INTERNACIONAL
El gremio de recolectores anuncia suspensión del servicio de basura en Guatemala por extorsiones y ataques
El Gremio de Recolectores de Desechos Sólidos anunció la suspensión del servicio de basura en todo el departamento de Guatemala ante las extorsiones, amenazas y ataques contra sus trabajadores.
La medida se mantendrá hasta que el Gobierno garantice condiciones de seguridad para que los camiones puedan circular sin que sus conductores y ayudantes sean atacados por estructuras criminales.
Cada unidad puede afrontar hasta cuatro cobros simultáneos, además de una exigencia adicional de fin de año que ronda los Q80 mil por camión. El gremio no confirmó la fecha de inicio del paro, aunque trabajadores del sector señalaron que podría aplicarse de manera escalonada durante la próxima semana.
La organización expresó su reclamo en un comunicado dirigido al Gobierno de Guatemala y a la población. Allí sostuvo que la situación “ha llegado a un punto insostenible”, con consecuencias tanto para la limpieza de los sectores afectados como para la vida e integridad de los empleados y sus familias.
Los recolectores condicionaron la vuelta al trabajo a la adopción de medidas concretas contra los grupos que los amenazan. También pidieron comprensión a los vecinos y afirmaron que retomarán las labores cuando existan garantías de seguridad.
Cobros múltiples sobre un mismo camión
Las exigencias provienen de grupos que se presentan bajo distintas denominaciones: “los de la carita”, “los del numeral”, “los del crimen organizado”, “los ex MS” y “los ex pandilleros”.
Los trabajadores sostienen que esas identidades corresponden a una misma red o a estructuras que utilizan nombres diferentes para aumentar los pagos exigidos a cada vehículo.
Un recolector que pidió mantener su identidad en reserva por motivos de seguridad relató que un camión puede recibir entre ocho y nueve llamadas desde números distintos para reclamar dinero. El esquema comienza con una cuota de ingreso de hasta Q25 mil por unidad y continúa con pagos mensuales de Q2 mil y cargos semanales de Q1 mil.
A esas sumas se agrega un “aguinaldo” de aproximadamente Q20 mil al finalizar el año. La combinación de cobros obliga a los propietarios y trabajadores a destinar montos que, según el sector, pueden llegar a Q80 mil por unidad.
Las amenazas se producen principalmente de madrugada, cuando los camiones inician sus recorridos.
Los extorsionistas suelen interceptarlos en los trayectos hacia los vertederos autorizados, después de que descargan los residuos, de acuerdo con testimonios del sector.
La presión delictiva afecta especialmente a las zonas 1, 6, 11, 13 y 18 de la capital guatemalteca. También se registraron casos en los municipios de Mixco, Chinautla, San José Pinula y en el sector de San Cristóbal.
Secuestros exprés, incendios y rutas sin recolección
Los trabajadores denunciaron secuestros exprés contra conductores y ayudantes. Hombres en motocicletas detienen los camiones, retienen a las víctimas y las obligan a realizar transferencias bancarias inmediatas antes de permitirles continuar con la ruta.
El gremio también reportó incendios de unidades y ataques con bombas molotov contra vehículos cuyos responsables se niegan a pagar. Estas agresiones agravaron el temor entre los operadores y llevaron a la suspensión de recorridos en áreas donde los cobros se volvieron recurrentes.
En la zona 18 dejaron de recibir el servicio las colonias El Cerrito, Las Ilusiones, La Maya, Rinconcito y El Caminero. En la zona 6, la interrupción alcanzó a Proyectos, San Juan, Cipresales y Martinico, mientras que también hubo suspensiones en sectores de la zona 1, dentro del Centro Histórico.
El reemplazo de los camiones que abandonan una ruta tampoco permitió recuperar la normalidad. Las unidades enviadas para cubrir los recorridos quedan expuestas a nuevas amenazas y terminan por retirarse de las áreas afectadas.
Más de 500 unidades recolectoras trabajan en la Ciudad de Guatemala, Chinautla, Mixco y San José Pinula, según cifras citadas por trabajadores del sector. Un paro extendido a todo el departamento comprometería la disposición de desechos sólidos incluso en los lugares donde el servicio todavía se mantiene.
La extorsión contra recolectores de basura tiene antecedentes desde al menos 2017. Investigaciones periodísticas de ese año describieron un mecanismo por el que pandillas entregaban teléfonos celulares a los conductores para reclamar cuotas semanales y marcaban con un punto negro a los camiones que cumplían con los pagos.
El Ministerio Público atribuye este tipo de delito principalmente a las pandillas Barrio 18 y Mara Salvatrucha, conocida como MS-13, además de grupos que se hacen pasar por integrantes de esas organizaciones para exigir dinero.
La Policía Nacional Civil registró 8.672 denuncias por extorsión en todo el país durante 2018, una cifra que, según el Centro de Investigaciones Económicas Nacionales, mantuvo una tendencia ascendente en los años posteriores.
En agosto, autoridades de Estados Unidos, El Salvador, Guatemala y Honduras anunciaron la Operación Escudo Regional. El operativo incluyó 80 allanamientos y 40 arrestos de presuntos integrantes de Calle 18 y MS-13 en Guatemala vinculados con extorsiones contra empresas de transporte.
De acuerdo con medios locales en Guatemala, el portavoz de la Policía Nacional Civil, Jorge Aguilar Chinchilla, informó que la División Nacional contra el Desarrollo Criminal de las Pandillas mantiene investigaciones y contactos con el sector para reforzar la seguridad en los puntos más expuestos.
Sin embargo, trabajadores consultados aseguraron que no conocen mesas formales de diálogo ni avances concretos para identificar a los responsables de los cobros ilegales.
recolección de residuos,camión recolector,recolector de basura
Voting machines at a Rio de Janeiro polling station
Footage from a polling station in Rio de Janeiro showed electoral officials retrieving the voting results reports and disconnecting the machines after the first round of voting on Oct. 4, 2026. (Reuters)
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SAO PAULO, Brazil— About 125 million Brazilians voted Oct. 4 on machines that print no paper ballots. Less than four hours after polls closed, the country knew its presidential election was headed to a runoff between conservative challenger Flavio Bolsonaro and leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
That process has been in place for over three decades, and Brazilians have become accustomed to its speed, simplicity, accuracy and routine. The system is robustly audited, completely disconnected from the Internet, and is the largest digital voting system deployed on the planet.
Eleven days before the U.S. midterms, Brazil’s system, analysts say, could offer Americans a more secure way to vote.
The system has been widely praised and was also mentioned in President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order on elections, where he cited Brazil’s biometric voter identification as an example. Yet Brazil’s count runs partially on the kind of paperless machines that the president has vowed to scrap.
STATE DEPARTMENT CONSIDERS SHARING PASSPORT RECORDS FOR VOTER CITIZENSHIP CHECKS
Election workers prepare and seal electronic voting machines ahead of the upcoming general elections in Brasilia, Brazil, on Sept. 23, 2026. (Mateus Bonomi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
One citizen, one vote: digitally checked
Over the years, Brazil merged federal, state and municipal databases into a digital voting record, whereby voter identity, eligibility and single ability to vote can (and usually must) be verified biometrically. Nearly 9 in 10 voters unlock the machines with a fingerprint.
Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, or TSE, which designs the machines and oversees elections, says there has been no proven fraud since their 1996 debut. The 499,248 machines used on Oct. 4 never connected to the internet. Their software was open to inspection by parties, universities and watchdogs for 11 months before being digitally signed and sealed in public. Last December, the Brazilian government invited a record 149 outsiders to try to break the system; evaluators concluded nothing they found could alter results or reveal how anyone voted.
An electronic voting machine at a Regional Electoral Court (TRE) facility in Brasilia, Brazil, on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026. (Ton Molina/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
On election day, randomly drawn machines are fed paper ballots on camera as federal auditors and foreign observers watch and specifically track results.
Meanwhile, at closing, every machine used at every polling station prints its tally, which is then posted in front of the polling place with a QR code, so anyone can check it against the national count. In an email to Fox News Digital, TSE said each file’s digital signature «confirms that the result was produced by the electronic voting machine registered for that polling station.»
Karina Stange Calandrin, a political scientist and professor at Instituto Brasileiro de Mercado de Capitais (IBMEC), says the system combines three traits rarely found together: voting is electronic, votes hashed to voter eligibility are stored locally in the machine and tallying is automated.
«It is an extremely secure and safe system. The machines never connect to the Internet and even the central database system used to transmit tallied votes to TSE must match results issued physically and locally by each individual machine without human interference,» she said. Corrupting it, she added, would require breaking the seal of each machine and installing software that wouldn’t match the TSE’s version, automatically disqualifying its tally — a scale of collusion so large that it «simply could not pass undetected.»
COLOMBIA’S ‘EL TIGRE’ SECURES PRESIDENCY AS LEFTIST RIVAL FINALLY CONCEDES DEFEAT
Brazil’s right-wing senator and presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL) gestures next to federal deputy and candidate for governor of Rio de Janeiro, Douglas Ruas (L) during a campaign rally on the eve of the general election, in Campo Grande neighborhood, in the western zone of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on October 3, 2026. Brazilians go to the polls on Oct. 4, 2026. (Douglas SHINEIDR / AFP via Getty Images)
The machines passed their toughest political test in 2022, when former President Jair Bolsonaro, now serving a 27-year sentence for plotting to overturn his 2022 defeat, spent years attacking their credibility without evidence. Bolsonaro is presently serving time under house arrest.
This year, for the first time, a Bolsonaro appointee ran the TSE: Justice Kassio Nunes Marques. Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, finished first with 47% to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 45%. The machines at the center of the senior Bolsonaro’s controversy may yet hand victory to his son.
Florencia Ferrer, CEO of e-stategiapublica, which has audited elections in 17 countries, has no doubt the Brazilian system is the most modern and secure in the world. «In India votes are electronic, but each voter gets a printed version of their vote to take home, which weakens voter safety and augments coercion rates,» she says, adding that Estonia’s internet voting and the Philippines’ electronically tallied paper ballots carry their own risks.
An engineer from the University of São Paulo’s Polytechnic School who audited the machines in 2014, and declined to be named due to the sensitive nature of his work, agreed. «While no system is completely infallible… we have found no traces of tampering, wrong-doing or malicious intent,» he told Fox News Digital.
Still, some defend higher scrutiny. Security researchers say a clean record is not proof enough, and the Carter Center said voters should at least see a printed version of their ballot deposited into a separate area of the machine; otherwise, results integrity rests on software alone. Germany’s top court ruled in 2009 that voters must be able to check their ballot without expert help, effectively barring a Brazilian-like system.
Brazil’s machine has traveled mostly on loan to countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Paraguay adopted it permanently in 2006, with machines that now print each individual vote.
Brazil’s President and presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (C) waves next to Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin (L) and to his candidate for São Paulo’s governor, Fernando Haddad during a campaign rally on the eve of the general election, in São Paulo, Brazil on October 3, 2026. Brazilians go to the polls on Oct. 4, 2026, (Luis Robayo/AFP Via Getty Images)
«It’s obvious Washington and the remainder of the U.S. are way behind both technology as well as security when it comes to polling on voting day,» Ferrer said. U.S. elections are run in thousands of local jurisdictions under 50 sets of state rules and about 30% of 2024 ballots came by mail, which is slower to process. Brazil has one national election authority, compulsory voting and no mail-in ballots.
Brazilians will vote this coming Sunday on Oct. 25. The winner is expected to be known and certified in under five hours.
«The question is not whether Brazil has invented a perfect voting machine. No voting system is perfect. It is whether democracies can combine the speed and consistency of digital tabulation with independent verification, public scrutiny and rules that citizens across the political spectrum have reason to trust,» Ferrer said.
world elections, brazil, voting, latin america, jair bolsonaro, midterm elections
INTERNACIONAL
Ex-FBI officials arrested in Hunter Biden laptop probe as testimony comes under scrutiny
The Department of Justice charged two former FBI officials with lying to Congress about their involvement in FBI investigations into Hunter Biden, including matters involving his laptop.
Former FBI officials Nikki Cole Floris and Bradley Benavides, according to the DOJ, falsely denied involvement in the investigations into former President Joe Biden’s son when speaking to Congress. Both surrendered Friday on arrest warrants, according to the DOJ.
«Lying to Congress by anyone strikes at the heart of our democratic system, but when senior FBI agents lie to Congress believing they are above the law, it’s time to bring the hammer of justice down on them,» U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said of the charges.
«When senior officials entrusted with safeguarding our nation’s security choose deception over duty, they undermine the very institutions they swore to uphold. Today’s action makes clear that no one is above the law, and we will hold accountable all who obstruct the truth.»
FBI CO-DEPUTY DIRECTOR ANDREW BAILEY RESIGNS AFTER YEAR IN ROLE
The Justice Department claims to possess evidence that shows Benavides discussed the laptop story with others in the FBI, contradicting his testimony that he learned about the story from Wikipedia. Similarly, the department says that it has evidence Floris discussed Hunter Biden with members of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), despite testifying to the contrary.
A statement of facts filed by the DOJ points to 2023 testimony that Floris gave to the House Judiciary Committee where she denied any involvement in the investigation into Biden’s son. She answered in the negative to questions about whether there was «ever a discussion at the FITF about Hunter Biden» or if she had «any involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation.»
Contrasting these statements, the DOJ pointed to email logs purporting to show that Floris discussed Hunter with colleagues at the bureau.
Benavides, meanwhile, told lawmakers that he read the Wikipedia page on the laptop story when asked where he learned «that there was an ongoing criminal investigation related to the laptop.» The DOJ says emails it has obtained show he was in contact with the team working the investigation into Hunter Biden and that he met with the team prior to a meeting with lawmakers.
«Nikki Floris is a patriot. She served our nation as a dedicated FBI intelligence officer for nearly 20 years. Yet today, the DOJ has accused her falsely of a crime on the say-so of politicians, not on the facts. It’s no coincidence the government is filing these nonsense charges now, years later, on the eve of an election,» her attorneys said in a statement.
Floris served as the deputy assistant director and functional head of FITF while Benavides was the task force’s section chief.
Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson previously accused Floris and Benavides of participating in a 2020 FBI briefing about Russian disinformation that the senators alleged was intended to undermine their investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
Claims that Hunter Biden’s laptop was part of a Russian disinformation operation fueled controversy ahead of the 2020 election. The FBI later authenticated the laptop during Biden’s 2024 federal gun trial, when prosecutors introduced it as evidence.
«For 20 years Brad Benavides worked tirelessly to protect the public from terrorists and agents of foreign governments. He carried with distinction the heavy burden of thwarting terrorist plots to kill Americans and other innocents. Brad protected our democracy against those who would destroy it,» a lawyer for the former official said in a statement provided to Digital.
«In return, today, the government that he loves brought baseless criminal charges against him in a transparently political complaint. This is another sad day for the Department of Justice. But now we are in court, and the truth will come out: Brad Benavides is a true patriot who devoted his career to protecting this country and its people.»
«These charges are a disgrace,» the lawyer added.
RUSSIAN SPIES ORCHESTRATED $40K MURDER PLOT IN NATION’S CAPITAL, US ALLEGES
«This morning the FBI arrested two former FBI members of the now dissolved Foreign Influence Task Force, Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides, both of whom allegedly lied to Congress in 2023 on matters regarding investigations related to the 2020 election,» FBI Director Kash Patel said of the arrests. «One of these individuals is on record privately claiming to be ‘running a shadow government’ during the 2020 election. As we’ve said repeatedly: weaponization will never be tolerated at this FBI.»
fbi, politics, hunter biden, justice department, kash patel
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Cubans seeking political change Friday to discreetly cooperate with the CIA as President Donald Trump separately floated sending Rubio to the communist-run island to negotiate a deal.
«To those who seek to create positive change in Cuba – now is the time,» Rubio wrote in a post on X.
«The disappointment of failed promises, corruption, and the privileged lives of only a few; seize this opportunity to create the change you desire through a discrete partnership with the CIA.»
RUBIO WARNS CUBA HAS INFILTRATED US WITH SPIES, CALLS COMMUNIST REGIME AN ‘ESPIONAGE SUPERPOWER’
Rubio’s message explicitly encouraged Cubans to work with the U.S. intelligence agency but did not identify a specific operation or explain what such cooperation would involve.
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has long advocated for a tougher U.S. approach toward the Cuban government.
The former Florida senator has been a prominent critic of the communist leadership in Havana and opposed efforts to normalize relations without political reforms.
Trump, meanwhile, raised the possibility of U.S. ships stopping near Cuba while discussing Iran during a midterm rally in Fort Myers, Florida, Friday.
TRUMP EXPANDS CUBA SANCTIONS BEYOND US COMPANIES IN MAJOR CRACKDOWN ON FOREIGN ENABLERS
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to reporters alongside White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, left, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, center, after U.S. military actions in Venezuela at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Fla., Jan. 3, 2026. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
«Don’t worry. We’ll take care of Cuba on our way back from Iran with it. We’ll do a little stopover now. We’ll do a little stopover,» Trump told the crowd.
«Actually, what we’re going to do with Cuba is we’re going to come back from Iran. Those beautiful ships will pass Cuba. We’ll have one of them stop about 50 yards off the coast. They’ll raise up their hands.»
Trump then suggested Rubio could handle negotiations with the communist-run island.
IRANIAN NEGOTIATORS KICKED OUT OF US AS TALKS STALL, TRUMP LAYS OUT ‘POSSIBLE’ TIMELINE FOR MORE STRIKES
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US President Donald Trump speak to the press following US military actions in Venezuela, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Fla., Jan. 3, 2026. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
«And then we’re going to send Marco Rubio in to finish up the deal. We’ll have Marco. Marco. We don’t even have to stop. We could just put him in there and he’ll figure it out. He’s a great guy.»
Trump did not provide details about any proposed agreement with Cuba or indicate whether his remarks reflected an actual military or diplomatic plan.
Fox News Digital reached out to the CIA, State Department, White House and Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment.
cuba, marco rubio, donald trump, cia, world
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