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Cocaine trade in the rugged Micay Canyon threatens Colombia’s peace efforts

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EL PLATEADO, Colombia (AP) — El Plateado in the rugged mountains of southwestern Colombia might seem like a typical community in the countryside — until you hear the bursts of machine-gun fire and mortar blasts in the distance.

The remote town of 12,000 people lies in the Micay Canyon, where rebel groups have entrenched over the past two years despite efforts by Colombian President Gustavo Petro to negotiate peace deals with these irregular armies under a strategy known as total peace.

The canyon is currently a bastion of a rebel faction that broke away from the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and that has been attacking military positions while the army responds with heavy infantry.

“It hurts me to see my children growing up amid this war,” said Edilma Acuechantre, a 34-year-old woman who makes a living from picking coca leaves at local farms that sell the harvest to drug traffickers who turn it into cocaine.

She said she keeps a small backpack with clothes, soap and toothbrushes in her wooden house, in case she needs to quickly flee her village.

The Micay Canyon plays a key role in the illicit trade of both drugs and weapons.

It connects the Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean along dozens of remote trails used to bring cocaine to small ports where it is loaded unto home-made submarines heading to Central America. Experts say it also serves as a corridor to bring weapons into the interior of Colombia.

The former FARC faction, known by its initials in Spanish FARC-EMC, has set up roadblocks to control parts of the Micay Canyon region, and guards coca leaf farms on its mountainsides.

Fighting between the rebels and the army mainly takes place on the hillsides, but the sounds of the confrontation can be heard from El Plateado, where residents try to maintain normal lives, selling things, working in stores, going to pick leaves at the coca farms.

It’s been almost eight years since Colombia’s government signed a peace deal with the FARC that was seen as a crucial step toward ending decades of rural violence in the South American country.

Under the 2016 agreement, more than 14,000 fighters laid down their weapons and formed a political party that was given ten guaranteed seats in Colombia’s congress.

The rebel fighters stopped taxing cocaine producers, handing out sentences to thieves in small villages, and watching over illegal mines.

But experts say that Colombia’s government was too slow to fill the power vacuum left by the retreating rebels, and now a host of smaller groups that include the FARC-EMC, National Liberation Army, and the Gulf Clan are fighting to take over rural areas that were formerly under FARC control, like the Micay Canyon.

This threatens to undo years of progress in peacebuilding in Colombia.

Most members of the FARC-EMC withdrew from peace talks with Petro’s administration in April, after the government blamed the group for killing an indigenous leader and suspended a ceasefire. The FARC-EMC had also expressed growing frustration with efforts by the government to patrol villages in the canyon and seize drug shipments.

President Petro has called the area “the great cocaine stock market” of the FARC-EMC, and he said that the canyon provides the group with one of its main sources of financing.

The president has said he wants to take over the canyon in order to offer development projects to farmers who currently rely on coca crops.

Kevin Andrés Arcos, president of the community council in the town of El Plateado, says most of the town’s inhabitants make a living from harvesting or planting coca leaves.

The region’s poor roads make any other kinds of crops unprofitable, Arcos said.

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The Associated Press writers Astrid Suárez and Manuel Rueda contributed from Bogota, Colombia.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Canada’s Denis Shapovalov wins Belgrade Open for his second ATP Tour title

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BELGRADE, Serbia – Canada’s Denis Shapovalov is back in the winner’s circle.

The 25-year-old Shapovalov beat Serbia’s Hamad Medjedovic 6-4, 6-4 in the Belgrade Open final on Saturday.

It’s Shapovalov’s second ATP Tour title after winning the Stockholm Open in 2019. He is the first Canadian to win an ATP Tour-level title this season.

His last appearance in a tournament final was in Vienna in 2022.

Shapovalov missed the second half of last season due to injury and spent most of this year regaining his best level of play.

He came through qualifying in Belgrade and dropped just one set on his way to winning the trophy.

Shapovalov’s best results this season were at ATP 500 events in Washington and Basel, where he reached the quarterfinals.

Medjedovic was playing in his first-ever ATP Tour final.

The 21-year-old, who won the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF title last year, ends 2024 holding a 9-8 tour-level record on the season.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Talks to resume in B.C. port dispute in bid to end multi-day lockout

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VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.

The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.

The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.

The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.

The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.

MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.

In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.

“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.

“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”

In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.

“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.

The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.

“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”

The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.

The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.

A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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The Royal Canadian Legion turns to Amazon for annual poppy campaign boost

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The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.

Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.

Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.

Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.

“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.

“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”

Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.

“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.

Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.

“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”

But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.

Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.

“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.

Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.

The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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