Uruguay

A “smoke screen” caused by the out-of-control fires in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil hit southern neighbors Argentina and Uruguay this week, local Argentine and Uruguayan media reported.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog thanked his Argentine counterpart Javier Milei for leading the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the AMIA bombing.

Members of Uruguay’s national soccer team engaged in a physical altercation with fans of their rival Colombia on Wednesday in a North Carolina stadium.

Brazilian radical leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made calls on Wednesday for the South American trade bloc Mercosur, which Brazil helped establish, to “urgently” seal a long-awaited trade deal with the European Union so that it can move on to the same with communist China.

The governments of Latin America offered solemn condolences to the people of the United Kingdom and the Royal Family over the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, paying their respects to Britain’s longest-ever reigning monarch.

The government of Paraguay confirmed on Wednesday that it did not accept a request by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to address Thursday’s Mercosur summit, a rare rejection of a head of state who has made video appearances at international events critical to war efforts against invading Russia.

President Luis Lacalle Pou of Uruguay announced on Wednesday that his country would negotiate a free trade agreement with communist China despite the provisions of the country’s membership in the regional Mercosur trade bloc, which prevent any one country from doing so with non-member states.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Wang Yi spent much of the weekend calling up senior officials in Latin America to discuss dictator Xi Jinping’s vague “global security initiative,” the South China Morning Post observed on Sunday, in what appeared to be an effort to bolster Beijing’s profile in the Western Hemisphere.

Police in Miami, Florida, estimated on Saturday that 30,000 vehicles joined a caravan expressing rejection of communism, socialism, and leftist totalitarian ideologies – an event of historic size and diversity, organizer Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat told Breitbart News.

Attorneys with the Global Liberty Alliance, a human rights NGO, filed a complaint with the government of Uruguay on Thursday urging the nation to investigate its deal with communist Cuba to import doctors to the country.

German customs authorities say they have seized 4.5 tons (nearly 5 U.S. tons) of cocaine in a container shipped from Uruguay, a haul with an estimated street value of nearly 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion).

Mexico Chile, and Peru are among 11 Latin American nations, plus Canada, who announced they will not recognize the new “Constituent Assembly” created by socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

Former Guantánamo Bay detainee Jihad Ahmad Diyab’s fourth attempt to escape Uruguay and return to his native Middle East has failed after Morocco deported him this week for using a falsified passport.

Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro claimed on national television Saturday that the nation’s anti-Chavista opposition was “murdering its own protesters,” listing individuals killed by Venezuelan soldiers and Chavista gangs and blaming the leadership of the opposition for staging the deaths to garner support for their cause.

Contents: Paraguay wracked by worst violent riots in decades over constitutional crisis; Brief generational history of Paraguay; Paraguay’s National Congress building was built with funding from Taiwan

Two Iranian attorneys and their Kenyan driver were arrested in Nairobi, Kenya, and charged Thursday with illegally filming around the nation’s Israeli embassy, gathering film “for the use in the commission of a terrorist act.”

Uruguay’s Ministry of Public Health has released a new mobile phone app called “The Sex Guru,” intended to educate young people about how to practice safe sex, avoid pregnancy, and make a habit of routine doctor visits to stay healthy.

Jihad Ahmad Diyab — former detainee at the U.S. Guantánamo Bay detention center and, until recently, Latin American fugitive — may be planning a “hunger strike,” demanding the small nation of Uruguay pay to reunite him with his family in the Middle East.

Jihad Ahmad Diyab, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who went missing earlier this summer after leaving Uruguay, where he was given refugee status, is reportedly being kept incommunicado in a Venezuelan secret prison. His attorney fears he has taken up a hunger strike.

Jihad Ahmad Diyab, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who was released to Uruguay as part of a deal between the White House and the socialist government of former President José Mujica, has surfaced in Venezuela after his disappearance a month ago. He is demanding to be flown to Turkey to reunite with his Syrian family.

The Pentagon’s special envoy for closing the Guantánamo Bay prison facility, Paul Lewis, insisted on Thursday to Congress that the process of emptying the prison is being done in a “safe and responsible” manner, despite multiple former detainees confirmed to have once again joined jihadist groups.

As Latin America cooperates on a frantic search to find former Guantánamo Bay detainee Jihad Ahmad Diyab, a report suggests the terrorist left Uruguay for Venezuela last month, after authorities had issued a statement claiming he had illegally entered Brazil.

A former Guantánamo detainee living in Uruguay has gone missing following an alleged trip to Brazil. Brazilian authorities say they have no record of Jihad Ahmed Diyab, and a national airline has called for employees to be on the alert for him.

The government of Uruguay has lost track of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee from Syria who was transferred to its care in 2014 by the Obama administration, prompting a search by law enforcement, reports the Washington Post (WaPo).

The president of Uruguay’s soccer association dubs it a “mistake” to hold the Copa America soccer tournament in the United States.

An Islamist radical admitted to killing a Jewish businessman in Uruguay as a mode of “following Allah’s orders,” stabbing the man ten times in the back after following him down the streets of western Paysandú city.

At a historic summit in Uruguay, the health ministers of fourteen Latin American nations, alongside representatives from the regional wing of the World Health Organization, agreed on a number of measures to contain the Zika virus pandemic consuming the continent, including a “fast access” Zika information network at airports and border crossings.

Catholic Cardinal Daniel Sturla wants “flexibility” in the application of a new law requiring zero blood alcohol for Uruguayan drivers, insisting that priests who say Mass necessarily consume some wine during the ceremony.

Police found a “suspicious artifact” designed to look like a bomb near the Israeli Embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay this week, the fourth such item found and the third this year. Officials found the item on the same day as a scheduled anti-Israel BDS rally before the embassy took place.

Uruguayan nationals in areas that have taken in Syrian refugees are “outraged” with the “abuse” from Syrian families who demand the government provide them with more money and better jobs to feed their families.

Egypt, Japan, Senegal, Uruguay, and Ukraine have received a non-permanent spot on the United Nations Security Council.

A Syrian refugee in Uruguay doused himself in gasoline in protest when told Uruguay could not strong-arm other countries into giving his family a visa, and later attacked both government and UN officials, ending the meeting.

The 42 Syrian refugees granted asylum in Uruguay are staging a sit-in before the office of the President in Montevideo, accusing the government of lying to them about economic opportunity and demanding to return to Lebanon.

The small Latin American nation of Uruguay has agreed to accept 72 Syrian refugees from Lebanon, relaunching a program for relocating refugees and giving them dramatically new lives that was shut down in part due to the government’s apprehension that Syrians were culturally incompatible with Uruguayans.

Contents: Pope Francis in Paraguay alludes to 1860s War of the Triple Alliance; Distrust of Greece dominates indecisive Eurogroup meeting on Saturday; France and Italy welcome Greece’s proposals

Uruguayan authorities removed what is being described as an “incomplete” explosive device left near the Israeli Embassy in that country. While the artifact itself was deemed harmless due to faulty construction, it is the third such bomb scare for that nation’s Israeli Embassy this year.