International
Gustavo Petro announces renegotiation of the U.S.-Colombia FTA
August 17|
Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced on Wednesday that his government began renegotiating the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States, which has been in force for 11 years between the two countries.
During a meeting with coffee growers held in the town of Pitalito, in the department of Huila (south), Petro confirmed: “I want to publicly announce that its renegotiation (of the FTA) begins”.
The president justified the decision by the disadvantages that, as he explained, Colombia has with the United States as a result of the signing of the FTA in which sectors of national production cannot compete with those of that country.
In this sense, he argued that “If I wanted to replace that corn (in reference to the corn that Bogota imports from the U.S. and Canada) with Colombian corn, I would have 1,200,000 more jobs, that is, wealth. Why can’t I do it? Because the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, which was signed a few years ago, forbids it,” he said.
In his argument, the President explained that wealth is not in extraction, but in production, and that what is being experienced at the moment is the crisis of the extraction model.
For this reason, he considered that the renegotiation of NAFTA will be one of the pillars to return to that productive model, in which one of the bases will be the industrialization of agriculture, always with greater investment in human capital:
“If we are going to industrialize, we need knowledge, that means strengthening the public university, one of the priority axes of this Government”, he explained.
The President himself recalled that renegotiating the FTA with the United States was a banner during his campaign for the Presidency a year ago.
In his speech, Petro made a description of how the country’s economy has been for decades and how, as a result, “half of the Colombian economy has jobs that do not even earn the minimum wage and from this derives our social inequality, our poverty and from social inequality derives our main problems we have today, such as violence”.
International
Uribe requests freedom amid appeal of historic bribery conviction
Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe on Monday requested that the Supreme Court restore his freedom while he appeals the historic 12-year house arrest sentence he received for bribery and procedural fraud.
Uribe, the most prominent figure of Colombia’s right wing, was convicted last week by a lower court for attempting to bribe paramilitary members into denying his ties to the violent anti-guerrilla squads.
Since Friday, the 73-year-old has been under house arrest at his residence in Rionegro, about 30 km from Medellín. The judge justified the measure by citing a risk of flight.
However, Uribe’s defense team rejected that argument and formally petitioned the court to immediately lift the detention order, claiming it lacks legal basis.
Uribe, a dominant force in Colombian politics for decades, is now the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted and placed under arrest, found guilty of witness tampering and obstruction of justice to prevent links to paramilitary groups.
He has repeatedly denounced the trial as politically motivated, blaming pressure from the leftist government currently in power.
His political party, Centro Democrático, has called for nationwide protests on August 7 in support of Uribe, who remains popular for his hardline stance against guerrilla groups.
Uribe has until August 13 to submit his written appeal. The case will then move to the Bogotá High Court, which has until October 16 to uphold, overturn, or dismiss the sentence. If the deadline passes without a decision, the case will be archived.
International
U.S. Embassy staff restricted as gunfire erupts near compound in Port-au-Prince
The poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean is currently engulfed in a deep political crisis and a wave of violence driven by armed groups — a situation that an international security mission led by Kenya is attempting to stabilize.
Due to the worsening security conditions, the U.S. government has suspended all official movements of embassy personnel outside the compound in Port-au-Prince, the U.S. State Department announced Monday in a security alert posted on social media platform X.
“There are intense gunfights in the Tabarre neighborhood, near the U.S. Embassy,” the alert reads, urging the public to avoid the area.
Tabarre is a municipality located near Port-au-Prince International Airport, northeast of the Haitian capital.
According to a July report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 3,141 people were killed in Haitibetween January 1 and June 30 of this year.
International
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
The Israeli military announced on Sunday that 136 boxes of food aid were airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, and Belgium.
“In recent hours, six countries conducted air drops of 136 aid packages containing food for residents in the southern and northern Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which added that the operation was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli military emphasized that they will “continue working to improve the humanitarian response alongside the international community” and reiterated their stance to “refute false allegations of deliberate famine in Gaza.”
The announcement comes as UN agencies warn Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine. More than one in three residents go days without eating, and other nutrition indicators have dropped to their worst levels since the conflict began.
The agencies also noted the difficulty of “collecting reliable data in current conditions, as Gaza’s health systems —already devastated by nearly three years of conflict— are collapsing.”
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported on Sunday that hospitals in the enclave recorded six deaths from hunger and malnutrition on Saturday, all of them adults.
Uribe requests freedom amid appeal of historic bribery conviction
U.S. Embassy staff restricted as gunfire erupts near compound in Port-au-Prince
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
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Uribe requests freedom amid appeal of historic bribery conviction