Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro repeated a debunked sexually charged allegation about one of the country’s more prominent journalists on Tuesday, drawing fire from press freedom advocates and even some recent allies.Bolsonaro referred to Patricia Campos Mello, a reporter for newspaper Folha de S. Paulo who last year won the International Press Freedom Award after coverage of his presidential campaign. She’d also been honored for earlier reporting from the Middle East, U.S. and Africa.A witness in a congressional hearing testified she had insinuated an offer of sex in exchange for help with a story that triggered an investigation of Bolsonaro’s campaign by Brazil’s top electoral court. Her newspaper quickly debunked the assertion by releasing transcripts, screenshots and recordings of their conversations.Still, Bolsonaro echoed the insinuation as he spoke outside the presidential residence in Brasilia.“He talked about the journalist’s harassment, hitting on him. She wanted a scoop, she wanted to give a scoop, at any price, against me,” Bolsonaro said with a smile, using a Portuguese word for “scoop” that can have sexual connotations. That drew laughs from his supporters.Hours later Bolsonaro spoke to journalists again at the same spot. “Is there anyone from Folha there? So I sexually attacked your reporter? OK. I don’t want to talk to you,” he said before walking away.FILE – Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro greets supporters after attending a Changing of the Guard at the Planalto Presidential Palace, in Brasilia, Nov. 28, 2019.The Brazilian Press Association issued a statement calling Bolsonaro’s comment cowardly and embarrassing to Brazilians.“This misogynous behavior is undeserving of the office of the President and an affront to the Constitution,” the statement said.Folha, issued a statement calling Bolsonaro’s comment an attack to all professional journalists. “He also tars the dignity, the honor and the decorum as stated by the law for the exercise of the presidency,” the daily added.Campos Mello declined to comment on Bolsonaro’s insult.She has suffered online abuse and received threats from supporters of the Brazilian president since October 2018, when Folha published her report on a network of businessmen who allegedly sponsored the production of false news against rival candidate, Fernando Haddad.The wave of insults against the journalist returned last week after the testimony in Congress.Like U.S. President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro frequently speaks off the cuff, doesn’t shy from comments perceived as politically incorrect and often uses the press as a foil to rally support. He has repeatedly said that journalists willfully misconstrue his statements and are seeking to undermine his administration.The incident in Brasilia follows two recent examples of Bolsonaro making offensive arm gestures at a group of journalists.The Brazilian association of investigative journalism and the Brazilian bar association’s press freedom branch issued a joint statement Tuesday expressing “vehement repudiation” of Tuesday’s statement.Even the right-wing party that sponsored Bolsonaro’s run for president repudiated his comments. The Social Liberal Party said called the president’s attacks unacceptable and said “they deserve the repudiation of good Brazilians.” 
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The Trump administration announced sanctions Tuesday on a Russian state-controlled brokerage that has helped the Venezuelan government skirt an American oil embargo and enabled President Nicolas Maduro keep his grip on power in the South American country.Administration officials said Rosneft Trading S.A. and its president, Didier Casimiro, would be added to a financial blacklist in a move that is expected to largely freeze him and the company out of the global financial system.The action is an unusually strong move against a company linked to the Russian state and amounts to a substantial escalation of a U.S.-led campaign that has failed to oust Maduro from power.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Rosneft Trading is the primary broker for the sale and transportation of Venezuelan crude oil.”Rosneft Trading has propped up the dictatorial Maduro, enabling his repression of the Venezuelan people,” he said in announcing the sanctions.Rosneft Trading is incorporated in Switzerland and Russian-owned, according to the State Department. The parent company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.But Russian lawmaker Pavel Zavalny said the country would continue to cooperate with Venezuela in the energy sector despite the U.S. sanctions. “One doesn’t abandon friends in need,” Zavalny said.The U.S. and about 60 other countries say Maduro’s reelection in 2018 was not legitimate and have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president.The U.S. is considering additional economic sanctions aimed at further tightening economic pressure on the Maduro government, the special U.S. envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, told reporters.Maduro has held on to power despite runaway hyperinflation, a massive exodus and shortages of food and medicine and the international pressure that has left his socialist administration isolated.Venezuela managed to ship hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil last year with the help of Rosneft Trading despite sanctions on its petroleum sector imposed by the Trump administration last year.FILE – The leader of Venezuela’s political opposition Juan Guaido makes a speech at the Madrid regional government building during a visit to Madrid, Spain, Jan. 25, 2020.Opposition leader Juan Guaido called the latest sanctions a “new victory!””Whoever supports the dictator, from whatever part of the world, will bear the consequences,” Guaido tweeted. “Those who collaborate with democracy will be welcomed.”Guaido launched a campaign to oust Maduro a year ago but so far has failed to make it a reality. He has been unable to flip the military’s loyalty away from Maduro.In recent months the Venezuelans who had fervently supported Guaido early on had stopped filling the streets for demonstrations, and Maduro has grown emboldened.The action against Rosneft Trading and Casamiro means that any assets they have in the U.S. or in the control of U.S. financial institutions will be frozen. In addition, anyone who does business with them could face American sanctions, which senior administration officials told reporters should largely freeze the company out of the global financial system.The officials said the move was not expected to have a significant effect on global oil prices.Officials also said that President Donald Trump approved the move. They said he has spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past about U.S. objections to his country’s support for Maduro.
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Venezuela’s decision to suspend TAP Air Portugal’s flights to Caracas is “completely unfounded and unjustified,” Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva said Tuesday.”I can’t see any kind of justification” for the 90-day suspension, Santos Silva said.
Venezuelan authorities took the step Monday after TAP last week carried opposition leader Juan Guaido and his uncle home from an international tour aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro.
Guaido’s uncle was arrested upon landing and accused of trying to bring a small amount of explosives into Venezuela. Portugal ordered an official investigation into that allegation, and Santos Silva said it hasn’t finished yet.
The suspension is a “hostile act” against Portugal, Santos Silva told national news agency Lusa, in comments published by online newspaper Observador.
Portugal is in a coalition of European and Latin American nations, called the “International Contact Group,” that has backed Guaido against Maduro. Thousands of Portuguese immigrants live in Venezuela.
Santos Silva said the suspension would also hurt Venezuelans because the Portuguese flag carrier is one of the few international airlines still serving Caracas, with twice weekly flights.
TAP said in a statement it “meets all the legal and safety requirements demanded” by authorities in both Portugal and Venezuela. 
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The cardinal’s response was not what Yolanda Martinez  had expected — or could abide.Her son had been sexually abused by a priest of the Legion of Christ, a disgraced religious order. And now she was calling Cardinal Valasio De Paolis — the Vatican official appointed by the pope to lead the Legion and to clean it up — to report the settlement the group was offering, and to express her outrage.
The terms: Martinez’s  family would receive 15,000 euros ($16,300) from the order. But in return, her son would have to recant the testimony he gave to Milan prosecutors that the priest had repeatedly assaulted him when he was a 12-year-old student at the order’s youth seminary in northern Italy. He would have to lie.
The cardinal did not seem shocked. He did not share her indignation.
Instead, he chuckled. He said she shouldn’t sign the deal, but should try to work out another agreement without attorneys: “Lawyers complicate things. Even Scripture says that among Christians we should find agreement.”
The conversation between the aggrieved mother and Pope Benedict XVI’s personal envoy was wiretapped. The tape — as well as the six-page settlement proposal — are key pieces of evidence in a criminal trial opening next month in Milan. Prosecutors allege that Legion lawyers and priests tried to obstruct justice, and extort Martinez’s  family by offering them money to recant testimony to prosecutors in hopes of quashing a criminal investigation into the abusive priest, Vladimir Resendiz Gutierrez.Lawyers for the five suspects declined to comment. The Legion says they have professed innocence. A spokesman said that at the time, the Legion didn’t have in place the uniform child protection policies and guidelines that are now mandatory across the order.
De Paolis is beyond earthly justice — he died in 2017 and there is no evidence he knew of, or approved, the settlement offer before it was made. But the tape and documents seized when police raided the Legion’s headquarters in 2014 show that he had turned a blind eye to superiors who protected pedophiles.
In addition, the evidence shows that when De Paolis first learned about Resendiz’s  crimes in 2011, he approved an in-house canonical investigation but didn’t report the priest to police. And when he learned two years later that other Legion priests were apparently trying to impede the criminal investigation into his crimes, the pope’s delegate didn’t report that either.
And a few hours after he spoke with Martinez, De Paolis opened the Legion’s 2014 assembly where he formally ended the mandate given to him by Benedict to reform and purify the religious order. The Legion had been “cured and cleaned,” he said.
In fact, his mission hadn’t really been accomplished. ___
Benedict had entrusted De Paolis, one of the Vatican’s most respected canon lawyers, to turn the Legion around in 2010, after revelations that its founder, the late Rev. Marcial Maciel, had raped his seminarians, fathered three children and built a cult-like order to hide his crimes.
There had been calls for the Vatican to suppress the Legion. But Benedict decided against it, apparently determining in part that the order was too big and too rich to fail. Instead, he opted for a process of reform, giving De Paolis the broadest possible powers to rebuild the Legion from the ground up and saying it must undergo a profound process of “purification” and “renewal.”
But De Paolis refused from the start to remove any of Maciel’s old guard, who remain in power today. He refused to investigate the cover-up of Maciel’s crimes. He refused to reopen old allegations of abuse by other priests, even when serial rapists remained in the Legion’s ranks, unpunished.
More generally, he did not come to grips with the order’s deep-seated culture of sexual abuse, cover-up and secrecy — and its long record of avoiding law enforcement and dismissing, discrediting and silencing victims. As a result, even onetime Legion supporters now openly question his reform, which was dismissed as ineffective by the Legion’s longtime critics.
“They always try to control victims, minimize them, defame them, accuse them of exaggerating things,” said Alberto Athie, a former Mexican priest who has campaigned for more than 20 years on behalf of clergy sexual abuse victims, including victims of the Legion.
“Then, if they don’t achieve that level of control, they go to the next level, looking for their parents, trying to minimize them or buy them off, silence them. And if that doesn’t work, they go to trial and try to do what they can to win the case,” he said.
Now, victims of these other Legion priests are coming forward in droves with stories of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse, and how the Legion’s culture of secrecy and cover-up has remained intact.
“They say they’re close to the victims and help their families,” Martinez  told The Associated Press at her home in Milan. “My testimony is this didn’t happen.”___
Martinez, a 54-year-old mother of three, chokes up when she recalls the day she received the phone call from her son’s psychologist. It was March of 2013, and her eldest son had been receiving therapy on the advice of his high school girlfriend. Martinez  thought she was about to learn that she would be a grandmother; she thought her boy had gotten the girl pregnant.
Instead, Dr. Gian Piero Guidetti told Martinez  and her husband that during therapy, their son had revealed that he had been repeatedly sexually molested by Resendiz  starting in 2008, when he was a middle schooler at the Legion’s youth seminary in Gozzano, near Italy’s border with Switzerland. Guidetti, himself a priest, told them he was required by his medical profession to report the crime to prosecutors.
His complaint, and the testimony of Martinez’s  son, sparked a criminal investigation that resulted in Resendiz’s  2019 conviction, which was upheld on appeal in January. Resendiz, 43, who was convicted in absentia and is believed to be living in his native Mexico, has until the end of March to appeal the conviction and 6 1/2-year prison sentence to Italy’s highest court. (Efforts by The Associated Press to reach his lawyer were unsuccessful.)
The investigation, however, netted evidence that went far beyond Resendiz’s  own wrongdoing. Documents seized by police and seen by AP in the court file showed a pattern of cover-up by the Legion and the pope’s envoy that stretched from Milan to Mexico, the Vatican to Venezuela and points in between.
Personnel files, for example, made clear Resendiz was known to the Legion as a risk even when he was a teenage seminarian in the 1990s, yet he was ordained a priest anyway in 2006 and immediately sent to oversee young boys at the Gozzano youth seminary.
“He’s a boy with strong sexual impulses and low capacity to control them,” Resendiz’s  novice director, the Rev. Antonio Leon  Santacruz, wrote in an internal assessment on Jan. 9, 1994. “Given his psychological character, he’s inclined to not respect rules without great difficulty and the psychologist thinks it will be difficult for him to undertake consecrated life given he has little respect for rules. He follows them as long as he’s being watched, but as soon as he can, he breaks them and has no remorse.”
A year later, on Resendiz’s  19th birthday, the seminarian wrote a letter to Maciel — addressing it as all Legionaries addressed the man they regarded as a living saint: “Nuestro Padre,” “Our Father.”
“I’m having various problems in the field of purity and the truth is I’m having a hard time, because temptations are coming to me,” he wrote. “I’m praying to the Holy Virgin every day for grace and asking her for strength to not offend again; I say again because I have had the disgrace of falling, but with the help of God I will fight to form that pure, priestly heart.”
When Martinez  saw such letters in the court file, her heart fell.
“My son wasn’t even born yet, she said. “How can you put someone like that in charge of a seminary?”
A Legion spokesman, the Rev. Aaron Smith, said the Legion has overhauled its training process for seminarians since Resendiz’s  era, applying more scrutiny before ordination.
“Things are different today,” he said in emailed response to questions.___
      
While Milan prosecutors first heard about Resendiz’s  pedophilia in March 2013 when the therapist reported it, the crimes were old news to both the Vatican and the Legion.
The Legion has admitted it received a first report of abuse by Resendiz on March 6, 2011, from another boy who had been a student at Gozzano. The Legion says that boy, an Austrian, had first told a Legion priest of Resendiz’s  abuse. That priest recommended he report it to a church ombudsman’s office in Austria that receives abuse complaints, which he did, Smith said.
Separately, the Legion got wind of another possible victim in Venezuela, where Resendiz  had been sent from Gozzano in 2008, after he abused Martinez’s  son.
Italian police were never informed by the Legion or the Vatican. Neither the Vatican nor Italy requires clergy to report suspected child sex abuse.
When police finally did get wind of the case in March 2013, they uncovered elaborate efforts to keep Resendiz’s  crimes quiet. According to one email seized by Italian police — written March 16, 2011, or 10 days after the Austrian claim was first received by the order — a Legion lawyer recommended to one of the Legion’s most powerful behind-the-scenes superiors, the Rev. Gabriel Sotres, that a Legion priest visit with the victim in Austria.
The aim of the visit, prosecutors wrote in summarizing the email exchanges, “was to speak to the [victim’s] older brother and convince him to not tell their parents and not go to police because this could cause serious problems not only for the Legion but also Father Vladimir, all the other priests involved and the victim and his family.”
Smith, the Legion spokesman, didn’t deny the prosecutors’ account but said that “encouraging a child to keep something from their parents or guardians is contrary to our code of conduct.”
Later in 2011, the Legion arranged for Resendiz  to be transferred from Venezuela to Colombia, and prepared a legal strategy to limit the possible damage if the Venezuelan case escalated. The emails were sent to several Legion leaders, including Sotres, who remain in top positions today. In fact, in the Legion’s current leadership assembly under way in Rome to choose new superiors and priorities, at least 13 of the 89 priests were involved in some way in dealing with the Resendiz  scandal, fallout and cover-up, including two priests who are defendants in the upcoming Milan trial.
According to the seized emails, the plan proposed by a Legion lawyer involved reporting only Resendiz’s  name to Venezuelan police to comply with local reporting laws, leaving out that he was a priest, that he was accused of a sex crime against a child, and the name of the Legion, prosecutors said in summarizing the emails. The report would also note that he no longer lived in Venezuela.
The Legion has said Resendiz  was removed from priestly ministry and from his work with young people in Venezuela within days of receiving the initial Austrian report.
But the emails seized indicate that the restrictions weren’t necessarily enforced: One from Dec. 20, 2012, suggests that Resendiz was hearing confessions in schools and celebrating Mass in Colombia, news that prompted the leadership to ultimately recommend he be sent for psychological counseling in Mexico and later assigned to an administrative position “where they don’t know his situation.”
Eventually, as part of the church’s in-house investigation, Resendiz  confessed — but only to the Legion and Vatican authorities, and only about other boys he abused, not Martinez’s  son.
“I sincerely recognize my terrible behavior as a priest,” he wrote the Vatican official in charge of the sex crimes office in 2012, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller.
“Truly I lived in hell when these sad facts occurred. I recognize the gravity of the acts that I committed and I humbly ask the church for forgiveness for these sad and painful facts. I can’t understand how it could have happened, and I recognize that I lacked the courage to admit to the problem and advise my superiors of the danger.”
The Vatican defrocked him on April 5, 2013 — just a few weeks after Italian prosecutors first heard about Martinez’s  son.
By October of that year, the Legion was nearing the end of De Paolis’ mandate and clearly wanted to avoid the possibility that the Resendiz  case could explode publicly and jeopardize the plan to resume their independence from the Vatican.
Martinez  and her family, for their part, were coping with the trauma of her son’s abuse.
“He would have nightmares. He wouldn’t let me touch him …,” Martinez  said. “He couldn’t stand anyone being close to him.”
Once, he was even prevented from throwing himself in front of a subway train.
Martinez  had been in regular touch with the Legion priest closest to the family, the Rev. Luca Gallizia, her husband’s spiritual director. He was serving as the family’s contact with the Legion, after all other priests and members of Martinez’s  Regnum Christi social circle severed contact — apparently on orders from the leadership.
Gallizia traveled to Milan to meet with Martinez  on Oct. 18, 2013, bringing a proposed settlement to compensate the family. They met in a room off the parish playground of the Sant’Eustorgio basilica where Martinez  worked.
When Martinez  read it later that night with her husband, she was shocked.
“It was a second violation, because for all intents and purposes in that letter, they asked us to deny the facts. And for us it was a stab in the back because it was brought to us by our spiritual father. … He knew everything about us, because my husband confided in him. And that made it even more painful.”
The Legion declined to comment on the proposed settlement, citing the upcoming trial.
The document the Legion wanted Martinez’s family to sign states that her son ruled out having been sexually abused by Resendiz and regardless didn’t remember. It said he denied having any phone or text message contact with him, and that his ensuing problems were due to the fact that he left the seminary and was having trouble integrating socially into his new public high school.
The document set out payments for the son’s continuing education and therapy and required “absolute” secrecy. If the family were called to testify, they were to make the same declarations as contained in the settlement — denying the abuse.
A few months later, the Legion realized it had erred in leaving the proposal with Martinez  and proposed a revised settlement acknowledging the abuse occurred. Now, though, it required the family to pay back double the 15,000 euro ($16,300) settlement offer if they violated the confidentiality agreement.
It was then that Martinez  called De Paolis.
“Both my lawyer and I, our jaws dropped,” she told the Vatican cardinal. The pope’s envoy said he was surprised as well.
“Yes, but this, this is how it’s done in Italy,” he said.
The mother would have none of it. “It’s not a very nice agreement, signing a lie,” Martinez  told the cardinal. “Aside from the fact that I don’t want any money, I’m not signing the letter.” 
 
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With Colombian military snipers in position, Howard Buffett descends from a helicopter and trudges through the wet grass in steel-toed boots chewed through by his dog’s teeth. Waiting under a tin-roofed shack is a small group of coca farmers. They’ve never heard of multibillionaire investor Warren Buffett, but after decades of neglect by their own government they’re grateful for the outstretched hand of his eldest son, whom they refer to simply as “the gringo.” “There’s a saying here: The less you know, the better,” said Ruben Morantes, his leathery skin and calloused hands a testament to a lifetime of tillage in one of Colombia’s most dangerous territories, where outsiders are traditionally mistrusted. For nearly two decades Buffett has crisscrossed the world, giving away part of his father’s fortune to promote food security, conflict mitigation and public safety. But his latest gamble is one of the most daunting yet: helping Colombia kick its cocaine curse. He is focusing on Tibu, heart of the remote, notoriously lawless Catatumbo region bordering Venezuela where Buffett accompanied President Ivan Duque. Tibu has the second-largest coca crop in all of Colombia — 28,200 acres (11,400 hectares), according to the United Nations. Drug production and violence have skyrocketed in the area since armed groups filled the void left by retreating rebels who signed a peace deal with the government in 2016. Foundation’s plansThe Howard G. Buffett Foundation has committed to spending $200 million over the next few years to transform the impoverished municipality into a model of comprehensive state building. Plans include strengthening security forces and helping farmers to secure land titles and substitute coca — the raw material for cocaine — with licit crops like cacao. Howard Buffett plants a cocoa plant at a farm in La Gabarra, Colombia, Jan. 29, 2020. Buffett began working in Colombia in 2008, helping pop star Shakira set up schools in her hometown of Barranquilla.The first component is building 300 kilometers (185 miles) of roads to connect the municipality’s 37,000 residents for the first time with national and international markets. It’s a challenge made more difficult by lurking guerrillas who last year detonated a homemade bomb as army engineers were working on the road, killing five people and injuring several others. “The only way we have confidence that farmers can grow legal crops is if they can get those crops to market,” Buffett told farmers during a visit last month with Duque to La Gabarra, a rural outpost in Tibu. It was the first time any Colombian president had visited the blood-soaked hamlet. The plan envisions providing subsidies and training for farmers as they switch crops, as well as helping them find buyers. It also aims to strengthen infrastructure for local law enforcement. But some experts worry that Buffett’s enthusiasm for speeding Colombia’s development is no match for entrenched corruption in rural areas run like political fiefdoms. There’s also the challenge posed by thousands of Venezuelan migrants who lack roots in the community and are being targeted for recruitment by criminal gangs. A lot is riding on Buffett’s investment. Not since the start of the U.S.-led Plan Colombia two decades ago have so many resources converged on a single geographical area, said Alvaro Balcazar, who helped the government negotiate with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia the section of the peace deal focusing on illicit crops. “There’s no precedent for something on such large a scale,” Balcazar said. “But the region is strategic for consolidating peace in Colombia.” Son’s pursuitsLike his father, Buffett, 65, has a reputation for folksy, Midwestern plain speech and self-effacing humor. Although he’s a three-time college dropout, his father wants him to succeed him as the non-executive chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the $550 billion conglomerate that owns companies such as Duracell, Dairy Queen and GEICO insurance as well as major stakes in leading U.S. airlines and banks. But he’s spent much of his adult life roving the world, taking wildlife photos and writing books. He’s also a corn farmer and made headlines in 2017 by briefly serving as the sheriff of Macon County, Illinois, where he lives and his foundation is based. He began exploring the world as a teenager on a trip to Soviet-controlled Prague in 1969 to visit one of the many exchange students his mother hosted at their home in Omaha, Nebraska.  As a philanthropist, his priority now is helping Colombia and El Salvador, whose fight against drug trafficking directly affects the U.S. Between the two countries he has already spent or committed $310 million, including the funding in El Salvador of a new police forensics center and a modern system to help the country’s prosecutors track criminal investigations. As a volunteer police officer who logged 678 hours on patrol last year, Buffett has seen firsthand the human toll caused by drug addiction. A few weeks before traveling to Colombia, he and a partner were staking out a motel in Decatur, Illinois, at 1 a.m. when they arrested a man possessing crack. With him was a woman who said she had a drug problem, so Buffett paid for her to stay at the hotel two nights. Later, he referred her to a county rehab facility paid for with a gift from the Buffett Foundation in the hope she would get help. “These are people who need our help,” he said. “They’re not criminals.” Colombia’s President Ivan Duque, left, and Howard Buffett laugh during a tour of a cocoa farm in La Gabarra, Colombia. The Howard G. Buffett Foundation has committed to spending $200 million over the next few years to develop the municipality.He has turned to Latin America after years of focusing much of his attention on Africa and especially Rwanda, where he works with the government on sustainable agriculture. He spent so much time at his farm in South Africa in the 1990s that he obtained permanent residency. Worked with ShakiraBuffett began working in Colombia in 2008, helping pop star Shakira set up schools in her hometown of Barranquilla. He’s also funded an army unit removing thousands of landmines strewn across former conflict zones. Leveraging his business contacts, he established a program to help around 100 families in southern Colombia switch from growing coca to producing high-quality coffee for Nespresso. While an enthusiastic supporter of the 2016 peace deal, he has nonetheless struck a close relationship with Duque, a law-and-order conservative who rode into office attacking the agreement. Duque has vowed to slash cocaine production in half by the end of 2023. Production of the drug skyrocketed after his predecessor — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Juan Manuel Santos — halted aerial eradication in 2015 because of health concerns related to the herbicides used. But reaching that goal requires huge resources the government doesn’t have, as well as overcoming the indifference of urban voters who are removed from the conflict and have their own growing list of demands. That’s where Buffett steps in. The $200 million Buffett has pledged for Tibu is more than triple what the government has spent the past two years altogether on public works in 170 high-risk municipalities that are part of a rural development rescue plan mandated by the peace deal. The U.S. Agency for International Development spends $230 million annually in Colombia, although its projects are spread across the country. Beyond the big check, longtime partners praise the Buffett Foundation for being independent and nimble. It’s funded from an annual gift in Berkshire Hathaway stock by Warren Buffett, so it can take risks few are willing to attempt, development experts say. “We’re accountable mainly to the IRS [Internal Revenue Service],” joked Buffett, who sees setbacks like a venture capitalist who must eat crow before finding wild success. “If you’re a charity, and you’re going to have your annual banquet to raise a lot of money, you can’t stand up there and tell people how you had these five failures and this one success. People aren’t going to write checks,” he said. “We’ll make a decision in five minutes if we know what we want to do.” Howard Buffett, left, talks to Colombia’s President Ivan Duque aboard an air force plane before departing from Bogota, Colombia, Jan. 29, 2020. Duque has vowed to slash cocaine production in half by the end of 2023.He is skeptical of the U.S. government and United Nations, preferring not to work with either. “The reason is because we can’t depend on them,” said Buffett, who said he was burned badly by USAID in 2011 when it abandoned a joint $10 million seed program for starving farmers in South Sudan just as fighting broke out in the world’s newest independent state. “The bullets started flying and they pulled out. But it’s like, you’re in South Sudan, so of course bullets are going to fly,” he said. Partners who produceInstead, the foundation relies on partners known for delivering results quickly with slim overhead — a combination he says is hard to find among the “beltway bandits” profiting from U.S. foreign aid outlays. One accompanying him to Catatumbo is Portland, Oregon-based Mercy Corps, which is helping farmers sort through Colombia’s bureaucratic maze to obtain land titles. In a nod to his father’s reputation for common sense, Buffett seeks frequent counsel from the so-called “Oracle of Omaha.” “He’s my sounding board, kind of like my conscience in a way,” Buffett said. “But he never asks, Why are you doing that?' orWhy you’re taking that risk?’ ” In Tibu, after cracking a few jokes and planting a cacao tree, he seemed beside himself with joy even as the presidential committee hustled to quickly depart as heavy fog threatened to maroon them in the middle of nowhere. “I know Emilio is very worried about leaving,” Buffett told the farmers through a translator, referring to Duque’s post-conflict adviser, Emilio Archila. “But I’m not, because there’s lots of chocolate here.” 
…

A fire swept through a Haitian children’s home run by a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit group, killing 13 children, health care workers said Friday.
Rose-Marie Louis, a child-care worker at the home, told The Associated Press that she saw 13 children’s bodies being carried out of the Orphanage of the Church of Bible Understanding in the Kenscoff area outside Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital.
Marie-Sonia Chery, a nurse at the nearby Baptist Mission Hospital, confirmed that 13 boys and girls had died.
Louis, who worked at the home, said the fire began around 9 p.m. Thursday and firefighters took about 1.5 hours to arrive. The orphanage had been using candles for light due to problems with its generator and inverter, she said.
About half of those who died were babies or toddlers and the others were roughly 10 or 11 years old, Louis said.
Catiana Joseph, a doctor at the Baptist hospital, gave a different account, saying the victims were between three and 18 years old. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.
Rescue workers arrived at the scene on motorcycles and didn’t have bottled oxygen or the ambulances needed to transport the children to the hospital, said Jean-Francois Robenty, a civil protection official.
“They could have been saved,” he said. ”We didn’t have the equipment to save their lives.”
Robenty said officials believed other children’s bodies remained inside and emergency workers were trying to pull them out on Friday.
Orphanage workers on the scene said they believed two bodies were still inside.
The Associated Press has reported on a long-standing series of problems at two children’s homes run by the Church of Bible Understanding.
The Church of Bible Understanding lost accreditation for its homes after a series of inspections beginning in November 2012. Haitian inspectors faulted the group for overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and not having enough adequately trained staff.
Members of the religious group were selling expensive antiques at high-end stores in New York and Los Angeles and using a portion of the profits to fund the homes.
The Associated Press made an unannounced visit to the group’s two homes, holding a total of 120 kids, in 2013 and found bunk beds with faded and worn mattresses crowded into dirty rooms. Sour air wafted through the bathrooms and stairwells. Rooms were dark and spartan, lacking comforts or decoration.
The Church of Bible Understanding, based in Scranton, Pennsylvania, operates two homes for nearly 200 children in Haiti as part of a “Christian training program,” according to its most recent nonprofit organization filing. It has operated in the country since 1977. It identifies the homes as orphanages but it is common in Haiti for impoverished parents to place children in residential care centers, where they receive lodging and widely varying education for several years but are not technically orphans.
“We take in children who are in desperate situations,” the organization says in its tax filing for 2017, the most recent year available. “Many of them were very close to death when we took them in.” The nonprofit reported revenue of $6.6 million and expenses of $2.2 million for the year.
A member of the organization who identified himself only as “Jim” on a phone call referred questions on the fire to their lawyer in Haiti, whom he would not identify.         
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Spanish opposition parties are calling for an investigation of a mysterious midnight meeting between Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez and a senior Spanish cabinet official in Madrid’s airport last month, arguing that the session undercut Europe-wide sanctions against the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro.Lawmakers demanded at a stormy parliamentary session Wednesday that Transport Minister Jose Luis Abalos explain what was discussed at the meeting with Rodriguez, who along with 24 other Venezuelan officials is barred from entering the European Union.Abalos acknowledges that he arranged the brief stopover for Rodriguez when her aircraft landed in Spain on its way to Turkey on Jan. 20. The government argues that it seeks to negotiate democratic elections in Venezuela and that transit lounge meeting was designed to avoid a diplomatic incident.“I achieved not creating a problem in the diplomatic sphere with a government with which we want to have elections without coups,” said Abalos, echoing Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s repeated calls for elections in Venezuela “as soon as possible.”EU sanctions violatedHowever, Eliot Abrams, the U.S. State Department’s special envoy for Venezuela, told the Spanish newspaper ABC that the meeting did violate the EU sanctions, which bar leading Venezuelan officials from entering EU territory including its air space. He called for the Spanish media and Congress to investigate the Madrid stopover.Since word of the airport meeting was first leaked to the media by sources in the Spanish police, Abalos has offered shifting explanations of the encounter. After first saying that the meeting consisted of only a casual greeting, he later admitted they had talked for 20 minutes on board her airplane.Second meeting heldSpanish news outlets have since reported that Abados and Rodriguez held a second meeting for an hour in the airport’s VIP lounge.The incident has heightened suspicion among Spain’s conservative opposition that the Socialist-led government is backing away from its previous support for Venezuela’s democratic opposition.Sanchez was among the first European leaders to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela, but he has since formed a new coalition that relies on the support of the far-left Podemos party, which has longstanding ties to Maduro.Sanchez notably failed to meet with Guaido during a tour of Europe last month by the Venezuelan National Assembly president, who is recognized as interim president by the United States and more than 60 other countries. Guaido did secure meetings with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and other nations.’Motives’ questionedThe apparent snub, which was blamed on a scheduling conflict, prompted a subtle rebuke from the United States. “We don’t know the motives of [Prime Minister] Sanchez, but urge chiefs of government to meet with the interim president to know firsthand what happens on the ground,” said Carrie Filipetti, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of State for Cuba and Venezuela.Despite that concern, U.S. President Donald Trump praised the “close friendship and shared history” between the United States and Spain this week in announcing a coming state visit to Washington by Spain’s King Felipe and his wife.
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In a much-anticipated document released Wednesday, Pope Francis did not accept a proposal to allow the ordination of married men as priests or women as deacons in the Amazon in order to combat the serious clergy shortages in the region.The proposal had been put forward by the majority of bishops attending a synod on the Amazon at the Vatican last year.Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation on the “Beloved Amazon,” made public Wednesday, made no change to the Roman Catholic Church’s centuries-old rule on celibacy. The majority of bishops from the Amazon region had voted at the end of their synod in the Vatican three months ago to allow some married men to be ordained and for women to serve as deacons. But in his document, the pope ignored that proposal.FILE – Pope Francis greets a group of nuns during his weekly general audience, in Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, Jan. 15, 2020.Some groups that advocate for women’s ordination and giving them a greater role in the church criticized the pope’s decision. The Britain-based Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research said in a statement that the pope’s refusal to consider the ordination of women rejects the explicit recommendation of the synod on the Amazon.”Beloved Amazon” was more of a love letter by the Latin American prelate to the Amazonian rain forest and the indigenous people who populate it, according to Cardinal Michael Czerny, the synod secretary.The cardinal said the pope’s love for the region lay at the heart of the pope’s apostolic exhortation. Pope Francis, he added, has “four great dreams” for this region: social, ecological, cultural and pastoral.The pope says the Amazon region is one that “fights for the rights of the poor,” that “preserves its distinctive cultural riches,” that “jealously preserves its overwhelming natural beauty” and where Christian communities may be “capable of generous commitment, incarnate in the Amazon region.”Francis urged Catholics to “feel outrage” over the exploitation of indigenous people. He also spoke about the “injustice and crime” committed against the people of the Amazon and their land, devastated by illegal mining and extraction industries.In the Roman Catholic Church, only priests can say mass. Due to the acute shortage in the region, the faithful in at least 85% of villages cannot attend regular services and have not for years.The pope said, “Every effort should be made” to give the faithful access to the Eucharist.”This urgent need leads me to urge all bishops, especially those in Latin America … to be more generous in encouraging those who display a missionary vocation to opt for the Amazon region,” he wrote.Pope Francis called on bishops to promote “prayer for priestly vocations.” He also said there was a need for priests who understand Amazon sensibilities.
 
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Pope Francis, in one of the most significant decisions of his papacy, on Wednesday dismissed a proposal to allow some married men to be ordained in the Amazon region to ease an acute scarcity of priests.The recommendation, put forward by Latin American bishops last year, had alarmed conservatives in the deeply polarized 1.3 billion-member Roman Catholic Church, who feared it could lead to a change in the centuries-old commitment to celibacy among priests.FILE – Pope Francis greets a group of nuns during his weekly general audience, in Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, Jan. 15, 2020.Francis delivered his response in an Apostolic Exhortation, three months after the proposal passed by 128 votes to 41 at a contentious Vatican assembly, or synod, of Roman Catholic bishops.Apostolic Exhortations are used to instruct and encourage the Catholic faithful but do not define Church doctrine.Wednesday’s 32-page document did not even mention the proposal, which was for older married deacons who are proven leaders of remote Catholic communities and have stable families to be ordained as priests.Conservatives balked, fearing that even a circumscribed change would be a slippery slope leading to a married priesthood throughout the Church. They branded a pre-synod working document as heretical.In what some viewed as a strategically timed appeal to Francis not to approve the Amazon proposal, a book published last month by Church conservatives defended the tradition of priestly celibacy.”From the Depths of Our Hearts” was co-authored by Cardinal Robert Sarah and former Pope Benedict, though Francis’ predecessor subsequently disassociated himself from the project.Vatican officials said the pope completed the document on Dec. 27, before the book controversy, and handed it in for translations. They said no changes were made after that. In the Exhortation, the 82-year-old Argentine pope wrote, new ways must be found to encourage more priests to work in the remote region, and allow expanded roles for lay people and permanent deacons, of whom the Amazon needed “many more.”Deacons, like priests, are ordained ministers. They can preach, teach, baptize and run parishes, but they cannot say Mass. Married men can become deacons.Because only priests can say Mass, people in at least 85% of Amazon villages cannot attend the liturgy every week and some cannot do so for years.”This urgent need leads me to urge all bishops, especially those in Latin America… to be more generous in encouraging those who display a missionary vocation to opt for the Amazon region,” he wrote.He used the first three chapters of the document to defend the rights and legacies of indigenous people and the environment in the Amazon, which had to be protected because of its vital role in mitigating global warming.Conservatives feared that if Francis had taken up the proposal, other areas with a shortage of priests would follow, even in developed countries such as Germany, where the issue is being discussed.
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó is gearing up for the next stage of his campaign to oust President Nicolás Maduro following his return home from a tour abroad that included a meeting with his most important foreign ally — U.S. President Donald Trump.An energized Guaidó told cheering supporters at a public square in the capital of Caracas late Tuesday that he is armed with the backing of the “free world” to finish the job of reclaiming the nation.“Today more than ever we have to make our presence known,” Guaidó said. “This is not the time to go back. It’s time to move forward.”Just hours earlier, Guaido sped through immigration at Venezuela’s main airport outside Caracas without any major incidents. Authorities didn’t stop Guaidó, who left the country in defiance of a travel ban imposed by Maduro’s government.But inside the terminal, a woman threw what appeared to be a soft drink can, dousing Guaidó, who moments later walked from the airport pumping his right hand over his head.And outside, an aggressive crowd of Guaidó critics shouted, “Dirty traitor!” and “Get out!” Some threw traffic cones and others pounded the hood of an SUV that whisked him away.Guaidó backers shouted his name in support: “Guaidó! Guaidó!” A few minor clashes broke out between the two sides.Guaidó launched the trip with the goal of redoubling backing in Washington and Europe for the oppositioin’s effort to remove Maduro. The trip’s high-point for Guaidó came with a meeting inside the Oval Office with Trump, the day after the U.S. president recognized him as the “legitimate president of Venezuela” during his State of the Union address.As leader of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled congress, Guaidó rose to prominence a year ago when he claimed presidential powers on the grounds that Maduro’s rule is illegitimate after a fraudulent re-election in 2018. He won backing from the United States and more than 50 other nations, though so far has made no visible dent in Maduro’s hold on power.In addition to his stop in Washington, Guaidó met with European leaders including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.Guaido told supporters at Tuesday night’s rally that he is holding back some details of his foreign meetings that he is not able to talk about publicly.“Stay tuned,” he said, teasing the crowd.In public comments abroad, Guaidó urged foreign leaders to increase their support for Venezuelans who are trying to shrug off two decades of socialist rule that have left the country broken, with millions emigrating as public services like water and electricity have become a luxury.Officials in the Trump administration have said they are considering ways to exert more pressure to force out Maduro. On Friday, the administration hit the Venezuelan state-run airline CONVIASA with sanctions.Guaidó urged Venezuelans to remain unified and to take to the streets again to demonstrate their will to end the government that the opposition calls a “dictatorship.” He did not immediately announce any plans for organized protests.For his part, Maduro appeared on state television Tuesday to announce new public buses and expanded routes. He didn’t directly mention Guaidó or the opposition leader’s return.“We’re concentrating our efforts on defending Venezuela,” Maduro said, telling supporters not to be distracted by “idiots” and “traitors.”
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Nicaragua’s best-known daily newspaper La Prensa is aiming to expand its page count and possibly re-hire some laid-off newsroom staff after an 18 month government-enforced blockade of newsprint supplies.Nicaraguan customs officials on Thursday agreed to release an impounded shipment of ink and paper after a communications channel between the government and the country’s only remaining national newspaper was reopened.According to news wires, the government’s decision came just days after the Vatican’s top diplomat in Managua intervened on La Prensa’s behalf.The breakthrough came just days after a La Prensa editorial warned that the newspaper’s days may be numbered.“Nicaragua would be the only country in the world that would not have a printed newspaper,” said the storied publication’s editorial board, which has long been an irritant of President Daniel Ortega.2018 seizureLa Presna’s imported newsprint shipments were seized in August 2018, shortly after the paper repeatedly called Ortega a dictator following deadly police crackdowns on a wave of anti-government protests over cuts to social security and calls for his resignation.Ortega’s government labeled the uprising a U.S.-financed coup attempt, and its violent response claimed more than 320 lives.“We have not offered anything in return to the government [for the surprise release of print materials],” said La Prensa Director Jaime Chamorro, whose family bought the publication in 1932, just six years after it was founded.La Presna editor Eduardo Enrique said the seizure forced rationing of newsprint, cutting its standard 36-page daily edition down to eight pages, sacrificing ad revenue and forcing newsroom-wide layoffs.Over the weekend, La Prensa executives said they plan conduct a market study to determine how many pages they can print in light of their economic losses. Enrique, who now leads of newsroom of 25 journalists that produce multiple publications, also said they’re planning to rehire newsroom personnel lost during the blockade, although he did not give a specific number.A storied history“La Prensa used to have a big newsroom with more than 70 journalists,” said Emiliano Chamorro, who was laid off after a 25-year career covering political and religious affairs for La Presna.”It’s the most important newspaper in the country,” he said. “With more than 94 years of history, the newspaper has survived three dictatorships—two of Somoza, and the first one of Daniel Ortega in the 80s.”Nicaraguan government officials did not respond to requests to explain why they retained the materials or what prompted them to free it.Part of broader press clampdownThe violent unrest of 2018 was followed by a severe clampdown on independent media, in which Ortega’s security forces raided news outlets and imprisoned journalists.Since that time, more than 100 journalists have fled the country in the wake of threats, beatings and arbitrary detentions, according to a July 2019 statement by the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights. Ortega, whose own family presides over a vast media empire, has repeatedly offered assurances that all Nicaraguans enjoy unrestricted freedom of personal expression.“In Nicaragua there is an absolute freedom of religion and expression,” the president said during a recent presidential speech.Carlos Fernando Chamorro, director of independent newsweekly and TV channel Confidencial, told Voice of America he hopes the released paper and ink will be followed by a return of confiscated news facilities, including his 100% Noticias television newsroom.La Prensa executives say they anticipate printing a full edition in coming weeks, but that they must first assess the quality of the recently released paper, newsprint reel, and plate cylinders.Washington-imposed sanctions on Nicaragua for human rights violations followed the 2018 unrest, which aimed to pressure Managua into easing restrictions on various organizations.According to Reuters, Michael Kozak, the Acting Assistant Secretary for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said on Twitter that “the long-overdue decision to release @laprensa’s paper & ink from Nicaraguan customs is a step in the right direction.”Managua-based El Nuevo Diario shut down in September after government officials impounded their newsprint supplies. Leaders of both El Nuevo Diario and La Prensa have accused Ortega’s government of de facto censorship and “economic asphyxiation” for editorials critical of his administration’s response to the 2018 protests.A report by the Violeta Barrios de Chamorro Foundation recorded some 420 press violations between April and October 2018. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders ranks Nicaragua 114 out of 180 countries in its 2019 World Press Freedom Index, a 24-point drop from its 2018 ranking.”The persecution of independent media outlets has become much more intense since the political crisis intensified in April 2018,” the report states. “…Although the environment is now extremely violent, non-aligned media outlets cannot afford the bulletproof vests and other protective equipment that their reporters need when covering demonstrations.”This story originated in VOA’s Latin American Division (( https://www.voanoticias.com )). Some information is from Reuters.
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Former Bolivian President Evo Morales, who has been in exile in Argentina, went to Cuba on Monday for medical treatment, Argentina’s president said.President Alberto Fernandez said that as “nothing impedes him as a political refugee from going to Cuba.”He did not specify what sort of treatment Morales would receive, but the leftist leader has several times turned to Cuba for medical care. In 2017 and 2018, he had surgery there for a nodule on his vocal chords.Morales, who governed Bolivia for nearly 14 years, resigned the presidency in November when the police and army withdrew support after several weeks of demonstrations that erupted over allegations of fraud in the Oct. 20 presidential election. Morales claimed to have won reelection, but the Organization of American States said its audit found serious irregularities in the vote count.
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Supporters of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele gathered on Sunday to press lawmakers to approve a $109 million loan Bukele wants to bolster his plan to better equip police and soldiers in the fight against crime.Bukele, who on Friday warned lawmakers that citizens have the right to “insurrection,” summoned his supporters to congregate outside the legislative building to drum up support for the loan.The president’s move to pressure lawmakers was backed by defense minister René Merino Monroy and police director Mauricio Arriaza Chicas but was questioned by human rights organizations.Invoking an article of the constitution, Bukele said Thursday that his ministers had called on congress to approve the loan immediately.Statement from the US Ambassador to #ElSalvador asking for all to seek consensus and remain calm-amid reports the military has taken over the legislative assembly: https://t.co/mV2KE066UP— Cindy Saine (@cindysaine) February 9, 2020On Sunday, hundreds of Salvadorans responded to Bukele’s call to demonstrate, waiving banners and blowing whistles as soldiers and police officers stood by to protect them, according to a Reuters witness.”We are here because of the insecurity we have in our country, and the lawmakers do not want to recognize that,” said Adelma Campos, a 43-year-old housewife. “They do not want to work for the people who gave them their votes.”Although the murder rate in El Salvador declined steeply last year, authorities continue to battle gangs that control vast territory in the Central American country.The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in a statement on Sunday called for “dialogue and full respect for democratic institutions to guarantee the rule of law, including the independence of the branches of public power.” 
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Argentinian judicial authorities seeking to prosecute officials suspected of covering up Iran’s alleged role in a 1994 Buenos Aires terrorist attack have suffered another setback with the death of a judge who led the legal battle against those officials.Judge Claudio Bonadio, head of Argentina’s No.11 Federal Criminal and Correctional Court, died Tuesday at the age of 64, after undergoing surgery for a brain tumor last year.Bonadio had spent years building a case against Argentinian officials who approved a controversial 2013 memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran. He had gathered evidence alleging the MOU was part of an illicit deal for Buenos Aires to shield Iranian suspects in the 1994 attack from justice in return for securing oil and other economic benefits from Tehran.FILE – People hold up pictures of the victims of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center on the 21st anniversary of the terror attack in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 17, 2015.The July 18, 1994, suicide car bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association Jewish community center in the Argentine capital killed 85 people. It remains Latin America’s deadliest terrorist attack.In the following years, Argentinian judicial authorities accused Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of carrying out the attack on the order of Iranian officials. Iran and Hezbollah have denied involvement and refused to send any suspects named by Argentina to stand trial there.Bonadio had taken up the investigation of the Argentinian officials who approved the MOU with Iran after an earlier setback in the case: the January 2015 death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman.Nisman had initiated the investigation of the MOU approved by then-Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and was hours away from presenting his evidence of a cover-up to the Argentinian Congress when he was found dead in his home of a gunshot to the head. Kirchner said he committed suicide, but a 2017 report by the Argentine National Gendarmerie, a domestic security force, said he had been murdered. Nisman’s death remains an unresolved legal matter in Argentina.Kirchner, who served two terms as president from 2007 to 2015, returned to high office as Argentinian vice president in December, winning election as the running mate of President Alberto Fernández (no relation) after she served two years as a senator.FILE – Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman speaks with journalists in Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 29, 2013. Picture taken May 29, 2013. Nisman was found dead hours before presenting evidence of a cover-up in the 1994 AMIA bombing.The 2013 MOU with Iran had called for a bilateral commission to conduct a new joint investigation of the AMIA bombing, years after Argentinian judicial authorities had issued arrest warrants and secured Interpol red notices asking for international help in detaining and extraditing the Hezbollah militants and Iranian officials wanted in connection with the attack.Argentinian critics of the MOU, incensed by Nisman’s allegations that it was part of a cover-up, succeeded in getting a court to rule it unconstitutional in 2015 and it was never implemented.Bonadio, who continued Nisman’s work on the MOU case after the prosecutor’s death, had charged Kirchner and her aides with treason and obstruction of justice in 2017. He also had been pursuing multiple corruption cases against the former president in recent years in relation to her presidential tenure.Kirchner consistently has denied wrongdoing and accused the judge of waging a personal vendetta against her.Bonadio had last worked Dec. 30, after which he had taken vacation in January, his secretary Mónica Mica told VOA by phone. Sometime before Dec. 30, he had handed the central part of the MOU case to the No. 8 Criminal Federal Tribunal, judicial official Rodriguez Varela confirmed, also in a VOA phone interview. The tribunal is a body that decides, after analyzing the investigating judge’s evidence, whether to hold a trial and issue a verdict.However, a legal dispute about witness testimony in the MOU case continued into last month, FILE – Argentina’s new President Alberto Fernandez and Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner smile after they take the oath of office at the Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dec. 10, 2019.Bonadio’s death also could embolden plans by Kirchner and President Fernández to reform the computerized lottery system that assigns judges to cases involving political figures.“We were suspicious and wondered why all the cases involving Kirchner ended up in Bonadio’s hands,” Dalbón said. “We believe the process of assigning a case to a judge should be public and transparent. This will be one of the reforms of President Fernández.”Benjamin Gedan, director of the Argentina Project at Washington’s Wilson Center, told VOA Persian the Argentinian judiciary has had long-running problems with political interference and corruption under governments of all political parties.“I think efforts to reform the judiciary are necessary,” Gedan said. “But it’s hard not to think that the motivation is to guarantee impunity for members of the Kirchner/Fernández administration.”It is not clear what impact the judge’s death will have on the new Argentinian government’s approach to bringing the Iranian and Hezbollah suspects in the AMIA bombing to trial.FILE – Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri and his wife, Juliana Awada, react during a rally in support of Macri, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dec. 7, 2019. He lost to opposition candidate Alberto Fernandez.The prior administration of Mauricio Macri, who served as president from 2015 to 2019, had called on Iran to cooperate with Argentina on the issue and had appealed to other countries to detain any suspects who entered their territories.“The new government is seeking to reverse each and every positive step that has been taken to bring a measure of justice to the victims of the AMIA bombing and their families. It would be a travesty of justice for Argentina if these efforts were to succeed,” FDD’s Dershowitz said.“Personally, I am skeptical about the AMIA case,” Dalbón said. “Cases that last longer that 20 years very rarely can reach the truth. Slow justice is not justice.”  This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. It was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Latin America Division.
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Argentinian judicial authorities seeking to prosecute officials suspected of covering up Iran’s alleged role in a 1994 Buenos Aires terrorist attack have suffered another setback with the death of a judge who led the legal battle against those officials.Judge Claudio Bonadio, head of Argentina’s No.11 Federal Criminal and Correctional Court, died Tuesday at the age of 64, after undergoing surgery for a brain tumor last year.Bonadio had spent years building a case against Argentinian officials who approved a controversial 2013 memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran. He had gathered evidence alleging the MOU was part of an illicit deal for Buenos Aires to shield Iranian suspects in the 1994 attack from justice in return for securing oil and other economic benefits from Tehran.FILE – People hold up pictures of the victims of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center on the 21st anniversary of the terror attack in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 17, 2015.The July 18, 1994, suicide car bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association Jewish community center in the Argentine capital killed 85 people. It remains Latin America’s deadliest terrorist attack.In the following years, Argentinian judicial authorities accused Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of carrying out the attack on the order of Iranian officials. Iran and Hezbollah have denied involvement and refused to send any suspects named by Argentina to stand trial there.Bonadio had taken up the investigation of the Argentinian officials who approved the MOU with Iran after an earlier setback in the case: the January 2015 death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman.Nisman had initiated the investigation of the MOU approved by then-Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and was hours away from presenting his evidence of a cover-up to the Argentinian Congress when he was found dead in his home of a gunshot to the head. Kirchner said he committed suicide, but a 2017 report by the Argentine National Gendarmerie, a domestic security force, said he had been murdered. Nisman’s death remains an unresolved legal matter in Argentina.Kirchner, who served two terms as president from 2007 to 2015, returned to high office as Argentinian vice president in December, winning election as the running mate of President Alberto Fernández (no relation) after she served two years as a senator.FILE – Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman speaks with journalists in Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 29, 2013. Picture taken May 29, 2013. Nisman was found dead hours before presenting evidence of a cover-up in the 1994 AMIA bombing.The 2013 MOU with Iran had called for a bilateral commission to conduct a new joint investigation of the AMIA bombing, years after Argentinian judicial authorities had issued arrest warrants and secured Interpol red notices asking for international help in detaining and extraditing the Hezbollah militants and Iranian officials wanted in connection with the attack.Argentinian critics of the MOU, incensed by Nisman’s allegations that it was part of a cover-up, succeeded in getting a court to rule it unconstitutional in 2015 and it was never implemented.Bonadio, who continued Nisman’s work on the MOU case after the prosecutor’s death, had charged Kirchner and her aides with treason and obstruction of justice in 2017. He also had been pursuing multiple corruption cases against the former president in recent years in relation to her presidential tenure.Kirchner consistently has denied wrongdoing and accused the judge of waging a personal vendetta against her.Bonadio had last worked Dec. 30, after which he had taken vacation in January, his secretary Mónica Mica told VOA by phone. Sometime before Dec. 30, he had handed the central part of the MOU case to the No. 8 Criminal Federal Tribunal, judicial official Rodriguez Varela confirmed, also in a VOA phone interview. The tribunal is a body that decides, after analyzing the investigating judge’s evidence, whether to hold a trial and issue a verdict.However, a legal dispute about witness testimony in the MOU case continued into last month, FILE – Argentina’s new President Alberto Fernandez and Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner smile after they take the oath of office at the Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dec. 10, 2019.Bonadio’s death also could embolden plans by Kirchner and President Fernández to reform the computerized lottery system that assigns judges to cases involving political figures.“We were suspicious and wondered why all the cases involving Kirchner ended up in Bonadio’s hands,” Dalbón said. “We believe the process of assigning a case to a judge should be public and transparent. This will be one of the reforms of President Fernández.”Benjamin Gedan, director of the Argentina Project at Washington’s Wilson Center, told VOA Persian the Argentinian judiciary has had long-running problems with political interference and corruption under governments of all political parties.“I think efforts to reform the judiciary are necessary,” Gedan said. “But it’s hard not to think that the motivation is to guarantee impunity for members of the Kirchner/Fernández administration.”It is not clear what impact the judge’s death will have on the new Argentinian government’s approach to bringing the Iranian and Hezbollah suspects in the AMIA bombing to trial.FILE – Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri and his wife, Juliana Awada, react during a rally in support of Macri, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dec. 7, 2019. He lost to opposition candidate Alberto Fernandez.The prior administration of Mauricio Macri, who served as president from 2015 to 2019, had called on Iran to cooperate with Argentina on the issue and had appealed to other countries to detain any suspects who entered their territories.“The new government is seeking to reverse each and every positive step that has been taken to bring a measure of justice to the victims of the AMIA bombing and their families. It would be a travesty of justice for Argentina if these efforts were to succeed,” FDD’s Dershowitz said.“Personally, I am skeptical about the AMIA case,” Dalbón said. “Cases that last longer that 20 years very rarely can reach the truth. Slow justice is not justice.”  This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. It was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Latin America Division.
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Sam Mewis scored a pair of goals to help lead a dominant United States to a 4-0 rout over Mexico Friday, clinching a spot in the 2020 Olympics.FIFA’s No. 1 ranked women’s team, the U.S. women played up to their lofty status as they blasted Mexico in the semi-finals of the CONCACAF women’s Olympic qualifying championship.The U.S. advanced to Sunday’s final against Canada, also Tokyo-bound after defeating Costa Rica 1-0 in a tight match earlier in the day.The Americans had no such challenge in their home tilt at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.Rose Lavelle gave the team an early advantage with a goal in the fifth minute, while Mewis netted her first in the 14th.Mexico could do little to make an impression as the U.S. controlled possession.Mewis added her second score in the 67th minute, and Christen Press completed the scoring six minutes later.The U.S., now on a 27-match unbeaten streak, are keen to make amends for a quarter-final at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.Canada defeats Costa RicaFor Canada, Jordyn Huitema’s second-half strike earned the win over Costa Rica.Canada dominated possession in a frustrating opening half but lacked inspiration in the attacking zone, managing a single shot on target.The Canadians continued to press after the break and were finally rewarded in the 72nd minute when Huitema hit the post from close range but then coolly slotted the rebound into the back of the net for her seventh of the tournament.“I think the first thing I said to the team was, that’s my luck for 2020,” said Huitema. “I said that’s all of it right there that it came off the post and right back to my foot.”Eighth-ranked Canada, bronze medal winners at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, have won all four of their matches and head to Sunday’s final against the U.S. having yet to concede a goal.
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido has gotten a boost after a four-day visit to Washington where he met with President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials. It’s been a year since the United States and other Western nations threw their support behind Guaido with little success in pushing Nicolas Maduro from power. VOA’s Ardita Dunellari reports on Guaido’s latest diplomacy push to gain new momentum for his opposition movement
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Venezuelan police rounded up six U.S. oil executives who have been under house arrest, hours after President Donald Trump met with opposition leader Juan Guaido in Washington.Family members of the six executives of Citgo said they were seized from their homes Wednesday night and that they didn’t know where the men were being held.Elliot Abrams, U.S. special representative for Venezuela, said U.S. officials thought the men were being held in El Helicoide prison and were taken there by Venezuelan intelligence agents. He said the timing of their detention, just after Trump held talks with Guaido, was suspicious.President Donald Trump and Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido walk to a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, Feb. 5, 2020.”We condemn this cruel and indefensible action and demand that their long, unjust detention come to an end and they be allowed to leave Venezuela,” Abrams said. “We urge the regime to release unconditionally all persons who are being detained, including National Assembly deputies.”There has been no comment from Venezuelan officials.Citgo is a Venezuelan-owned oil company whose corporate headquarters and main refinery are based in Texas.Police arrested the men in November 2017 and charged them with embezzlement, money laundering and corruption.A Venezuelan court ordered them to be put under house arrest awaiting trial.Citgo says the executives are political prisoners and that their fundamental human rights are have been violated. The company says it will continue to provide legal expenses and other support to their families.The families have appealed to the State Department to help win the executives’ freedom and also met last year with Vice President Mike Pence.It was unclear if Trump and Guaido talked about the detained men during their meeting.
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Jhon Jario Velàsquez, known by his alias “Popeye,” an assassin who worked for Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, died on Thursday according to a statement by Colombia’s prison institute.The statement said the 57-year-old, who had a long criminal history, died at the National Cancer Institute in Bogota, where he had been treated for stomach cancer.Velàsquez’s first stint in prison was for 23 years after plotting the murder of an ex-presidential candidate. But Velàsquez has admitted to committing over 300 murders himself and also helped coordinate the killings of nearly 3,000 people for Escobar’s Medellin drug cartel during the 1980s and 90s.After serving extensive prison time he gained fame as an author and YouTube celebrity with over 1.2 million subscribers. On his YouTube channel, he spoke angrily about leftist rebels, corrupt politicians and expressed a desire to run for a seat in Colombia’s senate.Velàsquez spoke openly about his career as an assassin during a television interview, expressing his preference for a revolver and saying he “worked from the eyebrows up.”He continued to confess to assisting in many of Colombia’s most notorious crimes, including the killing of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan in 1989, the kidnapping and murder of Colombian journalist Diana Turbay and the Avianca Airlines bombing, which killed 107 people.He was released from prison in 2014, but Velàsquez’s time out of jail was short-lived when authorities caught him partying with a wanted U.S. drug trafficker in 2017. By 2018, he was arrested on extortion charges.Velàsquez was hospitalized in late December, 2019 at the National Cancer Institute in Bogota where he died early Thursday morning.Even years after his run with Escobar’s cartel, Velàsquez continued to boast about his former boss, describing him as “a good friend and a good enemy.”Escobar founded the Medelli cartel and was shot and killed by Colombian security forces in 1993.
 
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El Salvador is not ready to receive asylum seekers from the United States and will not accept them until it can offer them the necessary protections and support, Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill Tinoco said Wednesday.El Salvador is one of three Central American governments that signed bilateral agreements with the U.S. government last year that would allow the U.S. to send asylum seekers from its Southwest border to instead apply for asylum in Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador.Guatemala started receiving asylum seekers in November, and Honduras and El Salvador are expected to follow.”We are not going to admit anyone seeking asylum until we as a country have the conditions and technical, financial and human capacity to be able to give these people who are seeking asylum and sent to another country the best treatment,” Hill Tinoco said.The so-called Asylum Cooperation Agreements are among the measures the U.S. government has taken to close the door to asylum seekers arriving at its border with Mexico.Hill Tinoco said her government is at the point of determining the technical team that will meet with their U.S. counterparts to develop a plan of how it could work.
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Canada’s ambassador to China said Wednesday there is a chill in relations between the two countries since Beijing imprisoned two Canadians, but his top priority is winning their release and resetting the relationship.Dominic Barton offered that assessment in testimony before a special House of Commons committee studying the strained relationship between the two countries, which was already tense when he was named to the post last fall.Barton said his main concern is winning the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, both detained by China in December 2018 in what is widely seen as retaliation for Canada’s arrest of Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the company’s founder.Canadian police arrested Meng in Vancouver on a U.S. extradition request, and nine days later Kovrig and Spavor were detained by the Chinese and accused of violating China’s national security.Neither Kovrig nor Spavor has seen a lawyer or been permitted visits from their families, while Meng has been released on bail and is living in a luxurious Vancouver home while her extradition hearing plays out.Barton said other priorities include clemency for Canadian Robert Schellenberg, who was given a death sentence in January 2019 after having been previously sentenced to prison for drug smuggling.”The chill is real,” Barton said.He said both sides were shaking with anger during his first diplomatic meeting with Chinese officials.”The first conversation I had was probably one of the most unpleasant conversations I have ever had,” he said.Barton said he has now met with all three imprisoned Canadian men and is impressed with how they are holding up. He said he plans to make further personal visits.”I hope that our efforts will soon bear fruit,” he said, without elaborating. “I am unbelievably inspired by their resilience.”
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido meets with U.S. President Donald Trump Wednesday at the White House as Guaido tries to rekindle his campaign to depose President Nicolas Maduro.In a statement announcing Guaido’s visit, the White House said, “We will continue to work with our partners in the region to confront the illegitimate dictatorship in Venezuela, and will stand alongside the Venezuelan people to ensure a future that is democratic and prosperous.”Guaido’s visit to Washington comes at the end of a world tour that included visits with European and Canadian leaders in an attempt to revive his campaign after an unsuccessful uprising against Maduro last year.The United States and dozens of other countries recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate interim president. Guaido was a guest at President Trump’s State of the Union speech in Washington Tuesday night.Maduro called for direct talks with the U.S. last month, describing them as a “win-win.” Maduro also suggested U.S. oil companies could benefit financially if the U.S. lifted sanctions against Venezuela, including the OPEC member’s state oil company, PDVSA.Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will meet with Maduro Friday in Caracas in a show of support for the socialist leader.Russia has criticized the U.S. sanctions as illegal and harmful, while the Guaido-led opposition has urged Washington to increase pressure on Moscow for supporting Venezuela diplomatically, economically and militarily.Maduro won a second term in office in May 2018, and Guaido declared himself interim president eight months later. 
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The United States is calling for international sanctions on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his allies to pressure the government to hold free and fair elections this year.
The United States agrees with Venezuelan activists and opposition leaders that nothing except free and fair elections will end the country’s political crisis.  Congressional elections are supposed to take place by the end of the year, but so far, no date has been set.Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido listens as President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 4, 2020.U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva Andrew Bremberg says for elections to be credible, they must be open to all parties and candidates, and the independent media must be allowed unrestricted access to cover the event.  He is calling on international partners to support opposition leader Juan Guaido.”We encourage partner nations to implement serious travel and financial sanctions against Maduro and his allies.  We also ask our partners to call on Russia, Cuba and China to cease providing support to Maduro,” he said.Several Venezuelan parliamentarians in exile and other activists have come to the United Nations in Geneva to raise awareness of the plight of the Venezuelan people and to garner U.N. support for free and fair elections.Miguel Pizarro has been an elected member of Venezuela’s National Assembly since 2010.  He was forced to flee the country to Italy last July after being convicted on false charges of conspiracy.He says the U.N. is not toothless.  He says it can effect change and already has done so.  He notes the U.N. human rights council has succeeded in putting the spotlight on the situation of abuse that exists in Venezuela.  Pizarro says U.N. agencies have informed the world about the abysmal humanitarian conditions in the country, which have forced millions of people to flee as refugees.  He tells VOA the United Nations has an important role to play both before and after an election.“If we won an election in Venezuela, we will need observation, multilateral observation, because an election is not only because we know for sure, the day we are able to vote is the last day of the regime in the power.  And that will need a lot of international support to achieve the transition because it will not be an easy peace,” he said.Pizarro says he appreciates the important role played by the U.N. in regard to Venezuela’s humanitarian and refugee crisis.  He says he would like to see the U.N. play a more active role in the political sphere.      
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is recognized as the country’s interim president by the United States, was guest at Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday, U.S. media reported.Guaido was invited by Trump to attend the flagship event in Washington in a public show of support for his efforts to dislodge President Nicolas Maduro, CNN and NBC reported.Guaido has defied a travel ban to leave Venezuela and meet with officials abroad as he struggles to maintain momentum in his year-long campaign to oust Maduro.The U.S. quickly recognized Guaido as the legitimate leader of Venezuela after he invoked constitutional powers and named himself interim president in January 2019. More than 50 other countries have also recognized Guaido.Maduro won a new term in 2018 elections that were widely criticized internationally as fraudulent.Trump’s choice of guests for the annual speech to Congress are carefully chosen.Trump also invited a senior border patrol officer, a woman whose brother was murdered by an illegal immigrant in 2018, and former Caracas police chief Ivan Simonovis who spent years in jail under Venezuela’s far-left government.
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