Diplomatic Service, Embassies and Consulates

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Lawyer Who Tried to Set Off Bomb Outside of Chinese Embassy Pleads Guilty

      by

      Christopher Rodriguez tried to detonate a bag of explosives at the embassy in Washington, D.C., by firing a rifle at it but missed, prosecutors said.A Florida lawyer pleaded guilty on Friday to placing a bag of explosives near the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., and trying to detonate it with a rifle, according to court records.This was not the first time the lawyer, Christopher Rodriguez, had attempted a detonation, prosecutors said. He had previously set off explosives in 2022 that caused “significant damage” to a statue of the Communist leaders Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong in San Antonio, Texas, by shooting at canisters of explosives with a rifle, according to court records.But when Mr. Rodriguez, 45, of Panama City, Fla., employed a similar tactic by shooting at a 15-pound backpack of explosives that he dropped near the fence of the Chinese Embassy on Sept. 25, 2023, he missed, and the explosives did not detonate, according to court records.Federal authorities say a Florida lawyer tried to detonate a backpack with explosives outside the Chinese Embassy in Washington in September.U.S. District Court for the District of ColumbiaMr. Rodriguez pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to damaging property occupied by a foreign government, using explosive materials to cause malicious damage to federal property, and receipt or possession of an unregistered firearm.The charges cover his attack on the statue in San Antonio and his attempt to damage the Chinese Embassy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Los venezolanos en el exterior enfrentan dificultades para poder votar

      by

      El gobierno venezolano ha impuesto una serie de normas estrictas que hacen que inscribirse para votar sea complicado para millones de venezolanos que viven en el exterior.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]La fila afuera del consulado de Venezuela en Madrid llegaba hasta el final de la cuadra. Mujeres embarazadas, familias con niños pequeños, personas mayores y con discapacidades llegaron incluso a las 4:00 a. m. —cinco horas antes de que la oficina abriera sus puertas— para intentar inscribirse para votar en las muy esperadas elecciones presidenciales de Venezuela.Adriana Rodríguez, de 47 años, que salió de Venezuela en 2018, llegó a las 8:00 a. m., dos días seguidos. En ambas oportunidades, esperó durante horas antes de llegar al principio de la fila, solo para terminar siendo rechazada, contó, siempre con la misma explicación: “Ya no se podía inscribir más gente”.Con el presidente autoritario de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, detrás en las encuestas por gran margen en vísperas de las elecciones del 28 de julio, el gobierno ha impuesto una serie de normas estrictas que hacen que inscribirse para votar sea casi imposible para millones de venezolanos que viven en el exterior, incluido Estados Unidos, España y otros países de América Latina.Muchos abandonaron su país natal debido a las duras condiciones económicas y políticas.Como resultado, expertos electorales afirman que las tácticas del gobierno equivalen a un fraude electoral generalizado, dado que hasta un 25 por ciento de los votantes elegibles de Venezuela viven fuera del país, y una gran cantidad de ellos muy probablemente no votaría por Maduro.Adriana Rodríguez, de 47 años, quien se fue de Venezuela en 2018, fue al consulado en Madrid dos días seguidos pero no pudo inscribirse para votar.Emilio Parra Doiztua para The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Wayne S. Smith, a Leading Critic of the Embargo on Cuba, Dies at 91

      by

      A former State Department official, he resigned in protest in 1982 over Cuba policy, then spent decades trying to rebuild relations with the island nation.Wayne S. Smith, a veteran Cuba expert at the State Department who, after resigning in protest over America’s embargo against the island nation in 1982, spent nearly four decades leading efforts to rebuild relations between Washington and Havana, died on June 28 at his home in New Orleans. He was 91.His daughter, Melinda Smith Ulloa, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.For more than 24 years after he joined the Foreign Service in 1958, Mr. Smith was America’s man in Havana, whether he was physically in the Cuban capital or dealing with it from a desk in Washington.Later, after leaving the State Department, he used his extensive experience to carry out a sustained campaign against America’s strategy of isolating Cuba, while also leading private and congressional delegations to the island in an attempt to build avenues of dialogue.“He was one of the foremost spokespeople in favor of normalizing relations,” William LeoGrande, an expert on Cuba affairs at American University in Washington, said in an interview.A witty and nimble writer, Mr. Smith turned out scores of opinion pieces, journal essays and books, including a memoir-cum-history, “The Closest of Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic Account of U.S.-Cuban Relations Since 1957,” published in 1987.“Cuba seems to have the same effect on U.S. administrations,” he liked to say, “as the full moon once had on werewolves.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Sweden and Iran Exchange Prisoners in a Breakthrough Swap

      by

      Iran released an E.U. diplomat from Sweden and a dual Iranian-Swedish national, whereas Sweden released a senior former Iranian official serving a life sentence for war crimes.Iran and Sweden exchanged prisoners on Saturday in a major breakthrough, according to the Swedish prime minister.Iran released the European Union diplomat and Swedish national Johan Floderus, who had been arrested in April 2022 in Tehran, as well as the dual national Saeed Azizi, the Swedish prime minister said.“It is with pleasure that I can announce that Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi are now on a plane home to Sweden, and will soon be reunited with their families,” the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said on social media.In exchange, Sweden released Hamid Noury, a high-ranking Iranian official who had been sentenced to life in a Swedish court for war crimes committed in 1988 in Iran.The swap was coordinated with the help of Oman, according to a statement published by the Omani state news agency.Vivian Nereim More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Moorhead C. Kennedy Jr., 93, Dies; Hostage Who Chided Foreign Policy

      by

      A Foreign Service officer, he was one of 52 hostages seized in Iran and held for 444 days. He later challenged the U.S. government to reshape its diplomacy with the Islamic world.Moorhead C. Kennedy Jr., wearing a dark suit and a green polka-dot tie, was working at his desk in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on the morning of Nov. 4, 1979, when a Marine burst into the hallway outside his office.It was a tense period in Iran: A revolution to overthrow the shah was escalating. Mr. Kennedy, a career Foreign Service officer, was filling in for the economics counselor, the embassy’s third-ranking diplomat, who was away on family leave.“I was very interested in seeing a revolution in progress,” Mr. Kennedy later recalled. “It was a very fruitful time until, all of a sudden, I heard a shout from the Marines, ‘They’re coming over the wall!’ And then a whole new experience began.”Supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took Mr. Kennedy and 51 others hostage. They were held for 444 days and subjected to psychological and physical abuse, including mock executions. The global crisis upended Jimmy Carter’s presidency and helped foment in the West an enduring distrust of the Islamic world.Following the release of the hostages just after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president in January 1981, Mr. Kennedy emerged as one of the most recognizable characters of the episode — in part because his wife, Louisa Livingston Kennedy, had been a spokeswoman for families of the hostages, but more so because he had quit the Foreign Service and become a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy.Mr. Kennedy died on May 3 in Bar Harbor, Maine. He was 93. The cause of his death, at an assisted living facility, was complications of dementia, his son Mark said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      J. Gary Cooper, Pathbreaking Marine Leader, Is Dead at 87

      by

      He was the first Black officer to lead a Marine Corps infantry company into combat. He later became an Alabama state lawmaker and an assistant secretary of the Air Force.J. Gary Cooper, a two-star general and the first African American to lead a Marine infantry company in combat, who later became an Alabama state lawmaker, an assistant secretary of the Air Force and an ambassador to Jamaica, died on April 27 at his home in Mobile, Ala. He was 87.His death was confirmed by his daughter Joli Claire Cooper.Growing up in Alabama in the 1930s and ’40s, General Cooper overcame the harsh segregation of the Deep South to attain leadership roles in the military, corporate America and government, a sweeping arc that paralleled the paths of a generation of African Americans that pushed open doors during a time of profound racial change in the United States.General Cooper was raised in Mobile in a rarefied world: the Black upper class of the pre-civil rights era. His family owned an insurance company and a funeral home. But money did not insulate him from the strictures of Jim Crow and its long racist shadow.When his father tried to send him to an all-white Roman Catholic school, the local bishop barred him. When he returned to Mobile to run the family business after 12 years in the Marines, the Junior Chamber of Commerce rejected him as a member. And in 1973, when General Cooper went to the Mobile County Courthouse to obtain a marriage license, he was humiliated to find that Black couples were made to sign a “colored” register, separate from the one for white couples.His initial escape from the segregated city of his youth came in 1954 when he won a scholarship to Notre Dame, where he was one of only a handful of Black freshmen in a class of 1,500.“On campus there were no ‘colored’ or ‘white’ signs on the drinking fountains or bathroom doors,” General Cooper wrote in a reminiscence published in Notre Dame magazine in 2014. “I thought I had died and gone to heaven.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Who Is Jorge Glas, an Ecuadorean Politician Arrested at Mexico’s Embassy?

      by

      A former vice president of Ecuador, Jorge Glas had been convicted of bribery in two separate cases. He had fled to the Mexican Embassy in Quito after facing more embezzlement charges.Mexico has severed diplomatic relations with Ecuador after Ecuadorean police officers on Friday arrested Jorge Glas, an Ecuadorean politician who had been granted refuge in Mexico’s Embassy in Quito.That arrest, which Mexico described as a “violation” of its sovereignty, capped days of growing tensions between the two Latin American countries. Ecuador has considered Mr. Glas a fugitive and said its police force was acting on an arrest warrant for Mr. Glas.Here’s what to know about the politician at the center of the dispute.Jorge Glas is a former vice president of Ecuador.Mr. Glas served in several ministerial roles under the longtime left-wing government of a former Ecuadorean president, Rafael Correa. Mr. Glas’s most notable role was as Mr. Correa’s vice president, a position he held from 2013 to 2017.His term as vice president in the subsequent government, led by Lenín Moreno, lasted only a few months. In 2017, he was forced from office and sentenced to six years in prison after being found guilty of receiving over $13.5 million dollars in bribes.The bribes had involved Odebrecht, an international construction giant that admitted to paying bribes in more than a dozen countries. The corruption scandal implicated current and former officials in Latin America and has rocked its political establishment.He became mired in other bribery charges.In 2020, a separate bribery case led to Mr. Glas being found guilty of accepting money in exchange for issuing public contracts between 2012 and 2016.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      A Timeline of Iran and Israel’s Shadow War Across the Middle East

      by

      The regional rivals have for decades targeted each other’s interests, including with a recent strike in Syria that killed three Iranian commanders. Here are some other notable flash points.For decades, Israel and Iran have fought a shadow war across the Middle East, trading attacks by land, sea, air and in cyberspace.Iran has largely used foreign proxies to strike Israeli interests, while targeted assassinations of Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists have been a key part of Israel’s strategy.Israel’s strike in the Syrian capital, Damascus, that killed three top Iranian commanders on Monday was the most brazen attack in years, raising fears of a wider confrontation. That would be particularly dangerous in a region already in turmoil on multiple fronts, including Israel’s war in Gaza, cross-border skirmishes between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militia against Western interests in the Red Sea. An escalation between Israel and Iran would also risk further entangling the United States, given the presence of American troops in the region.Here are some key moments in the yearslong conflict.January 2020: A major targetThe assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, commander of the foreign-facing arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, in an American drone strike in Baghdad was greeted with satisfaction in Israel.Crowds at the funeral for Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Tehran in 2020.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesIran hit back by attacking two bases in Iraq that housed American troops with a barrage of missiles, injuring about 100 U.S. military personnel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More