New machine offers relief for Colombian coffee-growers' labor woes - Reuters

Third generation Colombian coffee farmer Mauricio Giraldo knows all too well the stress of seeing some of his crop rot on the tree because he cannot find enough workers to pick the cherry-like red fruit.

Luisa Gonzalez

His 35-hectare (86-acre) farm in the southern mountains of Huila requires 80 pickers, but sometimes during busy harvest seasons he can find only half that, as people gravitate toward urban centers and away from arduous agricultural work.

Colombia, the world’s top producer of washed arabica coffee, lacks between 60,000 and 90,000 pickers overall, but a new machine invented by the coffee growers’ federation and Brazilian machinery company Brudden could cut that shortage in half.

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Colombian anti-corruption referendum fails to meet quorum - Reuters

A referendum vote on seven anti-corruption measures failed to meet quorum in Colombia on Sunday, nullifying the results even though each of the measures, including a reduction in lawmakers’ salaries and term limits for public posts, got at least 99 percent support.

Luisa Gonzalez

Corruption has become a hot topic in the country in recent years as security has improved and Colombians have increasingly turned their attention to headline-grabbing cases, including vote-buying, graft to obtain public contracts and the extradition of the country’s anti-corruption czar for allegedly taking bribes.

Graft costs the country $17 billion a year, equivalent to 5.3 percent of GDP, the country’s comptroller has said.

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U.S. to give Colombia $9 mln to help Venezuelan migrants-Haley - Reuters

The United States will give Colombia $9 million to help provide for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Venezuela fleeing a severe economic and political crisis over the past 18 months, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Wednesday.

“We really have to question how long can this be sustainable,” said Haley, who was in Colombia for Tuesday’s inauguration of Colombian President Ivan Duque.

Speaking in northern Cucuta, which borders Venezuela, Haley said the funds would go toward water sanitation, health needs, sterilization and medicines and “things like that to really help the Venezuelan people.”

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Duque becomes Colombia's president, promising to unite divided nation - Reuters

Colombia’s President-elect Ivan Duque was sworn in to office on Tuesday, pledging to unite a divided nation behind his plan to toughen a peace accord with Marxist rebels and rekindle economic growth.

Right-wing Duque, who replaces Nobel Prize winner Juan Manuel Santos, faces significant challenges.

The economy remains weak, a new wave of drug trafficking gangs have moved into areas once controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, and nearly a million Venezuelan migrants have crossed into Colombia looking for food and work.

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Colombia's Uribe says Britain's MI6 part of 'ruse' against him - Reuters

Reuters

Colombia’s former President Alvaro Uribe on Wednesday accused President Juan Manuel Santos and Britain’s MI6 spy agency of participating in a plot against him, a day after resigning his Senate seat to face a bribery and fraud investigation by the Supreme Court.

Uribe, a mentor of Colombia’s incoming President Ivan Duque, is under investigation by the court over allegations he made false accusations and tampered with witnesses in a case he himself started by making similar accusations against a leftist senator.

Known for a hardline military crackdown on Marxist guerrillas during his 2002-2010 government, Uribe cited on Twitter what he said were claims that recordings in the case were made by MI6, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.

“There are repeated accusations that the recordings were made by the British agency MI6, friends of Juan Manuel Santos. Foreign authorities in a ruse against me,” Uribe said.

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