Free Republic

Colombia is hoping to expedite its mission to recover a three-century-old sunken treasure worth as much as $20 billion as the ownership of the fortune lies in legal limbo amid an ongoing court battle. President Gustavo Petro ordered his administration to exhume the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks” — the Spanish galleon San José — from the floor of the Caribbean Sea as soon as possible, the country’s minister of culture told Bloomberg last week. Petro wants to bring the 62-gun, three-masted ship to the surface before his term is up in 2026 and has requested a public-private partnership be formed...

Anonymous alleged “U.S. and congressional officials” told the Wall Street Journal this week President Joe Biden is planning to remove the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a nearly 60-year-old terrorist organization responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, from America’s list of designated foreign terrorist groups. The FARC, a communist group, has been responsible for a wide variety of human rights atrocities in Colombia since its founding in 1964 that include mass killings, kidnappings, child rape, forced abortions, the use of child soldiers, and one of the world’s most lucrative drug trafficking operations. The government of then-President Juan Manuel...

Bogota (AFP) - Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos declared the country's 50-year conflict with FARC guerrillas "truly over" Tuesday, as the last truckloads of decommissioned weapons rolled away to be melted down. Santos himself shut a padlock on the last lot of decommissioned rifles before it was taken out of a remote demobilization camp to formally seal the UN-supervised disarmament by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). "With the laying down of arms ... the conflict is truly over and a new phase begins in the life of our nation," Santos said at a ceremony in Pondores, a remote...

It’s not often that a political candidate’s re-election campaign speech goes viral. But no doubt Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos would have liked the video of his speech over the weekend in the coastal city of Barranquilla to have gone viral because of the power of his message, or mesmerizing oratorical style, instead of The Spot. Video of the speech shows a spot appearing and spreading on Santos’ pants – which unfortunately were a light tan color – during his speech to supporters.

President Obama erred during a speech at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, when attempting to call the disputed archipelago by its Spanish name. Instead of saying Malvinas, however, Mr Obama referred to the islands as the Maldives, a group of 26 atolls off that lie off the South coast of India. Cristina Kirchner, the Argentine president, has renewed her country's sovereignty claim to the Falklands in the build-up to the 30th anniversary of the Argentine invasion of the islands, which triggered the Falklands War, on April 2. She has accused David Cameron of maintaining a "colonial enclave"...

...Russian news services are reporting that both U.S. and Colombian military sources have confirmed that Venezuela's defense ministry has purchased several advanced MiG-29 fighters and that that U.S. sources have detected them on training missions. ..."Venezuela plans to spend approximately $5 billion on acquisition of Russian fighters including purchase of armament, airdrome and airborne equipment." ...UPI: "letters addressed last year to the director general of Russian Aeronautic Corp., Nicolai F. Nikitin, the Venezuelan air force requested the 'latest version' of the MiG-29 SMT equipped with high-tech weaponry, including radar-guided missiles and 2,000-pound bombs." UPI: "The plane must have the capacity...