Colombian Senator Uribe extremely critical after brain surgery
June 16 (Reuters) - Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe is in extremely critical condition after undergoing surgery to tend to a brain bleed, the hospital treating him said on Monday.
Swelling in the area is persistent and his brain bleed remains difficult to control, the hospital added. Uribe was shot in the head at a political rally earlier this month.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘We'll keep fighting': search persists for priest thought to be murdered on Pinochet torture ship
In the weak winter sunshine forensic investigators in white suits cast long shadows as they stepped between gravestones at Playa Ancha cemetery in the Chilean coastal city of Valparaíso. But as the rhythmic click of spades and the throb of an excavator faded, a third search for the remains of Michael Woodward reached a frustrating conclusion. No trace has ever been found of Woodward, an Anglo-Chilean priest who is thought to have been murdered on the Esmeralda, a Chilean navy corvette which Gen Augusto Pinochet's bloody regime used as a floating torture centre after its coup d'état on 11 September 1973. But almost two years since the Chilean state assumed responsibility for finding the missing victims of Pinochet's regime for the first time, cautious, methodical progress is being made. 'The fact that they managed to carve out a space for a permanent, ongoing public policy commitment is no mean feat,' said Dr Cath Collins, director of the transitional justice observatory at Diego Portales University in Santiago. In August 2023, the National Search Plan for Truth and Justice became an official state policy, with the aiming of centralizing information, finding the remains – or trace the final movements – of 1,469 disappeared people, and seeking reparations for their families. In the harrowing, uncertain days after Pinochet's coup, Miguel Woodward, as the tall, cheerful priest was known to his Chilean friends, laid low in the valleys around the city. Born to an English father and Chilean mother in Valparaíso and educated in the UK, he had returned to Chile to become a priest, joining a leftist political movement under the banner of socialist president Salvador Allende's Unidad Popular coalition. Early on 22 September 1973, Woodward was kidnapped from his home by a navy patrol and taken to the Universidad Santa María, which had become a makeshift detention centre. He was beaten and submerged in the campus swimming pool, before being transferred to a naval academy and then on to the Esmeralda, where he is thought to have died of the injuries sustained under torture. 'That's when our search began,' said Javier Rodríguez, 58, an affable, wild-haired construction worker with an unbreakable will to find the priest he remembers vividly as a family friend. Rodríguez founded the Friends of Miguel Woodward organisation, and has set up a cultural centre in Woodward's name, a narrow room a few doors down from where the priest was abducted, where a faded poster promoting the National Search Plan is stuck in the window. 'If Miguel were alive now, he would be marching for Palestine, for the Mapuche [Indigenous people], for all injustices,' he said. 'They murdered him because they were afraid of him.' Since democracy returned to Chile in 1990, human rights cases have made halting progress through the Chilean courts. Woodward's sister, Patricia, was able to file a case in 2002, but it was soon closed for lack of evidence. Eventually, when it was reopened on appeal, 10 low-ranking officers were implicated in his torture. Two were convicted, but neither ever served jail time. Michael Woodward's final moments have been pieced together from eyewitness accounts and testimonies, but those of many others have not – and activists fear that time is running out. 'The easy cases are all done,' said Dr Collins, 'Some of the people who might have been going to talk have died.' In Chile, the armed forces have long tried to obstruct progress, either by remaining silent or handing over partial or misleading information. Progress has been achingly slow. 'The state never did enough to find any of the disappeared, but now the resources are there,' said Rodríguez. 'Maybe the [search] plan came late, but it represents the state coming to settle its debts.' Searches are being carried out at 20 sites up and down the country, but as yet, no finds have been made – and some fear that progress could soon be checked. 'Of course there is going to be disappointment that there haven't been any big discoveries yet, but if the plan survives the next administration, that's almost an achievement in itself,' said Dr Collins. In November , Chileans will vote in a presidential election in which three of the four current leading candidates offer rightwing agendas to replace leftist president Gabriel Boric, who ratified the national search plan. Woodward's last home, painted bright blue, still stands on a Valparaíso street corner; neighbours still use 'Miguel's house' as a reference when giving directions. And despite its dark history, the Esmeralda is still in service in the Chilean navy. It is frequently picketed by protestors at ports around the world, returning periodically to haunt its victims from Valparaíso's wide bay. Chile's forensic medical service says that further searches for Woodward's body will be carried out in the cemetery in Playa Ancha imminently. 'If we find Miguel, the fight doesn't end there,' said Rodríguez. 'He lived with us and we have a history with him, but he's just one of those we are missing – there will still be hundreds more to find.' 'We'll keep fighting until we have justice, whatever that may look like.'
Reuters
8 hours ago
- Reuters
Colombia lower house approves pension reform, again
BOGOTA, June 28 (Reuters) - Colombia's lower house approved on Saturday, for the second time, a pension reform supported by leftist President Gustavo Petro, after the constitutional court ordered a repetition of the ballot because of procedural irregularities. The court's June decision did not rule on the bill's constitutionality but required the lower house to vote again on the version approved by the Senate, saying there was not enough debate held ahead of the first vote in June 2024. The bill was backed by 97 lawmakers on Saturday, while one voted against it. The measure was supposed to come into force in July but will not be valid until the court approves it, the court ruling said. The bill is meant to strengthen state pension fund Colpensiones by requiring those who earn less than $800 per month to save with the fund. It ensures payments for those without sufficient retirement savings, or with no savings at all. The legislation, which reduces the number of weeks women who have children must accumulate in order to be eligible for pensions, will not affect people who have already notched enough weeks to be within striking distance of retirement. It does not change Colombia's pension age, which is 62 for men and 57 for women. The government estimates that some 2.6 million older adults will benefit from the payments to those with no or insufficient pension savings. Petro's ambitious economic and social reforms have faced uphill battles in Congress, though lawmakers in June backed a labor reform similar to an original proposal backed by Petro's government which was initially rejected.
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Daily Mail
ALEXANDRA SHULMAN'S NOTEBOOK: How cherry vodka took the edge off my 'scanxiety'
It's exactly a year since I was in hospital, recovering from a six-hour operation to remove a cancerous tumour from my colon. This means two things. One, that it's Glastonbury weekend, which 12 months back I was watching from my adjustable bed wired up to a zillion tubes. Hospital days are long, but the nights are even longer, and lying in that dark ward the noisy joy of Glastonbury was a welcome distraction. The other, more haunting thing, is the onset of 'scanxiety'. As everyone who has cancer knows, this is the dread of the routine scan and what it might reveal. It messes with your head, removing a large dollop of rationality. Last week was my first-year follow-up colonoscopy, and on the morning of the procedure I looked at the cherry tree in our garden. We've been blessed with a magnificent amount of bright red, sadly sour fruit this summer, and along with fretting about the scan I was wondering what to do with it all. It seemed a shame to just leave the cherries dangling there for the pigeons to feed on, but I'm not a cherry pie kind of gal, nor a jam-maker. But then the scanxiety kicked in. Would doing something constructive with the cherries mean the scan would reveal some new horror? It's obviously not clear headed, but in my mind, having the hubris to think it was worth making something out of the cherries would be tempting fate. In the end, common sense prevailed and I made a jar of cherry vodka before heading to the hospital. Very fortunately, the scan was clear. I now have no excuse not to try my hand at the jam or pie making, and there's enough cherry vodka in the freezer to take the edge off my next bout of scanxiety. An at-home test could save you too On the subject of medical testing, my cancer was picked up by the DIY bowel cancer test mailed out by the NHS. Last week the Government announced it would be sending at-home cervical cancer tests to women who've never attended smear tests. My gut feeling is that most people who are too queasy to attend the testing already on offer are unlikely to do their own, but perhaps not having someone else prod around your vagina might be an encouragement. At any rate I would urge everyone who receives one to take up the offer. It could save your life. The terrible curse of White Lotus 'That's the plan.' Those three words haven't sounded the same since Season 3 of HBO's The White Lotus. Anyone who's seen the moving scene between the emotionally damaged Rick and the younger, optimistic hippie-chick Chelsea, when Rick finally agrees that their destiny is to be together for the rest of their lives, will remember those words. 'That's the plan,' he says to her astonishment. Next thing we know they are both murdered. Now whenever anyone says 'that's the plan', it's that scene with Walton Goggins in his tropical print shirt and Aimee Lou Wood's toothy grin, that comes to mind, and with it a sense of impending doom. My lack of curiosity didn't kill the cat! Time was running out to find someone to take care of our cat Coco when we went away recently, so for the first time in 18 years we searched online for help. We found TrustedHousesitters, which pairs owners with sitters. The process was similar to how I imagine online dating would be – a shot in the dark. I plumped for a sweet Canadian boy with five-star reviews who I only spoke to on FaceTime briefly before his arrival. The night before the trip I had a total panic. Despite being a woman who returned to work leaving her four-month-old son in the care of a nanny who'd only arrived the night before, abandoning Coco to a complete stranger felt more worrying. I realised that I knew nothing about the Canadian other than the basic information provided online. All I had was his mobile telephone number. I didn't even know his surname. I had visions of the subsequent news stories: 'Former Vogue editor's home is raided and cat killed by man she gave the keys to without bothering to learn his name.' As it happened there was no need for the front-page fears and we returned to a very happy cat. My son survived his nanny back then, too. Shining example of our lack of urgency Arhitect Norman Foster's plans for a memorial to the late Queen in St James's Park look splendid, in particular the glass balustrade bridge which will shimmer beautifully over the lake. But why does everything have to take so long? The final designs aren't going to be passed until next year and there is no completion date scheduled. With this country's tragic lack of urgency when it comes to getting things done, there's every chance we could be well into the next decade before this beautiful new parkscape emerges. Mysterious return of the mini dress It's not only the Kardashian clan at the Bezos wedding who are kitted out in mini dresses – they're springing up everywhere. After years of women in wafting midis, the mini is back. The famous hemline index – that long hems are fashionable in economically tough times while short skirts thrive in economic prosperity – isn't exactly describing what we're experiencing. But perhaps fashion knows something we don't? Now wouldn't that be fine.
