Bolivia

Aerial view of an area of Amazon rainforest deforested by illegal fire in the municipality of Labrea, Amazonas State, Brazil, taken on Aug. 20, 2024.

Deforestation continued last year at a rate far beyond pledges to end the practice by 2030, according to a major study published Tuesday.

The Amazon rainforest has lost an area about the size of Germany and France combined to deforestation in four decades, fueling drought and record wildfires across South America, experts have said.

The world's biggest jungle, spanning nine countries, is crucial to the fight against climate change due to its ability to absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Gen. Juan Mario Paulsen Sandi, left, and Anibal Aguilar Gomez, arrested for his alleged involvement in what President Luis Arce called a coup attempt, is presented to the press in La Paz, Bolivia, Thursday, June 27, 2024.

In Bolivia, an attempted military coup concluded with the arrest of its organizer, General Juan Jose Zuniga. The military units he dispatched to the presidential palace in La Paz withdrew from Murillo Square, according to reports from Reuters.

Latin America and the Caribbean had their warmest year on record in 2023 as a "double-whammy" of El Nino and climate change caused major weather calamities, the World Meteorological Organization said Wednesday.

In 2018, convicted cocaine trafficker Slobodan Kostovski fled a Brazilian prison and made his way back to Europe with a fake passport.

The Serbian senior quickly fell into old habits, police allege. Last August, Kostovski was arrested in Belgrade, accused of shipping 2.7 metric tonnes of cocaine from Brazil aboard a 22-meter vessel apprehended near Spain's Canary Islands.

Türkiye's top diplomat has called on the G20 to play a more effective role in ending the tragedy of the Palestinians in Gaza through a full ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in his diplomatic contacts on the sidelines of the G20 ministerial in Brazil.

Police in violence-plagued Ecuador arrested 68 people Sunday who had attempted to take over a hospital in the country's southwest in the midst of a "war" between drug gangs and the security forces.

Foreign, interior and defense ministers of Andean countries will hold an urgent meeting this weekend to discuss the problem of cross-border drug crime that has plunged Ecuador into a security crisis, Peru's government said on Jan. 15.

Peruvian Prime Minister Alberto Otarola told reporters the meeting in Lima on Jan. 21 will focus on ways to confront transnational crime.

More than a dozen member states of the World Health Organization submitted a draft resolution on Friday that urged Israel to respect its obligations under international law to protect humanitarian workers in Gaza.