Pope Francis is sending the Vatican’s most respected sex crimes expert to Chile to investigate a bishop accused by victims of covering up for the country’s most notorious pedophile priest.

The Vatican said Tuesday that Maltese Bishop Charles Scicluna would travel to Chile “to listen to those who have expressed the desire to provide elements” about the case of Bishop Juan Barros.

The Barros controversy dominated Francis’ just-ended trip to Chile and exposed Francis’ blind spot as far as clerical sex abuse is concerned. Even one of his closest advisers, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, publicly rebuked him for his treatment of victims and tried to set him straight.

Barros was a protege of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, a charismatic and politically powerful priest who was sanctioned by the Vatican for sexually abusing minors in 2011. His victims testified to Chilean prosecutors that Barros and other priests in the El Bosque community saw Karadima kissing youngsters and were aware of his perversions, but did nothing.

​After Karadima was sanctioned, Chile’s bishops were so intent on trying to stem the fallout from the scandal that they persuaded the Vatican to have Barros and two other Karadima-trained bishops resign and take a yearlong sabbatical, according to a 2015 letter obtained by The Associated Press.

But Francis stepped in and put a stop to the plan, arguing that there wasn’t any proof against them. He overruled the local bishops’ objections and in January 2015 appointed Barros to head the diocese of Osorno. Barros’ presence there has badly split the dioceses ever since, with both laity and priests rejecting him and protesting his appointment.

The issue haunted Francis after he told a Chilean journalist during his visit that the accusations against Barros were “slander” and that he would only speak out if he had “proof” against Barros. Francis later apologized for having demanded proof of victims, but stood by his belief that the accusations against Barros were “calumny.”

Francis seemed unaware that Karadima’s victims had placed Barros at the scene, and were the source of the accusations.

Scicluna was the Vatican’s long-time sex crimes prosecutor in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and was instrumental in finally bringing to justice Latin America’s most notorious pedophile, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ.

Scicluna was tasked with gathering testimony from Maciel’s victims, who for years had been discredited by senior Vatican and Legion officials and accused of slander for having accused Maciel. Scicluna, currently archbishop of Valletta, is now something of a hero to survivors of sex abuse for having finally understood the dynamic of the clerical abuse scandal and vigorously prosecuted priests who raped and molested children.

 
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Tourism to Cuba, one of the few bright spots in its ailing economy, has slid in the wake of Hurricane Irma and the Trump administration’s tighter restrictions on travel to the Caribbean island, a Cuban tourism official said on Monday.

Although the number of visitors rose nearly 20 percent in 2017, it fell 10 percent on the year in December, and is down 7-8 percent this month, Jose Manuel Bisbe York, the president of Cuban state travel agency conglomerate Viajes Cuba, said.

Arrivals from the United States, which had surged in the wake of the U.S.-Cuban detente in 2014, took the worst hit, dropping 30 percent last December, he told Reuters.

“Since Hurricane Irma, we’ve seen arrivals shrink,” Bisbe York said on the sidelines of the event organized by U.S. travel agency insightCuba to dispel tourist misperceptions about Cuba.

Irma hit in September, just as the tourism sector was taking reservations for its high season from November to March.

Images of destruction put many would-be visitors off although Cuba had fixed its tourism installations within two months, said Bisbe York. Arrivals of Canadians, the largest group of tourists to Cuba, were down 4-5 percent.

“But we see this as a temporary thing and what we are seeing is that arrivals are recovering from month to month,” said Bisbe York, adding that Cuba would go ahead with its plans to launch more than 15 hotels island-wide this year.

“The first trimester will be the most difficult, because logically the change in the public perception takes time.”

Occupancy rates at the hotels in Cuba managed by Spain’s Meliá Hotels International S.A. were down around 20 percent on the year in December and January, said Francisco Camps, Meliá’s Cuba deputy general manager.

“From February though, we are already reaching figures similar to those we had in previous years,” he said.

Republican President Donald Trump’s more hostile stance towards Cuba than his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama looks set to have a more lasting impact than Irma.

The number of U.S. visitors had surged since the Obama administration created greater exemptions to a ban on tourism to the Caribbean’s largest island and restored regular commercial flights and cruises.

Arrivals reached a record 619,523 last year, up from 91,254 in 2014.

But the Trump administration in September issued a warning on travel there due to a spate of alleged health attacks on U.S. diplomats in Havana. In November, tighter travel regulations also went into effect.

The double whammy seriously depressed U.S. visits, American tour operators and a cruise line said at Monday’s event, although in reality the restrictions remain looser than before the detente and travel easier.

Cuba is also still one of the safest destinations worldwide, they said.

“While the regulations he changed very little the perception in the U.S. was that you no longer could travel to Cuba legally,” said insightCuba’s Tom Popper, noting his agency’s reservations were down 50 percent this year. “Part of hosting this event was to communicate that it is 100 percent legal to travel to Cuba.”
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A group of dissidents from the Colombia’s former FARC guerrilla group were likely behind an attack on a police station in Ecuador, in retaliation for offensives against drug trafficking in the Andean nation, Ecuador’s defense minister said on Monday.

A car bomb exploded on Saturday outside a police station in the town of San Lorenzo, on the border with Colombia, wrecking the station, damaging other houses in the area, and leaving 28 people with minor injuries.

“They are dissident groups of the FARC, dissident groups of a subversive movement that our brothers in Colombia has and that we are fighting because they have dedicated themselves to drug trafficking,” Defense Minister Patricio Zambrano told reporters in Quito.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fought the Colombian government for more than 52 years, but demobilized after a 2016 peace deal.

Though thousands of members handed over their arms, more than 1,000 are estimated to have refused, choosing to continue lucrative drug trafficking and illegal mining.

Police seized more than seven tons of chemicals and another ton of drugs in recent days and arrested seven people linked to dissident FARC operating on the border, according to official data.

Zambrano said the groups are seeking to “frighten the population” as the government combats drug trafficking.

 
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A group of young Colombians, one as young as seven, filed a lawsuit against the Colombian government on Monday demanding it protect their right to a healthy environment in what campaigners said was the first such action in Latin America.

The lawsuit, filed at a Bogota court, alleges the government’s failure to stem rising deforestation in Colombia puts their future in jeopardy and violates their constitutional rights to a healthy environment, life, food and water.

“Deforestation is threatening the fundamental rights of those of us who are young today and will face the impacts of climate change the rest of our lives,” the 25 plaintiffs, whose ages range from seven to 26, said in a joint statement.

“We are at a critical moment given the speed at which deforestation is happening in the Colombian Amazon. The government’s lack of capacity and planning as well as its failure to protect the environment makes the adoption of urgent measures necessary.”

It is the first climate change litigation in Latin America, according to the Bogota-based rights group, Dejusticia, which is supporting the plaintiffs’ case.

The lawsuit follows a recent surge in litigation around the world demanding action or claiming damages over the impact of climate change – from rising sea levels to pollution.

“Just as cities, like New York and San Francisco, have sued oil companies for their role in fueling climate change, and a court ordered the Netherlands’ government to reduce its carbon emissions, we are asking that Colombia fulfills its prior commitments to tackle climate change,” said Cesar Rodriguez, head of Dejusticia.

Experts say U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to pull out of the global Paris climate change accord and roll back environmental regulations means campaigners are increasingly resorting to litigation in the United States.

The Colombia lawsuit calls on the government to halt deforestation in Colombia’s Amazon and keep to its promises.

Colombia, home to a swathe of rainforest roughly the size of Germany and England combined, has declared a goal of zero net deforestation by 2020 and halting the loss of all natural forest by 2030.

Despite the government’s pledges, deforestation in Colombia’s Amazon region rose 23 percent and across the country increased by 44 percent from 2015 to 2016.

When forests are degraded or destroyed, the carbon stored in the trees is released into the atmosphere. Deforestation accounts for 10 to 15 percent of carbon emissions worldwide.

Stemming forest loss is even more urgent following Colombia’s 2016 peace deal that ended a decades-long civil war.

Experts say Colombia’s rainforests are under increasing threat with once no-go conflict areas opening up for development and criminal gangs cutting down trees for illegal gold mining.
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Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, who pitched himself as the “son” of Hugo Chavez to appeal to voters ahead of his 2013 presidential win, has all but scrubbed mention of the late socialist leader from his campaign for re-election this year.

Chavez is barely anywhere in Maduro’s new campaign song or logo, unveiled in recent days ahead of presidential elections slated to be held before the end of April in the crisis-torn country.

Maduro’s campaign logo features a big “M” emblazoned in the yellow, blue, and red Venezuelan flag colors.

“Together we can do more. Nicolas Maduro, president,” reads the slogan promoting the former bus driver and union leader.

During the 2013 race to replace Chavez, who died of cancer, Socialist Party billboards usually featured the charismatic late president’s face and the slogan, “From my heart, (I want) Maduro president.”

And while the new campaign song, a catchy mix of reggaeton, merengue and rap, makes a brief reference to Chavez by mentioning his nickname “comandante,” the song is squarely focused on Maduro.

“Nicolas Maduro, a driver of victories, is guiding Venezuela to peace and glory!” goes the song, publicized on Maduro’s Twitter feed, with the chorus urging, “Everyone with Maduro!”

That’s a far cry from the 2013 campaign song, which kicked off with a recording of Chavez naming Maduro his political heir and featured the chorus: “Chavez, I swear to you, I’ll vote for Maduro!”

​’Burying the father’

The shift highlights how Maduro, although widely disliked due to a brutal economic crisis that has sparked malnutrition and disease, is seeking to carve out his own political image away from his far more popular predecessor.

“Symbolically, Maduro is burying his political father,” said Andres Canizalez, a professor and expert in political communications.

“If this turns out to be successful, we could be in the presence of a metamorphosis in the political process to go from ‘Chavismo’ to ‘Madurismo’,” added Canizalez.

But the shift could also heighten growing tensions in the ruling Socialist Party, once firmly held together by the dominant Chavez. Rafael Ramirez, a former oil czar in exile and wanted for alleged corruption, has lashed out at Maduro for his handling of the economy and asked for guarantees to return to the country and face him in primaries.

But officials have said there is but “one candidate” in this year’s vote, solidifying Maduro’s grip on the country after major anti-government protests last year.

During a softball game Sunday, Maduro and his cabinet played against military officers, who had the words “Chavez lives” emblazoned on their blue shirts.

Maduro, meanwhile, wore a white uniform with the Venezuelan colors on its sleeves.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade chief on Monday dismissed Canadian proposals for unblocking NAFTA modernization talks but pledged to stay at the table, easing concerns about a potentially imminent U.S. withdrawal from the trilateral pact.

Trump, who described the 1994 pact as a disaster that has drained manufacturing jobs to Mexico, has frequently threatened abandon it unless it can be renegotiated to bring back jobs to the United States.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said after a sixth round of NAFTA modernization talks in Montreal that Trump’s views on the pact are unchanged, and cautioned that talks are still moving too slowly on U.S. priorities.

“We finally began to discuss the core issues, so this round was a step forward,” Lighthizer said. “But we are progressing very slowly. We owe it to our citizens, who are operating in a state of uncertainty, to move much faster.”

But Lighthizer’s Mexican and Canadian counterparts said that enough progress was made in Montreal to be optimistic about concluding the pact “soon,” with nine days of talks in Mexico City scheduled to start Feb. 26.

“For the next round, we will still have substantial challenges to overcome. Yet the progress made so far puts us on the right track to create landing zones to conclude the negotiation soon,” said Mexico’s Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo.

Officials are now openly speculating that the bid to salvage the $1.2-trillion free trade pact will continue well beyond an end-March deadline set to avoid Mexican presidential elections.

Canadian proposals dismissed

Heading into Montreal last week, some officials had feared the United States might be prepared to pull the plug on the pact amid frustration over slow progress.

The mood lightened after Canada presented a series of suggested compromises to address U.S. demands for reform.

But Lighthizer criticized Canadian proposals to meet U.S. demands for higher North American content in autos, saying it would in fact reduce regional autos jobs and allow more Chinese-made parts into vehicles made in the region.

He also dismissed a suggestion on settling disputes between investors and member states as “unacceptable” and “a poison pill” and said a recent Canadian challenge against U.S. trade practices at the World Trade Organization “constitutes a massive attack on all of our trade laws.”

Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, who stood stony faced as Lighthizer made his remarks, later told reporters that “the negotiating process is … always dramatic.”

A Canadian government source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, noted Lighthizer had not speculated about withdrawal and said the U.S. official had been more positive in private than during previous rounds.

Officials said the negotiating teams had closed a chapter on anti-corruption measures and were close to wrapping up sections on telecommunications, sanitary measures for the agriculture industry and technical barriers to trade.

Challenging demands

But the three sides are still far apart over U.S. demands to boost regional auto content requirements to 85 percent from the current 62.5 percent and require 50 percent U.S. content in North American-built vehicles.

Other challenges are Washington’s demands that NAFTA largely eliminate trade and investment dispute-settlement systems and contain a “sunset” clause to force renegotiations every five years.

Critical comments by Trump, Lighthizer and others have unsettled markets that fret about the potential damage to a highly integrated North American economy if the United States gives six months’ notice it is leaving.

The Mexican round next month is an extra set of talks that officials added to help tackle the many remaining challenges.

Negotiators are supposed to finish in Washington in March with the eighth and final round.

Although some officials have privately speculated about freezing the talks at the start of April, Guajardo told reporters that “we cannot afford to suspend this process.”
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Executive branch government employees in Argentina will get no pay raises this year and one out of every four “political positions” appointed by ministers will be cut, President Mauricio Macri said on Monday, deepening his austerity drive.

The clampdown on political positions, including advisers appointed by government ministers, is viewed as an attack on a patronage system that has been in place for decades.

The firings, expected to save $77 million a year, are symbolic of Macri’s drive to regain market confidence.

“Austerity has to be part of politics,” Macri said in a televised address.

He spent the first two years of his administration dismantling the trade and currency controls set up by his predecessor, Cristina Fernandez, who had expanded the role of government in the economy.

He was elected in 2015 with a mandate to free the markets and improve Argentinas business climate.

Macri, expected to seek re-election next year, denounced “the corruption and clientelism” of past administrations. Included in the measures announced on Monday, family members of ministers were banned from holding government jobs.

Macri scored a series of business-friendly legislative wins late last year after his coalition swept mid-term elections. But passage of his pension reform bill last month triggered violent protests and a decline in the president’s approval ratings.

The government wants to foster the idea that politically appointed officials share the burden of the fiscal adjustment.

“It also wants to convey the message that this administration really is different from its predecessors,” said Ignacio Labaqui, analyst for consultancy Medley Global Advisors.

Pressured by the country’s powerful labor unions, the government canceled a special session of Congress planned for February to debate Macri’s proposed labor reform.

The bill includes amnesty for companies that register workers who had been paid off the books. It aims to curb litigation by workers and would lighten social security taxes paid by employers. The private sector has long argued for more flexibility in labor regulations.

 
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Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed decrees Monday creating vast new national parks using lands donated by a U.S. conservation organization in what is believed to be the largest private donation of land ever from a private entity to a country.

The agreement signed by Bachelet and Tompkins Conservation CEO Kristine McDivitt Tompkins will create the new Pumalin and Patagonia national parks while expanding others to help create a “Route of Parks.”

The string of 17 parks will span more than 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) across the South American nation, stretching from Puerto Montt to Cape Horn.

In all, the plan ultimately seeks to increase Chile’s national parkland by more than 15,600 square miles (40,400 square kilometers). Bachelet said that would expand national parklands in Chile by 38.5 percent.

“This is not only an unprecedented preservation effort,” Bachelet said at a ceremony surrounded by pristine lands.

“It’s also an invitation to imagine other ways of rationally occupying our lands, of creating other economic activities, of using natural resources without preying on them. In other words, it’s about generating sustainable development.”

Tompkins Conservation said the area that will be protected is three times the size of the United States’ Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks combined, or about the size of Switzerland.

“Today is a historic day for Chile and for the world. Today, Patagonia is protected with a new network of Parks,” said Rodrigo Catalan, head of conservation at the World Wildlife Fund in Chile.

The lands will safeguard millenary forests, unique fauna and flora species, and one of the purest reservoirs of water in the world, he said. But they also present daunting challenges for conservation, including how they will be financed and how they will benefit local communities.

“It’s a day to celebrate, but tomorrow, we have to think how we’re going to make this conservation real,” he said. “How are we going to manage and finance this great legacy. It’s a tremendous conservation legacy that we have to take care of for the world.”

Since her husband’s death in a 2015 kayaking accident, McDivitt Tompkins worked to permanently protect from development the millions of acres the couple acquired over a quarter century.

Doug Tompkins, an American conservationist and co-founder of the North Face and Esprit clothing companies, used much of his fortune to buy huge tracts of land in Patagonia, a lightly populated region of untamed rivers and other natural beauty straddling southern Chile and Argentina.

At first, his purchases of land to preserve swaths of wilderness caused suspicion and strong opposition by local politicians, loggers, power companies and nationalists who stirred rumors that he was trying to steal water and other resources. But he promised he would eventually return the land to both governments to be preserved as nature reserves or parks.

“This is a reflection of the power of dreams and ideas, built path by path,” said McDivitt Tompkins.

“We’re proof that nothing is impossible. No dream should go unfulfilled.”

 
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Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos on Monday suspended peace talks with Marxist ELN rebels after a series of bombings over the weekend killed seven police officers and injured dozens.

The government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) have been in talks since February 2017 to end a five decade war, but Santos said he will not accept the group’s continued violence after it launched attacks on three police stations nationwide on Saturday and Sunday.

“My patience and the patience of the Colombian people has its limits, so I have taken the decision to suspend the start of the fifth cycle of negotiations, which was scheduled for the coming days, until we see coherence between the ELN’s words and its actions,” Santos said at an event close to Bogota.

Five police officers were killed and more than 40 wounded on Saturday morning when the ELN detonated a bomb in the northern port city of Barranquilla as they lined up to receive orders.

Two more died and one was wounded just before midnight on Saturday in rural Bolivar province, and the third attack took place about four hours later in the city of Soledad, close to Barranquilla, injuring five police and one civilian.

“The authorship of these terrible actions is on the head of the National Liberation Army,” Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said earlier on Monday, adding that the violence raised the question of whether the group wants peace.

Formal talks

The 2,000-strong ELN and the government have been in formal peace talks for nearly a year, and the two sides agreed to their first-ever ceasefire in October. But the rebels launched a new offensive when the ceasefire expired earlier this month, killing security force members, bombing major oil pipelines and kidnapping an oil contractor.

A larger rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), demobilized under a 2016 peace deal with the government. It is now a political party known as the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force.

In a statement on Monday, the ELN said it would support a new ceasefire but that attacks would continue in the absence of one.

Santos, who won a Nobel Peace prize in 2016 for clinching peace with the FARC, had already recalled his negotiator from Quito talks after the ELN rebels launched this month’s offensive.

“I will continue to work for peace, to build peace, until the final day of my government and until the final day of my life, because nothing is more important,” Santos said.

Santos leaves office in August after two four-year terms.

The ELN, founded by radical Roman Catholic priests in 1964, has sought peace with the government before but made little progress. It is considered a terrorist group by the United States and European Union.

The ELN are considered more radical than the FARC and are less centralized. ELN spokespeople in Quito could not confirm on Sunday whether a statement from the group’s urban unit claiming responsibility for the Barranquilla attack was genuine.

The group opposes the presence of foreign companies in Colombia and regularly bombs pipelines and other oil infrastructure, which the state oil company Ecopetrol says has caused significant environmental damage.

A man arrested after the first bombing in Barranquilla had been detained in 2015 in connection with an ELN cell, Villegas said.
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The leftist front-runner for Mexico’s 2018 presidential election on Monday said he would propose reforms to allow a sitting president to be charged with corruption and electoral crimes.

Former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who leads polls ahead of the July 1 election, spoke at an event in the capital to present his planned nominees for top prosecutorial posts.

“We will propose a legal reform to suppress immunity and privileges,” Lopez Obrador said, including changing the constitution to allow the president to be judged for “the crimes of corruption and violation of political electoral rights.”

“Corruption will end, impunity will end,” he said.

Mexican law does not provide for impeachment of the president and mandates that the incumbent can only be put on trial for treason and serious crimes, such as murder.

Late last year, a group of opposition senators put forth a similar proposal.

Lopez Obrador is running a campaign based on fighting entrenched corruption and he has consolidated support, a poll showed Monday. However, the race has tightened as another opposition contender gained ground while the ruling party hopeful trailed.

The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has been hit by graft scandals and allegations of conflict of interest surrounding President Enrique Pena Nieto and several top aides.

Lopez Obrador said he would propose three candidates for congressional approval to take over the position as attorney general: judges Eva De Gyves Zarate and Juan Luis Gonzalez Alcantara and lawyer Bernardo Batiz, who served as the capital’s attorney general when Lopez Obrador was mayor.

He said he would not lobby in favor of any of the three and would leave the decision to lawmakers, if he wins the election.

He also put forward candidates to take over as top electoral crimes prosecutor and a newly created anti-corruption post.

Reporting by Michael O’Boyle.
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