Energy: As the EPA snipes at the State Department’s approval, Canada’s natural resource minister says failure to approve the pipeline would seriously jeopardize our energy relationship and do nothing to save the earth.

Joe Oliver, not amused by the continued delays in perhaps the most shovel-ready project since the pyramids, said Wednesday that rejection by the U.S. of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline “would represent a serious reversal in our long-standing energy relationship.”

This critical energy infrastructure project is also perhaps the most studied and approved. After a reroute at the behest of environmentalists allegedly concerned about the sensitive Ogallala Aquifer, it received approval from the state of Nebraska.

The U.S. State Department, which must approve or deny the project because it crosses an international boundary, recently released its second Keystone XL supplemental environmental impact statement, which represents the project’s fourth environmental review.

It found the pipeline would not accelerate global greenhouse gas emissions or ... Read More

JUAN O. TAMAYO

La negativa de visas por parte de Estados Unidos a tres cubanos invitados a un congreso académico ha destapado una protesta sorprendente, tanto en contra de Washington como de los tres académicos estadounidenses pro-Castro que supuestamente controlan la agenda sobre Cuba de la conferencia y los espías de La Habana que asisten a la misma.

La influencia de Cuba sobre la Asociación de Estudios Latino Americanos (LASA) se ha rumorado por largo tiempo entre los académicos estadounidenses. Pocos se han quejado públicamente, por miedo a que La Habana les prohíba la entrada o les niegue acceso a materiales de investigación.

Pero ahora las quejas se han hecho públicas.

“La sección de Cuba de LASA ha caído en manos de partidarios de la revolución, y ha sido completamente politizada”, dijo Ted Henken, profesor de Estudios Latinoamericanos de Baruch College en Nueva York.

“Los que hemos estado en LASA también sabemos que dentro de ... Read More

BY VINCENT BEVINS

SAO PAULO, Brazil — Shortly before Venezuela’s presidential election, former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva recorded a video supporting Nicolas Maduro, saying he had “stood out brilliantly in the struggle” for a more democratic Latin America.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who was endorsed by Lula in 2010, kept silent on the ultimately victorious candidacy of Maduro, the hand-chosen heir of the late leftist Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez.

The difference in demeanor between the two Brazilian presidents was not surprising to Rousseff watchers. Since assuming office at the start of 2011, she has taken a much more muted approach to foreign policy than Lula, avoiding the type of activism that often annoyed the United States.

Rousseff, 65, “has a more subtle style,” said Gregory Weeks, a professor of Latin American politics at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. “Even if they agree on most things, she considers this to be a more effective way of getting what she wants, ... Read More

BY JIM POPKIN

The Justice Department on Thursday announced the indictment of a former State Department employee for allegedly spying on behalf of Cuba, but it is unable to arrest her because she lives in Sweden, a country that does not extradite citizens accused of espionage.

Marta Rita Velazquez, 55, a graduate of Princeton University and Georgetown University Law School, was indicted nearly a decade ago on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage. Velazquez lives in Stockholm and is aware of the charges against her, the Justice Department said. But the extradition treaty between the United States and Sweden does not allow extradition for spying.

“Espionage is considered a ‘political offense’ that, therefore, falls outside the scope of Sweden’s extradition treaty,” said Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd. Swedish officials declined to comment on the announcement of the indictment.

A grand jury in Washington indicted Velazquez in 2004, but the charges remained sealed until Thursday. ... Read More

BY JUAN FORERO

Timothy Tracy, a 35-year-old filmmaker and graduate of Georgetown University, went to Venezuela to make a film about the the country’s searing political divide.

Now he’s been arrested, President Nicolas Maduro said Thursday in a speech in which he accused the American of instigating the unrest that has roiled the oil-rich country since its April 14 presidential election. Venezuela’s political opposition says the election was stolen through fraudulent voting.

“The gringo who financed the violent groups has been captured,” Maduro said in comments carried on state television. “I gave the order that he be detained immediately and passed over to the attorney general’s office.”

The arrest of Tracy, a resident of Los Angeles who was arrested Wednesday, comes on the heels of accusations by Maduro about U.S.-inspired machinations designed to bring about his downfall.

According to the National Electoral Council, Maduro, 50, narrowly won the election to succeed late President Hugo Chavez. ... Read More

BY PETER WILSON

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski said Thursday his movement will boycott an audit of the election results and push the government to hold a new presidential vote.

Capriles said the opposition would not participate in the audit because the National Electoral Council did not meet its demand for an examination of registers containing voters’ signatures and fingerprints.

He said the opposition would go to the Supreme Court to challenge the results of the April 14 election, which was narrowly won by Nicolás Maduro, the handpicked successor of President Hugo Chávez, an anti-American leader who died from cancer.

Capriles said he’s not optimistic the Supreme Court, which is packed with allies of Chávez, would overturn results of the election.

“This is a fight for the truth,” he said. “This fight is not over.”

Capriles lost the presidential contest by fewer than 300,000 votes out of more than 14.7 million cast. ... Read More

BY ANDREA JARAMILLO

Colombia’s foreign debt rating was raised to the second-lowest investment grade by Standard & Poor’s as economic growth increased tax revenue and peace talks with rebels boosted investor confidence.

Yields on benchmark local bonds fell to a record low as S&P lifted Colombia one step to BBB with a stable outlook. The rating is in line with Brazil, Mexico and Peru. Colombia’s peso appreciated 0.1 percent to 1,836.60 per U.S. dollar at the close of trading in Bogota.

“A stronger fiscal profile, growing domestic capital markets, and favorable long-term prospects for GDP growth have strengthened Colombia’s creditworthiness,” S&P credit analyst Joydeep Mukherji wrote in a statement today. “Negotiations between the government and the country’s main guerrilla group could lead to a significant reduction in violence.”

Colombia was given an investment-grade credit rating in 2011 for the first time in a decade as improved security bolstered economic growth and attracted record foreign investment. Congress passed legislation that year known as the ... Read More

BY ROSA MARÍA PAYÁ ACEVEDO

On July 22, 2012, Cuban pro-democracy activists Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero of the Christian Liberation Movement were killed in a car crash near the town of Bayamo as they and two European visitors were traveling to visit fellow dissidents. Although Cuban authorities claimed the crash was an accident, one of the survivors, visiting Spanish politician Ángel Carromero, later confirmed that government functionaries ran the car off the road — and subsequently coerced him to sign off on their version of events. Oswaldo Payá’s daughter, Rosa María, has called for an independent investigation by the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Below is her account of the events surrounding her father’s death.

I knew right away that the deaths of my father and Harold were not an accident. Text messages sent by the two survivors of the crash to Madrid and Stockholm saying that they had been ... Read More

BY PAUL SHINKMAN

At a conference earlier this month, top U.S. military officers identified what they thought would be the top threats to the U.S. as it draws down from protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, was unequivocal about a largely unreported danger:

“Narco-terrorism just on our south border: [it is] yet to be seen just how that is going to play out in our own nation, but it is an issue and it is something that our nation is going to have to deal with.”

“Colombia is doing particularly well, but there is an insurgency growing,” Amos continued. “They have been fighting it, probably the greatest success story in this part of the world.”

The commandant’s remarks came a week before the April 14 election where Venezuelans chose a successor to the wildly popular and charismatic Hugo Chavez, who died March 5. Amos indicated the outcome of ... Read More

BY CORINA PONS & CHARLIE DEVEREUX

Venezuela cut off the transmission of a speech by opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski yesterday using a system of national broadcasts known as “cadena” after he said this month’s election was “robbed.”

Capriles said he would give the national electoral council until today to announce news of an expanded vote audit before his speech, broadcast on the Globovision television network, was interrupted to play a recorded government message.

“The cadena shows the fear they have about Venezuelans defending their rights,” Capriles said. “If they are so sure, let them audit the vote.”

Venezuela’s National Assembly yesterday set up a commission to determine whether Capriles is responsible for violence that erupted after the opposition contested the April 14 election. Prisons Minister Iris Varela said on April 23 that she has a cell prepared for the 40-year-old governor of Miranda state.

“I have a clear conscience, and all of their threats show ... Read More

Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles has threatened to take action over disputed votes he claims were “stolen” by Nicolas Maduro’s government.

Mr Capriles demanded details of an audit of the vote the electoral council says it will carry out.

Mr Capriles said the council had a “deadline” of Thursday, but did not specify what action he would take.

Mr Maduro won the 14 April election by less than two percentage points.

He was sworn in as president last week, succeeding his mentor Hugo Chavez, who died in March of cancer.

But the opposition cried foul, and tensions in the divided country have reached fever pitch, with the government accusing the opposition of fomenting coup attempts and the opposition accusing the government of “desperate lies”.

Nine people died in post-election protests and both the government and opposition are planning more protests on 1 May.

‘Get serious’

Mr Capriles says the vote was marred by thousands of irregularities, including ... Read More

BY MARY O’GRADY

Remember all the hype about Cuba drilling for oil in Caribbean waters and American companies missing out on the bonanza because of the U.S. embargo? Well, like all the other Cuban get-rich-quick schemes of the past 50 years, this one seems to have flopped too.

Last week, Florida’s Sun Sentinel reported that “after spending nearly $700 million during a decade, energy companies from around the world have all but abandoned their search for oil in deep waters off the north coast of Cuba near Florida.” Separately, CubaStandard.com reported on Friday that “the shallow-water drilling platform used by Russian oil company OAO Zarubezhneft will leave Cuban waters June 1, to be redeployed to Asia.”

According to the Sun Sentinel story, Jorge Piñon, an oil-industry guru who had been cheering Cuba’s exploration attempts, said “Companies are saying, ‘We cannot spend any more capital on this high-risk exploration. We’d rather go to Brazil; ... Read More

BY FRANK CALZON

The Obama Administration soon will be releasing its list of countries that support international terrorism. Currently on the list are: Iran, Sudan, Syria and Cuba. Cuba has been listed since 1982 but Reps. James P. McGovern, D-Mass., and Kathy Castor, D-Fl., propose to remove Cuba from the list. They argue that because Raúl Castro has taken control of the island from his brother Fidel, Cuba no longer poses a threat to the United States.

An article appearing in Sunday’s [April 21] Washington Post presents a less benign appraisal of Cuba’s intentions. The author, Jim Popkin, focuses on the career of a Pentagon intelligence analyst, Ana Montes, who for 17 years fed highly classified information about the U.S. military to the Cuban government, which the Castro brothers routinely shared with their anti-American allies. The unrepetant spy is serving a 25-year sentence in a U.S. penitentiary.

Nevertheless, some say Havana is still ... Read More

BY CHARLIE DEVEREUX & NATHAN CROOKS

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government is threatening to imprison the opposition’s candidate for violence that left nine dead following the April 14 election.

Venezuela’s National Assembly on Wednesday set up a commission to determine whether Henrique Capriles Radonski is responsible for the violence a day after Prisons Minister Iris Varela said she has a cell prepared for the 40-year-old governor of Miranda state.

“The deaths ordered by the fascist murderer Capriles cannot go unpunished,” National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello said Wednesday in a message on his Twitter account. “The investigations are going forward.”

Violence erupted in the country last week after Maduro, who was sworn in April 19 following the electoral council’s decision to declare him the winner with 50.8 percent of the vote, refused Capriles’s request for a full ballot recount and accused him of inciting a coup. The electoral council agreed to extend ... Read More

(Washington, DC) – The Argentine Congress should reject proposals by the Fernández de Kirchner administration to reform the justice system because they would undermine judicial independence, Human Rights Watch said today.

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner submitted to Congress on April 8, 2013, a series of legislative proposals to reform Argentina’s justice system. The package included a bill to limit individuals’ ability to request injunctions against government acts, and another to modify the composition and selection process for members of the Council of the Judiciary – a body charged with selecting judges and deciding whether to open proceedings for their removal. The Senate has approved both proposals, which are to be debated on April 24 in the Chamber of Deputies.

“This reform would give Argentina’s ruling party an automatic majority on the council that oversees the judiciary, which seriously compromises judicial independence,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Elections to ... Read More

BY JAY WEAVER

Sandra Avila Beltran, the dark-haired Mexican beauty dubbed the “Queen of the Pacific,” has pleaded guilty to a drug-trafficking charge in Miami, closing the curtain on the once celebrity-like role of the reputed cocaine smuggler.

Avila, 52, admitted Tuesday in federal court that she helped her former boyfriend, a one-time Colombian cartel boss, evade prosecution for cocaine importation and distribution charges in the United States. She pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to his conspiracy crimes, for which the ex-boyfriend, Juan Diego Espinosa Ramirez, was ultimately convicted.

Avila, who stood out in a narco-trafficking world dominated by macho men, avoided a potential life sentence if convicted on the same conspiracy offenses at trial next month. With her plea, she now faces up to 15 years in prison at her sentencing before U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore. But she is expected to receive a much lesser sentence, ... Read More

BY FERNANDO MENENDEZ

One of the first measures taken by the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías, in establishing his Bolivarian revolution, was the replacement of constitutional democracy with an authentic “participatory democracy.” Since the fraudulent election of Chávez’s successor, the inept and brutal Nicolás Maduro, the world is now getting a closer look at this new type of democracy.

Following the presidential election, which the government-packed National Election Commission (CNE) declared Maduro won by 50.66 percent of the vote, the presumptive president himself suggested a recount of all the votes. The next day, the chavista-controlled Supreme Court Justice rejected any recount. Then, after promoting its own victory rally, the Maduro government banned any street demonstrations by the opposition.

In the following days, small street protests were brutally put down by police and the chavista Bolivarian National Guard (GNB). Numerous beatings by chavista crowds, reminiscent of SS shock troops, have been uploaded to websites. Almost immediately, several citizen ... Read More

BY JAY SOLOMON

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration charged Hezbollah with operating like an international drug cartel and blacklisted two Lebanese money-exchange houses for allegedly moving tens of millions of dollars of drug profit through the U.S. financial system on behalf of the militant group.

The Treasury Department’s action Tuesday marked the latest salvo in a two-year U.S. government campaign against Hezbollah’s alleged drug-trafficking activities.

U.S. officials alleged that Hezbollah is using proceeds from this narcotics trade to fund international terrorist activities and to bolster the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in their fight against a widening political rebellion.

U.S. officials also said Hezbollah is increasingly reverting to illicit trade to offset diminished funding coming from Iran, the organization’s closest ally.

“Hezbollah is operating like a major drug cartel,” said Derek Maltz, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, who is overseeing the U.S. probe into Hezbollah. “These proceeds are funding violence against Americans.”

Bulgaria’s Interior ... Read More

BY BEN OTTO

SURABAYA, Indonesia—The world’s most important trade body needs a major shake-up in leadership to revive the long-dormant Doha round of global trade talks or else it will become irrelevant among newer, fleeter free-trade agreements, said Herminio Blanco, one of the candidates to take over the World Trade Organization.

Mr. Blanco, who was Mexico’s chief negotiator to create the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement and represented Mexico in the last successful global trade round that created the WTO two decades ago, told The Wall Street Journal in a recent interview that the WTO risked becoming a simple referee of its increasingly outdated rules rather than leading global trade.

“The rules of the WTO were drafted 20 years ago, and a lot has changed in the sophistication of countries that decrease tariffs but create new very sophisticated barriers,” Mr. Blanco said. “To remain relevant, it must remain competitive vis-à-vis these mega ... Read More

BY JOE LEAHY

In 2010, when 60 Minutes came to Brazil to do a piece on the “World’s Next Economic Superpower”, the US television programme chose Eike Batista as the ambassador for the country.

“You know, in the last 16 years, Brazil has put its act together. This is it. Hello, time for Americans to wake up,” Mr Batista said with trademark brashness.

In retrospect, the discovery by primetime TV of Brazil’s economy should itself have been a sell signal for investors that a long boom in Latin America’s biggest economy, fuelled by high commodity prices and credit, was peaking.

It was also a high-water mark for Mr Batista. In only a few years he had amassed a paper fortune that until last year was estimated by Forbes to be worth about $30bn through the listing of his X group of mostly start-up companies. This year, the bubble surrounding the group burst after his oil and gas explorer, OGX, ... Read More