COLOMBIA

Government, rebels sign new peace accord

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Thursday signed a new peace agreement with the country’s largest rebel movement, aiming to end a half-century of hostilities.

Santos and Rodrigo Londono, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, signed the 310-page accord at Bogota’s historic Colon Theater — nearly two months after the original deal was rejected in a referendum.

After signing, they clasped hands to shouts of “Yes we could!”

Thursday’s hastily organized ceremony was a far more modest and somber event than the one in September where the two men signed an accord in front of an audience of foreign leaders and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The new accord introduces some 50 changes intended to assuage critics led by still-powerful former president Álvaro Uribe. They range from a prohibition on foreign magistrates judging crimes by the FARC or government to a commitment from the insurgents to forfeit assets, some of them amassed through drug trafficking, to help compensate their victims.

But the FARC would not go along with the opposition’s strongest demands — jail sentences for rebel leaders who committed atrocities and stricter limits on their future participation in politics.

In an act of protest, members of Uribe’s political party are considering a boycott of next week’s scheduled debate in Congress on ratifying the agreement, accusing the legislature of disobeying the constitution. They are also threatening to call for street protests to denounce what they say is a “blow against democracy.”

The lack of broad support for the accord will make the already-steep challenge of implementing it even tougher. Colombians overwhelmingly loathe the FARC for crimes such as kidnappings and drug trafficking.

— Associated Press

EUROPEAN UNION

Membership talks halted with Turkey

European Union lawmakers called for a temporary halt to E.U. membership talks with Turkey because of Ankara’s “disproportionate” reaction to July’s failed coup, although E.U. governments are unlikely to take heed.

Members of the European Parliament voted 479 to 37 in favor of a nonbinding motion urging the European Commission and national governments to institute what lawmakers acknowledge would be a largely symbolic freeze in negotiations that have been going on for 11 years but have long been stalled.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said ties with the E.U. were already strained and that the vote was of no importance, echoing comments this week by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Neither side expects Turkey to be in a position to join the E.U. for very many years to come.

— Reuters

Earthquake off Central America shakes region: A strong earthquake off the Pacific Coast of Central America shook the region and triggered a tsunami warning, U.S. monitoring agencies said, just as a hurricane barreled into the Caribbean coasts of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Emergency services in El Salvador said on Twitter that there were no immediate reports of damage at a national level. Earlier on Thursday, the Category 2 Hurricane Otto hit land near the southeastern coast of Nicaragua, where thousands had already been evacuated.

Cases of chikungunya rise in Brazil: Brazil’s Health Ministry says that cases of chikungunya are soaring this year in Latin America’s biggest country. The ministry said there have been 134,910 confirmed cases of the mosquito-borne disease so far in 2016. Last year the total was 8,528. Chikungunya is a viral disease spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also transmits the Zika virus and dengue fever.

— From news services