Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 62
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Monday re-designated Cuba as a "state sponsor of terrorism," hitting the country with new sanctions that could hamstring President-elect Joe Biden's promise to renew relations with the communist-governed island. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the step, citing in particular Cuba's continued harboring of U.S. fugitives, its refusal to extradite a coterie of Colombian guerrilla commanders as well as its support for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. The designation, which had been di...
MEDELLIN, Colombia (AP) — "Don't WORRY!" reads the cryptic note scribbled on a scrap of perforated paper smuggled out of a dank, basement cellblock. "Han Solo always wins!" The weeks-old message is all the family of Matthew Heath has to pin its hopes on since the former U.S. Marine corporal was arrested at a roadblock in Venezuela two months ago and accused by President Nicolás Maduro of being a terrorist and spying for Donald Trump. But other than the brief mention by Maduro, the American's plight has largely gone unnoticed. Nobody in the fa...
MIAMI (AP) — Back in January, a yearlong campaign of U.S. sanctions was taking its toll at Venezuela's state-run oil company. Many of PDVSA's overseas bank accounts had been frozen, hampering its ability to pay vendors on whom it relies to keep the nation's crude flowing. So the company leaned on a longtime client from Thailand, Tipco Asphalt, to blunt the impact: in exchange for discounts on oil, Tipco would pay PDVSA's bills and deduct the amounts from what it owed the Venezuelan oil giant, according to records obtained by The Associated P...
MIAMI (AP) — The Trump administration has blocked the scheduled removal of a former Colombian paramilitary boss to Italy and now intends to deport him to his South American homeland, where he's been found responsible for hundreds of war crimes. Salvatore Mancuso received notification of the surprise reversal on Sunday, according to two people familiar with the matter who discussed the proceedings on condition of anonymity. His lawyers have 14 days to challenge the deportation order. Mancuso's removal to Italy, where he also has citizenship, w...
MIAMI (AP) — Even in a pandemic, there's no slowdown for swindlers in Latin America. From Argentina to Panama, a number of officials have been forced to resign as reports of fraudulent purchases of ventilators, masks and other medical supplies pile up. The thefts are driven by price-gouging from manufacturers and profiteering by politically connected middlemen who see the crisis as an opportunity for graft. "Whenever there's a dire situation, spending rules are relaxed and there's always someone around looking to take advantage to make a p...
MIAMI (AP) — A former Green Beret who has claimed responsibility for an ill-fated military incursion into Venezuela is under federal investigation for arms trafficking, according to current and former U.S. law enforcement officials. The investigation into Jordan Goudreau is in its initial stages and it's unclear if it will result in charges, according to a U.S. law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The probe stems from a frenzy of contradictory comments Goudreau has made since a s...
MIAMI (AP) — The plan was simple, but perilous. Some 300 heavily armed volunteers would sneak into Venezuela from the northern tip of South America. Along the way, they would raid military bases in the socialist country and ignite a popular rebellion that would end in President Nicolás Maduro's arrest. What could go wrong? As it turns out, pretty much everything. The ringleader of the plot is now jailed in the U.S. on narcotics charges. Authorities in the U.S. and Colombia are asking questions about the role of his muscular American ad...
MIAMI (AP) — A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent and a telecommunications specialist are accused of stealing personal protective equipment, toilet paper and other supplies from an agency warehouse in Florida amid shortages caused by the coronavirus pandemic, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. The officials, who were not authorized to discuss the case and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity, say it was not clear exactly how much of the supplies the men took or what they intended to do with them but the matter was s...
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — With gas lines across Venezuela growing, a controversial shipping magnate has stepped in to prevent the country from running out of fuel amid the coronavirus pandemic, The Associated Press has learned. The fuel shortage, in the nation that sits atop the world largest crude reserves, is the latest threat to Nicolas Maduro's rule at a time he is under intense U.S. pressure to resign. Wilmer Ruperti's Maroil Trading Inc. billed state-owned oil monopoly PDVSA 12 million euros last month for the purchase of up to 250,000 ba...
MIAMI (AP) — A once-standout U.S. federal narcotics agent known for spending lavishly on luxury cars and Tiffany jewelry has been arrested on charges of conspiring to launder money with the same Colombian drug cartel he was supposed to be fighting. The FBI arrested Jose Irizarry and his wife, Nathalia Gomez-Irizarry, Friday at their home near San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the case. In a 19-count indictment unsealed Friday, federal prosecutors in Tampa, Florida, accuse Irizarry of "secretly using h...
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The metal doors of a shoebox-sized cage open up and a bird tagged #811 launches into a giant aviary. The palm-sized finch performs a midair pirouette, lands on a willow branch and curiously twitches its saffron-colored head sideways, as if surprised by its good fortune. "That's what it feels like to be free," said Juan Camilo Panqueba, a veterinarian at a quarantine center in Colombia's high Andean capital, far from the canary's natural habitat along the humid, Caribbean coast. The moment of liberation contrasts with t...
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — For weeks, representatives of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his would-be successor, opposition leader Juan Guaidó, have been shuttling back and forth to Barbados trying to agree on a common path out of the country's prolonged political standoff. The meetings have been slow-going and shrouded in mystery, with neither side disclosing details. But now Maduro's supporters are accusing the U.S. of trying to blow up the fragile process. The purported explosive: sweeping new sanctions that freeze all of the Mad...
WASHINGTON (AP) — As the last rays of sunlight faded into the Caribbean Sea, political fugitive Iván Simonovis was speeding toward an island rendezvous with freedom. Three weeks earlier he had fled house arrest in the Venezuelan capital, rappelling down a 75-foot (25-meter) wall in the dead of night, then took a bolt cutter to his ankle monitor. Since then he had been furtively moving between safe houses to stay one step ahead of Nicolas Maduro's security forces. It was a meticulous plan befitting his reputation as Venezuela's most famous SWAT...
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó is looking to jumpstart his movement to oust Nicolas Maduro in the wake of last week's failed military uprising, promising to persevere in the face of a deepening crackdown. In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Guaidó reiterated his willingness to consider inviting foreign troops to force Maduro from power, echoing the line from Washington that "all options" are on the table for dealing with Venezuela's rapidly-escalating crisis. He blamed the socialist leader for...
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Around May 2017, an unusual request from a prominent Venezuelan general made its way to the White House: Gen. Ivan Hernández, head of both the presidential guard and military counterintelligence, wanted to send his 3-year-old son to Boston for brain surgery and needed visas for his family. After days of internal debate, the still young Trump administration rejected the request, seeing no point in helping a senior member of a socialist government that it viewed as corrupt and thuggish but wasn't yet prepared to co...
Huddled at a home in Ecuador's capital, President Lenin Moreno's aides anxiously awaited word in the middle of the night on an operation that would soon make headlines around the world: the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the country's London embassy. Over the course of nearly seven years, the Australian hacker had all but worn out his welcome at the embassy with antics that included late-night skateboarding, harassing the staff and smearing his feces on the walls, according to Ecuadorian officials. Moreno had finally decided...
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The International Committee of the Red Cross has regained access to prisons in Venezuela, including highly guarded military facilities where dozens of inmates considered political prisoners are being held, as President Nicolas Maduro seeks to counter mounting criticism of his government's human rights record. The fact that the visits include military prisons, which hadn't been previously reported, was confirmed to The Associated Press by a human rights lawyer and family members of those detained. International Red Cros...
MOSCOW (AP) — Call it the aid wars. The Trump administration is accusing President Nicolas Maduro of starving Venezuelans by blocking tons of American-supplied humanitarian aid stored next door in Colombia. In Russia, the Kremlin sees the opposition's plan to ram the aid across the border as a reckless pretext for ordering a U.S. military intervention. As tensions in Venezuela mount ahead of a Saturday showdown over humanitarian aid, both sides are digging in, highlighting how the South American nation's crisis has become the latest fault l...
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A month into Venezuela's high-stakes political crisis, President Nicolas Maduro revealed in an AP interview that his government was in secret talks with the Trump administration and predicted he would survive an unprecedented global campaign to force his resignation. While harshly criticizing U.S. President Donald Trump's confrontational stance toward his socialist government, Maduro said Thursday that he holds out hope of meeting the U.S. president soon to resolve a crisis over America's recognition of opponent J...
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — As a meeting last August in the Oval Office to discuss sanctions on Venezuela was concluding, President Donald Trump turned to his top aides and asked an unsettling question: With a fast unraveling Venezuela threatening regional security, why can't the U.S. just simply invade the troubled country? The suggestion stunned those present at the meeting, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, both of whom have since left the administration. This account of the p...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A secret backchannel led by a veteran Republican Senate staffer and a flamboyant Venezuelan official nicknamed "Dracula" broke through hostile relations between the two governments to secure the release of American prisoner Joshua Holt, who traveled to the South American country for love and ended up in jail, without a trial, for two years. A week ago the chances of Holt's long ordeal ending any time soon looked slim. On the eve of Venezuela's May 20 presidential election, the Utah native appeared in a clandestinely shot v...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joshua Holt, who traveled to Venezuela from Utah in 2016 to marry a Spanish-speaking Mormon woman but soon found himself jailed and later branded the CIA's top spy in Latin America, was set free by the anti-American Maduro government on Saturday in what his family called "this miracle." Holt and his wife, Thamara Caleno, arrived Saturday evening at Washington Dulles International Airport. In video tweeted by the office of Sen. Orrin Hatch, the couple enter a room to be greeted by the Utah Republican before a hug-filled and t...
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Texas Republican congressman Pete Sessions quietly visited Venezuela this week and met with President Nicolas Maduro at the invitation of the socialist government in a peacebuilding mission that has raised some eyebrows in Washington. It's not clear what prompted the previously undisclosed visit by the Dallas congressman to the politically turbulent South American nation. Caroline Booth, a spokeswoman for the congressman, said it was related to work Sessions has done over the past year as an intermediary to resolve i...
LIMA, Peru (AP) — Embattled President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski offered his resignation Wednesday ahead of an impeachment vote, seeking to put an end to a fast-moving political drama playing out just three weeks before the Andean nation is set to host U.S. President Donald Trump for a regional summit. In a nationwide televised address, Kuczynski, flanked by his cabinet, lashed out at opponents led by the daughter of former strongman Alberto Fujimori for allegedly plotting his overthrow with damaging leaks of confidential documents that raised d...
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A trust linked to Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA has filed a lawsuit against major international energy trading firms for their alleged role funneling bribes to corrupt company officials in exchange for rigged oil purchase contracts. The civil complaint was unsealed Thursday by a federal judge in Miami and alleges the ongoing scheme cheated the socialist-run company of billions in lost revenue since 2004. The lawsuit comes as the U.S. expands a criminal investigation into corruption at PDVSA, and the Trump a...
