Latin America

The Milei government is weathering a bribery scandal as a pair of important elections approach in September and October.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei has been forced to leave a campaign rally in Lomas de Zamora, a suburb of Buenos Aires, after protesters pelted his vehicle with small rocks, bottles and other objects.

On Wednesday, Milei and members of his libertarian party, La Libertad Avanza, held a rally for voters ahead of two key upcoming elections.

On September 7, the province of Buenos Aires is expected to hold local races. And on October 26, the country faces midterm elections, which will see half of the 257-seat Chamber of Deputies up for grabs, as well as a third of the Senate.

The elections are seen as major tests for Milei as he reaches the midpoint of his four-year term as president.

But Milei, whose dark-horse election victory in 2023 upset Argentina’s political establishment, has faced backlash for the dramatic “shock treatment” he has attempted to undertake with the country’s economy.

His administration has also been rocked by a bribery scandal involving his sister, Karina Milei.

As Milei and Karina stood on the bed of an open pick-up truck on Wednesday, waving to supporters and signing autographs, witnesses reported seeing objects flying in their direction as protesters attempted to approach the vehicle.

Presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni shared a picture on the social media platform X, with a circle highlighting what appeared to be a rock thrown in the president’s direction.

“They could have killed anyone,” Adorni said of the protesters. “They don’t care about human life, and they’ll care even less about the country. The end.”

Video captured the pick-up truck accelerating to escape the crowd. One protester held aloft a mock suitcase with Karina Milei’s face on it and dollar bills sticking out in odd places. Others chanted, “Out with Milei!”

The news agency AFP reported that one Milei supporter had to be transported by ambulance for medical care after clashes with protesters resulted in rib injuries. But no officials in the Milei pick-up truck were injured.

Milei himself used the incident to campaign on social media against “Kirchnerism”, a left-wing political movement.

“The empty-headed nutters throwing rocks resorted to violence again,” he wrote in one post. “On September 7 and October 26, let’s say at the polls: KIRCHNERISM NEVER AGAIN.”

In another, Milei put the choice more starkly: “Civilisation or barbarity.”

Milei has taken dramatic action to regulate Argentina’s spiralling inflation, but his austerity campaign has included cuts to social safety-net services, widespread government layoffs and sweeping deregulation.

He famously campaigned with a chainsaw to symbolise his approach to government bureaucracy. But critics warn that his efforts have left Argentina’s poorest citizens more vulnerable. While official statistics indicate inflation has dropped, unemployment and poverty have risen.

The bribery allegations have heightened the backlash against his administration.

Karina Milei occupies a high-level position in Milei’s government, as a general secretary to the president.

But audio recordings have captured Diego Spagnuolo, the head of the National Disability Agency and a close ally of Milei, claiming that Karina took a cut from government contracts intended to help those with disabilities.

Milei has since fired Spagnuolo, and in his public appearances on Wednesday, he repudiated the recordings.

“Everything he says is a lie,” Milei told reporters in Lomas de Zamora. “We are going to bring him to justice and prove he lied.”

Milei put on a united front with his sister at Wednesday’s rally, appearing side by side with her in the pick-up truck.

A court in Bolivia has transferred a high-profile opposition leader, Luis Fernando Camacho, to house arrest amid outcry over the length of his pretrial detention.

On Wednesday, a court ruled that Camacho, the right-wing governor of the eastern department of Santa Cruz, could be returned to his home and released from preventative detention on bail, provided he submits to house arrest.

He is expected to travel on Friday back to Santa Cruz, home to Bolivia’s most populous city, also called Santa Cruz.

“The judicial authority has ordered the end of preventive detention against Governor Luis Fernando Camacho and has replaced it with precautionary measures, including house arrest,” his lawyer, Martin Camacho, confirmed on Wednesday.

The lawyer said Governor Camacho would be able to resume his political duties under the work-release terms of his bail.

A political shift in Bolivia

Camacho has been held in pretrial detention since December 2022, when he was arrested amid weeks of deadly protests led by right-wing forces frustrated with the left-wing political leadership in La Paz.

Normally, pretrial detention in Bolivia should not last longer than six months. Last week, the Supreme Court of Justice called for a review of Camacho’s incarceration, and on Tuesday, a judge considering one of the two cases against him approved his release.

After Wednesday’s hearing, a second judge echoed the first’s decision to place Camacho under house arrest instead.

“This is the first step towards freedom,” Camacho said after Tuesday’s decision. “The elected representatives of justice today begin to restore the rule of law.”

Camacho’s release comes as the political sphere in Bolivia braces for a dramatic shift. The left-wing Movement for Socialism (MAS) party has led the country for much of the last 20 years.

But in the August 17 general election, all the left-wing presidential candidates were knocked out of contention.

Two right-wing politicians have instead progressed to the run-off race: centrist Senator Rodrigo Paz and former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, who has promised more radical change.

Camacho, meanwhile, has gained fame as a leader in Bolivia’s far-right Christian coalition, Creemos, which translates to “We Believe”. The Argentinian newspaper La Nacion even nicknamed him the “Bolivian Bolsonaro”, a reference to Jair Bolsonaro, a former Brazilian president currently on trial for allegedly conspiring to overturn an election.

For his part, Camacho has been held in La Paz’s Chonchocoro prison while facing “terrorism”-related charges.

Wednesday’s release to house arrest does not mean those charges have gone away.

The case against Camacho

Camacho still faces legal jeopardy, including the two high-profile cases that landed him behind bars.

The first concerns his actions during the 2019 political crisis that saw then-President Evo Morales flee the country.

Morales is considered to be the first president of Indigenous heritage in Bolivia’s modern history, but he had controversially sought a fourth term as president in the 2018 general election.

In the months afterwards, Camacho emerged as a prominent opposition figure, calling Morales’s victory a “fraud”.

He and other conservative leaders pressured the then-president to resign, in a campaign Morales compared to a “coup”.

Upon Morales’s departure from the country, Camacho delivered a symbolic resignation letter to the presidential palace, carrying a Bible in hand. For his role in the political crisis, Camacho faces charges of sedition and “terrorism”.

The second major case against Camacho concerns his actions during the 2022 unrest in Santa Cruz. He has been charged with criminal association and illegal use of public property.

By 2022, Morales’s former finance minister, Luis Arce, had been elected president of Bolivia, continuing the streak of MAS-led governments in La Paz.

Santa Cruz, considered Bolivia’s most prosperous economic hub and the largest by land area, had expected to see gains in the upcoming census, which would potentially translate into greater representation in the country’s legislature.

But because of disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Arce government announced the census would be delayed.

Anger over the decision spilled into Santa Cruz’s streets. The Pro Santa Cruz Civic Committee, a powerful right-wing group that Camacho had once led, carried out a strike that stretched on for nearly 36 days.

Protesters blocked roads, set fires and clashed with law enforcement. Dozens of cases of human rights abuses were reported to the government ombudsman, including sexual assault and murder. Prosecutors have accused Camacho of complicity in the turmoil.

Split opinions over Camacho’s release

But the Supreme Court of Justice has called for a review of the cases concerning Camacho and other prominent opposition leaders, including former President Jeanine Anez and Marco Antonio Pumari.

As Quiroga campaigns for the presidency ahead of the October 17 run-off, he has championed efforts to release the imprisoned opposition figures.

On his Facebook page on Tuesday, Quiroga celebrated the news of Camacho’s impending release.

“Justice cannot be an instrument of revenge. It must be the pillar of a free and democratic Bolivia,” Quiroga wrote.

“I salute the release of Luis Fernando Camacho and Marco Pumari, so they can pursue their defence in freedom. Let’s move forward, and remember that when there’s justice, there’s hope for all.”

Supporters in Santa Cruz also gathered in the street to celebrate Camacho’s anticipated return.

But outside the court in La Paz, some protesters called for his continued incarceration. They blamed Camacho for stirring the unrest that caused at least 37 people to be killed in the 2019 political crisis.

“Without justice,” they chanted, “there is no democracy.”

Mining proponents are expecting to see an increase in activity under President Noboa, a right-wing candidate who won re-election in April.

In 2024, Noboa travelled to the World Exploration and Mining Convention in Canada and signed six agreements worth $4.8bn.

And just this month, Noboa issued a presidential decree that would dissolve the Ministry of Environment and fold its duties into the Ministry of Energy and Mining.

Critics warn these developments threaten to undercut environmental causes and the right for Indigenous communities to have prior consultation before development projects.

To prevent conflicts like Rio Blanco’s, experts emphasise that implementing these rights in good faith is key. They also say communities need more resources, so that mining is not the only way out of poverty.

“These places often have no government support, leaving people to fend for themselves,” said Patricio Benalcázar, a sociology professor and mining conflict researcher at the University of Cuenca.

“The government should create programmes that improve people’s lives, provide basic utilities, schools, healthcare — and should help create other ways for people to earn money, besides mining.”

Alfaro, however, believes that communities cannot rely on the national government’s support. Activists, nonprofits, universities and others need to step in.

“Río Blanco is the best example we have of a community working together to stop a big international mining project,” he said.

“But that doesn’t mean the next steps will be easy. How do you rebuild and heal families after the industry’s damage? For a small place like Río Blanco, they can’t do it alone.”

Community members, however, are taking small steps to begin healing the rifts the mining caused.

In May, Durazno — the local leader — organised a Mother’s Day event to bring together Rio Blanco’s residents.

A mother of four herself, she felt the holiday could be unifying. Still, the attendance was not what Durazno had hoped for.

As she watched a dozen children from pro- and anti-mining families play together in a sunlit courtyard, she reflected on the toll the conflict has taken.

“It took too much to drive mining out,” she said. “People are tired and don’t want to hear about mining any more. If the company comes back, I don’t know if we’d have the strength to take them on again.”

Venezuela’s defence minister says military vessels and drones will be sent to patrol the country’s coastline amid simmering tension with the United States after Washington deployed warships to waters off Venezuela to fight drug trafficking.

In a video on social media on Tuesday, Minister of Defence Vladimir Padrino announced a “significant” drone deployment as well as naval patrols along the country’s Caribbean coast, including “larger vessels further north in our territorial waters”.

The move comes after Washington last week deployed an amphibious squadron of three warships towards Venezuela’s coast in what it said was an operation against Latin American drug cartels.

News agencies reported on Monday that two more US ships – a guided missile cruiser and a nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine – had also been dispatched to the Caribbean, and that some 4,500 US service members, including 2,200 Marines, were part of the deployment.

The US naval build-up comes after the administration of US President Donald Trump last week accused Venezuela’s left-wing president, Nicolas Maduro, of being involved in cocaine trafficking and working with drug cartels.

Washington also announced that it had doubled a reward for the capture or prosecution of Maduro on drug charges from $25m to $50m. The US is also offering a reward of $25m for the arrest or prosecution of Venezuelan Minister of the Popular Power for Interior Diosdado Cabello.

US officials have accused Maduro and members of his government of heading the Venezuelan cocaine trafficking cartel Cartel de los Soles, which Washington has designated a terrorist organisation .

Maduro has dismissed the accusations and accused the US of attempting to instigate regime change in his country.

Military build-up

On Monday, Maduro insisted during a weekly television show that his country, unlike neighbouring Colombia, is “free of coca leaf crops and free of cocaine production”.

Maduro, who has also criticised the US government for not addressing the drug consumption within its borders, has mobilised hundreds of thousands of local militia members to strengthen national security amid the threats from Washington.

Some 15,000 Venezuelan troops have also been dispatched to the country’s border with Colombia to crack down on criminal groups, including those involved in drug trafficking.

In a separate announcement on Tuesday, Defence Minister Padrino said an ongoing operation in Venezuela’s northeastern corner had resulted in the dismantling of shipyards where criminals intended “to manufacture semisubmersibles and boats to transport drugs by sea” to markets in Europe and North America.

The move to deploy US warships and personnel off Venezuela comes as Trump pushes for using the military to thwart cartels he blames for the flow of fentanyl and other illicit drugs into US communities, and for perpetuating violence in some US cities.

Venezuela’s mission to the United Nations denounced the US’s “escalation of hostile actions and threats” in a letter, local media outlet Noticias Venevision reported on Tuesday.

Referring to the imminent arrival of US ships off the coast, Venezuela told the UN that Washington’s actions were “a serious threat to regional peace and security”, while the presence of a nuclear-powered attack submarine was “a clear act of intimidation”.

The letter also demanded “guarantees” that the US would “not deploy or threaten to use nuclear weapons in the region”, Noticias Venevision reported.

Despite the military build-up, analysts have downplayed the possibility of a US invasion or US strikes on Venezuela, while many Venezuelan people have shrugged off the US threat as posturing, the AFP news agency reported.

Maduro, who claimed a third term in office following an election in July 2024, which was described as deeply flawed, has been in Trump’s sights ever since the US president’s first term, from 2017 to 2021.

But the US policy of maximum pressure on Venezuela, including an ongoing oil embargo, failed to dislodge Maduro from power.

“I think what we’re seeing represents an attempt to create anxiety in government circles and force Maduro to negotiate something,” International Crisis Group analyst Phil Gunson told the AFP regarding the building tension.

Stronger police presence is called for to monitor the former president, who is under house arrest awaiting trial.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has requested the police to tighten security around former President Jair Bolsonaro’s home while he is under house arrest.

Moraes on Monday sent a notice to police calling for full-time monitoring near Bolsonaro’s house to ensure he is complying with the restraining orders against him.

Earlier this month, the embattled former president was placed under house arrest after Moraes determined that he had violated precautionary measures imposed by the court restricting his social media use and political messaging.

Police said last week that they had found a draft letter on Bolsonaro’s phone of a request for asylum in Argentina. It was last edited in 2024, police said.

Bolsonaro’s legal defence said the document was not evidence that the former president was a flight risk.

Bolsonaro’s trial is expected to start on September 2. The former president faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted of plotting to overthrow his democratically elected successor as president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in 2022.

His case has been a flashpoint for the administration of United States President Donald Trump, who insists it is a witch-hunt against his former ally.

Last month, Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on Brazil, directly tying the levy to the trial of his fellow right-wing politician, Bolsonaro. That was followed by sanctions against Moraes, with the Trump administration accusing the judge of “arbitrary detentions that violate human rights”.

Defence minister says soldiers taken while evacuating area after a military operation that killed 11 rebels.

At least 34 government soldiers have been kidnapped by armed civilians in a jungle in southeastern Colombia after clashes that killed 11 fighters, including a commander of a dissident faction of the former FARC rebel group, Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez says.

The fighting occurred on Sunday in a rural part of the El Retorno municipality in the province of Guaviare and involved members of the Central General Staff (EMC), a group of former fighters with the left-wing FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, who rejected a 2016 peace deal with the government.

Sanchez said on Tuesday that the soldiers were taken as they were evacuating the area after a military operation that killed an EMC commander and 10 other rebels.

“This is an illegal, criminal action by people in civilian clothing,” Sanchez told reporters. “This is a kidnapping.”

The jungle region is considered a strategic corridor for drug trafficking and is known for its extensive coca crops, the main ingredient used to produce cocaine.

It followed a similar abduction in June when the army said 57 soldiers were seized by civilians in a southwestern mountainous area, a key zone for cocaine production and one of the most tense in the country’s ongoing security crisis.

The Colombian army has maintained that the civilians in the region receive orders from the EMC, the main FARC dissident group.

Armed groups – which fund themselves through drug trafficking, illegal mining and other crimes – remain present in Colombia after a six-decade conflict that has killed more than 450,000 people despite the peace deal with the FARC nine years ago when it was Colombia’s largest rebel group.

Last week, at least 18 people were killed and dozens injured in two attacks attributed to dissident FARC factions.

In Cali, the country’s third most populous city, a vehicle packed with explosives detonated on Thursday near a military aviation school, killing six people and injuring 71, according to the mayor’s office.

Hours earlier, a National Police Black Hawk helicopter participating in a coca crop eradication operation was downed by a drone in the municipality of Amalfi in the department of Antioquia, killing 12 police officers.

President Gustavo Petro blamed the attacks on dissident factions of FARC.

While many people are forced to flee the violence devastating Haiti, Kareen Ulysse decides to stay and keep her family-run hospital open in the gang-controlled area of Cite Soleil. The chaos that has caused thousands of deaths and the displacement of more than a million people has also led to many babies being abandoned at Hospital Fontaine’s neonatal clinic.

As the airport is closed and hospitals come under increasing attack, the strain on obtaining urgent medical supplies intensifies. Amid this escalating crisis, Kareen finds herself in a race against time to obtain oxygen crucial to the newborn babies in her care.

Healing Haiti’s Children is a documentary film by Rosie Collyer.

The United States warships are approaching Venezuelan waters in the southern Caribbean as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to fight drug trafficking, reports said.

The Trump administration has accused Venezuela’s left-wing President Nicolas Maduro of being involved in cocaine trafficking and working with drug cartels. On August 7, the US Departments of State and Justice doubled the reward for information leading to the arrest of Maduro to $50m after accusing him of being “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world”.

In response, Maduro has urged millions of Venezuelans to join militias, saying, “No empire will touch the sacred soil of Venezuela.”

On Monday, the Venezuelan government announced that it is sending 15,000 troops to its border with Colombia to fight drug trafficking, amid growing pressure from the Trump administration.

So why are the US warships heading to Venezuelan waters, and how is it being seen in Latin American nations, including Venezuela?

Why is the Trump administration sending navy warships to Venezuelan waters?

Multiple news reports say that the Trump administration has dispatched navy warships to the southern Caribbean, saying that these missions are intended to counter threats to US national security posed by organisations in the region that the US has designated as “narco-terrorist organizations.”

The New York Times reported last month that Trump signed a secret directive ordering the Pentagon to use military force against certain Latin American drug cartels that the US has deemed foreign “terrorist” organisations.

On Monday, the Reuters news agency reported that the US ordered additional ships to the southern Caribbean, citing two sources familiar with the deployment.

The sources told Reuters, on the condition of anonymity, that the USS Lake Erie, a guided missile cruiser and the USS Newport News, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, will arrive in the region by early next week.

Last week, multiple news agencies reported that three US Aegis-class guided missile destroyers were headed to Venezuelan waters.

According to two individuals briefed on the deployment – who anonymously spoke to Reuters – the USS San Antonio, USS Iwo Jima and USS Fort Lauderdale were headed towards the Venezuelan coast, carrying 4,500 US service members, including 2,200 Marines.

In both the reports, Reuters said that the unnamed sources refrained from disclosing the specific objectives of the deployments but indicated that recent military movements were intended to address threats to US national security posed by designated “narco-terrorist organizations.”

On August 14, the US Fleet Forces Command published a news release saying that sailors and Marines assigned to the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group had departed from Norfolk, Virginia and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The news release does not explicitly state details of the mission or specify where the group is being deployed.

The release says, “More than 4,500 Sailors and Marines from the 22nd MEU comprise the force aboard the ARG’s three amphibious ships: flagship USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7), and the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships USS San Antonio (LPD 17) and USS Fort Lauderdale (LPD 28).”

Reporters asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt about the possibility of US boots on the ground in Venezuela on August 19. In response, she said, “President [Donald] Trump has been very clear and consistent. He’s prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.”

Leavitt reiterated that the US does not recognise Maduro’s administration as the legitimate government of Venezuela. Maduro won last year’s disputed election. The US and Venezuela have not had a formal diplomatic relationship since 2019.

How is Trump cracking down on drug trafficking?

On his inauguration day on January 21, Trump signed an executive order designating international drug cartels as foreign “terrorist” organisations.

“In certain portions of Mexico, they function as quasi-governmental entities,” the order says. Mexico opposed the order because it created the threat of US military action against the country.

In response, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that her government will cooperate with the US to fight drug trafficking, but opposed US intervention on Mexico’s territory. “What we insist on is the defence of our sovereignty and our independence,” she said back in January.

Trump also accused Canada and Mexico of failing to prevent fentanyl, a highly addictive synthetic opioid, from entering the US –  although he has not furnished proof for his claims.

After Trump threatened tariffs on Mexican imports, Sheinbaum deployed 10,000 National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border to help regulate immigration.

On February 20, the US State Department designated eight international cartels as foreign terrorist organisations, including Mexico-based Cartel del Golfo, Sinaloa Cartel, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion, Carteles Unidos, La Nueva Familia Michoacana and Cartel del Noreste, California-based Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), and Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua.

Later in February, Mexico handed over 29 drug cartel leaders to the US.

What has the US accused Maduro of?

US officials accused both Maduro and Venezuelan Minister of Popular Power for Interior Diosdado Cabello of collaborating with the Cartel de los Soles (“Cartel of the Suns”), a drug trafficking organisation that Washington has designated as a “terrorist” group. Cabello, like Maduro, is part of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Maduro has rejected the Trump administration’s accusations earlier. The US government has not provided any evidence linking Maduro to drug cartels.

The US announced earlier this month that it had doubled the reward for Maduro’s capture on drug charges to $50m. In a video on August 7, US Attorney General Pam Bondi also accused Maduro of collaborating with the Venezuelan crime syndicate Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico. “He is one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world,” Bondi said about Maduro.

Today, @TheJusticeDept and @StateDept are announcing a $50 MILLION REWARD for information leading to the arrest of Nicolás Maduro. pic.twitter.com/D8LNqjS9yk

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) August 7, 2025

Earlier this year, the US also raised the reward for the arrest or prosecution of Cabello from $10m to $25m.

During Trump’s first term in 2020, Maduro and his close allies were indicted in Manhattan federal court on federal charges of “narco-terrorism” and conspiracy to import cocaine. Back then, Washington offered a $15mm reward for his arrest. The administration of US President Joe Biden increased this bounty to $25m.

How has the Venezuelan government responded?

On Monday, Cabello announced that Caracas will send 15,000 troops to strengthen security in the border states of Zulia and Tachira, which border Colombia.

“Here, we do fight drug trafficking; here, we do fight drug cartels on all fronts,” the minister said, while also announcing the seizure of 53 tonnes of drugs so far this year.

Cabello stated that the enhanced security measures along the border with Colombia, aimed at “combating criminal groups,” will also include the deployment of aircraft, drones and riverine security, according to local media outlet Noticias Venevision. Cabello urged Colombian authorities to take similar steps to “ensure peace along the entire axis.”

Referring to the deployment of US warships on Venezuelan waters, Maduro said, “From the north, the empire has gone mad and, like a rotten rehash, has renewed its threats to the peace and stability of Venezuela,” Caracas-based news network, Globovision reported.

“We are not fakes nor drug traffickers, and we will defend the dignity of beloved Venezuela,” Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez told a crowd of military recruits over the weekend.

How have Venezuelan opposition leaders responded?

Opposition figure Marina Corina Machado called Maduro the “head of the Cartel of the Sun,” in an X post on Monday. Machado was disqualified weeks before last year’s election.

But opposition leader Henrique Capriles warned against an act of force against Venezuela. “We firmly express our rejection of any act of force against Venezuela, regardless of its origin. The sovereignty of our country is sacred and must be unconditionally respected. The United Nations Charter and International Law clearly establish that no State can attack another, as it would result in the loss of human lives,” he posted on X.

Capriles, who lost to Maduro in the 2013 presidential election, added that regional peace must be defended.

“The government, currently in power, has the duty to open the doors and create the mechanisms necessary to prevent our crisis from worsening further.”

Juan Guaido, the West-backed interim president between 2019 and 2022, supported the actions taken by the United States against Venezuelan cartels. “The Cartel of the Suns and the Tren de Aragua have already been designated as terrorist organizations. Their leader is not hidden in the shadows: his name is Nicolas Maduro, a dictator responsible for this criminal network that drains Venezuela and threatens the entire region,” he posted a statement on X on Monday.

What have other Latin American leaders said?

Mexico’s Sheinbaum said earlier this month that her government does not have any evidence linking Maduro to the Sinaloa Cartel, which is based in her country and is named after the Mexican state of Sinaloa.

On the other hand, the office of the president of Paraguay, Santiago Pena Palacios, posted a statement on X on Friday declaring the “Cartel of the Suns” a foreign terrorist organisation.

Two more US ships said to join amphibious squadron due to arrive off coast of Venezuela in anti-drug cartel operation.

Venezuela has announced the deployment of 15,000 troops to its border with Colombia to fight drug trafficking, as the United States was reported to have sent two additional navy ships to the southern Caribbean as part of an operation against Latin American drug cartels.

Venezuelan Minister of the Popular Power for Interior Diosdado Cabello announced on Monday that Caracas would deploy 15,000 troops to bolster security in Zulia and Tachira states, which border Colombia.

“Here, we do fight drug trafficking; here, we do fight drug cartels on all fronts,” the minister said, while also announcing the seizure of 53 tonnes of drugs so far this year.

Cabello said the increased security on the border with Colombia, to “combat criminal groups”, would also involve aircraft, drones and riverine security, according to local media outlet Noticias Venevision, as he called on Colombian authorities to do the same to “ensure peace along the entire axis”.

The reinforcement of Venezuelan troops on the Colombian border comes after the Trump administration accused Venezuela’s left-wing president, Nicolas Maduro, of being involved in cocaine trafficking and working with drug cartels.

Officials in Washington, DC, have accused both Maduro and Cabello of working with the Cartel de los Soles (“Cartel of the Suns”) drug trafficking organisation, which Washington has designated a terrorist group.

The accusations were made as the US announced last week that it had doubled a reward to $50m for the capture of Maduro on drug charges. The US earlier this year increased a reward for Cabello’s arrest or prosecution from $10m to $25m.

Maduro has accused the US of attempting to foment regime change in Venezuela, and launched a nationwide drive to sign up thousands of militia members to strengthen national security in the country amid the threats from Washington.

“I am confident that we will overcome this test that life has imposed on us, this imperialist threat to the peace of the continent and to our country,” Maduro was quoted as saying in local media on Monday.

The Reuters news agency also reported on Monday that the USS Lake Erie, a guided missile cruiser, and the USS Newport News, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, will arrive in the southern Caribbean by early next week.

Citing two sources briefed on the deployment, Reuters said the missile cruiser and attack submarine would join the US amphibious squadron that was due to arrive off the coast of Venezuela on Sunday.

The squadron includes the USS San Antonio, USS Iwo Jima and USS Fort Lauderdale, and is said to be carrying 4,500 US service members, including 2,200 Marines, according to reports.

Trump has made the targeting of Latin American drug cartels a central focus of his administration, and has designated Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and other drug gangs, including Venezuelan criminal group Tren de Aragua, as global terrorist organisations.

The conservative president faced a legislative panel weighing whether he should retain his immunity from prosecution.

Rodrigo Chaves Robles has become the first sitting president in the history of Costa Rica to testify to a legislative committee as he faced charges of corruption and the possibility of a criminal trial.

The three-member committee held the hearing on Friday to consider whether or not to lift Chaves Robles’s immunity as president.

Doing so would pave the way for Chaves Robles to be prosecuted based on allegations he used government-related funds to give kickbacks to an ally.

Chaves Robles has denied any wrongdoing and accused his opponents of using the judiciary to oust his government.

“What we are experiencing has historic consequences,” Chaves Robles said on Friday. “The entire country is witnessing a legal rigging by the attorney general and the criminal court.”

He told his supporters outside the Legislative Assembly that his adversaries had “staged a ridiculous case to carry out a judicial coup d’etat” and convince the public he was a “scoundrel”.

The committee must deliver a report following Chaves Robles’s testimony to the full Legislative Assembly, which will then vote on whether to strip him of his immunity from prosecution.

A conservative economist and former minister of finance, Chaves Robles has been accused of forcing an associate to take money from a contract awarded by a development bank, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, and use it to pay his former presidential adviser, Federico Cruz.

The sum was allegedly $32,000, and Cruz used it to buy a house, according to prosecutors.

The bank told the Reuters news agency that it had conducted its own internal investigation, the conclusions of which were provided to Costa Rica’s attorney general. Witnesses for the prosecution include the president’s former communications minister, Patricia Navarro, and businessman Christian Bulgarelli.

“I never ordered the delivery of money to anyone,” Chaves Robles said in response to the allegations.

His lawyer, Jose Miguel Villalobos, also argued that the accusations do not meet the “minimum requirements” for the removal of presidential immunity.

The Legislative Assembly would need a supermajority in order to strip Chaves Robles of his immunity.

Chaves Robles was considered a dark horse candidate when he ran for president in 2022, representing the conservative Social Democratic Progress Party.

Even then, however, he faced scrutiny for allegedly running an illegal parallel campaign financing structure. Multiple women also came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment during his time employed at the World Bank.

Chaves Robles is ineligible to run for a second term in 2026: The law does not permit back-to-back presidential terms.

Costa Rica is scheduled to hold its next presidential election on February 1, and Chaves Robles’s term is slated to end the following May.

America First was the slogan Donald Trump championed during his re-election campaign as he promised to put the interests of Americans above those of foreign governments, immigrants and large corporations. However, the United States president has made several policy decisions that have divided his electoral base. The two guests in this episode of The Stream voted for Trump in the 2024 election but now find themselves on the opposite side of several issues: economic policy, foreign military spending and the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Presenter: Stefanie Dekker

Guests:
Ethan Levins – Social media journalist
Erol Morkoc – Spokesman, Republicans Overseas UK

In January, just before Donald Trump resumed command of the United States on a bevy of sociopathic promises, incoming US border czar Tom Homan announced that the new administration would be “shutting down the Darien Gap” in the interests of “national security”.

The Darien Gap, of course, is the notorious 106km (66-mile) stretch of roadless territory and treacherous jungle that straddles Panama and Colombia at the crossroads of the Americas. For the past several years, it has served as one of the only available pathways to potential refuge for hundreds of thousands of global have-nots who are essentially criminalised by virtue of their poverty and denied the opportunity to engage in “legal” migration to the US.

In 2023 alone, about 520,000 people crossed the Darien Gap, which left them with thousands of kilometres still to go to the border of the US – the very country responsible for wreaking much of the international political and economic havoc that forces folks to flee their homes in the first place.

In a testament to the inherent deadliness of borders – not to mention of existence in general for the impoverished of the world – countless refuge seekers have ended up unburied corpses in the jungle, denied dignity in death as in life. Lethal obstacles abound, ranging from fierce river currents to steep ravines to attacks by armed assailants to the sheer physical exhaustion that attends days or weeks of trekking through hostile terrain without adequate food or water.

And while literally “shutting down” the Darien Gap is about as feasible as shutting down the Mediterranean Sea or the Sahara Desert, the jungle has become drastically less trafficked in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s machinations to shut down the US border itself, essentially scrapping the whole right to asylum in violation of both international and domestic law.

In March, two months into Trump’s term, Panama’s immigration service registered a mere 194 arrivals from Colombia via the Darien Gap – compared with 36,841 arrivals in March of the previous year. This is no doubt music to the xenophobic ears of the US establishment, whose members delight in eternally bleating about the “immigration crisis”.

However, it does not remotely constitute any sort of solution to the real crisis – which is that, thanks in large part to decades of pernicious US foreign policy, life is simply unliveable in a whole lot of places. And “shutting down” the Darien Gap won’t deter desperate people with nothing to lose from pursuing other perilous paths in the direction of perceived physical and economic safety.

Nor can the enduring psychological impact of the Darien trajectory on the survivors of its horrors be understated. While conducting research for my book The Darien Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas, published this month by Rutgers University Press, I found it next to impossible to speak with anyone who had made the journey without receiving a rundown of all of the bodies they had encountered en route.

In Panama in February 2023, for example, I spoke with a young Venezuelan woman named Guailis, who had spent 10 days crossing the jungle in the rain with her husband and two-year-old son. Among the numerous corpses they stumbled upon was an elderly man curled up under a tree “like he was cold”. Guailis said she had also made the acquaintance of a bereaved Haitian woman whose six-month-old baby had just drowned right before her eyes.

Guailis’s husband, Jesus, meanwhile, had experienced a more intimate interaction with a lifeless body when, tumbling down a formidable hill, he had grabbed onto what he thought was a tree root but turned out to be a human hand protruding from the mud. Recounting the incident to me, Jesus reasoned: “That hand saved my life.”

I heard about bloated corpses floating in the river, about a dead woman sprawled in a tent with her two dead newborn twins and about another dead woman with two dead children and a man who had hanged himself nearby – presumably the children’s father.

A Venezuelan woman named Yurbis, part of an extended family of 10 that I spent a good deal of time with in Mexico in late 2023, offered the following calculation regarding the prevalence of bodies in the jungle: “I can say that we have all stepped on dead people.”

For pretty much every step of the way, then, refuge seekers transiting the Darien Gap were reminded of the disconcerting proximity of death – and the negligible value assigned to their own lives in a US-led world order.

Add to that the surge in rapes and other forms of sexual violence with The New York Times reporting in April 2024 that the “sexual assault of migrants” on the Panamanian side of the jungle had risen to a “level rarely seen outside war” – and it becomes painfully clear that the individual and collective trauma signified by the Darien Gap is not something that will be summarily resolved by its ostensible “shutting-down”.

That said, the Darien Gap has also served as a venue for the display of incredible solidarity in the face of structural dehumanisation. I met a young Colombian man who had personally saved an infant from being swept away in a river. I was also told of a Venezuelan man who had carried an ailing one-year-old Ecuadorean girl through the jungle when her mother, too weak to move at a rapid pace, feared she wouldn’t make it out in time to seek medical help.

When I myself staged an incursion into the Darien Gap in January 2024, two refuge seekers from Yemen complimented me on my Palestine football shirt and did their best to assuage my apparently visible terror at entering the jungle: “If you need anything, we are here.” This from folks who had for more than two decades been on the receiving end of quite literal terror, courtesy of my own country, as successive US administrations went about waging covert war on Yemen.

The Darien Gap, too, has functioned as a de facto warzone in its own right where punitive US policy plays out on vulnerable human bodies in the interests of maintaining systemic inequality. Widely referred to in Spanish as “el infierno verde”, or The Green Hell, the gap has certainly lived up to its nickname.

And while the heyday of the Darien Gap may be at least temporarily over, the territory remains an enduring symbol of one of the defining crises of the modern era in which the global poor must risk their lives to live and are criminalised for doing so. In that sense, then, the Darien Gap is the world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Argentine and Chilean fans hurled sticks, stones, and stun grenades during violent clashes at a Copa Sudamericana match in Buenos Aires that left 19 injured. Officials said at least 90 men and 5 women remain in custody. FIFA has condemned the “shocking” violence.

Police claim Brazil’s ex-President Jair Bolsonaro wrote letter seeking asylum in Argentina as coup investigation ramped up in 2024.

Brazil’s federal police said that messages found on the mobile phone of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro showed he once wanted to flee to Argentina and request political asylum from Argentinian President Javier Milei.

The police said in a report released on Wednesday that the letter seeking asylum was saved on Bolsonaro’s mobile phone in February 2024, just days after the former president’s passport was seized amid an investigation of his involvement in an alleged coup plot.

It was unclear whether the asylum request was sent, and the Argentinian president’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The asylum request document revealed on Wednesday was part of the final police report that formally accused Bolsonaro and his United States-based son, Eduardo, of working to interfere in the ongoing legal process related to the ex-president’s forthcoming trial for allegedly plotting a coup.

Bolsonaro’s trial is expected to start on September 2, in which he faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted of plotting to overthrow his democratically elected successor as president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in 2022.

Police have now recommended that the ex-president and his son be charged with “coercion in the judicial process” and “abolition of the democratic law” related to interference in the coup case. The combined sentence for the two offences could reach up to 12 years in prison.

Brazilian news outlet O Dia said on Wednesday that recordings were also found on a device seized during the police investigation of Bolsonaro, which indicated “attempts to intimidate authorities and impede the progress of the investigations related to the inquiry into the attack on democracy, including attempts to use external influence”.

Bolsonaro – who has been under house arrest since early August – has maintained his innocence in the coup trial, which US President Donald Trump, an ally, has called a “witch-hunt”.

Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, stepped down from his position as a Brazilian congressman in March and moved to the US, where he is campaigning for the Trump administration to intercede on his father’s behalf.

Those lobbying efforts have been successful, with the Trump administration taking punitive action against Brazil over the case, including sanctions against court officials.

Trump has also imposed a massive 50 percent tariff on many Brazilian exports to the US, citing Bolsonaro’s trial.

Three US warships to be stationed off the coast of Venezuela in so-called fight against ‘narco-terrorists’, according to reports.

Three United States warships ordered to deploy off the coast of Venezuela by US President Donald Trump could arrive by the weekend, according to reports, as Washington sends its military to curb drug trafficking by Latin American crime cartels.

The reported deployment of the warships comes as the Trump administration increases pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, after recently doubling a reward for his arrest to $50m on what the US claims are drug offences linked to cocaine trafficking.

Sources told the Reuters and AFP news agencies on Wednesday that an amphibious squadron consisting of three US Aegis-class guided missile destroyers is heading to the waters off Venezuela and could arrive as early as Sunday.

Two sources briefed on the deployment, and speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the USS San Antonio, USS Iwo Jima and USS Fort Lauderdale are moving towards the Venezuelan coast and are carrying 4,500 US service members, including 2,200 Marines.

The sources declined to detail the specific mission of the squadron. But they have said that recent deployments are aimed at addressing threats to US national security from specially designated “narco-terrorist” organisations in the region.

Maduro said on Monday that he would be deploying millions of militia members across Venezuela in response to US “threats”, which included the reward for his arrest and the launch of a new anti-drug operation in the Caribbean.

“This week, I will activate a special plan with more than 4.5 million militiamen to ensure coverage of the entire national territory – militias that are prepared, activated and armed,” Maduro said in a televised address.

Washington has accused Maduro of leading the Venezuela-based Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) cocaine trafficking gang.

The US Department of the Treasury designated the cartel as a global terrorist organisation last month, accusing it of supporting the Venezuelan crime group Tren de Aragua and Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartels, which were also designated foreign terrorist organisations earlier this year.

“President Trump has been very clear and consistent, he’s prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday.

“Maduro, it is the view of this administration, is not a legitimate president; he is a fugitive head of this cartel who has been indicted in the United States for trafficking drugs into this country,” Leavitt said.

Al Jazeera’s Latin America editor, Lucia Newman, reports that Maduro has ordered the grounding of all aerial drones for the next 30 days, “an indication that he might be expecting an attack from the air rather than sea”.

“President Trump’s vow to send warships to the Caribbean and elsewhere in Latin America to stop the flow of drugs to the United States is being seen as more than just a threat to Venezuela. It could apply to many, many countries in this region,” Newman said.

“They say today it may be Venezuela, tomorrow it could be any one of them,” Newman said.

Many in the region are also wondering why Trump has chosen to implement “such an aggressive move in the United States’ backyard while he portrays himself as a global peacemaker”.

Mayor Clara Brugada says ‘government will not rest’ until justice is served for the killing of two municipal officials.

Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada has announced that authorities arrested 13 people for their alleged roles in the May attack that killed two high-ranking officials in the Mexican capital.

Brugada did not identify the suspects on Wednesday, but she said three were involved directly in the shooting.

“In this operation, 13 people were arrested, including three people who directly participated in the murder, and others related to the logistical preparation of the event,” she told reporters.

The daytime shooting of two of Brugada’s top aides by gunmen on motorbikes shocked the city, seen as a relative pocket of safety compared to the rest of the country.

The victims were Brugada’s personal secretary Ximena Guzman and adviser Jose Munoz.

“In memory of our colleagues and out of respect for their families and friends, this government will not rest until the truth is known and justice is served,” the mayor said in a social media post on Wednesday.

After the shooting, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, a Brugada ally who previously served as the capital’s mayor, vowed that her government would ensure that “justice is served”.

“We express our solidarity and support for the families of these two individuals who have worked in our movement for a long time,” Sheinbaum said in May.

“We know them, we stand with their families, and we will give her [Brugada] all the support the city needs from the Mexican government.”

For decades, Mexico has been struggling with high crime rates and murders, including violence against political and security officials as well as journalists.

In 2020, Mexico City’s security chief, Omar Garcia Harfuch, survived an ambush by gunmen that killed two of his bodyguards and a bystander.

Shortly after taking office last year, Sheinbaum’s administration announced a security strategy that focused on boosting intelligence gathering, strengthening the National Guard police and addressing root causes, including poverty.

Earlier this month, the United States – which has been struggling with its own crime rates – issued a travel advisory for Mexico, warning of security risks.

“Many violent crimes take place in Mexico. They include homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery,” the US State Department said. “There is a risk of terrorist violence, including terrorist attacks and other activity in Mexico.”

Appeals court pauses an order that had protected status for Nepalese, Hondurans and Nicaraguans.

A United States appeals court has sided with the Trump administration and halted, for now, a lower court’s order that had kept in place temporary protections for 60,000 migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal.

In a decision issued on Wednesday, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted an emergency stay pending an appeal. Immigrant rights advocates allege that the administration acted unlawfully in ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal.

This decision means that the Republican administration can move towards removing an estimated 7,000 people from Nepal whose TPS designations expired on August 5. The TPS designations and legal status of 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are set to expire September 8, at which point they will become eligible for removal.

“The district court’s order granting plaintiffs’ motion to postpone, entered July 31, 2025, is stayed pending further order of this court,” wrote the judges.

In July, a district judge ordered that the termination of the TPS be halted until November, when a hearing on the merits is scheduled. In her ruling, she found that the plaintiffs would suffer “irreparable harm” by the hasty termination, but also noted that the broader public would be impacted both economically and socially by the loss to the labour force and community.

The brief decision issued on Wednesday did not give a reason, and in a statement, UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy co-director Ahilan Arulanantham said there appeared to be a lack of due process.

“The court’s failure to provide any reasoning for its decision, including why this was an ‘emergency,’ falls far short of what due process requires and our clients deserve.”

TPS allows nationals from countries facing conflict, natural disaster or other extraordinary circumstances to temporarily remain in the US. It also gives them the right to work and travel.

The Trump administration has aggressively sought to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal. It is part of a wider effort by the administration to carry out mass deportations of immigrants.

Since taking office, the administration has sought to remove protections for Afghans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Cameroonians – despite troubling conditions in their home countries.

EXPLAINER

With this year’s hurricane season under way, Al Jazeera visualises the differences between various storm systems.

Hurricane Erin became the Atlantic Ocean’s first hurricane of the season – which runs from June 1 to November 30 – rapidly intensifying to Category 5 on Saturday before weakening to Category 2 on Tuesday.

While the storm remained far out at sea, it still generated major waves along the United States East Coast. Officials in North Carolina’s Outer Banks warned of coastal flooding and issued evacuation orders.

On its path were the northern Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and the Turks and Caicos, with swells reaching the Bahamas, Bermuda, the US East Coast and Atlantic Canada.

The storm’s rapid intensification, reaching Category 5 in a short span, ranks it among the fastest-strengthening hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic. Scientists have linked such rapid intensification to climate change, as global warming increases atmospheric water vapour and ocean temperatures, providing hurricanes with more fuel to strengthen quickly and unleash heavier rainfall.

Storms that ramp up so quickly complicate forecasting and make it harder for government agencies to plan for emergencies.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) publishes an alphabetical list of names for upcoming tropical cyclones. These names are meant to be short, easy to pronounce, appropriate across languages and unique.

Erin was the fifth named storm of the season but became the first hurricane because the previous four storms never reached hurricane strength.

Are hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons the same thing?

When broken down to basics, yes, hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons are all essentially the same thing. The only thing that differs is where they originated from. All three are storm systems with winds exceeding 119km/h (74mph).

Hurricanes: Occur in the North Atlantic Ocean and Northeast Pacific, often affecting the United States East Coast, the Gulf, and the Caribbean. The strength of a hurricane is measured on a wind scale from 1 to 5. A Category 1 hurricane will bring with it sustained winds of 119-153km/h (74-95mph), whereas a Category 5 storm can exceed 252km/h (157mph).

Cyclones: Occur in the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, often impacting countries from Australia all the way to Mozambique. Cyclone season typically runs from November to April.

Typhoons: Occur in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, frequently hitting the Philippines and Japan. Typhoon season is most common between May and October, but they can form year-round. The strength of a typhoon has various classification scales with the most severe storms named “super typhoons”.

How does a tropical storm form?

Tropical storms form over warm ocean waters near the equator. As this warm air rises, an area of lower air pressure is formed. As the air cools down again, it is pushed aside by more warm air rising below it. This cycle causes strong winds and rain.

When this cycle gains momentum and strengthens, it creates a tropical storm. As the storm system rotates ever faster, an eye forms in the centre. The eye of the storm is very calm and clear and has very low air pressure.

When winds reach speeds of 63km/h (39mph) the storm is called a tropical storm. When the wind speeds reach 119km/h (74mph) the storm becomes a tropical cyclone, typhoon or hurricane.