Orlando Police Twitter Orlando, Florida, Jun 14 (EFE).- Two days after the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history at a gay nightclub in Orlando this Sunday, families of the dead and wounded struggle to carry on with their lives, while authorities investigate the background of the gunman, Omar Seddique Mateen. At Orlando Regional Medical Center where most of those wounded at the Pulse night...

Wikimedia Commons Austin, Texas, Jun 13 (EFE).- Hilda Ramirez is a Guatemalan Indian who has spent four months in a church that has provided her with sanctuary in this Texas city in order to prevent U.S. authorities from detaining her and complying with the deportation order issued against her and her 10-year-old son. She has no wish to return to Guatemala, from where she fled north in 2014...

EFE file Caracas, Jun 12 (EFE).- Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles said Sunday that socialist President Nicolas Maduro would be removed from office this year and insisted that government opponents had gathered the quantity of signatures - 1 percent of the voting population - needed for the first phase of the recall referendum process. Maduro "will be recalled this year, period,...

EFE file photo United States President Barack Obama addressed his nation on Sunday afternoon in the wake of a horrific shooting being investigated as an of terrorism. As of mid-day on Sunday, reports indicated that at least 50 people were killed by a man identified as Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen of Afghan ethnicity, who burst into a nightclub that caters to gay revelers before shooting into...

The 2011 World Naked Bike Ride in Brighton, UK.- Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Jun 11 (EFE).- Hundreds of bicyclists rolled into the streets Saturday, both in Mexico City and in Guadalajara, Jalisco state, to take part in the World Naked Bike Ride. Among the objectives of this 6th edition of the show-all ride was, first, to raise awareness about the environmental advantages of bicycles ove...

Archive San Salvador, Jun 7 (EFE).- The former director of El Salvador's penitentiaries, Nelson Rauda, was sent to prison on Tuesday for allegedly forming part of a network that authorized privileges and perks for imprisoned gang members during a truce with those groups from 2012-2014. Rauda, who had been a fugitive since early May - when authorities arrested 18 people, including top police...

Illustrative image. (Flickr Commons) Caracas, Jun 6 (EFE).- The body of Italian diplomat Mauro Monciatti, an administrative official at Italy's consulate in Caracas, was found at his home in an eastern Caracas neighborhood, fellow diplomat Lorenzo Salinas confirmed to EFE on Monday. Monciatti, 60, died from blunt trauma to the skull, an official with the Cicpc criminal investigative unit, w...

Beijing, Jan 5 (EFE).- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sent a clear warning to China on Sunday regarding Beijing's possible creation of an air defense identification zone in the South China Sea, saying such a move would be a "provocative and destabilizing act." The hypothetical declaration of an air defense zone, discussed in China's state-run press last week, "would automatically raise tens...

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

Photo: Activist Sergio Castillo, Twitter Mexico City, Jun 3 (EFE).- Police reinforced several points of the Mexican capital Friday to prevent hundreds of protesting teachers from following through on a threat to march to the international airport serving this metropolis, EFE confirmed. More than 4,000 police were taking part in the operation launched early Friday to contain the teachers, wh...

Wikimiedia Commons Caracas, Jun 2 (EFE).- The Venezuelan military and police on Thursday used tear gas in Caracas to disperse several groups of protesters who were trying to approach Miraflores Palace, the seat of government, to demonstrate against the scarcity of food and medicine. A large contingent of heavily armed members of the Bolivarian National Guard and the National Police fired te...

Wikimedia Commons By Marina Villen Luxor, Egypt, May 30 (EFE).- Temples that are almost empty and docked cruise ships unlikely to sail the Nile anytime soon are elements of the image presented by the Egyptian cities of Luxor and Aswan, whose Pharaonic ruins wait impassively for tourists to return. The dispirited inhabitants of these historic sites dedicate themselves - or rather dedicate...

An Uber driver in Bogota. Wikimedia Commons San Juan, May 31 (EFE).- Traffic chaos prevailed in San Juan on Tuesday as taxi drivers and truckers protested the arrival in Puerto Rico of Uber, the private ride-hailing service, which links passengers and drivers via a mobile application. On Tuesday morning it was difficult to find taxis on the capital streets, while some tourist excursions had...

Photo by Bill Damon, Flickr Commons Lima, May 30 (EFE).- A group of Peruvian shamans faced off Monday in a duel of rituals to bring an election victory either to Keiko Fujimori or to rival Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the June 5 presidential runoff. The rituals were celebrated by six shamans, four in favor of Fujimori and two supporting Kuczynski, outside Lima's National Stadium. Empowered b...

Wikimedia Commons Santiago, May 27 (EFE).- Chile has completed the removal of an additional 31,000 land mines along its northern border with Peru, the Defense Ministry said. "The efficacy of the mine-clearance work by the armed forces is apparent in the numbers: out of 181,814 landmines planted in different areas of the national territory, 130,497 have already been destroyed in the existing...

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, May 27 (EFE).- The gang rape of a 16-year-old girl by more than 30 men in a Rio de Janeiro shantytown has sparked an outcry for justice on social networks and from Brazil's political class, including suspended President Dilma Rousseff and interim head of state Michel Temer. Thousands of Internet users have inundated Twitter with messages expressing indignation...

Illustrative image. (Flickr Commons) By Marti Quintana. Teotihuacan, Mexico, May 26 (EFE).- Lack of trust in the authorities, a perception of abandonment and a fired-up sense of community led hundreds of residents of a central Mexican town to lynch two suspected kidnappers. All was apparently quiet on Wednesday in the central square of Atlatongo, a town of 5,000 in the central state of M...

An anti-GMO activist in San Francisco. Source: Wikimedia Commons Asuncion, May 24 (EFE).- About 100 farmers with peasant organizations on Tuesday left their family farms in Paraguay's interior to attend a fair in downtown Asuncion, where they displayed their native seeds, the basis for their resistance against the advance of genetically modified crops, or GMOs. The seeds of Paraguayan stapl...

Source: EFE Caracas, May 24 (EFE).- The Coca-Cola Company of Venezuela said in a communique that it has used up its inventories of refined sugar for industrial use, which has in turn forced the company to temporarily suspend all lines of soft drinks containing that ingredient, though they will continue to produce others. "The sugar shortage means a temporary interruption of lines of soft dr...

Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. Source: Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, May 23 (EFE).- Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman will not appeal any ruling opening the way for his extradition to the United States, a move approved by the Mexican Foreign Relations Secretariat last week, if he reaches an agreement with U.S. authorities, defense attorney Jose Refugio Rodriguez told EFE. "Joaquin is n...

Monument at Punta Querandí, Wikimedia Commons Buenos Aires, May 22 (EFE).- A small patch of land is the epicenter of a conflict to defend the rights of Argentina's original inhabitants against construction firms. Punta Querandi, a little "peninsula" in a river in the Buenos Aires provincial town of Dique Lujan, was isolated by the collapse of its only bridge and by the private neighborhoods...

David, Panama, May 21 (EFE).- Panamanian authorities have stopped selling tickets for Mexico-bound flights to transfer nearly 4,000 Cubans stranded in the Central American country since last December, an immigration official told EFE. Dozens of Cubans trying to make their way to the United States have been waiting in line in this western city, capital of Chiriqui province, to purchase the $575 ...

Police officers stand guard next to a company list showing the Mossack Fonseca law firm outside their office in Panama City April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso Montevideo, May 20 (EFE).- The Panama Papers are "the tip of the iceberg" with respect to offshore companies, according to Panamanian financial expert Julio Aguirre, who said Friday that the massive leak of Mossack Fonseca's documents ...

Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. Source: Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, May 20 (EFE).- Mexico's Foreign Relations Secretariat said Friday it had approved the extradition of notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman to the United States so he can be tried by federal courts in California and Texas for a range of crimes. In a statement, the secretariat said it conveyed its decision to the ...

An EgyptAir Airbus. Wikimedia Commons Cairo, May 19 (EFE).- An EgyptAir passenger jet that left Paris bound for Cairo with 66 people on board crashed into the Mediterranean Sea early Thursday for unknown reasons, although authorities are not ruling out a terrorist attack and say that hypothesis is more likely than technical failure. The Airbus A320 disappeared from radar screens at 2:45 a.m...

(Courtesy) NEW YORK/FRANKFURT (Reuters) German drugs and chemicals group Bayer has made an unsolicited takeover proposal to U.S. seeds company Monsanto, aiming to create the world's biggest agricultural supplier and take advantage of converging pesticides and seeds markets. Monsanto disclosed the approach on Wednesday before Bayer confirmed its move, though neither released proposed terms. ...

Wikimedia Commons Caracas, May 17 (EFE).- A U.S. military aircraft "with lethal technical abilities" illegally entered Venezuelan airspace twice over the past week, President Nicolas Maduro said Tuesday. "Our military aviation detected the illegal entry, for unusual espionage tasks, of the Boeing 707 E-3 Sentry, which is an airborne early warning control center system that has all the mecha...

Guatemala special forces soldiers on patrol. Wikimedia Commons Guatemala City, May 15 (EFE).- The Guatemalan government on the weekend denounced what it said was a new incident of the "excessive use of force by the Belizean army" after the detention of three Guatemalans for illegal gold mining in an operation that resulted in one of the men being wounded. In a brief communique released by t...

(Reuters OMX) Caracas, May 14 (EFE).- Crowds of Venezuelan opposition members gathered Saturday in Caracas to demand that electoral authorities act quickly to hold a recall referendum that might succeed in removing from office the president of Venezuela, the Chavista Nicolas Maduro. The demonstration that began around 10:00 a.m. downtown in the Venezuelan capital was called two days ago by ...

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

Presidential Standard of Brazil. Wikimedia Commons Brasilia, May 12 (EFE).- Vice President Michel Temer will become Brazil's acting president on Thursday after the Senate voted to remove Dilma Rousseff from office for up to six months while she is tried in that chamber for allegedly violating budget laws. The vote to impeach and suspend Rousseff came after a marathon session in the upper ho...

Wikimedia Commons Toronto, May 10 (EFE).- Canadian William Gadoury, age 15, discovered an ancient Maya city in the Yucatan jungle without leaving home while reviewing satellite images on his computer, local media reported Tuesday. Gadoury, who admits being fascinated by the Maya civilization, discovered that the location of bright stars in various constellations corresponded to the location...

YouTube Commons Lima, May 9 (EFE).- The Cuzco Decentralized Culture Directorate reported Monday that vandals had painted eight graffiti with aerosols on five streets of the historic center of that ancient Inca city, which they called a crime against culture. The graffiti were sprayed on the stone walls with black paint to form the word "KOYOS 16," at a height of approximately 40 centimeters...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, May 8 (EFE).- Mexican authorities shut down a Web site that posted erotic pictures of minors and extorted them in exchange for removing the photos, the Attorney General's Office, or PGR, reported Sunday. Two people have been arrested so far for their association with the network operating in the southern states of Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo, the head o...

Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. Source: Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, May 7 (EFE).- Mexican authorities on Saturday transferred notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman from the Altiplano prison in the central state of Mexico to another maximum-security prison in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, amid rumors about his possible extradition to the United States. Mexico's Gover...

Illustrative image. (Flickr Commons) Caracas, May 6 (EFE).- Venezuelan politician German Mavare, leader of the opposition UNT party, died Friday after being shot in the head, an assassination that occurred in the western state of Lara, his organization said. "The board of the UNT expresses its deepest sorrow for the slaying of colleague German Mavare. We demand justice and an end to violenc...

EFE file photo Washington, May 5 (EFE).- A U.S. Army officer has sued President Barack Obama for waging war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria without congressional authorization, U.S. media said Thursday. Capt. Nathan Michael Smith, an intelligence officer stationed in Kuwait, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Smith argues that ...

Confiscated rhino horns. Wikimedia Commons By Jessica Martorell Nairobi, Apr 30 abr (EFE).- Kenya declared war on poachers Saturday with the burning of 105 tons of ivory and 1.35 tons of rhinoceros horns gathered by illegal hunting, which puts at risk the survival of elephants in Africa. Never before has such a huge quantity of ivory been destroyed in Kenya, which reaffirmed with this ac...

Canadian Red Cross Toronto, May 3 (EFE).- Canadian authorities on Tuesday ordered the evacuation of large parts of the city of Fort McMurray, some 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) northeast of Toronto due to the danger posed by forest fires in the vicinity. The city, home to more than 60,000 people, many of them immigrants, is one of the country's petroleum centers. The forced evacuation a...

Wikimedia Commons San Juan, May 2 (EFE).- Cinefiesta, San Juan's prestigious international short film festival, has canceled its next edition after finding it lacked sponsors due to the economic crisis the Caribbean island is going through, its chief promoter, Luis Cruz, announced Monday. Despite the fact that 5,044 short films from 124 countries have been entered for this year's edition, C...