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China poised to take over U.S. base at Ecuador's invitation Ecuador’s president has offered the Chinese government an airbase currently serving as one of the last U.S. military outposts in South America. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said during his recent visit to China that he would offer Beijing a lease on the Manta Airport, the presidential website reported last week. Currently, Manta is used by U.S. military forces for operations. The contract is up in 2009 and Correa will not renew it, a transport and public works ministry communications official told BNamericas. Correa said access to the air base is...

MIAMI — The donations kept pouring in: hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to President Obama and more than a dozen members of Congress, carefully routed through the families of two wealthy brothers in Florida. They had good reason to be generous. The two men, Roberto and William Isaias, are fugitives from Ecuador, which has angrily pressed Washington to turn them over, to no avail. A year after their relatives gave $90,000 to help re-elect Mr. Obama, the administration rejected Ecuador’s extradition request for the men, fueling accusations that such donations were helping to keep the brothers and...

The American film industry changed beyond recognition after the milestone year of 2001, director Oliver Stone told RT, with producers using financial restraints to censor movies challenging the US military or the CIA. “Maybe in the 1980s, when I did ‘Platoon’, ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ and ‘Heaven & Earth’, I could do that, because it was a slightly more relaxed system,” said the award-winning filmmaker, mentioning his famed movies while making his case during former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s show on RT Spanish. When the Iron Curtain fell and the Cold War ended, things didn’t change for the...

BREAKING: Swedish software developer who is allegedly close to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is arrested at Quito airport, Ecuadorian official says.

Trump supporters turned the tables on Democrats in California and disrupted a Santa Ana Congressman’s “Immigration Workshop” on Tuesday evening—resulting in the arrest of one ANTIFA protestor, who allegedly physically assaulted one of the Trump supporters. According to Santa Ana Police Department Cmdr. Matt Sorenson, interviewed in the Orange County Register, a fight broke out between two women at the Delhi Center, Tuesday, May 30, resulting in the room being cleared by police, and later the arrest of one protester outside. The event was hosted by Rep. Lou Correa, (D-Santa Ana), at the [Delhi] center […and] was scheduled to run...

The New York Times reported last summer that the Cardinals were the subject of a federal investigation in connection with multiple illegal breaches of the Astros’ proprietary computer network, Ground Control. Correa was ultimately fired by the Cardinals in July and was later charged. At the time of his plea, Correa claimed that his to access Ground Control was due to concern that former Cardinals scouting director Jeff Luhnow had taken proprietary information with him upon being hired by the Astros as general manager. Per Barron, the court denied a request that would’ve allowed Correa to subpoena documents from the...

Rep. Loretta Sanchez’ candidacy for U.S. Senate was only a few minutes old when former state Sen. Lou Correa was making it known at the Sanchez event that he was running for her now-open congressional seat, the 46th. No surprise here: according to Democratic insiders, Correa has been raising money and putting a campaign together for several weeks in anticipation of a Sanchez run to U.S. Senate.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa caused a firestorm Thursday, after he tweeted “Heil Hitler!” during a political debate. Correa’s tweet was in response to Panamanian politician Guillermo Cochez, who tweeted the first line from former Ecuadorian President Osvaldo Hurtado’s speech last week calling Correa “fascist.” Correa’s response, meant as a tongue-in-cheek way of responding to that claim, is just one of many spotty tweets. In another days later, he referred to US President Barack Obama under questionable terms, stating, “it is worrisome that an Afro minimizes history.” …

Ecuador's government has ordered everyone in the US Embassy's military group, about 20 Defense Department employees, to leave the country by month's end. The group was ordered to halt operations in Ecuador in a letter dated April 7, embassy spokesman Jeffrey Weinshenker said Thursday. The Associated Press was alerted to the expulsions by a senior Ecuadorean official who refused to be identified by name due to the information's sensitive nature.

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...