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Gunmen kill head of Ecuador prison where deadly riots broke out

| By AFP | Santiago Piedra Silva |

The warden of an Ecuadoran prison where deadly riots broke out two weeks ago was killed by gunmen on Thursday, the federal prisons agency announced.

Retired police colonel Santiago Loza took up his post as head of Quito’s Pichincha 1 prison on November 9.

But just over a week later, on November 18, riots broke out after gang leaders were transferred to another facility, with ten prisoners dying in the brawl.

Loza “has been the victim of a deadly attack” on a side road in Quito, the SNAI federal prisons agency said in a statement.

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Witnesses said Loza was driving his car when people on a motorcycle shot and killed him, the police said.

Since February 2021, more than a dozen gang-related riots have broken out at Ecuador’s overcrowded prisons, leaving some 400 inmates dead.

The SNAI has pledged to reinforce its prisons and address the overcapacity.

“We repudiate this cowardly act committed in the midst of the transformation process, which we have undertaken as an institution, for the security and control of detention centers,” added the SNAI.

On Monday, Ecuadoran authorities announced the deployment of 1,461 new prison guards joining the current team of about 1,500 officers, who at times have been severely outnumbered in a country with 32,000 inmates.

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While Ecuador does not have large drug production or cartels, it has become a significant conduit for cocaine from neighboring Colombia and Peru, due to weaker controls at its main port and its dollar economy.

Mexican, Colombian and Balkan mafias are all involved in the trade, pitting local gangs against each other as they jockey for alliances and control of drug-smuggling routes.

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International

The US Supreme Court gives the green light to Trump to dismantle the Department of Education

The US Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump to go ahead with his plan of mass layoffs in the Department of Education, which until now was blocked by an order from a lower court.

The decision overturned a temporary blocking resolution issued by a federal judge in Massachusetts in response to a class action from about twenty states, teachers’ unions and school districts.

The opinion so far prevented the federal government from carrying out the plan it announced at the end of March to cut, this year alone, a third of the more than 4,100 workers in this portfolio.

The Trump Administration’s plan, which has admitted that it cannot close the Department because that is the responsibility of Congress, involves dismantling the agency to the point that it only maintains basic competences related, for example, to the management of aid, scholarships or student loans.

The long-term project is to cut half of the staff working in this portfolio with the idea of eliminating what the Government, which wants to return educational skills to the states, considers a waste of the federal budget.

As usual in cases that are resolved by emergency channels, the majority of judges in favor of the ruling did not explain the basis of their decision, rejected by the three liberal judges of the court, Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan.

For the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, the judicial decision confirms “the obvious, that the president of the United States, as head of the executive branch, has the authority in the final instance to make decisions about personnel, the administrative organization and the day-to-day of the federal agencies.”

“As well as today’s ruling is an important victory for students and families, it is a shame that the highest court in the country has had to intervene to allow President Trump to move forward with the reforms that the Americans chose him to implement using the authorities granted by the Constitution,” the head of Education said in a statement.

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International

Colombian Senator Uribe Turbay, shows clinical improvement and begins neurological rehabilitation

Colombian senator and presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay, seriously injured in the head in an attack on June 7, has had a clinical improvement and a process of neurological rehabilitation began, reported this Monday the Santa Fe Foundation of Bogotá, where he has been hospitalized since then.

“During the last few days the patient has shown a favorable and stable clinical response, evidenced both in the recent diagnostic images taken (magnetic resonance, tomography, Doppler, among others), and in his response to surgical and medical interventions,” says the medical report.

According to the Santa Fe Foundation, “in this context, and as part of the comprehensive care process, the neurorehabilitation protocol was initiated.”

The medical report, the first disclosed by the Santa Fe Foundation in the last eleven days, points out, however, that the 39-year-old politician continues with a “reserved” neurological prognosis.

“Miguel Uribe Turbay requires continuing his management in the Intensive Care Unit, with mechanical ventilatory support and under sedation, as well as with hemodynamic and neurological monitoring for the early detection of any change,” the statement adds.

Uribe Turbay, a member of the right-wing Democratic Center party, was shot twice in the head and one in the left leg when he was leading a rally in a park in the Bogota neighborhood of Modelia, an attack that has revived among Colombians the ghost of political violence that marked the 1990 elections in which three presidential candidates were killed.

Due to the severity of the injuries suffered, the politician, one of the candidates of the Democratic Center for the 2026 presidential elections, has undergone several surgeries in Santa Fe.

The authorities, for their part, have made some progress in the investigation of the attack, for which five people have been arrested, including the hit man who shot him, a 15-year-old boy who was found with a Glock pistol used in the attack.

The other four detainees have been accused by the Prosecutor’s Office of participating in the preparation and cover-up of the attack, and among them is Elder José Arteaga Hernández, alias ‘el Costeño’, considered by the authorities as a key piece for being the alleged organizer of the attempted murder.

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Zelenski proposes the Minister of Economy, Sviridenko, as the new prime minister

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed on Monday the current Minister of Economy, Yulia Sviridenko, as the new prime minister to replace the current head of government, Denis Shmigal.

“I have proposed that Yulia Sviridenko lead the Government of Ukraine and significantly renew her work. I look forward to the presentation of the new Government action plan in the near future,” Zelenski wrote in X after meeting with Sviridenko.

The Ukrainian president spoke with the current Minister of Economy about “concrete measures to double Ukraine’s economic potential, to expand support programs for Ukrainians and to increase domestic weapons production.”

Zelenski and Sviridenko also reviewed the economic agreements signed by Ukraine at the international conference for the reconstruction of the country held in Rome on Thursday and last Friday.

Several Ukrainian media had advanced weeks ago that Sviridenko would soon replace Denis Shmigal as prime minister. At the head of the Economy portfolio, Sviridenko, 39, has been one of the most visible and active figures in the Government in recent months.

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