Wikimedia Commons New York, May 1 (EFE).- Complaints by New Yorkers over the presence of rats in the city have shot up in recent months, according to figures compiled by authorities and published Sunday by the local daily New York Post. Between January and April, a total of 8,335 complaints about rats were phoned in to the free 311 hotline number, 18 percent more than during the same period...

Pixabay Commons Caracas, May 1 (EFE).- The Venezuelan government on Sunday moved local time up 30 minutes, to four hours behind UTC, with an eye toward dealing with the emergency caused by the ongoing severe drought. The time change will enter into effect as of May 1 and brings Venezuela back to the time schedule that prevailed until 2007, when the government shifted the nation's clocks bac...

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

YouTube Commons Manila, Apr 28 (EFE).- At least 14 members of the Filipino rebel group Abu Sayyaf, which has publicly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, have been killed in army operations in the southern Philippines, military sources said Thursday. The head of the armed forces' press department, Col. Noel Detoyato, said the Western Mindanao Command had received reports from civilians...

Photo by Robert Moreno, citizen journalist in Maracay Caracas, Apr 27 (EFE).- A series of violent disturbances erupted in several Venezuelan cities over frequent power and water cuts and longstanding food shortages, regional officials and media outlets said Wednesday. The governor of the northwestern state of Zulia, Francisco Arias Cardenas, said Wednesday that "destabilizing actions" had t...

Source: Wikimedia Commons San Juan, Apr 26 (EFE).- Puerto Rican drug agents on Tuesday found a caiman inside an abandoned apartment in the San Juan district of Rio Piedras while they were carrying out monitoring operations in the area. The Puerto Rico police issued a statement saying that the agents also found two ammunition clips and many rounds of ammo in the apartment. The officers tu...

File photo from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Senator Loren Legarda of the Philippines called on nations to immediately ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change and stressed on the need to target the more ambitious but safer 1.5 degrees Celsius warming limit. Legarda, Global Champion for Resilience of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), made the statement during the pr...

(FILE) WASHINGTON (VOA) Nearly 15 years after terrorists hijacked four passenger jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and a farm field in Pennsylvania, 28 pages detailing foreign support for the attackers could soon be made public. Only a select group of U.S. officials have read the highly classified document, which has been l...

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

Guatemala special forces soldiers on patrol. Wikimedia Commons Guatemala City, Apr 23 (EFE).- Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales will meet Saturday in the United States with OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro and the secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or IACHR, Emilio Alvarez Icaza, to ask that they investigate the death of a 13-year-old boy on the Guatemala-Belize bor...

John Cocgh - Flickr Commons Managua, Apr 22 (EFE).- Nicaragua is undergoing the most severe environmental crisis in its recent history, a group of 15 non-governmental organizations said during the presentation of a report coinciding with Earth Day. The drastic reduction or disappearance of 34 rivers, the near-complete evaporation of at least four lakes, the loss of nearly 6,000 hectares (14...

Wikimedia Comons Caracas, Apr 22 (EFE; beer context by The Costa Rica Star).- Residents of Venezuela are hunkering down for a long summer without beer and with diminished electricity. Venezuela's Electric Energy Minister Luis Motta Dominguez has announced the start of electricity rationing next Monday due to the drought affecting the entire country, and which will remain in effect for 40 da...

File photo Washington, Apr 20 (EFE).- Legal marijuana sales in the United States totaled nearly $5.7 billion in 2015, while more than 100,000 jobs are being created annually in that industry's medicinal and recreational segments, according to a study released Wednesday. Four states (Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington) - in addition to the District of Columbia, where the U.S. capital is...

Flickr Commons Quito, Jul 19 (EFE).- Volunteers are working to help animals, the silent victims of natural disasters, in the aftermath of the magnitude-7.8 earthquake that killed 413 people and injured more than 2,000 others in Ecuador. Lost and abandoned dogs wander the streets of the Pacific coastal areas shattered by Saturday's earthquake, with some pets sleeping in the rubble of their f...

Popocateptl in 2004. Wikimedia Commons Puebla, Mexico, Apr 18 (EFE).- Several eruptions of the Popocatepetl volcano left the city of Puebla covered with a white cloud at sunrise Monday, which led authorities to decree a yellow alert, which obliges residents to take preventive measures to protect food and drinking water. According to a report by the Cenapred disaster management agency, start...

Rescue team members wait outside a clinic that was evacuated after tremors were felt resulting from an earthquake in Ecuador, in Cali, Colombia, April 16, 2016. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga The death toll of the powerful earthquake that devastated Ecuador and prompted Pacific tsunami alerts all the way north to Costa Rica has surpassed the 300 mark, and it includes a mother and son from Canada. ...

(VOA) The death toll from a powerful earthquake in Ecuador surged to 233 on Sunday, as daylight aided rescue and recovery efforts from the overnight devastation. The latest figures from the office of President Rafael Correa more than triple earlier estimates. Hundreds more people were injured when the the shallow 7.8-magnitude quake struck late Saturday along the South American country's...

By Yuri Garcia GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (Reuters) - Ecuador launched rescue operations on Sunday after its biggest earthquake in decades killed at least 77 people, caused devastation in coastal populations, and left an unknown number trapped in ruins. The 7.8 magnitude quake struck off Ecuador's Pacific coast on Saturday night and was felt around the Andean nation of 16 million people, causing...

Wikimedia Commons Caracas, Apr 15 (EFE).- The scarcity of medicines in Venezuela continues to be a tragedy visible in pharmacies and hospitals around the country, weeks after congress declared a "humanitarian health crisis" that includes the lack of 872 essential medications. Cancer patients, HIV carriers, diabetics and those suffering hypertension must either trek from one drugstore to the...

Firefighters walk among collapsed houses caused by an earthquake in Mashiki town, Kumamoto prefecture, southern Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo, April 15, 2016. (Reuters Open) A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck southern Japan early on Saturday morning (local time), less than 24 hours after a smaller quake killed at least nine people. The quake's epicenter was near the city of Kumamoto an...

Wikimedia Commons Miami, Apr 13 (EFE).- The Miami Beach City Commission voted against the opening of a Cuban consulate until significant human rights reforms have been made in that country, local media reported Wednesday. With four votes in favor and three against, the commission "has thrown cold water on their mayor's hotly debated idea of a having a Cuban consulate in the city," according...

Members of the media stand outside the Mossack Fonseca law firm office in Panama City April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso PANAMA CITY - Following a raid of its offices late Tuesday by Panamanian authorities, the Mossack Fonseca law firm said Wednesday that it is "ready, willing and eager" to collaborate with the Panamanian Attorney General's Office, which is investigating the murky dealings d...

Pixabay Commons Lima, Apr 12 (EFE). - Two American tourists died in Peru when the cruise ship on which they were touring the Amazon River caught fire, the head of the Iquitos port authority, Oscar Garrido, told EFE. The fatalities were Larry Morris Hammer, 74, and Cristy Jeins Hammer, 72, who died while being taken to the hospital in Iquitos, capital of the Amazon region of Loreto in northe...

A police officer stands guard outside the Mossack Fonseca law firm office in Panama City April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Panama's attorney general late on Tuesday raided the offices of the Mossack Fonseca law firm to search for any evidence of illegal activities, authorities said in a statement. The Panama-based law firm is at the centre of the "Panama Papers" l...

Microcephaly is a birth defect which causes babies to be born with unusually small heads and brains. (Photo by Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters) A group of Brazilian scientists on Monday released a study proving the relationship between the Zika virus and cases of babies being born with abnormally small skulls, a condition known as microcephaly which has increased exponentially in Brazil in recent mon...

Wikimedia Commons Baghdad/Mosul, Apr 9 (EFE).- At least 58 jihadists of the Islamic State, or IS, including an armed commander, were killed Saturday in attacks and skirmishes in central and northern Iraq, security officials told EFE. The Center of Operations for the liberation of Nineveh province reported in a communique the death of the Islamic State's head of security in the northern town...

Wikimedia Commons By Carlota Ciudad Rio de Janeiro, Apr 11 (EFE).- Stable sexual relationships in which more than two people are involved, or "polylove" as its participants call it, is gradually gaining ground in Brazil by making use of a loophole in the laws of the country, where more and more unions of this kind are in evidence. Though the number of such cases has grown in recent years...

Image;: Wikimedia Commons Lima, Apr 10 (EFE). - The death toll from the ambush of a military patrol earlier this weekend in the jungles of central Peru has risen to four, with five others wounded, while an attack in a nearby region wounded two people, the Armed Forces Joint Command said Sunday. The patrol from the 311th Counterinsurgency Battalion was attacked early Saturday by remnants of ...

Wikimedia Commons Havana, Apr 9 (EFE).- Beer production in Cuba is far from meeting the country's growing demand in stores, inns and hotels, due to the large increase in tourism, a demand that can only be met by building a new brewery, the island's producers said. The current demand for beer is beyond the capacity of Cuba's existing breweries, which have signed contracts for more than 33 mi...

Wikimedia Commons Caracas, Apr 6 (EFE).- The scarcity of clean water and personal hygiene products has increased the cases of scabies, malaria, diarrhea and amoebiasis in Venezuela, the director of epidemiology with the central state of Miranda's health department warned on Wednesday. "The lack of access to a constant supply of good-quality water brings with it, as a consequence, an increas...

Wikimedia Commons Santiago, Apr 6 (EFE).- The Chilean navy on Wednesday detected a huge gathering of uncounted thousands of jellyfish - some 16 kilometers (10 miles) long - off the coast of the South American nation. The navy said that the unusual phenomenon was discovered when the navy was making an overflight of a portion of the Chilean coast. Between San Pedro Bay and the Farellones L...

Transparency International This official statement by Transparency International was issued in the wake of the Panama Papers affair. Gonzalo Delaveau Swett, Chair of the Transparency International chapter in Chile, resigned from his postafter being linked to the Panama Papers, and thus presumably involved in the shadowy world of hiding money in secretive offshore accounts: “We are deeply tr...

Source: Diego Reyna Facebok Toronto, Apr 4 (EFE).- A Mexican construction worker helping to build Trump Tower in Vancouver, British Columbia, placed his country's flag on the building to protest recent statements by U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump. Diego Reyna placed the flag over the weekend, Canadian media reported Monday, and he later posted a photo on the social media ...

Source: Alfredo Guzman Twitter Mexico City, Apr 4 (EFE).- A Mexican government contractor, a former CEO of state-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, and an associate of notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman are some of the individuals whose names appear in the Panama Papers. Mexican media outlets Aristegui Noticias and Proceso magazine, part of the International ...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Apr 2 (EFE).- Six experts have concluded that at least 17 people were incinerated at a garbage dump in the southern Mexican town of Cocula and said more tests would be carried out to determine whether the bodies of all 43 students who went missing in 2014 could have been burned to ashes there, the latest development in a case that has garnered international atten...

Havana, Apr 1 (EFE).- Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will arrive in Cuba on Saturday afternoon for an official visit that will include a meeting with Cuban counterpart Raul Castro, the Caribbean island's state-run media said. Prior to his meeting with Castro, Nazarbayev is expected to pay tribute to Cuban independence hero Jose Marti - a tradition for visiting heads of state and other di...

Ronald McDonald sits in the Netherlands. Source: Wikimedia Commons New York, Mar 31 (EFE).- McDonald's Corp. plans to open approximately 1,300 fast food restaurants in China over the next five years, CEO Steve Easterbrook said. The top exec at the U.S. multinational said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the firm wants to make China its second largest market worldwide, behin...

Veracruz, Mexico, Mar 29 (EFE).- The alleged rape of a girl by four young men from wealthy families in the Gulf state of Veracruz has rocked Mexico, prompting people to take to the streets to protest the case's handling. The girl was leaving a disco in January 2015 in Boca del Rio when she was forced into a vehicle by college students Enrique Capitaine, Jorge Cotaita, Diego Cruz and Gerardo Rod...

Washington, Mar 29 (EFE).- Two suspicious packages found Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol forced police to evacuate a group of tourists and close off streets through the area, a congressional security spokesperson told EFE. The incident occurred after on Monday a man entered the Congressional Visitor Center, pulled out a pistol and caused chaos by pointing it at one of the officers directing tourist...

Wikimedia Commons Miami, Mar 27 (EFE).- The U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a group of 26 Cuban migrants on a raft near the Florida coast, seven of whom had bullet wounds, spokesmen for the force told EFE on Sunday. The group of Cubans was discovered on their raft near Key West, where they were attempting to land, on Saturday. Seven of the migrants had been shot and six of them were taken t...