Bolivia

Bolivia appears to be shifting sharply away from the conservative policies of the U.S.-backed interim government that took power last year after leftist President Evo Morales resigned and fled the country

Bolivians are settling in for a tense, and possibly long, vote count as results trickle in from Sunday’s high-stakes presidential election meant to put an end to political turmoil following last year’s annulled ballot that resulted in leftist President Evo Morales’ resignation

Prosecutors in Bolivia’s capital issued an arrest warrant against ousted President Evo Morales on Wednesday, accusing him of sedition and terrorism.

Interior Minister Arturo Murillo recently brought charges against Morales, alleging he promoted violent clashes that led to 35 deaths during disturbances before and after he left office.

Former Bolivian President Evo Morales has flown to Argentina, where the new center-left government said Thursday that it had granted him political asylum. “I’ve come to Argentina to keep fighting for the most humble people,” Morales said on Twitter. “I feel strong and excited.” Morales will live in the capital with his two children, who arrived on Nov. 23. The…

The death toll from an operation by Bolivian security forces to clear the blockade of a fuel plant by anti-government protesters has risen to at least eight, officials said Wednesday. The public defender’s office and the state Institute of Forensic Investigations announced the casualty figures, a day after the violence in the city of El Alto, near La Paz.

President Evo Morales on Thursday declared himself victor of the weekend election without a final vote tally, stirring more anger among foes who have protested for days claiming fraud in the vote count, while the U.S., Brazil, Argentina and Colombia joined in calling for Bolivia to hold a runoff between the incumbent and his top challenger. Electoral authorities, meanwhile, announced...

Chile is one of the richest countries in the region. Haiti is the poorest. Ecuador has a centrist government. Bolivia’s is socialist. Yet, from Port-au-Prince to Santiago, furious demonstrators were marching this week to demand fundamental change, part of a wave of often-violent protests that has set tires, government offices, trains and metro stations ablaze across Latin America and the...

Backed by military aircraft, Brazilian troops on Saturday were deploying in the Amazon to fight fires that have swept the region and prompted anti-government protests as well as an international outcry. President Jair Bolsonaro also tried to temper global concern, saying previously deforested areas had burned and that intact rainforest was spared. Even so, the fires were likely to be...

FIFA’s Council has unanimously approved expanding the Women’s World Cup from 24 teams to 32 for 2023 and has reopened bidding to host the tournament but made no mention of changing prize money. FIFA said Wednesday the decision was made remotely. Nine national associations had expressed interest in hosting and were due to submit their formal bids by Oct. 4:...

The Vatican formally opened debate Monday on letting married men be ordained as priests in remote parts of the Amazon where priests are so few that Catholics can go weeks or months without attending a Mass. The call for study on the proposal was contained in the working document, released Monday, for an October meeting of South American bishops on...

The Elks Club in Middletown hosted a naturalization ceremony Friday.

Julia Flores Colque still sings with joy in her indigenous Quechua tongue and strums the five strings of a tiny Andean guitar known as the charango, despite a recorded age of almost 118 years. In her long life, she has witnessed two world wars, revolutions in her native Bolivia and the transformation of her rural town of Sacaba from 3,000...

Some bad habits die hard when it comes to U.S. politicians traveling to Latin America. The latest faux pas came from the White House ahead of Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to Peru to attend the Summit of the Americas. Guidance sent to the press by Pence’s office on Thursday said the vice president would attend a Friday banquet hosted...

Facebook announced Thursday that it won’t be splitting the News Feed into two after all, CNBC reported. The social media site said it was ending testing of the change, which would have pushed publisher content onto a second feed away from posts by family and friends. “People don’t want two separate feeds,” Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed, said in...

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley called Venezuela “an increasingly violent narco-state” that threatens the world, speaking Monday at an informal Security Council meeting on the South American nation that was boycotted by Russia, China, Egypt and Bolivia.

The Miami-Dade Commission is calling on President Trump to grant temporary protected status to Venezuelans in the United States.

The Transformers have been transformed yet again. Already featured as toys and video games, comic books, television series and movies, they’ve now been reconfigured as exuberantly colorful multistory buildings that loom unexpectedly over the hardscrabble streets of El Alto, the world’s highest big city. A fan of the series, Santos Churata, designs the facades and interiors of lurid colors, jutting...

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that by 2050 global demand for fresh water is projected to grow by more than 40 percent and at least a quarter of the world’s population will live in countries with a “chronic or recurrent” lack of clean water. He told the Security Council that “strains on water access are already rising in all regions,”...

How does a leading neo-Nazi website that has railed against Hispanic immigrants expand its audience beyond a loyal base of U.S. white supremacists? By publishing a Spanish-language edition, of course. The Daily Stormer — infamous for orchestrating internet harassment campaigns by its “Troll Army” of readers — recently launched El Daily Stormer as a “news portal” tailoring its racist, anti-Semitic...

Could potatoes one day support human life on Mars? Scientists in Peru have used a simulator that mimics the harsh conditions on the Red Planet to successfully grow a small potato plant. It’s an experiment straight out of the 2015 Hollywood movie “The Martian” that scientists say may also benefit arid regions already feeling the impact of climate change.