South America

CARACAS, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Five people have been arrested and 19 others are being sought after attacks against the National Electric System (SEN) between March 7 and 28, Venezuela's Communication and Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said Tuesday.

Speaking from the Miraflores Palace, Rodriguez presented a report on the investigation into the attacks against the electric system which caused widespread outages in March.

20 Apr 2019; DW: A judge in Peru ruled Friday that former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski remain in pre-trial custody for up to three years, as prosecutors prepare charges against him for allegedly accepting bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

CARACAS, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro vowed to defeat the "new imperialists who seek to rob our sacred treasure, freedom" as the country marked the 209th anniversary of the start of its independence from Spanish rule on Friday.

On April 19, 1810, Venezuelans deposed the governor and captain general, Vicente Emparan, as well as other high-ranking Spaniards, sending them into exile. A year later, in 1811, Venezuela celebrated the signing of the Act of Independence.

17 Apr 2019; DW: Hundreds of protesters hit the streets in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito on Tuesday to object to the treatment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Assange spent seven years under the protection of the Ecuadorian government, but this ended last week when British police were invited into the London embassy, his long-time home, to arrest the whistleblower.

What you need to know:

16 Apr 2019; AFP: Ecuador said on Monday it has suffered 40 million cyber attacks on the webpages of public institutions since stripping Wikileaks founder Julian Assange of political asylum.

CARACAS, April 14 (Xinhua) -- The Venezuelan government on Sunday denounced the U.S. sanctions targeting its state-owned oil company PDVSA for the "criminal impact" on the Venezuelan people.

The sanctions blocked the country's access to oil revenues and its ability to pay for key social and health programs, the government said in a statement.

The sanctions "prevent the implementation of humanitarian aid programs for particularly difficult health cases," such as cancer, Parkinson's, epilepsy, and liver and bone marrow transplants, according to the statement.

BOGOTA, April 13 (Xinhua) -- An explosive attack that left a soldier dead on Saturday was attributed to the guerrilla group National Liberation Army (ELN), said the Colombian military.

The attack using explosives killed the 39-year-old Colombian soldier Carlos Urena in the northwestern province of Antioquia, the Colombian Seventh Military Brigade said.

Via his Twitter account, the brigade commander Juan Carlos Ramirez confirmed Urena's death following the attack allegedly carried out by the Taraza group which belongs to the ELN.

CARACAS, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Wednesday night that he had reached an agreement with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the delivery of humanitarian aid supplies within the framework of respect for the national sovereignty of his country.

Maduro said he had a meeting with Peter Maurer, president of the ICRC and Sophie Orr, the ICRC's regional director for the Americas on Tuesday night at Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas.

9 Apr 2019; DW: Colombian authorities are investigating an alleged militant plan to target President Ivan Duque during a scheduled meeting with indigenous communities on Tuesday.

"We have reliable information that ... some armed organized groups, which have infiltrated this social and indigenous movement, would like to carry out a terrorist act that could affect the safety of the president himself," Attorney General Nestor Martinez said.

CARACAS, April 7. /TASS/. The Venezuelan system of electricity generation and distribution was attacked not merely from the United States but also from South American countries, President Nicolas Maduro said at a rally in the capital of the country.

"I have already said that we confirmed the version of attacks governed from Houston and Chicago during the investigation," Maduro said. "We found new sources [of aggression] from Chile and Columbia, used to damage the power system of Venezuela," he noted.