NAYIB BUKELE

More than 2,000 soldiers and police surrounded and closed off a town in El Salvador in order to search for street gang members accused in a killing

More than 2,000 soldiers and police surrounded and closed off a town in El Salvador Sunday in order to search for street gang members accused in a killing. The large-scale encirclement of the town of Comasagua is the latest example of heavy-handed tactics by the government to root out street gangs. President Nayib Bukele wrote in his Twitter account that members of the MS-13 gang were believed to still be inside Comasagua, about 20 miles (30 kms) southwest of the capital, San Salvador.

Millennial leaders are rising at the United Nations General Assembly.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has told the U.N. General Assembly that wealthy countries should help — or at least not block — developing countries charting their own paths.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has announced on the country’s Independence Day that he will seek re-election to a second five-year term

In the hours after El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced he would seek re-election despite a constitutional ban, opinion quickly divided.

Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega’s government has closed seven radio stations this week owned by the Roman Catholic church, as well as two other outlets serving the largely rural northern area with a history of opposition.

The U.S. State Department has named 60 current and former officials, as well as some corporate figures in its latest list of people suspected of corruption or undermining democracy in four Central American countries

An expanded list of Central American officials considered corrupt by the U.S. further complicates efforts to stem illegal immigration from the region.

El Salvador’s congress has granted President Nayib Bukele another 30-day extension of the state of exception that has suspended fundamental rights since a surge in gang killings in late March

It’s offering some valuable lessons at relatively low cost.

The government's crypto coffers have been cut in half, bitcoin adoption nationwide isn't really taking off, and the country has big upcoming debt payments.

El Salvador’s Bitcoin-boosting president is asking people to be patient after the price of the cryptocurrency fell below $20,000 _ less than half the price the government paid.

El Salvador’s Bitcoin-boosting president has asked people to be patient after the price of the cryptocurrency fell below $20,000 — less than half the price the government paid. According to the tracking site nayibtracker.com, El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele’s administration has spent about $105 million on Bitcoin, starting last September and paying an average of almost $46,000 per coin.

In the run-up to this week's Summit of the Americas, President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador rebuffed attempts by U.S. officials to set up a phone call with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

It was the sort of diplomatic rebuff a small country like El Salvador generally can rarely afford to make. In the run-up to this week's Summit of Americas in Los Angeles, senior U.S. officials frantically worked the phones seeking to boost attendance amid threats of a boycott from Mexico's president and other leftist leaders over the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Among those efforts, the State Department sent a message that Secretary of State Antony Blinken wanted to speak with President Nayib Bukele last weekend, a rare show of comity from a Biden administration that for months had been blasting the Central American leader as a power-hungry populist.

Journalists in El Salvador who write about gangs can now be sent to prison. Two brothers defy the law with a story tying President Nayib Bukele to violent street gangs.

El Salvador pushed to make bitcoin a legal tender, but fluctuations in interest and inflation haven't encouraged a steady result.

Vice President Kamala Harris says the Biden administration's work to attract investment to Central America has generated $3.2 billion in private-sector commitments.

Immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Mexico are going to demonstrate when leaders from across the hemisphere gather in Los Angeles next week.

Over the past 10 weeks, El Salvador’s security forces have arrested more than 36,000 people since the congress granted President Nayib Bukele the power to suspend some civil liberties to pursue powerful street gangs

Over the past 10 weeks, El Salvador’s security forces have arrested more than 36,000 people since the congress granted President Nayib Bukele the power to suspend some civil liberties to pursue powerful street gangs.

El Salvador’s congress has granted a request by President Nayib Bukele for a second one-month extention of the country’s anti-gang emergency decree

Many wrote the Warriors dynasty off last year. The NBA Twitter Verified crew explain why we are still very much in the middle of the Warriors dynasty.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has started a five-day tour to four Central American countries and Cuba by lashing out at the U.S. government.

Five human rights groups say there have been complaints of at least 338 violations of human rights during El Salvador’s massive arrests of suspected gang members

Human rights groups are criticizing El Salvador’s massive arrests of suspected gang members

President Nayib Bukele has asked El Salvador’s congress to extend an anti-gang emergency decree for another 30 days

El Salvador’s congress has granted a request by President Nayib Bukele to extend an anti-gang emergency decree for another 30 days.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is calling on the government of El Salvador to respect human rights, after authorities declared a state of emergency and rounded up 14,000 suspected gang members

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is calling on the government of El Salvador to respect human rights, after authorities declared a state of emergency and rounded up 14,000 suspected gang members.

El Salvador’s security forces have arrested more than 10,000 suspected gang members in just over two weeks under rules that free them from having to explain an arrest or grant access to a lawyer

El Salvador's security forces have arrested more than 10,000 suspected gang members in just over two weeks under rules that free them from having to explain an arrest or grant access to a lawyer.

A day after the bloodletting -- 62 gang killings that convulsed El Salvador -- the crackdown began. President Nayib Bukele has responded to the surge in gang killings with mass arrests in poor neighborhoods like San Jose El Pino, each day posting the growing arrest total and photos of tattooed men. The highly publicized roundups are not the result of police investigations into the murders in late March, but propel a tough-on-crime narrative that critics are calling “punitive populism.”

A police union in El Salvador says some National Civilian Police commanders have been pressuring officers to meet daily arrest quotas as part of the government’s crackdown on street gangs that have yielded more than 10,000 arrests

With more than 6,000 people held after a weekend killing spree, El Salvador's president and his congressional allies have put civil liberties on hold.

El Salvador’s congress has approved laws that would impose prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for news media that reproduce messages from the country’s street gangs, and that’s alarming press freedom groups

Thousands of cryptocurrency enthusiasts are gathering in Miami as the city builds its reputation as one of the key locations to develop the blockchain technology despite its underdog status.

El Salvador’s president has threatened to stop providing food for imprisoned members of street gangs

El Salvador’s president threatened Tuesday to stop providing food for imprisoned members of street gangs following a wave of killings. Speaking at a graduation ceremony for new police officers and soldiers, President Nayib Bukele said that if the gangs “unleash a wave of crimes, we are going to cut off food in the prisons.” Previously, Bukele had ordered food for gang members held in Salvadoran prisons be reduced to two meals per day, seized inmates’ mattresses and posted a video of prisoners being frog-marched through corridors and down stairs.

El Salvador experienced its first day without a killing since imposing a state of emergency following a rash of gang violence last weekend

El Salvador’s security forces have intensified their operations against the country’s street gangs with mass arrests, the cordoning off of entire neighborhoods and house-by-house searches under a state of emergency sought by President Nayib Bukele.

Security forces intensified operations against El Salvador’s street gangs Tuesday with mass arrests, the cordoning off of neighborhoods and house-by-house searches under a state of emergency that has raised concerns among some organizations it could open the door to human rights abuses. Rather than back down under growing criticism, President Nayib Bukele appeared ready to double down, announcing late Tuesday that he had asked the president of the Congress to convene lawmakers to give him more legal tools to take on gangs.

The government declared a state of emergency and locked down prisons after more than 80 murders were committed Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The government of El Salvador has arrested more than 600 gang suspects and ordered reductions in food for inmates, after a wave of killings over the weekend

The government of El Salvador has arrested more than 600 gang suspects and ordered reductions in food for inmates, after a wave of killings over the weekend.

The homicides appeared linked to the country's notorious street gangs, who effectively control many neighborhoods in the the capital.

After making the cryptocurrency legal tender, President Nayib Bukele plans to launch bitcoin-backed bonds to raise $1 billion for the country.

El Salvador's congress has granted President Nayib Bukele's request to declare a state of emergency, amid a wave of gang-related killings over the weekend.

Four months into El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment, few use the cryptocurrency, fraud has been widespread, and the country has lost up to $22 million.

Four Salvadoran women all had sought medical help for obstetric emergencies, and each ended up in prison sentenced to 30 years on aggravated homicide convictions for allegedly terminating their pregnancies.

A new Cold War is brewing in Latin America between the U.S. and China amid a shifting global order driven more by economics and technology than by politics and ideology.

The International Monetary Fund says that El Salvador should dissolve the $150 million trust fund it created when it made the cryptocurrency Bitcoin legal tender and return any of those unused funds to its treasury.

One thing Nayib Bukele has succeeded at: Turning the president of a gang-plagued Central American country into the world’s most unlikely tech bro.

The International Monetary Fund wants El Salvador to drop the highly volatile cryptocurrency Bitcoin as legal tender and strictly regulate the electronic wallet the government has pushed adoption of across the country.

In a story published January 13, 2022, about the hacking of journalists' cellphones in El Salvador, The Associated Press erroneously reported the last name of one of the journalists involved.

An endangered leopard captured in Iraq's mountainous north had its hind leg amputated following a trap-inflicted wound. The Persian leopard, taken in a day earlier in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region near the border with Turkey, had injured two people, said Colonel Jamal Saado, head of the environmental protection police in Dohuk province.

President Nayib Bukele's government has freed three Salvadoran women who were sentenced to 30 years in prison under the nation's strict anti-abortion laws after suffering obstetric emergencies.

Abortion rights groups say President Nayib Bukele’s government has freed three Salvadoran women who were sentenced to 30 years in prison under the nation’s strict anti-abortion laws after suffering obstetric emergencies.

President Nayib Bukele's government has freed three Salvadoran women who were sentenced to 30 years in prison under the nation's strict anti-abortion laws after suffering obstetric emergencies, according to abortion rights groups. Morena Herrera of the Citizen's Group for the Depenalization of Abortion said late Friday that the group was told one woman would be set free at presidential order, but when they went to the prison to greet her, three were released. The three are among at least 17 Salvadoran women activists consider unjustly convicted and imprisoned following obstetric emergencies and who have been at the center of a campaign against El Salvador's absolute law against abortions.

Right up until 1984, the notorious former island prison of Gorgona off Colombia's Pacific coast was a tragic place where political prisoners and dangerous criminals were sent to serve out their sentences, sometimes until death. These days, only a few crumbling walls of the prison remain on an island that attracts a small amount of eco-tourism, mostly for scuba-diving or to explore its incredible biodiversity.

Former student leader Gabriel Boric will be under quick pressure from his youthful supporters to fulfill his promises to remake Chile after the millennial politician won the country’s presidential runoff.

Allegations from the U.S. government that El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s administration negotiated with the country’s powerful street gangs touched a sensitive topic

Allegations from the U.S. government that El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s administration negotiated with the country’s powerful street gangs touched a sensitive topic.

The U.S. Treasury says the government of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele secretly negotiated a truce with leaders of the country’s powerful street gangs.

The government of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele secretly negotiated a truce with leaders of the country’s powerful street gangs, the U.S. Treasury announced Wednesday. The U.S government alleges Bukele's government bought the gangs' support with financial benefits and privileges for their imprisoned leaders including prostitutes and cell phones. Bukele vehemently denied the accusation when it was reported in August 2020 by the local news site El Faro.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele says his government will build an oceanside “Bitcoin City” at the base of a volcano.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has pitched a proposed law requiring people and organizations who receive foreign funding to register as “foreign agents,” following the lead of countries like the United States.

At a geothermal power plant near El Salvador’s Tecapa volcano, 300 computers whir inside a trailer as they make complex mathematical calculations day and night verifying transactions for the cryptocurrency bitcoin.

El Salvador has mined 0.00599179 bitcoin, or about $269, with power harnessed from a volcano, in a first for the country.

To understand why there’s a crisis in Central America, an expert said, you have to start with El Mozote.

Salvadorans trying to pay for a cup of coffee or receive money sent from relatives in the United States using the cryptocurrency bitcoin continued struggling to perform transactions, a day after El Salvador made it legal tender.

Demonstrators marched in the country's capital to protest the first national adoption of Bitcoin as a form of legal tender.

Between El Salvador officially adopting bitcoin as legal tender and the NFT market booming, here are four key things that happened in crypto this past week.

El Salvador has become the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, but the rollout stumbled in its first hours.

President Nayib Bukele faced international condemnation after his supporters moved to fire a third of the nation's judges and clear the way for Bukele to seek a second term.

El Salvador’s top court and its election authority have tossed aside what seemed to be a constitutional ban on consecutive presidential reelection.

A judge in El Salvador has ordered the pre-trial arrest of 10 former government officials, including ex-President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, on corruption charges.

Prosecutors in El Salvador have issued an arrest warrant for former president Salvador Sánchez Cerén on charges of embezzlement and money laundering.

El Salvador is the first country to make a cryptocurrency legal tender. Some locals like it. To others, it's “the devil’s money.”

El Salvador is the first country to make a cryptocurrency legal tender. Some locals like it. To others, it's "the devil's money."

The Biden administration is expanding its offensive against corruption and other causes of immigration from Central America.

In El Salvador, most are not bothered by President Nayib Bukele’s dictatorial maneuvers -- sending armed troops into congress to coerce a vote, or ousting independent judges from the country’s highest court, paving the way to control all branches of government.

After El Salvador’s congress made the bitcoin legal tender this week, eyes turned to the rural fishing village of El Zonte on the Pacific coast.

El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly has approved legislation making the cryptocurrency Bitcoin legal tender in the country, the first country to do so.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has announced in a recorded message played at a Bitcoin conference in Miami that next week he will send proposed legislation to the country’s congress that would make the cryptocurrency legal tender in the Central American nation.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is trying to entice Central American nations to tackle the corruption and poverty that have helped drive a surge of migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border and presented an early challenge for the Biden administration.

The New England Patriots’ team plane has delivered 500,000 Chinese-made COVID vaccines to El Salvador.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's Cabinet chief and other allies have been included in a list of senior officials in Central America deemed corrupt by the U.S. State Department.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster has issued an executive order allowing parents to opt their children out of wearing masks in public schools.

The United States says it is gravely concerned over a vote by El Salvador’s new congress to remove magistrates of the constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court.

Aides to El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele say he's refused to meet with a visiting senior U.S. diplomat over what he sees as a pattern of slights from Democrats and the Biden administration.

Saúl Meléndez was a guerrilla fighter during El Salvador’s civil war.

Young women place flowers on the perimeter wall of the Quintana Roo state offices sprayed with graffiti that reads in Spanish "Justice for Victoria," during a protest in Mexico City, Monday, March. The demonstrators were protesting the police killing in Tulum, Quintana Roo state, of Salvadoran national Victoria Esperanza Salazar when a female police officer knelt on her back to cuff her. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)MEXICO CITY – A Salvadoran woman who died in police custody over the weekend in a Caribbean beach resort had also suffered abuse by her companion, who has been arrested, Mexican authorities said Tuesday. Quintana Roo state Gov. Salazar's death increased tensions in Quintana Roo, where police used live ammunition to ward off a throng of about 100 demonstrators in Cancun in November.

Young women place flowers on the perimeter wall of the Quintana Roo state offices sprayed with graffiti that reads in Spanish "Justice for Victoria," during a protest in Mexico City, Monday, March. “She was brutally murdered by Tulum police officers in Quintana Roo, Mexico,” the president wrote. In the southern Mexico city of Tapachula, near the Guatemala border, Salazar requested and received refugee status. AdProtest marches were scheduled for later Monday in Tulum, Mexico City and San Salvador. AdThe woman’s death seemed likely to ignite tensions in Quintana Roo, where police used live ammunition to ward off a throng of about 100 demonstrators in Cancun in November.

President Nayib Bukele holds his ballots as he prepares to vote in local and legislative elections, at a polling station in San Salvador, El Salvador, Sunday, Feb. 28, 2021. El Salvador went to the polls in legislative and mayoral elections that could break the congressional deadlock that has tied the hands of President Nayib Bukele. Exit polls suggested his party could win 53 of the 84 seats in the Legislative Assembly. “The story is not unique to El Salvador — Democratic elections have yielded antidemocratic leaders and governments, of the right and the left elsewhere in Latin America. AdThe tribunal noted that president is supposed to avoid using his office to influence elections.

FILE - In this Feb. 17, 2021 file photo, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele speaks before the start of vaccination of medical staff with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at the Atlacatl Medical Unit of the Salvadoran Social Security Institute in San Salvador, El Salvador. That could change Sunday when Salvadorans go to the polls in local and legislative elections that observers and surveys suggest could remake the country’s political landscape. Anger with the parties that ruled El Salvador for nearly three decades swept Bukele into office in 2019, and frustration remains. “In El Salvador, there is selective justice, an unjust, circular, vicious system where only the wealthy are favored,” Pastor said. “The people have placed their hopes in President Bukele who has changed preconceptions and like it or not, has helped the people.”

FILE - In this Feb. 7, 2020 file photo, people wearing masks attend a vigil for Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, in Hong Kong. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)HONG KONG — Hong Kong is reducing social distancing rules following a sharp drop in new coronavirus cases, including restarting indoor dining and reopening gyms. More than two-thirds of the new cases were in Seoul area, home to half of South Korea’s 51 million people. The company has contracted to provide 100 million doses — enough for 100 million Americans — by the end of June. “We just need the vaccine to arrive.”___ATLANTA — Snowy and icy weather across much of the nation has “significantly” delayed shipments of COVID-19 vaccine to Georgia, state health officials said Wednesday.

FILE - In this Feb. 9, 2020 file photo, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, accompanied by members of the armed forces, speaks to supporters outside Congress in San Salvador, El Salvador. The Biden administration turned down a meeting request with El Salvador's president on an unannounced trip to Washington on the first week of Feb. 2021. But like other world leaders befriended by Trump, he faces an uphill climb pivoting to the Biden administration, which is seeking to undo those policies and has signaled its relationship with El Salvador is under review. Bukele insisted that the trip was private and that he didn't request any meeting with Biden officials. Legislation passed last year and supported by Democrats curbs U.S. foreign aid to El Salvador to fund the purchase of U.S. military equipment.

In this image take from UNTV video, Nayib Armando Bukele, President of El Salvador, speaks in a pre-recorded video message during the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, at U.N. headquarters in New York. The tweet was widely shared in El Salvador. More recently, Stryk teamed up with another DC firm, Rational 360, which is run by veteran Democratic operatives including Joe Lockhart. El Salvador in October hired Rational 360 for $65,000 per month. Bukele’s government has also awarded a $780,000 contract to a newly formed U.S.-based entity called Invest El Salvador.