El Salvador

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador’s top court and its election authority have tossed aside what seemed to be a constitutional ban on consecutive presidential reelection, setting the stage for President Nayib Bukele to potentially seek a second term in 2024.

The Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber on Friday told the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to permit a second term, and the electoral authority announced Saturday it would accept what it called a ruling that cannot be appealed.

SAN SALVADOR, Sept 4 (Reuters) - El Salvador's top court has ruled that the country's president can serve two consecutive terms, opening the door for incumbent Nayib Bukele to stand for re-election in 2024.

Issued late on Friday, the ruling was handed down by judges appointed by lawmakers from Bukele's ruling party in May after they had removed the previous justices, a step that drew strong criticism from Washington and other foreign powers.

SAN SALVADOR, July 22 (Reuters) - El Salvador has ordered the arrest of former president Salvador Sanchez Ceren and nine top officials from a past administration as part of a money laundering and corruption probe, the Attorney General's office said on Thursday.

The office said Sanchez Ceren was out of the country, but five former high-ranking members of former president Mauricio Funes's government from 2009 to 2014 have been detained.

CHALCHUAPA, El Salvador, July 19 (Reuters) - Neighbors knew something was wrong in that squat green house when a young woman's screams pierced the quiet of their neighborhood in Chalchuapa, a small town about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from San Salvador, this nation's capital.

Jacquelinne Palomo Lima, 26, and her mother had been lured to the windowless dwelling by the man who lived there – 51-year-old former policeman Hugo Osorio - who had promised them information about Palomo's missing brother, Alexis, a family member told Reuters.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — In the narrow, gang-controlled alleys of the Las Palmas neighborhood, struggling Salvadorans are untroubled by actions of their president that so infuriate his critics.

EL ZONTE, El Salvador (AP) — After El Salvador’s congress made the bitcoin legal tender this week, eyes turned to this rural fishing village on the Pacific coast. Known to surfers for its pounding waves, El Zonte has had the cryptocurrency in its economy for the past year.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced in a recorded message played at a Bitcoin conference in Miami Saturday that next week he will send proposed legislation to the country’s congress that would make the cryptocurrency legal tender in the Central American nation.

The 39-year-old president, who has maintained approval ratings above 90% and made Twitter his preferred way of communicating, characterized it as an idea that could help El Salvador move forward.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The United States Agency for International Development will redirect its funding from El Salvador’s state institutions to its civil society groups as tensions rise between the two governments over the Central American country’s removal of Supreme Court justices and the Attorney General.

USAID Administrator Samantha Power said in a statement Friday that the agency has “deep concerns” about the shake-up in the justice system earlier this month and more generally about transparency and accountability.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — El Salvador’s new Legislative Assembly, controlled by President Nayib Bukele’s New Ideas party, held its first session Saturday with lawmakers voting to remove the magistrates of the constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court.

The assembly voted 64 to 19 with one abstention to oust the five magistrates on the chamber, which had angered Bukele by ruling against some of his tougher measures during the pandemic.

(Reuters) --- The Biden administration is considering creating a task force of officials from the U.S. Justice and State Departments and other agencies to help local prosecutors fight corruption in Central America's Northern Triangle countries, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.