In interviews in villages on Venezuela's northeastern coast, from which some of the boats departed, residents and relatives said the dead men had been running drugs but were not narco-terrorists.
The mayor of the Uruapan municipality, in the western state of Michoacan, was gunned down Saturday night in front of dozens of people who had gathered for Day of the Dead festivities, authorities said.
Brazilian police and soldiers launched a raid on a drug-trafficking gang in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, sparking shootouts that left at least 60 suspects and four police officers dead, officials said.
Melissa is forecast to make landfall on the island of Jamaica Tuesday, with up to 30 inches of rain and a life-threatening storm surge. Category 5 is the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
President Milei won in key districts in an election widely seen as a referendum on his past two years in office. Trump had appeared to condition billions of dollars in backing on a good showing for Milei.
The deployment and the quickening pace of U.S. strikes, including one Friday, raised new speculation about how far the Trump administration may go in operations it says are targeted at drug trafficking.
The sanctions sharply escalate tensions with the leftist leader of a country that has traditionally been one of the closest U.S. allies in South America.
In Brazil's coffee-producing areas, more than 42,000 square miles of forest have disappeared over about two decades, says Coffee Watch. Deforestation leads to drought, which harms crop yields.
Centrist senator Rodrigo Paz won Bolivia's presidency with 54% of the vote, ending 20 years of rule by the Movement Toward Socialism party amid economic turmoil.
The U.S. will slash assistance to Colombia and enact tariffs on its exports because the country's leader, Gustavo Petro, "does nothing to stop" drug production, President Donald Trump said Sunday.
The two survivors of an American military strike on a suspected drug-carrying vessel in the Caribbean will be sent to Ecuador and Colombia, their home countries, President Trump said.
