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Ecuador military, prison heads resign after jail riot

AFP

The heads of Ecuador’s armed forces and prisons resigned Monday after weekend riots left 68 dead in the latest outbreak of violence between inmates aligned to rival gangs, the government said.

President Guillermo Lasso accepted the resignations of Vice Admiral Jorge Cabrera, head of the joint command, and Bolivar Garzon, head of the SNAI prisons agency, the president’s office said in a statement.

Fighting over the weekend between inmates armed with guns, machetes and explosives killed dozens at an overcrowded prison in Guayaquil before authorities could regain control.

Social media posts showed gruesome images of prisoners beating and setting fire to bloodied bodies.

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This year, Ecuador’s violent, decrepit and overcrowded prisons have seen some of the worst rioting in the history of Latin American penitentiaries. 

More than 320 inmates have been killed so far in 2021, and the latest riot happened despite a state of emergency enforced in Ecuador’s prison system after even deadlier fighting in September.

The presidency said Lasso agreed to the resignations of Cabrera and Garzon at a meeting on measures to prevent further prison violence with his interior and defense ministers, as well as the military and police chiefs.

Lasso appointed army commander General Orlando Fuel as the new head of the joint command. Marlo Brito, who was head of the Center for Strategic Intelligence (CIES), took over from Garzon at the SNAI.

Another riot in the same prison in Ecuador’s southwest in September left 119 dead — making it the largest such massacre in the country’s history, and one of the worst in Latin America.

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Nestled between the world’s biggest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has seen a surge of violence blamed on fighting between rival drug groups.

The country of 17.7 million people is favored by traffickers because of its porous borders, a dollarized economy and major seaports for export.

Seizures of drugs, mainly cocaine, reached a record of 155 tons between January and October 2021, while street crime and warring between gang-aligned prisoners has left more than 2,000 dead so far this year.

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International

Trump to sign over 200 executive orders, declaring National Emergency at U.S.-Mexico Border

Donald Trump will sign over 200 executive orders this Monday, including declaring a national emergency at the southern U.S. border and designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorists on his first day as president, according to U.S. network Fox News.

A senior administration official familiar with the executive actions Trump will sign, and who was authorized to inform the media according to Fox News, said that the president will sign multiple “omnibus” executive orders, each containing dozens of significant actions.

The source indicated that Trump will declare a national border emergency, order the U.S. military to work with the Department of Homeland Security to fully secure the southern border, and make it a national priority to eliminate all criminal cartels operating on U.S. soil. This version of the emergency declaration had previously been reported by CNN News and was also confirmed to The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

According to Fox News, Trump will close the border to all undocumented foreign nationals through a proclamation. He will also create task forces for national security protection, working with officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other agencies to “completely eradicate the presence of criminal cartels.”

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International

Trump appoints Stallone, Voight, and Gibson as special ambassadors to Hollywood

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday the appointment of actors Sylvester Stallone (‘Rocky’) and Jon Voight (‘Midnight Cowboy’), as well as actor and director Mel Gibson (‘Braveheart’) as special ambassadors to the “very problematic” Hollywood.

“They will help me as special envoys to make Hollywood, which has lost many overseas businesses in the last four years, COME BACK BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER,” he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The Republican lamented all the “problems” he claims Hollywood faces and created this role with the aim of improving the situation from a business perspective.

“These three talented men will be my eyes and ears. I will do whatever they suggest,” he said.

Stallone had previously described Trump as the second George Washington, the first U.S. president (1789–1797) and one of the nation’s founding fathers, during a dinner after his victory in the November presidential elections, where he served as the master of ceremonies.

Meanwhile, Gibson attacked Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing her of having “the IQ of a fence.”

The Republican leader will be sworn in as president on January 20 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, succeeding Democrat Joe Biden.

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International

Latin American and Caribbean diplomats voice concern over U.S. mass deportation plan

Diplomatic chiefs from ten Latin American and Caribbean countries expressed their “serious concern” over the announcement of a mass deportation of migrants, a measure they consider incompatible with human rights, according to a joint statement released this Friday.

The statement, which does not attribute the measure to any specific country, refers to the announcement made by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to carry out the largest foreign deportation operation in the history of the nation once he takes office next Monday. “The announcements of mass deportations are a serious cause for concern, especially due to their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of human rights and their failure to effectively address the structural causes of migration,” the statement said, released by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).

The signing countries—Brazil, Belize, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela (almost all migrant-sending nations)—also committed to “defend the human rights of all migrants.”

This includes “rejecting the criminalization of migrants at all stages of the migration cycle” and “protecting them as a priority from transnational organized crime that profits from migration,” the document adds.

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