Beekeepers at site near Toronto in Ontario eventually managed to recapture most of the insects, although some remained on the loose
Police near Toronto have warned drivers to keep their car windows closed after a truck spilled crates carrying five million bees on to a road.
Halton regional police said they received a call about 6.15am on Wednesday reporting the bee crates had come loose from a truck and spilled on to a road in Burlington, Ontario.
Continue reading...Chilean state finally assumes responsibility for finding those executed and forcibly disappeared under dictatorship
Chile’s government has announced its much-anticipated plan to search for the victims of forced disappearance and political execution under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, which began with a coup 50 years ago next month.
The plan nacional de búsqueda, or national search plan, will seek to establish the circumstances and conditions under which each person was forcibly disappeared, guarantee access to government records and provide reparations and guarantees for victims’ families.
Continue reading...Researchers find homeless people more likely to spend lump sum on housing and food and not ‘temptation goods’ such as alcohol
The widely held stereotype that people experiencing homelessness would be more likely to spend extra cash on drugs, alcohol and “temptation goods” has been upended by a study that found a majority used a $7,500 payment mostly on rent, food, housing, transit and clothes.
The biases punctured by the study highlight the difficulties in developing policies to reduce homelessness, say the Canadian researchers behind it. They said the unconditional cash appeared to reduce homelessness, giving added weight to calls for a guaranteed basic income that would help adults cover essential living expenses.
Continue reading...Rapidly strengthening hurricane nears Gulf coast as officials warn of significant storm surge and destructive winds
A rapidly intensifying Hurricane Idalia was closing in on Florida’s Gulf coast on Tuesday as residents in more than a dozen counties rushed to evacuate amid warnings of a life-threatening storm surge and destructive 125mph winds.
Landfall of the first major hurricane to strike the US this year was expected early on Wednesday, following Idalia’s north-easterly march through the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba.
Continue reading...Police say Kenneth Law, 57, linked to 88 deaths in Britain, may have shipped as many as 1,200 packages to 40 countries
The Canadian man accused of selling sodium nitrite to people at risk of suicide is believed to have shipped as many as 1,200 packages to 40 countries, police said as they laid a dozen new charges in a sprawling investigation.
Kenneth Law, 57, previously charged with two counts of counselling or aiding suicide in the province of Ontario, is now facing 12 new charges in connection with deaths across the province, the York regional police inspector Simon James told reporters. The victims range in age from 16 to 36.
Continue reading...Canada and UK only donor countries to contribute so far, leaving scheme short of $40m to formally launch
Developed countries have been urged to contribute to a new nature fund after it was left undercapitalised by $40m (£32m), receiving money from just two donors.
At the Cop15 biodiversity summit in December, where countries agreed this decade’s biodiversity targets that included aims to protect 30% of Earth, governments agreed to the creation of a fund to help developing countries meet the deal’s aims, which included a target to provide $200bn for nature a year by 2030.
Continue reading...Javier Milei, a culture war populist and sex coach who won country’s open primary, rages at ‘communist’ pontiff as he sets his sights on becoming president
In one corner of the ring stands Javier Milei, 52, self-described former tantric sex coach, outsider anarcho-capitalist and frontrunner in Argentina’s upcoming presidential elections; in the other, his compatriot Pope Francis, 86, world champion of the poor, repeatedly derided by Argentina’s likely next president as “a fucking communist” and “the representative of the evil one on Earth” for promoting the doctrine of “social justice” to aid the underprivileged.
Milei, a political unknown until 2020, has pledged to wage a “cultural battle” to transform Argentina into a libertarian paradise where capitalist efficiency replaces social assistance, taxes are reduced to a minimum and cash-strapped individuals are allowed to sell their body organs on the open market.
Continue reading...Rights groups say churchgoers were killed and wounded as they marched in order to rid the area of gang members
At least seven people were killed in Haiti, a rights group said, after a powerful gang that controls a northern suburb of the capital, Port-au-Prince, opened fire with machine guns on a protest organised by a Christian church leader.
Hatian rights group CARDH director Gedeon Jean said the final number killed would probably be higher, adding that several people were wounded and some churchgoers had been kidnapped, after they marched through the community on Saturday trying to rid the area of gang members. Local media reported at least 10 participants were killed.
Continue reading...Papers reveal how Richard Nixon was briefed on impending military takeover in Chile that ushered in 17-year dictatorship
Two more US Department of State documents relating to Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’état in Chile have been declassified, revealing how President Richard Nixon was briefed on the impending military takeover.
The president’s daily brief from 11 September 1973, the morning of the US-backed military coup, informed Nixon that Chilean military officers were “determined to restore political and economic order”, but “may still lack an effectively coordinated plan that would capitalize on the widespread civilian opposition”.
Continue reading...Descendants of William Gladstone urge British government to discuss reparations in the Caribbean
The descendants of the former British prime minister William Gladstone have apologised for their family’s past as enslavers in Guyana and urged the UK to discuss reparations in the Caribbean.
Gladstone’s father was one of the largest enslavers in the parts of the Caribbean colonised by Britain.
Continue reading...Mexico latest country where government is considering passing new laws to criminalise environmental destruction
A growing number of countries are considering introducing laws to make ecocide a crime.
Mexico is the latest country where politicians are seeking to deter environmental damage – and to get justice for its victims – by criminalising it. Karina Marlen Barrón Perales, congresswoman for Nuevo León, has submitted a bill to the Mexican congress introducing a new crime of “ecocide”.
Continue reading...Irfaan Ali also demands posthumous charges for crimes against humanity for traders and enslavers
The president of Guyana has called on descendants of European slave traders to offer to pay reparations to right historical wrongs.
Irfaan Ali also demanded that those involved in the transatlantic slave trade and African enslavement be posthumously charged for crimes against humanity.
Continue reading...Major expansion as economic bloc that includes Russia and China attempts to provide counterweight to the US and western allies
The Brics group of big emerging economies has announced the admission of six new members, in an attempt to reshape the global world order and provide a counterweight to the US and its allies.
From the beginning of next year, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Argentina, the UAE and Ethiopia will join the current five members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – it was announced at a summit in Johannesburg on Thursday.
Continue reading...Three doctors accused of performing or coercing women into sterilisation procedures
A judge in Quebec has given the go-ahead for a class action lawsuit over the forced sterilisation of Indigenous women in the Canadian province.
Two Atikamekw women known publicly by only their initials, UT and MX, brought the lawsuit against three doctors they accuse of performing or coercing women into sterilisation procedures in a small, remote town in northern Quebec.
Continue reading...New study published in Nature says period was as destructive as record 2016 El Niño drought and heatwave
The first half of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency was so destructive for the Amazon that it was comparable to the record 2016 El Niño drought and heatwave in terms of carbon emissions, according to scientists.
Annual emissions from the world’s largest rainforest roughly doubled in 2019 and 2020, compared with the 2010 to 2018 average, according to a new study published in Nature, as swaths of forest were deliberately cleared and burned for cattle ranching and farming during the first two years of the far-right leader’s time in office.
Continue reading...Burning of fossil fuels made fires at least twice as likely, and the fire-prone weather at least 20% more intense, study shows
The conditions that caused Canada’s extreme spate of wildfires this year, which resulted in parts of the US and Canada to be blanketed in toxic smoke, were made at least twice as likely due to the human-caused climate crisis, scientists have found.
The 2023 Canadian wildfire season has been the largest, and most devastating, on record, with nearly 14m hectares (34m acres) burned, an area larger than Greece. The extent of these fires, more than double the size of the previous record, caused more than a dozen fatalities and thousands of evacuations, and sent a plume of smoke that unfurled as far as Norway and, for a time in June, turned the sky above New York City orange.
Continue reading...Experts say India concerned about expansion and any overt anti-west turn as leaders fly into South Africa
Leaders from developing countries representing almost half the world’s population including China and Russia are meeting in South Africa for a key summit aimed at reinforcing their alliance as a counterweight to the west.
The Brics grouping summit in Johannesburg is being hosted by the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and brings together the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, as well the presidents of China, Xi Jinping, and Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Continue reading...Referendum result protecting Yasuní reserve will benefit huge range of species as well as ‘uncontacted’ Indigenous peoples
Ecuadorians have voted in a historic referendum to halt the development of all new oilwells in the Yasuní national park in the Amazon, one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet.
Voters opted to safeguard the unique biosphere by a margin of nearly 20% with more than 90% of the ballot counted – with more than 58% in favour and 41% against, according to Ecuador’s National Electoral Comission. Voting took place in the first round of presidential elections on Sunday.
Continue reading...Bernado Arévalo’s surprise victory comes at time of growing concern for state of democracy in Central America
Central America’s democratic downswing has received a powerful correction after the centrist anti-corruption crusader Bernardo Arévalo was elected president of Guatemala – a result almost inconceivable just a few weeks ago.
Alongside El Salvador and Nicaragua, Guatemala was one of several Central American countries to have suffered a troubling authoritarian slide in recent years with judges and prosecutors forced into exile and a leading journalist thrown in jail.
Continue reading...Maria Bernadete Pacífico, whose son was shot dead in 2017, killed by gunmen at her home in Bahia
Human rights organisations in Brazil are clamouring for justice following the murder of a Black community activist who had been receiving threats.
Maria Bernadete Pacífico, a community and religious leader in the Pitanga dos Palmares quilombo – an Afro-Brazilian settlement of descendants of escaped slaves in the north-east state of Bahia – was killed on Thursday evening.
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