GUATEMALA CITY – In a second day of trial on Thursday, witnesses told the harrowing details of a Jan. 31, 1980 massacre by Guatemalan police that killed 37 people in a fire at the Spanish Embassy in the capital. The attack was in retaliation of a group of indigenous protesters, farmers and students who had taken over the embassy to demand an end to wartime atrocities committed in their communities.
While most of the more than three million refugees who have fled the Syrian conflict have flooded into neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Turkey, a growing number are defying language barriers and distance to try their luck in Latin America.
In the past month, U.S. President Barack Obama has launched an open-ended Middle East war, built an impressive coalition of allies and entirely reversed his previous strategy of standing back from the region. Curiously, however, Obama has so far refused to reckon with the actor that more than any other is responsible for ruining his foreign policy doctrine, creating the security crisis and dragging U.S. military forces back to Iraq and Syria.
Speaking to CBS News, the United States president said that former Al-Qaeda fighters driven from Iraq by U.S. and local forces had been able to gather in Syria to form the newly dangerous Islamic State group.
The duality of this particular moment, the tension between the good and the terrible, is so stark it evokes the light-versus-darkness heart of the Zoroastrian philosophy of the Yazidi people who, once upon a time, so long ago it seems hard to remember, helped usher in this latest chapter of Mideast war.
SANTIAGO, Chile – A Chilean man burned alive when a homemade bomb went off in Santiago early Thursday, law enforcement officials said, following the latest in a series of recent explosions.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. and Middle East allies pounded Islamic State positions in Syria in a barrage of airstrikes, a major expansion of President Barack Obama's effort to destroy the Sunni extremist group.
GUATEMALA CITY – Eight indigenous people have died in a village west of the capital after a clash that saw residents turn guns on their neighbors over plans to build a road and a cement plant.
SANTIAGO, Chile – Two men and a woman were arrested early Thursday on suspicion of involvement in a recent bombing in a subway station in the Chilean capital, police said.
Chile's achievements are enviable for Latin America, but Chileans no longer want to be merely the best among the least. Many are dogged by their status as the last among best.
