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https://youtu.be/r77fakYGnMI

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THE ENGLISH FOOTBALL IN MOURNING.
Sky Sports News reporter Rob Dorsett was at the King Power Stadium on Monday to witness the outpouring of grief, not just from Leicester’s fans but from the wider community...

It's been extraordinary the last two days. We've seen thousands of Leicester fans, and not just Leicester fans, thousands of football fans leaving scarves and shirts, flowers, messages, candles, you name it.

Fans from clubs, not just in this country but from around the world sharing in the grief, and they're there at all hours. I left at 8pm and it was still busy.

People from all communities as well. We know how multi-cultural Leicester is and people from all cultures and religions were there, saying how this man had united the city and united cultures in a way no other chairman had done before.

It surprised me how many people kept coming. Yesterday was Sunday so most people were off work, but today was a work day and yet it was constant, a constant stream of people. To the point that the shrine of flowers has tripled in size, it almost runs down the whole side of the stadium now. And you have to remember this is for an owner, not a star striker or a manager.

FIRS TRANSGENDER LIKE CONTESTANT IN MISS UNIVERSE 2018

For the first time in history, a transgender woman will be taking part in the upcoming Miss Universe pageant later this year.

According to Express UK, Angela Ponce from Spain has won her country’s qualifying rounds against 22 other contestants. She’ll be representing Spain in Miss Universe 2018 that is set to take place in Philippines this year.
For the first time in history, a transgender woman will be taking part in the upcoming Miss Universe pageant later this year.

According to Express UK, Angela Ponce from Spain has won her country’s qualifying rounds against 22 other contestants. She’ll be representing Spain in Miss Universe 2018 that is set to take place in Philippines this year.

USA SENDS 5.000 SOLDIERS TO THE FRONTIER WITH MEXICO

The US military is preparing to send as many as 5,200 troops to the nation’s southern border ahead of a migrant caravan travelling towards the region.

The latest reports arrived as an estimated 800 troops were sent to the US-Mexico border Monday, the US Department of Defence said Monday afternoon. By the end of the week, the department confirmed nearly 5,200 active duty troops would be assisting along the border with daily operations.

Meanwhile, the number of migrants continuing their collective journey has decreased each day, as is typical with the 15-year tradition that normally ends with a much smaller number of asylum-seekers arriving to US ports of entry along the border.

Earlier this year around 2,000 National Guard troops to the region, where about 15,000 US customs officials oversee the processing of trade, migrants and pedestrian travel daily.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mZaDod8BRw&feature=youtu.be

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COLOMBIAN NEWS
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/sep/22/colombia-cocaine-farc

Without drug traffickers, we’d have peace’: Colombian villagers flee new killings

Two years after the end of the guerrilla war that killed 220,000, other players have moved in on the drugs trade, with poor local children now being bribed to take up arms

Cabeceras villagers unfurl their peace banner, which they hope will mark a turning point in the community’s fortunes. Photograph: Federico Rios/Christian Aid

In a schoolhouse in Cabeceras in Colombia on the banks of the San Juan river, village leaders, teachers and others gather for a ceremony to mark what they hope will be a turning point in their lives. A large peace banner is unfurled and raised to waist height. Each person touches it, as if the sign, to establish their territory as an internationally protected “humanitarian zone”, is sacred.

A solemn blessing is read and repeated: a memorial to those who have been “disappeared”, murdered, silenced and displaced; those whose names they know, those they don’t.

“For the four men who disappeared on the river Naya in April,” says one woman. “For my brothers,” says Siode Arbolia, 35, tears welling up. Her young brothers, Elcias and Didier Arboleda, were among five people from Carrá, a neighbouring village, shot dead near their homes in March 2017 by an armed group.

The banner, placed overlooking the river at the village entrance, is a statement of sorts: it shows outsiders that the community has the backing of the international NGO Christian Aid, as well as the Inter-church Commission on Justice and Peace (CIJP), and that its leaders have denounced any collaboration with armed groups.

The San Juan and Naya rivers are two of Colombia’s main drug-trafficking routes and the communities are surrounded by armed groups vying for control of their land. Flowing more or less parallel to each other, on either side of Buenaventura, the country’s main port, the rivers carry shipments of cocaine from fields and laboratories deep in the jungle to the Pacific coast, where they are dispatched to international markets, including the US and Europe.

Earlier this year European officials warned that the rising availability of the illegal drug on the streets of the continent was a result of increased production in Colombia. New data shows coca cultivation had surged to a record high; the amount of land used to harvest the coca plant soared by 17% in 2017 in comparison with the previous year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). In Britain debate has centred on drug users fuelling rising violence on the streets of London and elsewhere.

In the Valle del Cauca department, cocaine trafficking and the battle to control land on which it is grown is causing such brutal conflict it is driving people to flee the territory their ancestors cultivated for centuries.

To the indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities who live on these rivers, identifying which armed group is responsible for the violence, harassment and terror inflicted on them is not an easy task. One thing they all have in common, though, is drug trafficking.

Dagoberto Pretel, the legal representative of Cabeceras, a community of a few thousand people, said: “We know that all the different actors are moving around on the river and there is combat between them to control this region, so that they can move their product.” He added: “If there weren’t drug traffickers, we would live like we did 15 or 20 years ago. We would live in peace.”

Two years after the government signed a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Force of Colombia (Farc) guerrillas, aimed at bringing an end to the longest war in the Americas, which left 220,000 people dead and nearly 6 million displaced, many armed actors remain. They include the military, paramilitaries, the police, the National Liberation Army, or ELN – an insurgent guerrilla group – as well as a rising number of dissident Farc groups.

Despite pledges by the government and Farc in the peace agreement to substitute illegal crops with alternatives among farmers and eradicate vast tracks of coca leaf, peace remains a distant hope for people in Cabeceras and the surrounding villages.

(Although two years have passed since the peace agreement, the situation of violence and drug trafficking have not changed, the situation of the defenseless communities is sad and worring.)

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INTERNATIONAL NEW
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46028862

WWF report: Mass wildlife loss caused by human consumption.

"Exploding human consumption" has caused a massive drop in global wildlife populations in recent decades, the WWF conservation group says.

In a report, the charity says losses in vertebrate species - mammals, fish, birds, amphibians and reptiles - averaged 60% between 1970 and 2014.

"Earth is losing biodiversity at a rate seen only during mass extinctions," the WWF's Living Planet Report adds. It urges policy makers to set new targets for sustainable development.

The Living Planet Report, published every two years, aims to assess the state of the world's wildlife.

§  'Shocking' human impact on protected areas

§  Why Guyana's rainforests are a scientist's dream

§  Alarm as China eases ban on rhino horn use

The 2018 edition says only a quarter of the world's land area is now free from the impact of human activity and the proportion will have fallen to just a 10th by 2050.

The change is being driven by ever-rising food production and increased demand for energy, land and water.

Although forest loss has been slowed by reforestation in some regions in recent decades, the loss has "accelerated in tropical forests that contain some of the highest levels of biodiversity on Earth", the report notes.

It says South and Central America suffered the most dramatic decline in vertebrate populations - an 89% loss in vertebrate populations compared with 1970.

Marine freshwater species are particularly at risk, the report says. Plastic pollution has been detected in the deepest parts of the world’s oceans, including the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific.

§  Ocean plastic could triple in decade

§  Welsh wildlife at risk

Freshwater species - living in lakes, rivers and wetlands - have seen an 83% decline in numbers since 1970, according to the report.

The WWF calls for "a new global deal for nature and people" similar to the 2015 Paris agreement to tackle climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"Decision makers at every level need to make the right political, financial and consumer choices to achieve the vision that humanity and nature thrive in harmony on our only planet," the report says.

The data, gathered from peer-reviewed studies, covers more than 16,700 populations belonging to 4,000 species around the world.

The WWF's methodology has been criticised. One conservationist told the BBC in 2016 that the data in the 2016 report was skewed towards western Europe, where figures were more readily available.

(human ambition for money and power is destroying our planet)

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Control of U.S. Senate may hinge on possible Mississippi runoff

A crowded U.S. Senate race in Republican stronghold Mississippi could set the stage for weeks of uncertainty over which party ends up controlling the upper chamber of Congress after the Nov. 6 elections.

It is a scenario that could focus international attention on the Southern state and bring in millions of dollars from outside political groups.

Two Republicans and two Democrats are contesting a special election to serve out the remainder of retired Republican Senator Thad Cochran's term. Under state law, if no one gets 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates regardless of party affiliation will go to a Nov. 27 runoff.

"Mississippi could be the deciding factor in who controls the Senate," said Melissa Scallan, a spokeswoman for Republican U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was appointed by Mississippi's Republican governor to temporarily replace Cochran after he retired on April 1.

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Colombia’s President Ivan Duque can declare a state of emergency that would allow him to bypass congress where many oppose the hard-line policies of the president and his political patron, former President  Alvaro Uribe.

An ongoing increase in violence would provide the president a perfectly legal argument for the far-reaching measure that would allow him to temporarily bypass Congress unless the Constitutional Court intervenes.

Article 213 of Colombia’s constitution

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David de Gea insists he is focusing on football and not contract talks as speculation over his Manchester United future intensifies. Jose Mourinho, the United manager, said before today’s Premier League home game against Everton that he is ‘not confident’ that United will tie the Spain goalkeeper down to a new deal. De Gea’s current deal runs out next summer — although United do have the option to extend this by a further year — and talks have been ongoing for several months.

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the 'Apu problema the simpsons the most famous family in the world announced this week that Apu a character in the series will not be released

Rumours are circulating that the Kwik-E-Mart manager could be axed from the cartoon. In the midst of a race row, it may not be that simple

this could be the end of Apu . After 28 years of service – and increasing controversy about the depiction of the character – it has been reported that the Indian-American convenience store worker may no longer appear in The Simpsons.

The debate over whether Apu is a harmless caricature or a racially insensitive misstep has been raging since the standup comic Hari Kondabolu released a documentary,

The Problem with Apu, in 2017. In it, Kondabolu said that the character had become “a tool for kids to go after you”.

On Friday, Adi Shankar, the showrunner for the Netflix series Castlevania, told Indiewire that The Simpsons was planning to “drop him altogether just to avoid the controversy”, citing three sources. However, Al Jean, a veteran producer of the cartoon, tweeted on Sunday: “Adi Shankar is not a producer on The Simpsons. I wish him the very best but he does not speak for our show”.

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Five ways the Simpsons could tackle the 'Apu problem'

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Rumours are circulating that the Kwik-E-Mart manager could be axed from the cartoon. In the midst of a race row, it may not be that simple

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SPORT NEW
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/formula-1/michael-schumacher-ski-accident-10360005

Michael Schumacher latest: What we know about F1 legend almost five years after ski accident

The F1 legend suffered a severe head injury and was left in a coma, with official updates from close to Schumacher very scarce in the following months and years

ski accident in the French Alps over four years ago.

The motor sport icon was left in a coma after sustaining a severe head injury in the incident on December 29, 2013.

Official updates from Schumacher's family have been incredibly scarce in the months and years following the incident.

Ahead of the 2018 F1 season, his manager Sabine Kehm passed on the family's thanks for fans' support.

There have been suggestions he could be taken to the US for specialist treatment near the Texas ranch he owns. Reported healthcare figures suggest his home care bills have now passed £20m.

The cost of care

On the fourth anniversary of the crash, it was reported his home care bills had passed £20m.

But Professor Mark Oberman from the Centre for Neurology of the Asklepios Clinic gave the German and his family hope.

"According to a Swedish study, between 30 and 40 percent of patients have regained consciousness within four years," he said.

"Many can come back to life and see how their children and grandchildren grow up, what plans they have or what else happens in the family or circle of friends."

What have his family said?

Mick Schumacher has also gone into motor racing and is progressing through the Formulas.

In April 2017 he revealed his dad is his inspiration. He said: "My role model is my dad. Simply because he is the best - my idol."

In August 2017 he marked the 25th anniversary of his father's first F1 win by driving the Benetton car Schumi drove to victory in the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa in 1992.

Mick's sister Gina-Maria paid tribute to their parents as she collected an award for her western riding achievements at the Audi Generation Awards in December 2017.

Is Michael Schumacher the greatest F1 driver ever? Off course yes!!

(This news is for speak of the state of health of the F1 legend, is said the familiar situation because the pain of see suffer a Good person, exceptional father and husband, great friend, haver complicate for all)

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Many thousands of years ago, not a single human being lived in the Americas.This only changed during the last Ice Age. It was a time when most of North America was covered with a thick sheet of ice, which made the Americas difficult to inhabit.But at some point during this time, adventurous humans started their journey into a new world.They probably came on foot from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge, which existed between Alaska and Eurasia from the end of the last Ice Age until about 10,000 years ago. The area is now submerged by water.There is still debate about when these first Americans actually arrived and where they came from. But we are now getting closer to uncovering the original narrative, and finding out who these first Americans really were

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Many thousands of years ago, not a single human being lived in the Americas.This only changed during the last Ice Age. It was a time when most of North America was covered with a thick sheet of ice, which made the Americas difficult to inhabit.But at some point during this time, adventurous humans started their journey into a new world.They probably came on foot from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge, which existed between Alaska and Eurasia from the end of the last Ice Age until about 10,000 years ago. The area is now submerged by water.There is still debate about when these first Americans actually arrived and where they came from. But we are now getting closer to uncovering the original narrative, and finding out who these first Americans really were

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Many thousands of years ago, not a single human being lived in the Americas.

This only changed during the last Ice Age. It was a time when most of North America was covered with a thick sheet of ice, which made the Americas difficult to inhabit.

But at some point during this time, adventurous humans started their journey into a new world.

They probably came on foot from Siberia across the Bering Land Bridge, which existed between Alaska and Eurasia from the end of the last Ice Age until about 10,000 years ago. The area is now submerged by water.

There is still debate about when these first Americans actually arrived and where they came from. But we are now getting closer to uncovering the original narrative, and finding out who these first Americans really were.

During the peak of the last Ice Age about 20,000 years ago, a journey from Asia into the Americas would not have been particularly desirable. North America was covered in icy permafrost and tall glaciers. But, paradoxically, the presence of so much ice meant that the journey was, in a way, easier than it would be today.

The abundance of ice meant that sea levels were much lower than they are now, and a stretch of land emerged between Siberia and Alaska. Humans and animals could simply walk from Asia to North America. The land bridge was called Beringia.

People were using the woody shrubs from the land bridge to ignite bones on the landscape

At some point around this time - known as the Last Glacial Maximum - groups of hunter-gatherers moved east from what is now Siberia to set up camp there.

"The first people who arrived in Beringia were probably small, highly mobile groups evolving in a large landscape, probably depending on the availability of seasonal resources," says Lauriane Bourgeon of the University of Montreal, Canada.

These people did well to seek refuge there. Central Beringia was a much more desirable environment than the icy lands they had left behind. The climate was a bit damper. Vegetation, in the form of woody shrubs, would have given them access to wood that they could burn to keep warm.

Beringia was also an ideal environment for large grazing mammals, giving early hunter-gathers something to hunt, says Scott Elias of Royal Holloway, University London in the UK, who reconstructs past climates.

"Our hypothesis is that people were using the woody shrubs from the land bridge to ignite bones on the landscape. The bones of big animals contain lots of fatty deposits of marrow, and they will burn."

When humans got to Beringia, they would have had little choice but to set up camp there. The vast Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets further east cut them off from North America.

This standstill helped these isolated groups of people to become genetically distinct from those they had left behind

It is now becoming clear that they made Beringia their home, staying put for several thousand years. This idea is called the Beringian Standstill Hypothesis. This standstill helped these isolated groups of people to become genetically distinct from those they had left behind, according to a 2007 study.

This long standstill therefore meant that the people who arrived in the Americas - when the ice finally retreated and allowed entry - were genetically different to the individuals who had left Siberia thousands of years earlier. "Arguably one of the most important parts of the process is what happened in Beringia. That's when they differentiated from Asians and started becoming Native Americans," says Connie Mulligan of the University of Florida in Gainesville, US, who took part in this early analysis.

Since then, other genetic insights have further supported the standstill hypothesis. Elias and colleagues even propose that people stayed in Beringia for as long as 10,000 years.

When the ice finally started to retreat, groups of people then travelled to different pockets of the Americas.

There has long been debate over whether these early settlers arrived from several migrations from different areas, or just one.

There's been no turnover or change in the population group as some people had previously hypothesised

Over 20 years ago, Mulligan proposed that there was just one migration from Beringia into the "New World". She came to this conclusion by analysing the genetic variation in the DNA of modern-day Native Americans and comparing it with the variation in Asia. The same rare pattern appeared in all the Native Americans she studied, but very rarely appeared in modern-day Asians. This meant Native Americans likely arose from a single population of people who had lived in Beringia, isolated for many years.

In 2015, a study using more advanced genetic techniques came to a similar conclusion. Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley, US, and colleagues found that the "vast majority" of Native Americans must have originated from just one colonisation event.

"There's been no turnover or change in the population group as some people had previously hypothesised," says Nielsen. In fact, about 80% of Native Americans today are direct descendants of the Clovis people, who lived across North America about 13,000 years ago. This discovery came from a 2014 genetic study of a one-year-old Clovis boy who died about 12,700 years ago.

But we now know there must have been staggered migrations from Beringia.

That is because there are small groups of people in the Amazonian region of South America - such as the Suruí and Karitiana - with additional mysterious "arctic gene flow", unrelated to the Clovis boy. Another 2015 study therefore proposed there was more than one "founding population of the Americas".

The indigenous populations of the Americas, the team found, have distant genetic links in common with people of Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Andaman Islands.

People came into Beringia over different times during the standstill

This means, says Pontus Skoglund of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, that people came into Beringia over different times during the "standstill" and went on to populate different parts of the Americas. Those early dispersals are still reflected by differences in the genomes of people living today.

"It wasn't simply a single homogenous founding population. There must have been some type of patchwork of people, and maybe there were multiple pulses," says Skoglund.

In other words, the Beringian inhabitants did not all arrive or leave at the same time.

This makes sense when you consider that Beringia was not a narrow land bridge with ocean on either side. "It was a huge region about twice the size of Texas," says Elias. The people living there would have had no idea that it was a land bridge at all. "There were no sign posts saying they were leaving Siberia."

This makes it highly likely that there were different groups of Beringian inhabitants that never met.

A study published in February 2017 strengthens this idea further. After examining the shapes of 800- to 500-year-old skulls from Mexico, researchers found they were so distinct, the people the skulls belonged to must have remained genetically isolated for at least 20,000 years.

To understand who the first Americans really were, we have to consider when they arrived. While the exact timing is hard to pin down. Nielsen's work gives some insight. By sequencing the genomes of people from the Americas, Siberia, and Oceania, he and colleagues could understand when these populations diverged. The team concludes that the ancestors of the first Americans came to Beringia at some point between 23,000 years and 13,000 years ago.

We found cut marks on bones from horse, caribou and wapiti so we know that humans were relying on those species

We now have archaeological evidence to suggest that the people who left Siberia - and then Beringia - did so even earlier than the 23,000-year-limit proposed by Nielsen and colleagues. In January 2017, Lauriane Bourgeon and her team found evidence of people living in a cave system in the northern Yukon Territory of western Canada, called the Bluefish Caves, that dates to as early as 24,000 years ago. It was previously believed that people had only arrived in this area 10,000 years later.

"They reached Beringia as early as 24,000 years ago, and they remained genetically and geographically isolated until about 16-15,000 years ago, before dispersing south of the ice sheets that covered most of North America during this period," says Bourgeon.

The caves "were only used on brief occasions for hunting activities", she says. "We found cut marks on bones from horse, caribou and wapiti, so we know that humans were relying on those species."

This work provides further evidence that people were in the Beringia area at this early date. But it does not reveal the exact dates these people first ventured further south.

For that, we can turn to archaeological evidence. For decades, stone tools left by the Clovis people have been found throughout North America. Some date to as early as 13,000 years ago. This might suggest that humans moved south very late. But in recent years evidence has begun to emerge that questions this idea.

Most preserved remains are stone tools and sometimes bones of animals

For instance, at a site called Monte Verde in southern Chile, there is evidence of human occupation that dates between 14,500 and 18,500 years ago. We know these people built fires, ate seafood and used stone tools - but because they did not leave any human remains behind, much about this early group remains mysterious.

"We really know little about them, because most preserved remains are stone tools and sometimes bones of animals, thus technology and diet," explains Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, US, who is studying these people. "Monte Verde in south-central Chile, where I am at present, has several organic remains - animal hide, meat, plant remains that reveal a wider diet, wood technology - but these types of sites are rare to find."

Another conundrum remains. Ice sheets still covered North America 18,500 years ago, making journeying south difficult. How did people arrive in southern Chile so early?

A leading idea had been that an ice-free corridor opened up, which allowed humans to travel south. However, the latest evidence suggests this corridor only opened about 12,600 years ago, long after these early Chileans arrived.

Elias also points out how difficult this journey would have been. "Even if there was a small gap in between these enormous ice sheets, the environment left in that gap would have been so horrible, with mud, ice, meltwater and slush. It would not have been a habitable place for people or the animals they would have wanted to follow," he says.

These early people could have travelled by boat

There is an alternative. These early people could have travelled by boat, taking a route along the Pacific coast. There is no archaeological evidence to support this idea, but that is not entirely unexpected: wooden boats are rarely preserved in the archaeological record.

There are still many unanswered questions, but Mulligan says that studying how and when early hunter-gatherers spread across the Americas can help us to understand the process of migration itself. That is, how population sizes change and which genetic traits persist.

In many ways, the peopling of America presents scientists with a golden opportunity to study these processes. There have been multiple migrations both into and out of other regions of the world - Africa, Europe and Asia, for instance. But the people who moved into the Americas were on a one-way journey. "We know the original inhabitants came from Asia into the New World with no other people there, and no major back migrations, so it's the simplest model you can conceive of."

That it was a one-way journey, coupled with the increased interest in studying the genetics of these ancient people, means we should soon understand even more about who these first Americans really were, and exactly when they arrived.
Melissa Hogenboom is BBC Earth's associate editor. She is @melissasuzanneh on Twitter. Join over six million BBC Earth fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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The first people who populated the Americas

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Many thousands of years ago, not a single human being lived in the Americas. This only changed during the last Ice Age. It was a time when most of North America was covered with a thick sheet of ice, which made the Americas difficult to inhabit.

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Home News:

The Duque effect: one social leader is assassinated in Colombia almost every day now

Violence against Colombia’s community leaders and human rights defenders has escalated to the point that a leader is assassinated almost every day, according to a leading think tank.

According to conflict monitoring Ong Indepaz, 416 (four hundred sixteen) leaders have been assassinated between the beginning of a peace process on December 1, 2016 (twenty sixteen) and Thursday.

Duque has fiercely opposed the peace process that effectively reduced violence to a record low in 2017.
Losing count

The Ombudsman’s Office and the United Nations confirmed Saturday that another social leader, Maria Caicedo from the southwestern Cauca province, was also murdered, making her the 417th victim.

Caicedo was kidnapped from her home in Argelia on October 20 by armed men. Neighbors found the tortured and half-naked body of the 62-year-old women’s rights activist on Friday.

The UN’s human rights office urged the government “to protect the human rights defenders and to investigate, try and punish this crime.”

Killings increased dramatically under Duque

According to Indepaz, Fourteen leaders were murdered in December 2016, 191 were assassinated in 2017 and 211 have been murdered until October 25 this year.

Since the inauguration of President Ivan Duque in August, 62 leaders have been assassinated, which is almost one per day, Indepaz said in a report published last week.

The president vowed to increase security for social leaders when signing a “Pact for Life” with national and local authorities in August, but his government has effectively suspended contact with the communities most affected by the violence, according to Indepaz.

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Violence against Colombia's community leaders and human rights defenders has escalated to the point that a leader is assassinated almost every day, according to a leading think tank.

According to conflict monitoring NGO Indepaz, 416 leaders have been assassinated between the beginning of a peace process on December 1, 2016 and Thursday.

Duque has fiercely opposed the peace process that effectively reduced violence to a record low in 2017.

Losing count

The Ombudsman's Office and the United Nations confirmed Saturday that another social leader, Maria Caicedo from the southwestern Cauca province, was also murdered, making her the 417th victim.

Caicedo was kidnapped from her home in Argelia on October 20 by armed men. Neighbors found the tortured and half-naked body of the 62-year-old women's rights activist on Friday.

The UN's human rights office urged the government "to protect the human rights defenders and to investigate, try and punish this crime."

Killings increased dramatically under Duque

According to Indepaz, Fourteen leaders were murdered in December 2016, 191 were assassinated in 2017 and 211 have been murdered until October 25 this year.

Since the inauguration of President Ivan Duque in August, 62 leaders have been assassinated, which is almost one per day, Indepaz said in a report published last week.

The president vowed to increase security for social leaders when signing a "Pact for Life" with national and local authorities in August, but his government has effectively suspended contact with the communities most affected by the violence, according to Indepaz.

With the arrival of the current government, there has been an erosion and stagnation in the dialogue with civil society organizations.

Indepaz

Duque: all talk and no action

In the southwestern province of Cauca, where more than 20% of the assassinations occurred, the national government has entirely failed to attend planned meetings with civil society groups that were agreed to attend the deteriorating security situation, said the think tank.

In spite of the will and insistence of the organizations and the agreement of dates for the session of the Territorial Roundtable on Guarantees for Human Rights Defenders, it has NOT been possible to hold a formal meeting to seek constitutional guarantees with the participation of the relevant institutions of the National Government.

Indepaz

Indepaz urged the president to resume the suspended dialogues with the social organizations that have been threatened by the socio-political violence that has marred the peace process with the FARC that has been fiercely opposed by the president.

Duque said Saturday that "we will do everything necessary" to curb the escalating violence, and urged the defense and justice ministers "to mobilize the entire public force, but without the abuse of citizens."

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The Duque effect: one social leader is assassinated in Colombia almost every day now

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Violence against Colombia's community leaders and human rights defenders has escalated to the point that a leader is assassinated almost every day, according to a leading think tank. According to...