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Colombia president appeals to football body over Copa America axing

AFP/Editor

Colombia’s President Ivan Duque on Friday appealed to South America’s football federation over its decision to bar the country from hosting the Copa America tournament after social unrest swept the nation.

CONMEBOL earlier in the week rejected a plea by the Colombian government to postpone the June 13-July 10 tournament that it was to share with Argentina, which said it would be ready to host all of the matches.

The continent’s football body said it would now decide where the games which were due to be held in Colombia will be played, with barely three weeks to go until the tournament is due to kick off.

Duque told the Red Mas television he would “would like CONMEBOL to take one final reflection,” on its decision, urging the federation to “provide alternatives” on when the tournament is held.

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The Colombian government has already pleaded with CONMEBOL to postpone the tournament until November but the body refused.

Copa America was due to take place last year but was postponed by 12 months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Colombia is in the midst of a wave of protests and social unrest that has resulted in 42 deaths. Covid-19 cases have also shot up in the last few weeks.

Demonstrators initially took to the streets to protest a proposed tax reform. The plan was quickly shelved, but protests have since morphed into a broader manifestation of anti-government sentiment.

Large and sometimes violent demonstrations have been taking place in Bogota, Medellin and Cali — cities where Copa America games were to be played.

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Colombia is seeing new peaks of deaths from the coronavirus with nearly 500 a day since last week, but Argentina too is grappling with its worst phase yet of the Covid-19 pandemic, recording its highest one-day total of 744 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday.

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FBI Most Wanted Fugitive Arrested in Mexico and Deported to U.S.

Authorities in Mexico announced Thursday that Samuel Ramírez Jr., a U.S. citizen accused of murdering two women and listed among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, was arrested in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Ramírez Jr., 33, was detained Tuesday in Culiacán just 1 hour and 13 minutes after being added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Ten Most Wanted list, the agency said in a statement.

The suspect, who was born in California, has already been deported to the U.S. state of Washington, where he faces charges related to the fatal shooting of two women at a bar in Federal Way in May 2023.

A court issued an arrest warrant for Ramírez in November last year, and the FBI initially offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to his capture, later increasing the amount to up to $1 million.

“To protect individuals’ privacy and ensure continued cooperation from the public, the FBI does not confirm the identity of those who provide information,” the agency said in its statement.

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UN experts warn Nicaragua runs vast transnational network to monitor exiled dissidents

Nicaragua maintains an “extensive” transnational network to monitor and intimidate opposition figures living in exile, affecting “hundreds of thousands” of people, the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua warned on Tuesday.

In a statement, the experts said their report “details an extensive transnational architecture of surveillance and intelligence used to monitor, intimidate and attack the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans living abroad.”

The report, which will be presented on March 16 to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, states that the structure maintained by the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo includes the army, the police, migration authorities and diplomatic missions.

According to the statement, “the government has arbitrarily stripped 452 Nicaraguans of their nationality, left thousands more exiled in a situation of de facto statelessness, and prevented many from returning to Nicaragua.”

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Trump: ‘We Think It’s True’ Amid Claims Iran’s Supreme Leader Was Killed

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he believes multiple reports claiming the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the U.S. and Israeli offensive against the Islamic Republic are likely true, though he stopped short of confirming the news.

“We have a feeling that the information is correct,” he said, according to NBC News. “I don’t want to say anything definitive until I see it, but we think that’s the case. And many of their leaders have disappeared,” he added.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there were “many indications” that Khamenei had died in an attack on his residential compound.