Argentina: Gay couple defies civil union ban

Denied the chance to marry in Argentina, two gay activists traveled to Spain to tie the knot on Monday. Once home from their honeymoon, they plan to campaign for legal recognition for their marriage in Argentina.

"It's not going to be easy. ... But we're already married, Spain recognizes us," Cesar Cigliutti, president of the Argentine Homosexual Community, said told The Associated Press from Madrid.

Cigliutti and Marcelo Suntheim were able to wed because Suntheim has dual citizenship in Argentina and Germany - allowing him to marry within the European Union.

Hundreds of landless farmers on Monday overran a ranch once owned by an imprisoned Colombian drug lord, hours before the government sold the confiscated property at a public auction.

Three hundred families of landless farmers seized control of the 319-acre ranch that Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia forfeited in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, police commander Paulo Roberto Mendes Rodrigues said.

The Landless Workers Movement said in a statement that its militants occupied the ranch because "we want it expropriated for agrarian reform purposes."

The group has gained international notoriety for taking over land it deems unproductive to pressure the government to redistribute farmland in a country with one of the world's most uneven distributions of land.