US charges 28 members of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel including El Chapo’s sons

Charges filed against cartel leaders, alleged chemical suppliers, lab managers, traffickers and others in fentanyl investigation

The US justice department has charged 28 members of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel, including sons of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in a sprawling fentanyl-trafficking investigation.

The attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced the charges on Friday alongside the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief, Anne Milgram, and other top federal prosecutors. The charges were filed against cartel leaders, as well alleged chemical suppliers, lab managers, fentanyl traffickers, security leaders, financiers and weapons traffickers.

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‘Terrifying’: Critics decry US plan to stop migrants at Darién Gap

Deal with Colombia and Panama aims to halt refugees crossing the lawless jungle region, but some say dangers will only increase

A US-backed plan to stop migrants from crossing the lawless Darién Gap will likely fail and only push desperate people further into the hands of merciless people-trafficking organisations, migration experts have warned.

The US Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday that it had brokered a deal with the Colombian and Panamanian governments to halt migrants crossing the land bridge on their journey northward to the US.

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Peru’s former presidential candidate sentenced for journalist’s murder

Daniel Urresti sent to jail for 12 years for his role in the 1988 killing of Hugo Bustíos at the height of the country’s civil conflict

A former Peruvian presidential candidate, Daniel Urresti, has been sentenced to 12 years in jail for his role in the murder of a journalist in 1988 at the height of the country’s brutal civil conflict.

A court ruled on Thursday that Urresti, then a military intelligence army officer, took part in the ambush and murder of Hugo Bustíos, who was investigating human rights abuses.

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Calls for action on Colombia’s hippo scourge after animal dies in road crash

Dead creature was one of 150 descendants of four hippos imported by drug baron Pablo Escobar in 1980s

Colombia has logged its first hippopotamus-caused road traffic accident after a car crashed into one of the animals at high speed, leaving the vehicle mangled and the two-tonne mammal lying lifeless and bloodied across a highway.

The hippo was declared dead soon after the crash on Tuesday night in the municipality of Doradal on a highway connecting the cities of Bogotá and Medellín, local environmental authorities said.

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Hyundai urged to stop illegal miners using its machines in Amazon

Greenpeace report finds heavy machinery made by South Korean firm contributing to destruction of Brazilian rainforest

Hyundai is being urged to prevent its heavy machinery products from being used in illegal mining and environmental destruction in the Brazilian Amazon.

A report published by Greenpeace on Wednesday found the South Korean conglomerate’s excavators and other heavy machinery are precipitating the destruction of the rainforest and putting the survival of Indigenous populations at risk.

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Mayan ball game scoreboard thought to be over 1,000 years old found in Mexico

The circular carved stone, unearthed at the Yucatán’s Chichén Itzá complex, displays hieroglyphic writing and two game players

A stone scoreboard used in an ancient ritual ball game has been discovered at the famed Mayan Chichén Itzá archaeological site on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.

The circular piece, measuring just over 12.6in (32cm) in diameter and weighing 88lbs (40kg), displays hieroglyphic writing surrounding two players standing next to a ball, according to a statement from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

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Experts warn of new spyware threat targeting journalists and political figures

Citizen Lab says victims’ phones infected after being sent a iCloud calendar invitation in a ‘zero-click’ attack

Security experts have warned about the emergence of previously unknown spyware with hacking capabilities comparable to NSO Group’s Pegasus that has already been used by clients to target journalists, political opposition figures and an employee of an NGO.

Researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School said the spyware, which is made by an Israeli company called QuaDream, infected some victims’ phones by sending an iCloud calendar invitation to mobile users from operators of the spyware, who are likely to be government clients. Victims were not notified of the calendar invitations because they were sent for events logged in the past, making them invisible to the targets of the hacking. Such attacks are known as “zero-click” because users of the mobile phone do not have to click on any malicious link or take any action in order to be infected.

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Weather tracker: Severe storms rock Australia and Canada

Tropical cyclone brews off the Kimberley while freezing rain causes chaos in Quebec and Ontario

At the weekend a tropical low that was situated in the Timor Sea moved west-south-west into waters north of the Kimberley, Western Australia. Deepening as it moved, the low developed into a tropical cyclone on Sunday night that brought gale-force winds of up to 56 mph (90km/h) to the coast. Squally thunderstorms across northern parts of the region produced strong winds and heavy rain.

The tropical cyclone is forecast to reach category 3 by Tuesday. From Wednesday it is expected to turn south, prompting the Australian Bureau of Meteorology to warn that a significant risk of further instability could steer the storm south-east into central or eastern Pilbara, or western Kimberley. Given sea surface temperatures will be 30-32C (86-90F), the cyclone is expected to deepen to a category 4, with some models forecasting central pressure as low as 910hPa.

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Mayor closes museum of memories in battle over story of Peru’s violent past

Far-right mayor claimed Lima institution peddled false narrative of 1980-2000 conflict in which guerrillas and army killed 70,000

It was supposed to be a museum of memories: a place of dialogue and reconciliation where Peruvians could commemorate the victims of a brutal internecine conflict which killed tens of thousands of people in the 1980s and 1990s.

Since its controversial inception in 2015, the Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion has received about 60,000 visitors a year.

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Indigenous Peruvians condemn US ambassador’s visit to palm oil company

Outrage as Indigenous communities claim company is operating on illegally deforested land and lacks environmental permits

The US ambassador to Peru has sparked outrage among Indigenous groups and environmental NGOs by visiting a controversial palm oil company and praising it for abstaining from deforestation and as a leader of sustainable agricultural practices.

In a tweet last week, Lisa Kenna commended the company, Ocho Sur, as an example of US-Peruvian ties and as the leading employer in the Peruvian Amazon region of Ucayali. Her expression of support came after she made the solo visit last week while on a trip with her British, German and Norwegian counterparts to the Peruvian Amazon city of Pucallpa.

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US teen to cycle across Europe after completing perilous ride from Alaska to Argentina

Liam Garner’s Pan-American adventure lasted a year – now he’s eyeing another odyssey, and planning to write a book about it

A US teenager who reported being robbed and even hospitalized while spending more than a year bicycling from northern Alaska to southern Argentina is now mulling plans for a similar trip from Europe to Asia.

Liam Garner and his trip across the Americas, which he completed in January, has drawn headlines from international news outlets including CNN, Insider and the BBC. But he is insisting he’s not done with his efforts, which he says demonstrate that one doesn’t have to be rich to travel internationally.

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Horror in Winnipeg as another Indigenous woman’s body found in landfill: ‘It keeps happening’

Remains of Linda Mary Beardy, 33, spotted by staff at Canadian garbage dump amid crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women

Police in Canada say the body of another Indigenous woman has been found at a Winnipeg landfill, in the latest grim episode of the country’s crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

The body of Linda Mary Beardy, a 33-year-old mother from Lake St Martin First Nation, was spotted on Monday by staff at the Brady landfill.

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Chief of top Canadian grocery chain gets $1.2m raise amid criticism over prices

Raise brings Galen Weston of Loblaw Companies’ pay to $11.79m last year amid outcry for raising prices during record inflation

The billionaire head of Canada’s largest grocery chain has been given a C$1.2m (US$890,000) raise, in a move likely to prompt controversy as grocery executives have faced sharp criticism for raising their prices amid record inflation.

The raise for Galen Weston, chairman and president of grocer Loblaw Companies, brought his total pay last year to C$11.79m. Details of the deal were first reported by the Globe and Mail.

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Axe attack at Brazilian pre-school leaves four children dead and five injured

President Lula deplores ‘act of hate and cowardice’ as police arrest 25-year-old man after killings in southern state of Santa Catarina

Four children have been killed and at least five others injured after a 25-year-old man armed with a small axe attacked a pre-school in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina.

A man with a hatchet jumped over a wall and invaded a daycare center on Wednesday in Brazil, killing four children and wounding at least five others, authorities said.

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Mexican president bemoans ‘rude’ US fentanyl pressure in plea to Xi Jinping

Andrés Manuel López Obrador asks China to curb exports of opioid after lengthy denunciation of similar calls from US

Mexico’s president has written to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, urging him to help control shipments of fentanyl, while also complaining of “rude” US pressure to curb the drug trade.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has previously said that fentanyl is the US’s problem and is caused by “a lack of hugs” in US families. On Tuesday he read out the letter to Xi dated 22 March in which he defended efforts to curb supply of the deadly drug, while rounding on US critics.

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Canadian PM’s residence shut down over dead mice in walls, documents say

Officials decided to shut down decrepit building last year amid concerns that the air in the mansion was no longer safe to breathe

So many dead mice were trapped behind the sagging walls and heaped in the basement of the Canadian prime minister’s official residence that officials decided to shut down the decrepit building last year amid concerns that the air in the mansion was no longer safe to breathe, according to newly released documents.

The limestone-clad house at 24 Sussex Drive, perched on a cliff above the Ottawa River, is the country’s most symbolically important and politically fraught plots of real estate.

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Almost half of human rights defenders killed last year were in Colombia

The county was the deadliest for rights activists in 2022, and Latin America and Ukraine together accounted for 80% of the 401 deaths

Colombia was the deadliest country in the world for human rights defenders in 2022, accounting for 186 killings – or 46% – of the global total registered last year, according to the latest report from the international human rights group Front Line Defenders.

Front Line Defenders found that killings of rights defenders across the globe increased in 2022, with a total of 401 deaths across 26 different countries, compared with 358 deaths in 38 countries registered in 2021.

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Four found dead in Mexico’s Cancún beach resort

No immediate information on nationalities or identities in latest violence to hit popular holiday destination

Four dead bodies have been found near a beach in the Mexican resort city of Cancún, in the latest incident of violence to hit the popular holiday destination.

There was no immediate information on the nationalities or identities of the victims. The announcement of the deaths came less that a week after a US tourist was shot in the leg in the nearby town of Puerto Morelos.

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Manhunt for people-smuggling suspect after eight drown at US-Canada border

The Akwesasne Mohawk police service continue a search for resident Casey Oakes as new details of victims emerge

Police investigating the drowning of eight people attempting to cross a river between Canada the the United States are searching for a man believed to be linked to people-smuggling, as new details of the victims emerge.

The bodies of eight people, including two young children, were discovered last week along the marshy banks of the St Lawrence River near the Mohawk community of Akwesasne, which spans Quebec, Ontario and New York state.

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Panic and emotional pain as alleged deep-cover Russian spies vanish

Pair of suspected ‘illegals’ are thought to have been a married couple living separate lives in Brazil and Greece

Halfway through a trip to Malaysia in January, Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich stopped messaging his girlfriend back home in Rio de Janeiro and she promptly launched a frantic search for her missing partner.

A Brazilian of Austrian heritage, Campos Wittich ran a series of 3D printing companies in Rio that made, among other things, novelty resin sculptures for the Brazilian military and sausage dog key chains.

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