Photographer Ken Pretty from the town of Dildo spotted an unusual ice formation at sea – an avalanche of risque puns ensued
It was a calm spring day when Canadian photographer Ken Pretty spotted an interestingly shaped 30ft iceberg off Newfoundland’s east coast.
As he flew his drone overhead, Pretty, who hails from the town of Dildo, realized the hulk of ice bore a distinct resemblance to a characteristic part of the male human anatomy.
Continue reading...Country’s largest public sector strike in history ends with most set to return but over 35,000 revenue agency workers still negotiating
Canada’s government struck an agreement with 120,000 federal workers on Monday, effectively ending the country’s largest public sector strike in history, which had crippled services from passport renewals to immigration.
While most strikers are set to return to work after almost two weeks of deadlock, more than 35,000 revenue agency workers who also went on strike on 19 April are still negotiating, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) union said.
Continue reading...The U’wa people’s case against the Colombian government could help protect the environment across Latin America
After centuries fighting to protect their territory – and 26 years waiting to testify in an international legal dispute – an Andean Indigenous community has finally made its formal declarations against the Colombian state.
The U’wa Indigenous community told the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) that Colombia has repeatedly failed to recognise their ancestral lands and has threatened the group’s existence by polluting their territory with oil.
Continue reading...Santiago Peña of the Colorado party is elected, defeating Efraín Alegre who wanted to switch diplomatic recognition to China
Paraguay’s ruling party candidate, Santiago Peña, 44, has scored a big win in the presidential election, tightening the conservative Colorado party’s political grip and defusing fears that diplomatic ties with Taiwan might have been cut.
Peña, who has pledged to maintain Paraguay’s longstanding Taiwan relations, had 42.7% of the vote with more than 99% of ballots counted – a more than 15-point lead over centre-left rival Efraín Alegre, who has argued for switching allegiance to China.
Continue reading...Members of terrorised Port-au-Prince communities armed with rocks and machetes carry out wave of lynchings
As Vélina Élysée Charlier ventured on to the streets of her conflict-stricken city last week, she encountered scenes that will haunt her for many years to come.
Armed civilians dragging bodies through the streets. Smouldering corpses. Young men with machetes chasing suspected gangsters they planned to kill.
Continue reading...President says island is only receiving two-thirds of the petrol it needs as queues outside gas stations stretch for miles
There was a time when International Workers’ Day was marked in Cuba by parades involving more than a million people marching through Havana’s Revolution Square. Many came out of conviction, some because they were pressured, others to enjoy the party.
This Monday, however, the square will be empty, after the Cuban Communist party cancelled this year’s celebrations due to gasoline shortages that are crippling the island’s economy.
Continue reading...Colombian author’s En Agosto Now Vemos (We’ll See Each Other in August) had been just a rumour but now fans will get to read it
Rumours had long circulated that an entire literary masterpiece, never seen by the public, could still be lying in a dusty safe held by the late author’s family or under lock and key at his archive at the University of Texas.
On Friday Penguin Random House confirmed that an unpublished Gabriel García Márquez novel – titled En Agosto Nos Vemos, (We’ll See Each Other in August) – not only exists, but will be on shelves across Latin America in 2024.
Continue reading...Largest strike in decades enters 10th day with workers enjoying public support despite disruption to government services
Striking federal workers in Canada are calling for the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to get involved in stalled negotiations, as the largest job action in decades enters its 10th day and key government services grind to a halt.
More than 100,000 employees with Canada’s largest public sector union have been on strike since last week in a battle over wages and the ability to work remotely.
Continue reading...Ricot Jean found dead after reportedly being kidnapped and Dumesky Kersaint reportedly killed by a stray bullet
Two more journalists have been killed in Haiti in the past month as rampant gang violence has gripped the capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas.
Ricot Jean, who worked for Radio-Tele Evolution Inter was found dead on Tuesday, a day after he was reportedly kidnapped by men wearing police uniforms. Jean was a prominent cultural activist in the Haitian capital and hosted a weekly radio show.
Continue reading...Former president of Brazil says he shared video ‘by mistake’ while on morphine in US hospital
Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been ridiculed by his political opponents after he was questioned by federal police as part of a criminal investigation into January’s alleged coup attempt and claimed he had shared a video questioning last year’s election result “by mistake”.
Bolsonaro spent more than two hours in the company of police investigators on Wednesday morning, nearly four months after thousands of hardcore supporters ran riot in the capital, Brasília, in what the new administration called a botched coup intended to reinstall the far-right former army captain as president.
Continue reading...Months before 43 Ayotzinapa students vanished, army was repeatedly warned of criminal gang presence
The Mexican military received nearly a dozen complaints about cartel activity in the region where 43 students were abducted in September 2014, emails hacked from the country’s defense ministry reveal, but the armed forces apparently did little to tackle organized crime in the area.
The students’ kidnapping and disappearance, which took place in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state, was one of the most horrific and high-profile human rights abuses in Mexico’s recent history, and remains unsolved despite years of protests and a relentless pursuit of justice by the students’ parents.
Continue reading...Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa makes rare acknowledgement of centuries of forced transportation of millions of Africans
Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has said his country should apologise and take responsibility for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, the first time a leader of the southern European nation has suggested such a national apology.
From the 15th to the 19th century, 6 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported across the Atlantic by Portuguese vessels and sold into slavery, primarily to Brazil.
Continue reading...Guaidó lands in Miami after failed bid to attend summit hosted by leftwing president, with return to Venezuela looking unlikely
Venezuela’s best-known opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, has touched down in the United States after being unceremoniously ejected from Colombia while attempting to gatecrash a summit about the political future of his crisis-stricken homeland.
Guaidó shot to fame in early 2019 and for a brief moment looked poised to topple Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, with the support of dozens of foreign governments including the US, UK and Brazil.
Continue reading...BASF among firms selling chemicals to sugar industry despite links to human health risks
Pesticides banned in the EU because of their links to human health risks are being exported and used on farms in Brazil supplying Nestlé, an investigation has revealed.
Europe is home to some of the world’s biggest and most profitable chemical companies, including the Swiss-based Syngenta and the German multinationals BASF and Bayer.
This article was amended on 25 April 2023. Although fipronil and triflumuron have been banned in the EU they have not been identified as potential carcinogens.
Continue reading...Footage shows men forced to lie on street by police before being killed and set on fire in broad daylight
Haiti’s tailspin into humanitarian crisis and bloodshed has racked up its latest moment of horror after at least a dozen suspected criminals were beaten to death and burned in broad daylight on the streets of its capital, Port-au-Prince.
Horrifying footage of the incident showed the bloodied men being forced to lie on the asphalt by rifle-wielding police before bystanders piled tyres on top of them, doused them with petrol and set them alight.
Continue reading...Intercepted over the weekend, the 11,520 bottles were bound for export before sniffer dogs alerted the authorities to the liquid
Mexican navy inspectors have intercepted 11,520 tequila bottles bound for export that actually contained nearly 10 tons of concentrated liquid meth.
In total, the bottles – intercepted over the weekend at the Pacific coast seaport of Manzanillo, contained approximately 8,640kgs (about 19,000lbs) of meth.
Continue reading...Diane Wilson took on Formosa Plastics and won a $50m settlement to help clean up decades worth of toxic plastic waste
Grassroots activists who took on British mining giants and a serial plastics polluter – and won – are among this year’s recipients of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.
The environmental campaigns led by the six 2023 Goldman prize winners highlight the hurdles faced by some local activists, who are often on the frontlines confronting the toxic mix of corporate greed and systemic corruption that is fuelling the climate emergency, biodiversity collapse and increasingly forced displacement.
Continue reading...A research team has discovered a parasite that’s been killing off sea urchins, but there’s no method to eliminate it yet
Marine biologists at a Florida university say they have solved the mystery of a mass die-off of long-spined sea urchins from the US to the Caribbean.
The scientists blame a microscopic, single-cell parasite for the die-off, which took hold early last year. Affected Diadema antillarum urchins lose their spines and suction, then succumb to disease.
Continue reading...Leader from 2001 to 2006 extradited from US after judge dismisses appeal
The former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo arrived in Lima on Sunday after his extradition from the United States, the latest in a string of ex-leaders to face corruption charges in the country.
Images showed Toledo, 77, wearing a green jacket and red jumper, being escorted by Peruvian police and US Marshals down the stairway from a commercial flight at Lima’s international airport.
Continue reading...Josep Borrell says safeguard would show Europe’s commitment to the ‘absolutely crucial’ area
European navies should patrol the disputed Taiwan Strait, the EU foreign policy chief has said, echoing earlier comments stressing how crucial Taiwan is to Europe.
Josep Borrell wrote in an opinion piece in the Journal Du Dimanche that Taiwan “concerns us economically, commercially and technologically”.
Continue reading...