South America

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 25. /TASS/: The heads of state and government of BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) will hold an informal meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan's Osaka on June 28, according to a document obtained by TASS.

The informal meeting will be held in the morning before the G20 summit's main program starts. According to a source in the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, the meeting will focus on financial and economic issues.

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Two months before Tamara Lagos was born in 1984, her father was killed by agents of the Chilean dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Soon after, her mother took her into exile in Argentina. But when Lagos finally returned to Chile five years later, she was unable to secure a birth certificate with her father’s surname because he wasn’t alive to claim her as his child. The quest for redress eventually led her to the Supreme Court, which finally ordered the Chilean civil registry in April to correct Lagos’ identity document.

BERLIN (AP) — Hundreds of climate activists are keeping up their protest inside one of Germany’s biggest open-pit mines despite police orders to leave the place immediately, citing life-threatening danger.

Authorities pulled out some of the protesters from the Garzweiler lignite coal mine in western Germany on Sunday, the third day of protests in the Rhineland region since Friday, when 40,000 students rallied for more action against climate change in the nearby city of Aachen.

22 June 2019; DW: At the end of a three-day visit to Venezuela, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said she had appointed two delegates to stay behind to advise the government and monitor abuses.

Her trip, at the invitation of embattled President Nicolas Maduro, came amid a deepening crisis that has caused crippling food and medicine shortages across the country. Rights groups say hundreds of political opponents have been jailed, while millions of people have fled abroad.

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro announced on Friday that Jorge Antonio de Oliveira Francisco is the new general secretary of the president.

The secretariat was previously held by Floriano Peixoto Vieira Neto, who will head the country's postal service.

Oliveira Francisco is a lawyer and a major of the Federal District's Military Police.

Bolsonaro expressed his confidence in his new cabinet member.

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — A court in Ecuador freed a Swedish programmer close to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday after more than two months in jail on suspicion of hacking.

In a two-to-one vote judges with a provincial court ruled that Ola Bini should be freed while he defends himself against any upcoming charges.

The Swede thanked judges and the Ecuadorian people as he walked from from jail late Thursday night.

“Today we have proven my innocence for the first time and we will continue to prove my innocence,” said Bini.

CARACAS, June 19. /TASS/: Venezuela has received 25 tons of humanitarian aid from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Tuesday, Healthcare Minister Carlos Alvarado told Venezolana de Television.

"Together with this batch, the volume of the aid provided by the ICRC stands at 48 tons. Together with medicines and surgical materials delivered from Russia and China, the volume of humanitarian aid stands at 569 tonnes," Alvarado said. "This helps us overcome the blockade imposed by the US," he added.

CARACAS, June 18. /TASS/: International payment systems Visa and Mastercard will operate on the territory of Venezuela until 20 March 2020, President of the Bank of Venezuela Jose Javier Morales said on Monday.

"The license issued by the US Department of the Treasury for Visa and Mastercard to work in Venezuela, expires on 20 March 2020. We don't know what will happen after that," Morales said.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The huge blackout that left tens of millions of people in the dark in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay over the weekend raised serious questions about the vulnerability of the power grid in South America and brought criticism down on Argentina’s leader.

President Mauricio Macri promised a thorough investigation into the cause of what he called an unprecedented outage. Energy officials said the findings would not be available for 10 to 15 days, and they had no immediate estimate of the economic damage from Sunday’s 14-hour power failure.

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — U.S. investigators have received permission from Ecuador to question a Swedish programmer close to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who has been held in jail for more than two months on suspicion of hacking, The Associated Press has learned.

The interview with Ola Bini is set for June 27, according to an Ecuadorian prosecutor’s order provided to AP by someone closely following the case.