Ecuador

Ecuador is in first place with 17.61 cm

Ecuadoran President Guillermo Lasso announced on April 29 he had decreed a state of emergency for two months in three provinces with the highest registered levels of violence due to drug trafficking.

"I have declared a state of exception in the (coastal) provinces of Guayas, Manabi and Esmeraldas, effective from midnight tonight," he said in a speech broadcast by state media.

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu will start a seven-day South America tour that includes six states.

A statement issued by the Foreign Ministry informed that Çavuşoğlu will visit Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela between April 23 and 29.

Swedish low-cost fashion brand Hennes & Mauritz AB said yesterday that its net sales in local currencies have increased by 8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 56 billion kronor ($6 billion) back at pre-pandemic level with the full year net sales increasing by 6 percent to 199 billion kronor ($21 billion).

Prison inmates from rival gangs in Ecuador fought each other with guns, explosives and blades in a bloodbath that left at least 68 dead in the same prison where a riot in September claimed 119 lives, officials said on Nov. 13.

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Anti-narcotics teams in the capital Ankara have unveiled cocaine traffic between a Colombian drug cartel, Cali, and seven Turkish drug barons in a nine-month surveillance, according to a report by the daily Hürriyet.

"Cali cartel sent the drugs in boxes of flowers, bananas, coffee or strawberries, using air and sea routes," the report said on Oct. 3.

Ecuador is trying to restore order in one of its largest prisons after a riot that killed at least 116 prisoners in the latest attack of violence, which authorities linked to groups fighting to control drug trafficking routes, Reuters reports.

Police gained control of an Ecuador prison on Sept. 30 where rioting has left at least 118 inmates dead, some of them decapitated, as rival drug gangs went to war armed with guns and grenades.

Another 86 inmates were wounded, six of them critically, according to Ecuador's prisons authority, in one of the deadliest prison battles in South American history.