TEGUCIGALPA -- The military officers who rushed deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya out of the country Sunday committed a crime but will be exonerated for saving the country from mob violence, the army's top lawyer said. In an interview with The Miami Herald and El Salvador's elfaro.net, army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza acknowledged that top military brass made the call to forcibly remove Zelaya -- and they circumvented laws when they did it. It was the first time any...

The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the appointment of Jorge Palacios as the Chief of the new Buenos Aires Metropolitan Police. In a letter to Minister of Justice and Security of Buenos Aires Town Hall, Guillermo Montenegro, the Center’s Director for Latin America, Sergio Widder, reminded that “Chief Palacios was involved in the less transparent period of the investigation of the AMIA bombing, and accusations of covering up are pending against him.” “To appoint...

TEHRAN: Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Iran's presidential election results mark a big "victory for the anti-imperialist camp," the official IRNA news agency reported. "Iran's election results mark a big victory for the entire anti-imperialist camp. Absolutely from now on, we will deal with global issues more powerfully," Ahmadinejad made the remarks in a meeting with the visiting Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez in Tehran Wednesday. ...

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has written to Ecuador’s Foreign Minister, Fánder Falconi, urging him to order the clean up of antisemitic graffiti which deface the outside wall of the Ministry for the last two weeks. The graffiti read: “Israeli Embassy out of the Country”; “Genocidal Israel” with a Swastika; and “Star of David = Swastika”. “Despite the time elapsed since the graffiti were painted, we believe that the security monitoring...

From the beginning of his rule in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez has stridently criticized Israel. In recent months, Chavez has found a more vulnerable target: the Jewish population inside Venezuela. Reports indicate that the Mayor of Miranda’s capital city incited an angry group of Chavez supporters to paint Nazi swastikas on the home of an anti-Chavez Jewish politician, Governor Henrique Capriles Radonski. “We are showing Capriles that …people are opposed to his continuous attacks...

TEGUCIGALPA - Honduras' interim government battled on Tuesday against a tide of international support for ousted President Manuel Zelaya who vowed to return home after troops toppled and exiled him in a coup. Honduras faces growing pressure to reinstate Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who was forced out on Sunday and spirited away by the army to Costa Rica in the first military putsch in Central America since the Cold War. The Honduran capital Tegucigalpa was mostly...

TEGUCIGALPA - Honduras has shut down television and radio stations since an army coup over the weekend, in a media blackout than has drawn condemnation from an international press freedom group. Shortly after the Honduran military seized President Manuel Zelaya and flew him to Costa Rica on Sunday, soldiers stormed a popular radio station and cut off local broadcasts of international television networks CNN en Espanol and Venezuelan-based Telesur, which is sponsored by leftist governments...

TEGUCIGALPA - Soldiers ousted the democratically elected president of Honduras on Sunday and Congress named a successor, but the leftist ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced what he called an illegal coup and vowed to stay in power. The first military takeover of a Central American government in 16 years drew widespread condemnation from governments in Latin America and the world, and Chavez vowed to overthrow the country's apparent new leader. President Manuel Zelaya was...

Police announced that evidence found in the computers of dead FARC commander 'Raul Reyes' prove that the guerrilla organization has networks in 17 countries, preparing "attacks on Colombians". National Police Commissioner Oscar Naranjo said that information on 'Raul Reyes' computers was "indisputable, irrefutable proof that the FARC have a presence in 17 countries in the world". Naranjo said that thanks to the information uncovered, six judicial processes against the...

During a summit in Venezuela on Wednesday, the Caribbean and South American integration organization, ALBA, solidified its regional presence by adding Ecuador, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda as its newest member countries. Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa said the ALBA bloc, which aspires to supplant neoliberal, U.S.-dominated free trade deals with regional unity, must construct a type of integration that goes beyond the economic initiatives that the ALBA and other...