Ottawa
Bunk with the Brits: To save money, the Canadian government plans to house its diplomats in several countries at the British Embassy rather than open its own embassy. “This arrangement allows us to focus on smart diplomacy,” Foreign Minister John Baird said this week, “without spending large amounts of taxpayers’ dollars on bricks and mortar.” Canadian analysts poured scorn on the proposal, saying it would undermine Canadian sovereignty and influence. “This is a dumb idea,” said former Ambassador Louis Delvoie. “There are many parts of the world where it’s best not to be identified with Britain, such as in the Caribbean and Africa, where Britain was a colonial power.” Britain and Canada share a head of state, the queen.
Havana
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Journalist defects: The news editor of the official Cuban newspaper, Granma, has defected to the U.S. Mairelys Cuevas Gómez, 27, traveled to Mexico last week on a business trip and then slipped across the border, making her way to Miami. She’s the fifth Cuban journalist to defect to the U.S. or the U.K. in recent months, and her loss is a major blow to the regime’s propaganda efforts. Cuevas was one of the few people authorized to approve the paper’s content every day. Cuban dissidents welcomed the news but cautioned against viewing Cuevas, who reportedly was having a romance with a Florida resident, as a hero. “These are people who, up to the last minute, wore the mask of a falsehood that they were willing to validate with their writing,” said dissident Yoani Sánchez.
San Cristóbal, Venezuela
Colombian drug lord busted: Colombia’s most wanted drug kingpin was arrested last week in a joint operation involving Colombian, Venezuelan, American, and British intelligence. Daniel Barrera, known as El Loco because of his wild mood swings and sudden violence, is accused of running a cocaine business that dealt with the Colombian rebel group FARC and Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. He had changed his looks through numerous plastic surgeries and dipped his fingers in acid to avoid fingerprint identification, but he was finally nabbed in the Venezuelan border town he had been living in for the past four years. “The last of the great capos has fallen,” said Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. “This is perhaps the most important capture of recent times.”
