Family says Lauren Brooke Robinson, who reportedly contracted fungal meningitis, began to feel ill months after February surgery
A Texas woman has died after contracting fungal meningitis in an outbreak that has been linked to a cosmetic procedure performed in Mexico.
Lauren Brooke Robinson, 29, died on Wednesday from a fungal meningitis infection after receiving cosmetic surgery in Mexico, the local TV news station KBMT reported.
Continue reading...Flies chilled to sub-zero temperatures amputate one or more of their six limbs to protect their internal organs
Flightless snow flies in the US and Canada can amputate their legs to survive as they begin to freeze, researchers have discovered.
Lab experiments in which the flies were chilled gradually to sub-zero temperatures revealed they can detach one or more of their six legs, an apparent “last-ditch tactic” to protect their internal organs from the advancing cold.
Continue reading...Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman, conspired with Colombian mercenaries, to kill Jovenel Moïse in 2021
A mastermind of the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse two years ago has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a federal court judge in Florida.
Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian-Chilean businessman, conspired with a group of Colombian mercenaries to murder Moïse at his home in Port-au-Prince on 7 July 2021. Prosecutors at his sentencing hearing in Miami said Jaar obtained the weapons used in the “commando-style” attack that killed Moïse, 53, and seriously injured his wife.
Continue reading...Huge Barrington Lake fire now considered province’s largest wildfire but wet weather expected from Friday into next week
Rain on Friday and a rainy forecast for the weekend have fire officials hopeful they can get the largest wildfire ever recorded in Canada’s Atlantic coast province of Nova Scotia under control.
That wildfire and three others in the province have prompted air quality warnings in US regions as far south as Virginia and Maryland.
Continue reading...Analysis shows handful of corporations extract tens of billions of dollars of raw materials a year – and their commitments to restoration vary greatly
A handful of global giants dominate the industrialisation of the Amazon rainforest, extracting tens of billions of dollars of raw materials every year, according to an analysis that highlights how much value is being sucked out of the region with relatively little going back in.
But even as the pace of deforestation hits record highs while standards of living in the Amazon are among the lowest in Brazil, the true scale of extraction remains unknown, with basic details about cattle ranching, logging and mining hard to establish despite efforts to ban commodities linked to its destruction.
Continue reading...Investigation involving Guardian shows systematic and vast forest loss linked to cattle farming in Brazil
More than 800m trees have been cut down in the Amazon rainforest in just six years to feed the world’s appetite for Brazilian beef, according to a new investigation, despite dire warnings about the forest’s importance in fighting the climate crisis.
A data-driven investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), the Guardian, Repórter Brasil and Forbidden Stories shows systematic and vast forest loss linked to cattle farming.
Continue reading...Officials say combination of high temperatures and stiff breezes could lead to ‘extreme fire behaviour’ in Maritime province
Officials in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia say a day of blistering heat, strong winds and low humidity could lead to “extreme fire behaviour” as they work to control wildfires that have forced more than 20,000 people from their homes.
Fire crews said on Thursday they were concerned about a phenomenon known as “crossover”, which occurs when temperature rises above 30C, humidity drops below 30% and winds exceed 30km/h.
Continue reading...President says last year’s killings were result of ‘encouragement of anarchy’ in Amazon under Bolsonaro
Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira will not be forgotten, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has vowed, blaming their killings a year ago on the Amazonian “anarchy” unleashed under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.
Phillips, a British journalist, and Pereira, a Brazilian Indigenous expert, were shot dead by a group of illegal fishers on 5 June last year while travelling in the remote Javari valley near Brazil’s border with Colombia and Peru.
Continue reading...Ex-partner of Lord Ashcroft’s son discharged gun at Henry Jemmott in 2021 as the pair drank together
The Canadian socialite and former partner of the son of the billionaire and Conservative party grandee Michael Ashcroft has been fined after killing a police officer in Belize.
Jasmine Hartin, 34, was ordered to pay £30,000 by the supreme court in Belize City for manslaughter by negligence. She must also undertake 300 hours of community service and film a video about the dangers of “drinking and making foolish decisions”.
Continue reading...Alexandre Saraiva gives alert on organised crime in region ahead of anniversary of killings of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira
The rapid advance of organised crime groups in the Brazilian Amazon risks turning the region into a vast, conflict-stricken hinterland plagued by heavily armed “criminal insurgents”, a former senior federal police chief has warned.
Alexandre Saraiva, who worked in the Amazon from 2011 to 2021, said he feared the growing footprint of drug-trafficking mafias in the region could spawn a situation similar to the decades-long drug conflict in Rio de Janeiro, where the police’s battle with drug gangs and paramilitaries has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Continue reading...Photos and videos on phone found near site of men’s killing show some of their last movements in Brazilian Amazon
Some of the last images of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira have been found after Indigenous activists recovered a mobile phone Pereira was carrying when the two men were killed in the Brazilian Amazon last year.
The phone was found last October when activists from Univaja, the Indigenous association where Pereira worked, returned to a stretch of flooded forest along the Itaquaí River where the men’s bodies were taken after they were shot dead on their boat on the morning of 5 June 2022.
Continue reading...Park has long been a target of activists who have sought to shut it down over the lack of care given to its captive animals
A theme park in Canada is facing charges for its handling of black bears in captivity, placing fresh scrutiny on a park that animal rights activists have long sought to shut down.
Ontario’s ministry of the solicitor general said on Wednesday it had laid the charges against Marineland, an amusement park on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. The province said the park had failed to comply with an order related to its captive American black bears.
Continue reading...More than 18,000 people remain under evacuation order outside Halifax as Canadian PM Justin Trudeau pledges federal assistance
Officials in the province of Nova Scotia say unprecedented wildfires that have forced thousands from their homes will keep growing despite the “water, raw muscle power and air power” deployed by fire crews.
As of Wednesday, more than 20,000 hectares of the Maritime province were burning from 13 wildfires, including three fires that considered out of control. More than 18,000 people remain under evacuation order outside Halifax, the region’s largest city. More than 200 structures, the majority of which are homes, have been destroyed by the fire. No fatalities have been recorded.
Continue reading...Critics denounced ‘lies, hatred and racism’ as legislation moves to senate after being overwhelmingly endorsed by lower house
Indigenous leaders and environmentalists in Brazil have voiced horror and indignation after lawmakers approved controversial legislation which opponents fear will strike a devastating blow to Indigenous communities and isolated tribes.
Members of Brazil’s conservative-dominated lower house overwhelmingly endorsed bill number 490 on Tuesday night, by 283 votes to 155.
Continue reading...Ex-leader of Conservatives says Canadian Security Intelligence briefed him on a ‘Chinese-orchestrated campaign’ to manipulate the vote
Canada’s spy agency told former Conservative party leader Erin O’Toole that China campaigned to discredit him and suppress votes ahead of the 2021 election he lost to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, O’Toole has said.
In a briefing on Friday, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (Csis) informed O’Toole about intelligence saying Beijing had targeted him in 2021, when he was Conservative leader and running to defeat Trudeau.
Continue reading...Party leader and Alberta premier Danielle Smith used victory speech to attack the prime minister’s climate policies
Alberta’s United Conservatives have scraped a majority government, narrowly defeating the rival New Democrats in what proved to be the province’s closest ever election.
The triumph for incumbent premier Danielle Smith foreshadows more friction between the western province and Canada’s federal government on environmental regulation, with Smith using her victory speech to attack the climate policies of the prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
Continue reading...Police have accused the teenager of starting the blaze in a dormitory that killed 18 schoolmates and a five-year-old boy
A teenage student whom police in Guyana accuse of deliberately setting a fire in a girls’ dormitory that killed 18 schoolmates and a five-year-old boy has been charged as an adult with 19 counts of murder.
The 15-year-old girl appeared virtually at the hearing on Monday in a court south of the capital, Georgetown, and was ordered to be held in custody pending further court proceedings.
Continue reading...Human rights group’s 107-page report details human cost of President Nayib Bukele’s controversial ‘war on gangs’
The human cost of El Salvador’s controversial “war on gangs” has been laid bare in a new report which claims dozens of prisoners were tortured and killed in jail after being caught up in the year-long security crackdown.
The detailed 107-page report from human rights group Cristosal said at least 153 people had died in custody after being arrested as part of President Nayib Bukele’s year long offensive against the Central American country’s notorious “pandillas”.
Continue reading...Thousands forced from their homes after spring fires destroy buildings in Canadian province
Rare and “very aggressive” spring wildfires in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia have destroyed many buildings and forced thousands from their homes and prompting officials to declare a local state of emergency.
Over the weekend, residents of the Maritime province posted video of thick smoke encroaching over Halifax as a nearby blaze rapidly swept through a suburb.
Continue reading...Monday’s election is going to be a political nail-biter but neither candidate has discussed a post oil and gas world
Record-breaking wildfires have charred more than a million hectares of land in Alberta, pushing tens of thousands from their homes and choking the skies in a thick haze of smoke.
But on the zigzagging campaign trail of the province’s general election, neither party leader has confronted the realities of climate change and how it will likely dramatically reshape life in the Canadian prairies.
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