Guatemala

GUATEMALA CITY, Aug 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Guatemala has declared a new state of emergency and will impose an overnight curfew from Sunday to contain a surge in Covid infections due to the Delta variant, President Alejandro
Giammattei said.

   The 30-day state of emergency is being implemented due to a rebound in cases attributed to the “more aggressive” Delta variant, Giammattei said in a televised address on Friday.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — With Kamala Harris visiting Guatemala and Mexico on her first foreign trip as vice president, the Biden administration is expected to announce new measures to fight smuggling and trafficking, and hopes to announce additional anti-corruption efforts as well on Monday, a senior administration official said.

The official, who briefed reporters traveling with Harris on Sunday, spoke on condition of anonymity to preview announcements before they have been made public. No further details were provided.

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Mexico on Friday returned the bodies of 16 Guatemalan nationals massacred in one of its northern border states, a case that caused renewed consternation about the dangers faced by migrants bound for the United States.

The bodies, some badly charred and with gunshot wounds, were found in January along a migrant smuggling route in a remote area of Tamaulipas state in the municipality of Camargo.

GUATEMALA CITY, March 4 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Guatemala’s Pacaya volcano erupted on Wednesday, expelling lava for several hours and prompting the country’s meteorological institute to warn that incandescent volcanic blocks could rain down on nearby towns.

Officials stopped short of ordering evacuations following the so-called strombolian eruption, explosions that consist of relatively mild blasts but eject burning cinders and lava bombs.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemala’s Congress began reshaping the country’s highest court Tuesday, selecting a new magistrate and an alternate in decisions that could have grave consequences for the battle against corruption and impunity.

GUATEMALA CITY, Feb 15 (NNN-TASS) — Guatemalan rescue services reported that the Fuego volcano, located 50km away from the capital city of Guatemala, has started to erupt.

Lava flows reach up to 1.5 km long, and a column of ash rises above the
volcano, spreading up to 5 km away, the report says. There were no reports of evacuation yet.

Last time, Fuego erupted on June 3, 2018, which led to deaths of over 200
people.

GUATEMALA CITY, Feb 13 (NNN-TELESUR) — Guatemala’s President Alejandro Giammattei urged Congress to reinstate the death penalty for some crimes, including femicide and child abuse, following the murder of an eight-year-old girl in the country.

“Let our hands not tremble to confront criminals,” Giammattei said, stressing that hardly any felony receives such punishment in the Constitution.

All crimes against children “should be punished with the criminal’s life,” he said one day after Sharon Figueroa was found dead in the Peten Department.

VADO HONDO (Guatemala), Jan 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Guatemalan security forces used sticks and tear gas to beat back a large migrant caravan bound for the United States, just days before the advent of a new US administration, which urged travelers to abandon the journey.

Between 7,000 and 8,000 migrants, including families with young children, have entered Guatemala since Friday, authorities say, fleeing poverty and violence in a region hammered by the coronavirus pandemic and back-to-back hurricanes in November.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan soldiers blocked part of a caravan of as many as 9,000 Honduran migrants Saturday at a point not far from where they entered the country seeking to reach the U.S. border.

The soldiers, many wearing helmets and wielding shields and sticks, formed ranks across a highway in Chiquimula, near the Honduras border, to block the procession of migrants.

Guatemala’s immigration agency distributed a video showing a couple of hundred men scuffling with soldiers, pushing and running through their lines, even as troops held hundreds more back.

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Hundreds of protesters broke into Guatemala’s Congress and burned part of the building Saturday amid growing demonstrations against President Alejandro Giammattei and the legislature for approving a controversial budget that cut educational and health spending.