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Colombian President Gustavo Petro speaks during his visit and after a binational council of ministers, in Jacmel, Haiti, on Jan. 22, 2025.

REUTERS/Marckinson Pierre

White House: Colombia has agreed to take deported migrants

President Donald Trump ordered a suite of tariffs and visa revocations against Colombian government officials on Sunday after Bogota refused to accept two US military planes carrying deported migrants – and was met with threats of retaliatory tariffs by Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
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Arauca, Colombia.- The photo shows the site of an attack with explosive devices at a military base located in Puerto Jordán in the department of Arauca, Colombia on September 17, 2024. The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said that "a peace process" that his Government until now maintained with the guerrilla of the National Liberation Army (ELN) is closed, after the attack that left two soldiers dead and 26 wounded in Arauca.

ULAN/Pool / Latin America News Agency via Reuters Connect

Colombia to declare emergency over rebel violence

Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Monday he will declare a state of emergency after guerilla attacks by the ELN in the northeast of the country killed at least 80 people and forced over 11,000 to flee. The attacks came after Petro suspended negotiations with the rebels on Friday and could prove a fatal blow to his dovish “Total Peace” policy, which aims to end armed violence in Colombia through dialogue.

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Guerrillas of the Central General Staff (EMC), a faction of the FARC that rejected the 2016 peace agreement and continued the armed struggle, inspect vehicles at a checkpoint installed on a highway in the Llanos del Yari, Colombia April 12, 2024.

REUTERS/Luis Jaime Acosta

Colombia ditches cease-fire with rebel groups

The Colombian government on Tuesday suspended a cease-fire with a major faction of Marxist guerrillas, highlighting the challenges to President Gustavo Petro’s attempts to rein in violence.

The background: Back in 2016, the Colombian government signed a historic peace deal with the FARC, the country’s largest rebel group. Dissident fighters who rejected those accords formed the EMC, which operates in about two-thirds of Colombia’s provinces and often provides social services that the government cannot.

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Suspended Jewish Columbia and Barnard students participate in a press conference outside the president of Columbia University’s house on April 23, 2024, in Manhattan, New York.

REUTERS/ Barry Williams

Hard Numbers: Columbia punishes deans, Iran boosts missile output, UN accuses Rwanda of fighting in Congo, Colombia protects the forest

3: Columbia University on Monday removed three deans from their positions over antisemitic text messages they exchanged in a group chat during a late-May event about Jewish life on campus in the wake of protests about Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza. The three have been placed on indefinite leave. For our complete on-the-ground coverage of the upheaval at Columbia this spring, led by GZERO’s Riley Callanan, see here.

2: Iran has been ramping up its output of ballistic missiles at two key production facilities, according to satellite imagery. Tehran’s most prominent buyers of the missiles include the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah paramilitaries in Lebanon and, of course, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which signed a missile deal with Iran in 2022.

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Nicolas Petro, son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro

REUTERS

Fathers and sons: Colombia scandal edition

The president’s son has been arrested and charged with money laundering! No, not Hunter Biden. It’s 36-year-old Nicolás Petro, son of Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

The charges, unsealed this week, stem from allegations by the younger Petro’s ex-wife, who says she helped him amass millions in bribes while he was serving as a local politician. In one instance, she says, they tricked a drug kingpin into believing he was giving them money to support the elder Petro’s 2022 presidential campaign. Petro Jr denies all the charges, which carry decades-long prison terms.

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Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

Reuters

Is Colombia’s Petro showing his true colors?

Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro sacked much of his cabinet earlier this week in a move that suggests the headstrong former guerrilla might be moving in a more confrontational direction after just eight months in office.

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Colombia hosts meeting on Venezuelan political crisis.

Reuters

Colombia convenes new Venezuela summit

Representatives from about 20 countries, including the US, gathered in Bogotá on Tuesday as part of the Colombian government’s push to restart talks between Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and the fractious opposition. Neither side has sent representatives, but both say they support the event.

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Members of parliament hold placards after the result of the vote on the first motion of no-confidence against the French government at the National Assembly in Paris, France, March 20, 2023.

REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

What We’re Watching: Slim win for Macron, protests in South Africa, Trump’s legal woes, Colombia peace collapsing?

Macron’s narrow escape

It came down to the wire, but Emmanuel Macron’s government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in France’s National Assembly on Monday, with 278 voting to topple the government, nine votes shy of the threshold needed to pass.

Quick recap: The motion was triggered after Macron used a constitutional provision last week -- bypassing a vote in the lower house -- to pass a controversial pension reform despite weeks of protests (more on that here).

Not only do 70% of French adults abhor Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62 by 2030 – which he says is necessary to plug the growing debt hole – but the French electorate, which has long had a libertarian streak, is also furious that the government used what it says is an anti-democratic loophole to pass the measure.

Macron’s troubles are only just beginning. Hundreds were arrested in Paris over the weekend and on Monday as anti-government protests turned violent and smelly. Unions have called for nationwide demonstrations and strikes in a bid to pressure the government to roll back the measures (which will never happen).

Prime Minister Élizabeth Borne will likely take the fall and resign. Still, Macron, already unpopular before this debacle, will emerge a diminished political figure. After previously saying he understood that people were “tired of reforms which come from above,” it will be very hard for the ideological chameleon to regain the trust of vast swathes of the population.

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