Workers of Caracas-based private TV news network Globovisión rejected through a statement the accusations and threats made last weekend by several pro-government groups. "We categorically reject their accusations as absurd and totally unfounded," said the document. The workers also urged government authorities to "publicly repudiate and detach themselves from these acts of harassment against journalists and workers of Globovisión, and to ensure peaceful...

Washington, DC-South Carolina Congressman Jeff Duncan’s legislation concerning the Iranian government’s activities in the Western Hemisphere took a major step towards becoming law on Wednesday, when it passed out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee with strong bipartisan support. The legislation, which currently has 73 cosponsors, will now move to the House floor for a vote. “Congress is recognizing the seriousness of the threat that Iran poses to both Americans here at...

The Mexican army seized a shoulder-fired missile, a rocket launcher and three grenades in an operation against drug trafficking in the Gulf of Mexico state of Veracruz, the Defence Department said Tuesday. Soldiers also found four rifles, 2,870 rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof vehicle, and packages of cocaine and marijuana in a raid in the ranch town of El Guayabal. Unidentified men fled the ranch when the troops arrived Monday and couldn't be captured. The Zetas drug cartel controls drug...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez revealed Sunday that a new tumor recently removed from his pelvic region was of the same type of cancer as a baseball-sized growth extracted from that part of his body about eight months ago. In his first TV appearance in nine days, Chavez said the surgery and follow-up tests showed the tumor was "a recurrence of the initially diagnosed cancer." As he has done in recent weeks, Chavez defended Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, who has tried to...

The bill, titled "Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act” and approved on Thursday, had been sponsored by representatives of Republican and Democratic parties. According to the bill, Iran has increased the number of its embassies in Latin America from five in 2005 to 11 in 2012. If the whole Congress approves the bill, the State Department would have to inform it of Iran's activities in Latin America within 180 days. Iran has been seeking to expand relations with...

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday expressed concern about allegations that some Latin American drug trafficking organizations are linked with Hezbollah and Iran. "We are concerned about the activities of Iran and Hezbollah in the Western Hemisphere," the top U.S. envoy told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs at a hearing. Washington brands Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group in Lebanon, as a terrorist organization, while Iran's disputed nuclear program is...

Honduras should urgently overhaul its prison system to end overcrowding and improve prison conditions, Human Rights Watch said today. On February 14, 2012, over 300 inmates were killed and dozens were injured during a fire in the Granja Prison in Comayagua, according to local press accounts. Honduran authorities said the fire could have been the consequence of a prison riot or an electrical short circuit. “The tragic deaths of hundreds of inmates, one of the worst incidents of its kind...

Gilda Silvestrucci (photo) has become the latest member of the “Journalists for Life and Free Expression” collective to get threatening phone calls, following Itsmania Pineda Platero, who received a series of threatening calls earlier this month. The two women, along with a number of other journalists, organized a march on 13 December that was violently dispersed outside the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa. The purpose of their march was to protest against free speech...

Argentina's President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, said her country intends to spearhead the increased involvement of Latin American states in the Mideast peace process. Kirchner announced the decision over the weekend at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires, where she met an Israeli-Palestinian delegation of the Peace NGO Forum. The delegation included Dr. Ron Pundak, the former director of the Peres Peace Center, Dr. Meir Margalit, Jerusalem city council member (Meretz), Nancy Sadiq,...

The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, better known by its acronym "ALBA," strongly condemned the current violence in Syria on Sunday. But the ALBA group wasn't condemning the slaughter of civilians by the Assad dictatorship, but violence that it said was being committed by "irregular groups supported by foreign powers." The ALBA group, which consists of Latin America's far-left led countries Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua and a handful of Caribbean...