HAVANA – Cuba policy sometimes makes strange bedfellows, which is how a man like Thomas Marten, a burly Illinois soybean farmer with a bushy red beard, had come to Havana to make a statement about the principles of free enterprise.
The move came after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro lashed out Saturday at U.S. "conspiracies" against his socialist government and ordered his foreign ministry to reduce the number of officials at the U.S. Embassy from 100 to 17.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Tabaré Vázquez was sworn in as president of Uruguay Sunday, returning to office a decade after first leading the left to power and drawing a curtain on folksy farmer José Mujica's colorful rule.
For the first time, voters will be able to select individual candidates from any party rather than being forced to vote for a single party with an established list of candidates. Voters can still opt to simply choose a party.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro also singled out several U.S. political figures as being unable to come to Venezuela because his government considered them "terrorists."
HAVANA, Cuba — With the United States and Cuba set to resume talks Friday in Washington on the restoration of diplomatic relations, a senior Cuban official said his government wants to be removed from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring nations and to be able to reopen U.S. bank accounts in order for the process to move forward.
Paving the way for a possible visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to Costa Rica later this year, Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel González met last Thursday with his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State John Kerry, for the first time since the May 2014 inauguration of President Luis Guillermo Solís.
“The United States and all countries south of us should and need to do business with each other. ... There’s no need to go to China when you have Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia and Chile."
At his May 8, 2014 inauguration, Solís pledged to run his administration as a “glass house” while fighting the corruption he said was “eating away” the country.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Panama’s economy will grow by 7 percent this year, but because of glaring inequality, most Panamanians will never see that prosperity. In Guatemala, corruption is rampant among the “klepto-dictatorship” that runs the country, and in El Salvador, gross domestic product stagnates as politicians stuff their pockets with money from violent gangs.
