Canada reached the semi-finals of the Copa America on Friday after beating Venezuela 4-3 on penalties after the 90-minute game finished 1-1. Jacob Shaffelburg fired Canada into the lead in the 13th minute but Salomon Rondon equalised in the 64th, before Canada triumphed in the shoot-out to set up a last-four meeting with world champions Argentina. The Canadians, under American coach Jesse Marsch, who only took over the team in mid-May, are playing in the Copa America for the first time and produced a relentless display of pressing in what was a frantic game.

Both teams failed to score from the spot twice in the shoot-out, leaving it at 3-3 after five penalties each and sending the contest into sudden death.

Canada keeper Max Crepeau, who had made a major error for Venezuela’s equaliser, made amends as he saved Wilker Angel’s kick.

That left Ismael Kone with the chance to win the game. He converted with an ice-cool penalty to set off the celebrations in front of a crowd of 51,080 mostly Venezuela supporting fans.

Canada played Argentina in the opening game of the group stage, losing 2-0 to the defending champions and will start as huge underdogs again in the semi-final.

But after a performance of remarkable energy and determination against a Venezuela team that won all three of their group stage games, Marsch will believe his team could pull off another upset and reach the final in Miami on July 14.

Canada roared out of the blocks, giving Venezuela no time on the ball and getting forward in numbers in the early stages.

“Vinotinto” keeper Rafael Romo had to race out of his area to stop Cyle Larin as he raced on to a ball over the top, but there was nothing he could do minutes later when the Canadians took the lead.

Jonathan David bustled in from the right and winger Shaffelburg arrived right on time to slot the ball into the bottom corner.

Shaffelburg, a speedy left-winger who plays in Major League Soccer for Nashville, then forced Romo into a diving save and then delivered a low cross which David was unable to finish.

Canada were going for the jugular and Richie Laryea zipped a ball across the face of the box but the stretching David was unable to reach it.

Larin wasted a big chance just after the interval when he found the ball in space in the box but leaned back and fired his shot well over the bar.

Marsch’s high-energy tactics were starting to take a toll on his players and as they tired Venezuela grew into the game.

Jose Martinez should have done better when a poor clearance landed at his feet in the box but he stabbed his shot wide.

But then a long ball forward was won by Rondon, who spotted Crepeau far off his line and from 35-yards out the veteran striker produced a perfect lob to beat the stranded keeper and make it 1-1.

There were late chances for Canada to win the game in regulation time, but neither Liam Millar nor Tani Oluwaseyi, both on as substitutes could provide a composed finish.

With no extra-time in Copa America, it was straight to penalties and after Rondon and David both converted, Yangel Herrera hit the post for Venezuela.

Millar then put his effort over the bar and after Tomas Rincon scored for Venezuela, Moise Bombito levelled for Canada.

But Jefferson Savarino hit the post and Canada’s Stephen Eustaquio saw his soft effort saved by Romo before both teams scored to make it 3-3.

Then in sudden death, Crepeau dived to deny Angel leaving Kone with the pressure shot to win which he handled with aplomb.

“Everybody needs to realize the respect this country deserves and these footballers deserve,” Crepeau told Fox Sports.

“Everybody says ‘these Canadians’, well these Canadians are in the semi-finals of Copa America”.

A Colombian journalist was shot dead in a coca-growing area near the border with Venezuela, an NGO tracking such crimes reported on Friday.

The reporter, Jorge Mendez, was attacked “by armed men in the town of Tibu in the Norte de Santander department, said the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) in a statement.

Mendez “was a recognized social leader, reporter and community journalist,” said the NGO.

He was killed in a region where leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries are known to operate.

Tibu is the town with the world’s biggest expansion of drug crops, where more than 22,000 hectares (54,000 acres) of coca, the base component of cocaine, are grown, according to the UN.

The former mayor of Tibu, Nelson Leal, governed for months from a distance due to threats, while the town’s prosecutor was murdered in 2021.

The Inter-American Press Association condemned Mendez’s murder and called for “a timely and exhaustive investigation,” in comments on X.

Venezuela booked their place in the quarter-finals of the Copa America on Wednesday with a hard-fought 1-0 victory over Mexico that ensured Jamaica’s elimination from the tournament. Mexico-based veteran striker Salomon Rondon stroked in the only goal from the penalty spot to seal all three points for Venezuela, who are top of Group B with six points from two games. Mexico, meanwhile, can still qualify for the knockout rounds with a victory over Ecuador in their final group game on Sunday.

But the Mexicans will be left kicking themselves at their failure to take at least a point from Wednesday’s clash with Venezuela at a packed SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.

Mexico’s Orbelin Pineda missed an 87th-minute spot kick that would have made it 1-1, his effort parried away by Venezuela goalkeeper Rafael Romo.

Earlier, Rondon had fired Venezuela into the lead in the 57th minute from the penalty spot after Mexico’s Julian Quinones brought down Venezuela’s Jon Aramburu with a clumsy challenge in the area.

Venezuela’s win confirmed Jamaica’s exit from the tournament following their 3-1 loss to Ecuador in Las Vegas earlier on Wednesday.

Ecuador, beaten by Venezuela in their opening match on Saturday, held off a spirited second-half rally by the Reggae Boyz to claim a vital three points at the Allegiant Stadium.

The South Americans looked to be cruising to victory after taking a 2-0 lead following a Kasey Palmer own goal and a penalty from Chelsea-bound teenager Kendry Paez.

However, Jamaica pulled a goal back from veteran striker Michail Antonio early in the second half, and then had strong claims for a penalty rejected 15 minutes before full-time.

Ecuador, however, made the game safe in stoppage time with a breakaway goal from Alan Minda as Jamaica pressed forward for an equaliser. 

Ecuador opened the scoring with a freakish own goal in the 13th minute, Pierre Hincapie’s cross from the left taking a wicked deflection off Palmer and looping into the Jamaica net.

Ecuador doubled their lead from the penalty spot on the stroke of half-time.

Defender Greg Leigh instinctively blocked a header with his upper arm and after a lengthy VAR review, Chilean referee Cristian Garay pointed to the spot.

The 17-year-old Paez — who will join Premier League giants Chelsea in July 2025 when he turns 18 — stepped up to calmly stroke the spot-kick into the bottom corner.

A rejuvenated Jamaica pulled one back early in the second half with Antonio jabbing home a low shot on 54 minutes after Ecuador failed to clear a corner.

Jamaica thought they had been thrown a lifeline with 15 minutes to go after a VAR penalty check triggered when Ecuador’s Alan Franco appeared to handle inside the area.

But despite being called to the monitor to take a look at the incident, referee Garay decided there had been no handball and waved play on, before Minda’s late goal sealed Ecuador’s win.

Darwin Cigarroa, a migrant from Venezuela, carries a cross while walking toward the U.S. border in a caravan called “The Migrant’s Via Crucis”, in Huixtla, Mexico March 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Venezuelan migrants often have a quick answer when asked to name the most difficult stretch of their eight-country journey to the U.S. border, and it’s not the days-long jungle trek through Colombia and Panama with its venomous vipers, giant spiders and scorpions. It’s Mexico.

“In the jungle, you have to prepare for animals. In Mexico, you have to prepare for humans,” Daniel Ventura, 37, said after three days walking through the Darien Gap and four months waiting in Mexico to enter the U.S. legally using the government’s online appointment system, called CBP One.

Mexico’s crackdown on immigration in recent months — at the urging of the Biden administration — has hit Venezuelans especially hard. The development highlights how much the U.S. depends on Mexico to control migration.

Arrests of migrants for illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped so this year after a record high in December. The biggest decline was among Venezuelans, whose arrests plummeted to 3,184 in February and 4,422 in January from 49,717 in December.

While two months do not make a trend and illegal crossings remain high by historical standards, Mexico’s strategy to keep migrants closer to its border with Guatemala than the U.S. is at least temporary relief for the Biden administration.

Large numbers of Venezuelans began reaching the U.S. in 2021, first by flying to Mexico and then on foot and by bus after Mexico imposed visa restrictions. In September, Venezuelans briefly replaced Mexicans as the largest nationality crossing the border.

Mexico’s efforts have included forcing migrants from trains, flying, and busing them to the southern part of the country.

Last week, Mexico said it would give about $110 a month for six months to each Venezuelan it deports, hoping they won’t come back.

Venezuelans account for the vast majority of 73,166 migrants who crossed the Darien Gap in January and February.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado attends a press conference, in Caracas, Venezuela, March 20, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado condemned on Wednesday the arrest of two of her staffers and accused the government of attacking her party for fear of losing July’s presidential election.

Her comments came after the country’s top prosecutor earlier in the day announced the arrest of two senior officials from Ms. Machado’s Vente Venezuela party over an alleged anti-government conspiracy.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab said Henry Alviarez and Dignora Hernandez were plotting to “rally the masses using labor and student unions to incentivize a military wing” to lead an uprising and “generate destabilization in the country.”

Seven other Ms. Machado aides have been arrested in recent days, and warrants have been issued for several more.

The attorney general did not mention any measures against Ms. Machado herself.

“Today, as you all know, arrest warrants were issued for nine Venezuelans, most of them members of our campaign team,” Ms. Machado said at a press conference in Caracas. “Two of the members of these teams were kidnapped and forcibly detained.”

“Everything, absolutely everything, said by the prosecutor” was false, she added.

“This is a shameful attempt to shut down the electoral process.”

Though she was disqualified from the July 28 election and banned from holding public office for 15 years, Ms. Machado has continued to try to challenge President Nicolas Maduro’s attempt to secure a third term.

Mr. Maduro’s regime knows “there is no way they can win an election,” she told reporters in the capital.

Attorney general Saab said the arrest warrants for Ms. Machado’s staffers stemmed from a confession by another of her aides, Emil Brandt Ulloa, who was arrested on March 9.

In a video, Mr. Bradnt allegedly admits to the conspiracy, and claims it was financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“We have revealed a series of conspiracies, threats and actions that have as a common denominator the intention of sowing violence and chaos in the country and threatening the life of the president” as well as “high civil and military authorities,” said Mr. Saab.

Vente Venezuela condemned what it described as the “kidnapping” of Alviarez and Hernandez, and said the “repression of the regime” was intensifying.

The party’s headquarters were shuttered Wednesday.

In a video circulating on social media, police officers were seen forcing a woman, widely identified as Hernandez, into a van as she shouted: “Help, please!”

“Vente Venezuela is not a terrorist organization … Our route is electoral, we want a peaceful transition,” Orlando Moreno, coordinator of the party’s human rights committee, told AFP.

‘Power at any cost’

Venezuela goes to the polls on July 28 with Mr. Maduro seeking re-election after 11 years in office marked by sanctions, economic collapse and accusations of widespread repression.

In October, Ms. Machado overwhelmingly won an opposition primary, capturing 92% of the votes.

But the Supreme Court in January upheld the administrative order barring her and her potential stand-in, Henrique Capriles, from holding public office.

Ms. Machado, 56, has accused Mr. Maduro of violating an agreement signed in Barbados last year, in which his administration promised to hold a free and fair vote in 2024 with international observers present.

The deal led the United States to ease sanctions, allowing Chevron to resume limited crude extraction — a decision it is now reconsidering given Ms. Machado’s continued exclusion from the ballot.

On Thursday, Brian Nichols, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, called for “the immediate release” of Ms. Machado’s staff.

“Maduro’s escalating attacks on civil society and political actors are totally inconsistent with Barbados Accord commitments but will not stifle the democratic aspirations of the Venezuelan people,” he wrote in a statement on social media platform X.

Argentina and Uruguay also demanded the release of the opposition aides, while Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil accused the United States and Argentina of being “accomplices” to “fascists”.

Ms. Machado has so far refused to bow out of the presidential race, though it is unclear how she will overcome the state’s hurdles to her participation.

Official nominations for presidential candidates open on Thursday.

“Once again, those who seek to stay in power at any cost lash out against those who oppose them,” Capriles wrote on X.

People gather at the bank of Guacara River Port while waiting for information on miners following the collapse of an illegal gold mine in La Paragua, Bolivar, Venezuela February 21, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The collapse of an illegally operated open-pit gold mine in central Venezuela killed at least 14 people and injured several more, state authorities said on February 21, as some other officials reported an undetermined number of people could be trapped.

Bolivar state Gov. Angel Marcano told local reporters that 14 bodies had been removed so far and authorities knew of at least 11 people injured.

“We continue to carry out rescue work,” he said, with relatives demanding swift rescue efforts.

The accident took place in the Angostura municipality on February 20 when a wall collapsed at a mine known as Bulla Loca, which can only be reached by an hours-long boat ride.

Angostura Mayor Yorgi Arciniega said late Tuesday that he planned to take “some 30 caskets” to a community near the mine, indicating that officials feared the death toll could rise into the dozens.

Relatives of the miners gathered in La Paragua, the closest community to the mine, to ask the government to send aircraft to the remote location to rescue the injured and recover bodies.

“We are here waiting, please, for the government to support us with helicopters, planes, anything,” said Karina Ríos, whose daughter’s father was trapped in the collapse. “There are quite a few dead, there are people wounded. Why don’t they give us support, where are they?”

Ms. Ríos said she is worried that bodies could quickly decompose because of the area’s conditions.

Venezuela’s government in 2016 established a huge mining development zone stretching across the middle of the country, to add new revenues alongside its oil industry. Since then, mining operations for gold, diamonds, copper and other minerals have proliferated within and outside that zone.

Many mines operate outside or on the margins of the law. They offer lucrative jobs for ordinary Venezuelans, but conditions are brutal.

Miner Carlos Marcano, 71, survived the collapse and arrived at a triage medical tent in La Paragua Wednesday. He said the desperate situation at the mine “was terrifying.”

“One would not want a colleague, a human being, to die like that,” he said. “Some of us made it. There are a few wounded, but there are still a number of dead who have not been rescued and are buried there.”

The United States will ease some oil and gas sanctions against Venezuela after the South American country’s government and opposition agreed to hold elections next year.

In response to those “democratic developments,” the U.S. Treasury Department “has issued General Licenses authorizing transactions involving Venezuela’s oil and gas sector and gold sector,” and is “removing the ban on secondary trading” in debt securities, a statement from undersecretary for terrorism Brian Nelson said Wednesday.

But it also said that those authorizations could be amended or revoked at any time if the electoral deal falls through.

“Let’s turn the page, let’s rebuild a relationship of respect, of cooperation… this is my message to those in power, and to the government of the United States,” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said, while also calling for a definitive end to the sanctions.

To uphold the agreement, the United States warned Venezuela that it must “define a specific timeline and process for the expedited reinstatement of all candidates” by the end of November, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

“All who want to run for president should be allowed the opportunity,” he said in a statement.

The agreement between Washington and Caracas comes just a day after the Venezuelan government and opposition reached a deal in Barbados — mediated by Norway — to hold elections in late 2024.

But that accord allows for the exclusion of certain candidates under Venezuelan law, which would include opposition frontrunner Maria Corina Machado.

U.S. officials speaking on the condition of anonymity on Wednesday evening, however, said they believed Caracas was planning to eventually allow such candidates to participate.

Blinken said “failure to abide by the terms of this arrangement will lead the United States to reverse steps we have taken.”

Later in the day, five jailed opposition figures were released, according to a social media post by Gerardo Blyde, who represents the opposition in talks with the government.

Among them were journalist Roland Carreno and former lawmaker Juan Requesens, imprisoned in 2018 after an attack on Maduro.

Also on Wednesday, a charter flight from Texas arrived at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Caracas carrying about 130 Venezuelan migrants, the first such deportation flight following an agreement earlier this month between the two countries.

The deal provides for the “orderly, safe and legal repatriation” of undocumented Venezuelan migrants, who until now had been deported in small numbers on commercial flights, mixed in with regular passengers.

In concrete terms, the sanctions easing means the U.S. government is re-authorizing the purchase of Venezuelan oil and gas for a period of six months, which may be renewed “only if Venezuela meets its commitments under the electoral roadmap as well as other commitments with respect to those who are wrongfully detained.”

Regarding the gold sector, no time limit has been specified, with the Treasury Department stating it seeks to reduce black market trading.

Washington is also allowing renewed trading in Venezuelan debt securities on the secondary market, although the ban on the primary market — meaning debt securities newly issued by the Venezuelan government — remains in force.

The easing of sanctions on Venezuelan oil had been eagerly awaited by the markets, leading to a fall in the price per barrel despite the war between Israel and Hamas and the risk of escalation in the Middle East.

An exact election date will be defined by the country’s National Electoral Council, according to the text of the deal.

The two sides had resumed talks seeking to end the country’s political and economic crisis, after a nearly yearlong suspension.

The opposition, backed by several countries including the United States, did not recognize Maduro’s 2018 re-election in a vote widely dismissed as fraudulent.

The following year, Washington ramped up sanctions against Caracas first imposed in 2015 over the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

But the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s war on Ukraine saw renewed global efforts to solve the crisis in Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves.

Last year, U.S. delegates went to Caracas to meet Maduro, even though Washington does not recognize him as a legitimate leader.

After initial talks between the government and the opposition, Washington granted a six-month license to U.S. energy giant Chevron.