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Ecuador has deployed some 10,000 security forces to its border with Colombia to deal with a "most grave" security problem, President Rafael Correa said Saturday. Correa said the troops and police forces were deployed to bolster security amid concerns about "organized crime, drug trafficking (and) irregular groups," including paramilitary groups and Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia known as FARC.

A prominent Democratic campaign treasurer who works for federal, state and O.C. lawmakers including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Rep. Loretta Sanchez and state Assemblymen Lou Correa and Jose Solorio has been arrested by the FBI on suspicion of mail fraud, The Orange County Register has learned. U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Thom Mrozek confirmed Saturday afternoon that Kinde Durkee of Burbank-based Durkee and Associates, was arrested by the FBI on a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento. Special Agent Steve Dupre of the bureau’s Sacramento office said she was arrested in connection with her position as a...

21st Century SocialismThe attempt to destroy democracy in Latin America.  The Obama administration started out on the wrong foot in world affairs. It used techniques better suited for domestic political campaigns — popularity contests — in its foreign policy. In our own hemisphere, the result was confusion for our allies and our enemies alike. The overriding objective of U.S. policy — in Latin America and elsewhere — should be to advance U.S. national interests, not to curry favor with foreign leaders. If we can be liked while advancing our interests, so much the better. But when we try to befriend...

The fruits of socialism on display.

SNIPPET: "Lula and Chavez have established a "strategic relationship," and recently agreed upon a joint Brazilian-Venezuelan oil venture worth billions of dollars. Lula and Chavez have joined with Daniel Ortega, the returned Nicaraguan Marxist dictator, to form an anti-U.S. Latin American military alliance - all with Russian assistance - funded by the region's abundant oil reserves. Brazil is engaged in its own arms build-up and Lula is determined that Brazil will become at least a first-rate regional power. Unfortunately, Lula is establishing Brazil as an anti-American military power by aligning with nations hostile or potentially hostile to the U.S. Lula...

U.S. President Barack Obama won praise on Saturday for reaching out to the Americas at a regional summit but Latin American and Caribbean leaders pressured him to end the long-standing U.S. embargo on Cuba. Obama, attending his first Summit of the Americas, has promised an era of better cooperation with the hemisphere and offered a new start to communist-ruled Cuba. He won early approval from left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The warm reception for Obama from countries from Brazil to Venezuela contrasted with the last Americas Summit four years ago in Argentina, where leftists like Chavez attacked the "imperialist" policies...

BOGOTA, Columbia (AP) -- An hour-long video police found in a computer of an alleged rebel appears to dispel any doubts that Colombia's largest rebel army gave money to the 2006 election campaign of President Rafael Correa of Ecuador. The video shows the second-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia reading the deathbed manifesto of founding leader Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda. The manifesto clearly acknowledges FARC contributions to Correa's campaign, but it's still possible that Correa wasn't aware of them. The video, given to The Associated Press by a government official on condition of anonymity due to political sensitivity,...

As Senate Democrats huddled Monday for a late-night briefing on the budget negotiations, one Democratic senator was missing: Lou Correa.His absence was no mere happenstance.The Orange County Democrat, who proudly campaigned in 2006 as "a different kind of Democrat," still hasn't committed to Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg that he'll support a negotiated budget pact with new taxes. If he doesn't, the whole deal could well fall apart.Steinberg, D-Sacramento, met privately with Correa at least three times in the last 48 hours to press his case.At the Sacramento Press Club Wednesday, Steinberg declared, "I expect all the Democrats to...

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa is heading downhill. According to the latest Cedatos-Gallup survey, only 41 percent of Ecuadoreans would support the extravagant new constitution that his supporters are drafting in the town of Montecristi. Approval requires 50 percent. Correa has said that, if he fails, he will quit politics. He has not said whether he will go back to teaching at the university (where he left no memorable impression) or if he will devote himself to playing the guitar and singing, activities he performs with greater talent than Abdalá Bucaram, another musician who drifted through Carondelet Palace. Ecuadoreans overthrew Bucaram...

Ecuador's president is challenging U.S. President George W. Bush to send troops to the Andean nation's border with Colombia "or shut your mouth" about Rafael Correa made the comments late Thursday in angry response to Bush's strong support for Colombia after it raided a rebel camp on Ecuadorean soil on March 1 — an act that Correa denounced as an attack on his country's sovereignty. "Bring your soldiers Mr. Bush," Correa said during a heated speech late Thursday. "Let it be your soldiers who die along the southern border with Colombia. We'll see if the Americans, the citizens of the...

BOGOTA, Colombia - Colombian security forces carrying out an arrest warrant Friday for a top rebel leader killed a man in a shootout, and were trying to confirm his identity, an official in the chief prosecutor's office said Friday. The raid targeted Ivan Rios, a member of the FARC guerrillas' ruling junta. If the body is identified as his, it would be the second member of the ruling secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to be killed in a week. That would be a huge blow to Latin America's oldest and strongest insurgency, shaken by the...

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said Friday that Colombian rebels helped Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa get elected, citing as evidence a rebel's letter seized during a cross-border raid that has sparked an international crisis. Correa walked out of the 20-nation Rio Group summit after the accusation, but an aide said he had merely gone to the bathroom. As other leaders complained, Uribe waited for Correa to return before continuing. Uribe said his forces seized a letter during their raid Saturday on a rebel camp just across the border with Ecuador in which Raul Reyes — the...

Venezuela threatened to declare war on neighbouring Colombia last night, raising the prospect of the U.S. being drawn into conflict in South America. Venezuela's Left-wing president Hugo Chavez ordered ten tank battalions to the Colombian border and put war-planes under emergency stand-by. The tension follows Colombia's decision to send its army to strike against anti-government guerrillas hiding in the jungles of Ecuador. The surprise attack - launched without Ecuador's permission - killed Raul Reyes, a top commander in the Left-wing Colombian rebel group Farc, and about 16 of his men. President Chavez yesterday closed the Colombian embassy in Caracas, warning...

Here's the problem for the U.S.: At the center of the current crisis is a new leftist president who has already formed an alliance with the American-hating Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and is now threatening to kick all American military personnel out of Ecuador. And all this, just as Ecuador becomes increasingly critical in the U.S. war on drugs.

Latin America: The weekend inauguration of Rafael Correa as president of Ecuador was a spectacularly sorry show of anti-U.S. sentiment. Maybe it's time the U.S. just quit funding this ungrateful country. Correa did more than bring in his best pal Hugo Chavez of Venezuela as guest of honor at his extravaganza. Correa also went out of his way to dedicate the inauguration to ailing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. "Down with imperialism," he shouted, using the regional code to accuse the U.S. Seldom has anti-Americanism been so in our faces. But to make sure the U.S. knew the inaugural wasn't just...

Final poll results indicate that leftist candidate Rafael Correa won the presidency of Ecuador on Nov. 26, garnering approximately 65 percent over banana billionaire Alvaro Noboa's 35 percent. Though Correa's win is decisive, he will face a struggle to govern the politically tumultuous Ecuador. ... Correa is also an outspoken friend of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, having visited Chavez's house in Venezuela and bragged publicly of their friendship. Correa does maintain that he has not received under-the-table support from the Venezuelan president and that he will not tolerate Venezuelan intervention in Ecuadorian politics. Regardless of Correa's flimsy denials of Chavez's...

Latin America: The election in Ecuador on Sunday showed a moderate platform attracts more votes than a far-left one. But if a winner has no intention of staying moderate, trouble is likely. That's why the election of leftist Rafael Correa, 43, is so likely to bring renewed turmoil to the Latin American nation when he takes office on Jan. 15. After his trouncing in the Oct. 15 first round by banana magnate Alvaro Noboa, Correa "washed face" (in the local parlance) and ran for president as a newly minted moderate. But Correa's first statements after declaring victory signal he hasn't...

QUITO, Ecuador - A leftist economist who called for Ecuador to cut ties with international lenders appeared to have easily won the presidency of this poor, politically unstable Andean nation, strengthening South America's tilt to the left. Partial returns from Sunday's voting showed that Rafael Correa — who has worried Washington with calls to limit foreign debt payments — would join left-leaning leaders in Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela, where he is friends with anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez. The returns showed Correa with as many as twice the votes recorded as for his banana tycoon rival, who claimed the...

QUITO, Ecuador - Ecuadorean presidential elections will go to a second round on Nov. 26, after one of the country's wealthiest men, Alvaro Noboa, narrowly defeated the U.S. trained economist Rafael Correa in the first round on Sunday. With a quarter of the votes counted, results from the National Electoral Tribunal showed Noboa obtained 26 percent, while Correa got 24 percent. Exit polls by independent pollsters coincided with these results. Neither candidate reached the 40 percent minimum needed to avoid a runoff. Ecuador was voting on Sunday for their eighth president in 10 years in what many hoped would be...