year. The president announced the proposal during the White House ceremony to commemora...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Feb 2 (EFE).- Three Colombians were arrested when they tried to fly out of the Mexico City airport with more than $1.5 million in cash hidden in their luggage, the Attorney General's Office said. "The three passengers tried to leave the country without declaring the foreign exchange they were carrying in their double-bottomed suitcases, registered to Copa Airl...

"Ejercito de colombia" by Mrnico1092 - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons Bogota, Jan 17 (EFE).- The 17 fishermen kidnapped by the National Liberation Army, or ELN, guerrilla group were rescued in an operation conducted by the Colombian army, President Juan Manuel Santos said Sunday. The ELN, Colombia's second-largest leftist rebel group, kidnapped the fishermen on Saturday. ...

Wikimedia Commons By Juan Carlos Gomi Bogota, Jan 11 (EFE).- The Spanish galleon San Jose did not sink off Colombia under attack by English ships, as contemporaneous accounts say, and perhaps it did not go down in the Caribbean with its load of treasure due to a powerful explosion, as English commodore Charles Wager reported, nautical researcher Daniel de Narvaez MacAllister told EFE. Th...

Bogota, Dec 29 (EFE).- Colombian police in this capital arrested a 58-year-old man and charged him with illegally stockpiling and selling radioactive material, authorities said Tuesday. The man, whose identity was not released, had been illegally storing chemical elements such as Iridium-192 and depleted uranium in a house in Engativa, a town close to Bogota's El Dorado international airport, p...

Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Dec 15 (EFE).- The Colombian Culture Ministry officially refused to give U.S.-based treasure hunters Sea Search Armada access to the coordinates of the site where the wreck of the Spanish galleon San Jose was found on Nov. 27. In a letter signed by Minister Mariana Garces and made public on Tuesday, Colombia ruled out the possibility suggested by SSA of receiving a...

Source: Pixabay Commons Mexico City, Nov 23 (EFE).- The Federal District Attorney's Office, working with federal law enforcement personnel, arrested three men and a woman, and 17 victims of sexual exploitation were rescued in Mexico City, officials said. The victims, all adult women, were forced to provide sexual services at the Desexxx3 bar in the Mexico City borough of Centro, the DA's of...

El Dorado airport in Bogota. Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Nov 19 (EFE).- One of the people being investigated for having participated in last week's terrorist attacks in Paris left Bogota in July and traveled to the French capital after bribing officials to let him leave the country, a source in the immigration agency told EFE. The suspect, identified as Syrian national Al Sakhadi Seham, made ...

Miami, Oct 3 (EFE).- American actor and rapper Will Smith sings again, this time doing a remix of his number "Fiesta" with the Colombian band Bomba Estereo. Missing from the music world for 10 years, Smith returns with the Colombian band doing an upbeat fusion of electro-tropical sound and rap that reflects "the impact of Latin rhythms" on the international scene. "Having a personality like ...

Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Oct 2 (EFE).- Guerrilla and drug-trafficking kingpin Victor Ramon Navarro Serrano, alias "Megateo," was killed in a military operation in northwestern Colombia, officials reported Friday. The report was confirmed by the Colombian ambassador to Washington, former Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon, who posted his congratulations both to the police and the armed for...

"Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes Yahoo 2006" by Kevin Ballard - http://flickr.com/photos/eridius/116003811/in/set-72057594087529032/. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons Bogota, Sep 12 (EFE).- At least two people died and one was injured when a plane carrying members of a movie crew working on Tom Cruise's upcoming thriller film "Mena" crashed in northwestern Colombia, local media reported. Th...

Source: Flickr Commons Cali, Colombia, Aug 26 (EFE).- Uruguayan soccer player Alexis Viera, a former goalkeeper for America de Cali, sustained a spinal injury and lost sensation in his legs after being shot during a robbery attempt in Colombia, doctors said. Viera, who currently plays for the Colombian Second Division's Depor Futbol Club, was shot in the left side of his chest and the injur...

Source: Ejercito Bolivariano Twitter By Gonzalo Dominguez Loeda Cucuta, Colombia, Aug 26 (EFE).- Unlike many Latin American border cities, Colombia's Cucuta offers good quality of life and a dynamic economy due, in part, to its close ties to San Antonio, the Venezuelan city that makes up the rest of an urban area now cut in half by the border closing. When Venezuelan President Nicolas Ma...

Young Facebook users in Costa Rica enjoy certain protections with regard to keeping their social media activity hidden from parents. That much is granted by Article 25 of the Childhood and Adolescence Code. Such is not the case in Colombia, where the Supreme Court recently issued an opinion that gives parents the right to monitor the Facebook accounts of their children. In Costa Rica, a legisla...

Juliana Lopez Sarrazola. Source: Miss World Colombia 2015 Juliana Lopez Sarrazola, a 22-year old Colombian bikini model, could face the death penalty in China for the alleged crime of smuggling cocaine into the People's Republic of China. According to the online news daily El Mundo from Spain, Miss Lopez, who was also the 2015 Miss World Colombia candidate from Antioquia, a major coffee-pr...

Source: Wikimedia Commons Bogota, Jul 14 (EFE).- Colombian police reported Tuesday the arrest of five people who were riding in an ambulance as if on a medical mission, while the true purpose of their trip was to transport 214 kilos (470 pounds) of cocaine to the northern part of the country.   "Inside the ambulance, assigned to the southwestern municipality of Puerto Caicedo, was t...

Flickr Commons Bogota, Jul 2 (EFE).- A committee of experts at a hospital in the central Colombian city of Pereira on Thursday authorized the first mercy killing in the country in the case of a patient with terminal cancer whom several days ago the hospital ceased treating for legal reasons. Ovidio Gonzalez, 79, suffers from an aggressive cancer in his face that can no longer be productivel...

Nicaragua cannot catch a break. After bringing a conflict with Colombia to the United Nations and having a tiff with Costa Rica over a border town, Panama announced on Thursday it had a bone to pick with its northern neighbor: President Ricardo Martinelli said Panama would be joining Colombia in its dispute with Nicaragua over territorial waters. Martinelli accused his Nicaraguan counterpart, D...

SAN JOSE - The acquisition of HSBC retail banking operations in Costa Rica earlier this week was reported in several news media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and La Nacion. The latter newspaper approached the corporate offices of HSBC on January 23rd regarding the impending sale, which at that time the bank chose to label as a rumor that would later be confirmed by Efrain Forero Fonse...