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After participating with Francisco Pizarro in the conquest of Peru in 1535, Orellana moved to Guayaquil and was named governor of that area in 1538. When Pizarro's half brother, Gonzalo, prepared an expedition to explore the regions east of Quito, Orellana was appointed his lieutenant. In April 1541 he was sent ahead of the main party to seek provisions, taking a brigantine with 50 soldiers. He reached the junction of the Napo and Marañón rivers, where his group persuaded him of the impossibility of returning to Pizarro. Instead, he entered upon an exploration of the Amazon system. Drifting with the...

His style was that of a celebrity lecturer, spreading "enlightenment" in a rich baritone with the help of jokes and references to pop stars as he addressed rapt audiences the length of Britain. News of the arrival of the extremist Muslim cleric Abdullah el-Faisal would spread by word of mouth, and he attracted crowds of up to 150 people at a time. But beneath his jocular manner lay a philosophy skewed by hatred of "kuffars", or unbelievers, and shared by a web of associates allegedly leading back to Osama bin Laden.Yesterday Faisal, 39, was convicted of soliciting murder and stirring...

A vast stone temple built 1,000 years ago by one of South America's most powerful civilizations has been uncovered in the Andes.Archaeologists discovered the temple, known as Palaspata, atop a ridge in the remote highlands southeast of Lake Titicaca, near the small community of Ocotavi in western Bolivia.The large structure was the craftsmanship of the Tiwanaku civilization, which left a mark on the world with impressive stone structures, advanced irrigation systems, and unique art and pottery before vanishing around 1000AD.Covering an area roughly the size of a city block, the site measures approximately 410 feet long by 476 feet wide.It...

Following the uncovering of a massive bribery scandal at USAID, the Small Business Administration (SBA) is ordering a full audit of all government contracting officers who have exercised grant-awarding authority under the agency’s business development program over the last 15 years. **SNIP** Despite claims of how much good the agency was doing, it was recently discovered that an influential contracting officer at USAID named Roderick Watson was able to carry out a massive, long-term bribery scheme dating all the way back to 2013. Watson, 57, pleaded guilty to "bribery of a public official," according to a DOJ press release. According...

Source: Unleashed.news If China secures the CopiaPort-E project, it would turbocharge Beijing’s trade in South America—not only enabling CHINAMAX megaships, but allowing all shipping to completely bypass U.S.-controlled chokepoints and dominate hemispheric commerce virtually overnight. A geopolitical storm is brewing on the western edge of South America—and the United States cannot afford to look away. At the heart of it all lies a deep-water mega-port project in Chile’s Atacama Desert: CopiaPort-E, a port so naturally engineered by geography itself that it could become either America’s greatest commercial and strategic opportunity, or China’s most dangerous economic beachhead south of our border....

Introduced from South America, mathenge was intended to halt desertification, but now three-quarters of the country is at risk of invasion by the invasive tree For his entire life, John Lmakato has lived in Lerata, a village nestled at the foot of Mount Ololokwe in northern Kenya’s Samburu county. “This used to be a treeless land. Grass covered every inch of the rangelands, and livestock roamed freely,” he says. Lmakato’s livestock used to roam freely in search of pasture, but three years ago he lost 193 cattle after they wandered into a conservation area in Laikipia – known for the...

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The U.S. military is stepping up operations in the Gulf of Guinea to enhance security in this strategic and resource-rich region, the commander of U.S. European Command's naval surface combatant warships told the Pentagon Channel. U.S. military engagement along southwestern Africa's Atlantic coast has increased exponentially, Capt. Tom Rowden, commander of Task Force 65, said during a Pentagon interview last week. It's increased from almost no activity in 2004 to 130 "ship days" in 2005 to even more planned ship days this year, he said. The goal is to build long-term relationships that promote greater security and...

Radical Islam in Latin America By Chris Zambelis In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the possibility of al-Qaeda infiltrating Latin America became a priority for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials. However, the most publicized incidents of radical Islamist activity in Latin America have not been linked to al-Qaeda but instead to the Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah, which is ideologically and politically close to Iran. These include the March 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina and the July 1994 attack against the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AIMA), also in the Argentine capital, allegedly in retaliation for...

January 21, 2022 With inflation at a record high, millions of its citizens fleeing the country, and a political opposition recognized by most Western democracies as the legitimate government of Venezuela, the regime of Nicolás Maduro seemed to be on the brink of collapse in 2019. But Maduro regime survived, thanks to a number of factors — among them the external support it received from malign state actors such as Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing never wavered in their political support of the Venezuelan regime, or of Maduro himself, including by refusing to recognize the constitutionally mandated interim presidency...

The president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, declared a state of emergency in the capital city, Lima, on March 18. The decree, which came amid a wave of violence, gives the police and military full control of the security situation there for a period of 30 days. Peru is no stranger to emergencies of this kind. Only last year, in September 2024, Boluarte’s government declared a 60-day state of emergency in 12 districts of the capital. The rationale for declaring the emergency now, as in the past, remains the same: to address the threat posed by criminal gangs. The latest emergency...

Martín López is an Argentine landlord, but in recent years he felt more like a nervous fugitive. Now based in Madrid, he spent much of 2022 and 2023 mired in anxiety and paperwork—not because he did anything immoral, but because Argentina's rental laws made being a landlord a liability. "Martín López" is an alias. Until late 2023, he rented out his two-bedroom apartment in Buenos Aires' upscale Belgrano neighborhood through a tangle of short-term contracts, never fully sure whether his actions were legal. Argentina's 2020 rent control law, repealed by President Javier Milei in December 2023, had loaded aboveground landlords...

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the governments of Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba on Tuesday of being “enemies of humanity” and causing the migration crisis in the region. “These three regimes that exist in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba are enemies of humanity and have created a migration crisis. If it weren’t for these three regimes, there wouldn’t be a migration crisis in the hemisphere,” Rubio said at a press conference in Costa Rica. “They created it because they are countries where their systems don’t work,” declared the U.S. chief diplomat, son of Cuban immigrants, in Spanish. Cuban President Miguel...

An LGBTQ group in Ecuador tapped into a $25,000 grant from the Biden State Department to produce a two-day drag workshop intended to promote diversity and inclusion abroad. Footage obtained by The Post showed drag queens donning makeup, strutting around topless wearing nothing but pasties and crowing about how the displays could be used as a “political tool.” Fundacion Dialogo Diverso, a nongovernmental organization that aims to promote democracy and the “LGBTIQ+ population” of the South American country, organized the drag show and published footage of it last July. The State Department footed some of the bill for the show...

A type of Trema micrantha. (Daniel Pineda Vera/iNaturalist/CC BY 4.0) Scientists have discovered cannabidiol, a compound in cannabis known as CBD, in a common Brazilian plant, opening potential new avenues to produce the increasingly popular substance. The team found CBD in the fruits and flowers of a plant known as Trema micrantha blume, a shrub which grows across much of the South American country and is often considered a weed, molecular biologist Rodrigo Moura Neto of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro told AFP in 2023. CBD, increasingly used by some to treat conditions including epilepsy, chronic pain and...

They wouldn’t allow his father to leave the country to attend,so he filled in and did great!

A regional poll published on Wednesday by the research agency CB Consultora Opinión Pública found that Argentine President Javier Milei ranks as the most popular head of state in South America. The survey, conducted by the Argentina-based research agency across the region’s countries during the month of December, found that the Argentine libertarian president leads the charts, ending 2024 with an approval rating of 51.8 percent, making him both the highest-rated President in the region and the only one with an approval rating of over 50 percent. Uruguay’s outgoing center-right President Luis Lacalle Pou ranked second with 49.8 percent, and...

Did his attempt to curry favor with Iran work? One of the ways Hezbollah earns money — about one billion dollars a year — is by drug trafficking. It controls much of the sale of drugs sent from Colombia and Venezuela to customers in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. For eight years, beginning in 2008, a wide-ranging investigation by the Drug Enforcement Agency known as Project Cassandra uncovered how Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle Eastern political and military organization into an international crime syndicate, but Project Cassandra was shut down by the Obama administration, that...

Agroup of illegal immigrants from South America was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly using construction crew disguises, blowtorches and cellphone jammers, among other "sophisticated tactics," to rob banks across multiple states of more than $4 million in cash, according to federal prosecutors. The crew, made up mostly of Chilean nationals, targeted more than 29 banks and credit unions throughout California, Oregon and Washington between May and October, U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert announced. According to court documents, the group mapped out ATMs in "vulnerable locations," then rented short-term vacation properties nearby and used cars they rented on...

A union representing roughly 1.8 million teachers and other educational workers used taxpayer-funded dues to book a trip to a famous casino and to pay for meals at luxury restaurants. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) spent over $370,000 on expenses at Caesars Palace, a luxury hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, disclosure forms show. In addition, the AFT also used dues collected from its members to help pay for trips to Europe and South America, as well as to pay off five-figure tabs at upscale restaurants. “My suspicion is that this is a case of ‘rank hath its...

The four men police arrested in connection to a Nassau County, New York, Jan. 9 Macy’s heist turned out to be bused migrants from Texas, officials announced Monday. Police arrested Wrallan Cabezas Meza, 19, Miguel Angel Rojas, 21, Rafael Rojas, 27, and Jose Garcia Escobar, 30, for allegedly stealing $12,489 in merchandise from the Macy’s Roosevelt Field in Gard.en City, New York, the New York Post reported. Police reportedly nabbed the gang in a 2006 BMW with fake license plates... ...They were reportedly tied to a South American thievery ring....