The judge rejected Serge Paincahud’s ‘scared’ defense to fire at a black bear while illegally carrying a shotgun on a trail
A Canadian man, who had pleaded guilty to shooting a black bear in a national park, will pay a fine of C$7,500 after the judge rejected his “fear” of the predator as justification for bringing a loaded firearm on a popular hiking trail.
Serge Painchaud, 42, was this week fined for violating a hunting restriction under the National Parks Act.
Continue reading...Government data shows marked reduction against same period last year, reversing trend of destruction during Bolsonaro reign
After four years of rising destruction in Brazil’s Amazon, deforestation dropped by 33.6% during the first six months of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s term, according to new government satellite data.
From January to June the rainforest had alerts covering 2,650 sq km (1,023 sq miles), down from 4,000 sq km –during the same period last year under former president Jair Bolsonaro. This year’s data includes a 41% plunge in alerts for June, which marks the start of the dry season when deforestation tends to jump.
Continue reading...Gabriel Barajas and Malea Tribble thought ‘it was all over for us’ – but marine expert suggests shark was merely being ‘inquisitive’
A pair of paddleboarders raising money for charity had a frightening encounter with a hammerhead shark that circled them near Florida’s coast – and the entire incident was caught on video.
Gabriel Barajas and Malea Tribble were paddling from Florida to the Bahamas, an 80-mile journey, to raise money for cystic fibrosis awareness, WJZY reported.
Continue reading...A Saskatchewan court rules emoji is just as valid as a signature and orders a farmer to pay $61,442 for unfulfilled contract
A Canadian judge has ruled that the “thumbs-up” emoji is just as valid as a signature, arguing that courts need to adapt to the “new reality” of how people communicate as he ordered a farmer to pay C$82,000 ($61,442) for an unfulfilled contract.
In a recent case the Court of King’s Bench in the province of Saskatchewan heard that a grain buyer with South West Terminal sent a mass text message to clients in March 2021, advertising that the company was looking to buy 86 tonnes of flax at a price of C$17 ($12.73) per bushel.
Continue reading...Captain of tourist boat from Baja California, Mexico, says grey whales return repeatedly for ‘grooming’
Grey whales have learned to approach whale-watching boats to have parasites removed by human beings, it has been claimed.
Video footage documenting the behaviour in the Ojo de Liebre lagoon, off the coast of Baja California, Mexico, shows a grey whale having whale lice picked off its head by the captain of a small boat. “I have done it repeatedly with the same whale and others,” Paco Jimenez Franco told a US news site. “It is very exciting for me.”
Continue reading...Frontrunner Sandra Torres alleged votes were manipulated after centrist Bernardo Arevalo claimed surprise runner-up spot
The US has issued a warning over possible efforts to interfere with Guatemala’s presidential election result, after the country’s top court ordered ballots from the first-round vote be reviewed, setting up the potential for a recount.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said Washington had endorsed findings from observers over the vote’s validity, and said undermining the outcome would be a “grave threat to democracy with far-reaching implications”.
Continue reading...Rising temperatures in north Atlantic and drop in Antarctic sea ice prompt fears of widespread damage from extreme weather
“Very unusual”, “worrying”, “terrifying”, and “bonkers”; the reactions of veteran scientists to the sharp increase in north Atlantic surface temperatures over the past three months raises the question of whether the world’s climate has entered a more erratic and dangerous phase with the onset of an El Niño event on top of human-made global heating.
Since April, the warming appears to have entered a new trajectory. Meanwhile the area of global sea ice has dropped by more than 1 million sq km below the previous low.
Continue reading...Former far-right leader will only be able to seek elected office again in 2030, when he will be 75
The political future of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has been cast into doubt after electoral judges banned him from running for office for eight years for abusing his powers and peddling “immoral” and “appalling lies” during last year’s acrimonious election.
Five of the superior electoral court’s seven judges voted to banish the far-right radical, who relentlessly vilified the South American country’s democratic institutions during his unsuccessful battle to win a second term in power. Two voted against the decision.
Continue reading...Travel startup says it doesn’t ‘holiday where people suffer’ but offers trek in Darién Gap known for dangerous migration routes
“We go where no one goes,” is Wandermut’s tagline, but one of the German tour agency’s packages has left people asking whether some places are better left unexplored.
The travel startup’s 10-day Panama Jungle Tour has been criticised across Latin America in recent weeks for offering tour packages in a region which is home to one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes.
Continue reading...One of the leaders of the violence-scarred country’s ‘self-defense’ movement was cut down in rural Michoacán
One of the founders of Mexico’s “self-defense” movement, the lime farmer turned vigilante crusader Hipólito Mora, has been murdered in an ambush – the latest macabre chapter in the country’s unabating crime conflict.
Guillermo Valencia, a politician from the violence-stricken state of Michoacán, where Mora helped launch a rural revolt against narco-traffickers 10 years ago, announced the news on Twitter.
Continue reading...Johanson was venerated as a forthright educator who filled voids left by the absence of sex ed curricula at US and Canadian schools
Sex educator Sue Johanson, who once declared that “horny is a beautiful thing”, has died at the age of 93 after more than two decades of giving frank advice to audiences in Canada and the US.
Johanson gained an international audience with her plainspoken guidance to Canadians on her radio and TV programme Sunday Night Sex Show – and then Americans on her Talk Sex programme.
Continue reading...Professor and two students were stabbed in attack on class on Wednesday at University of Waterloo
A suspect has been charged in the stabbing of a professor and two students during a class on gender issues at Canada’s University of Waterloo in what police are calling a hate-motivated attack.
Waterloo regional police said Geovanny Villalba-Aleman, an international student who had been studying at the University of Waterloo, faces three counts of aggravated assault, four counts of assault with a weapon and two counts of possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.
Continue reading...Climate change has made high temperatures more common in the country, which has already surpassed peak energy demand of 2022
When Raquel Rubio’s 13-month baby developed a 102F fever last week, she rushed to the doctor. Her son, Liam, had been in Rubio’s apartment without air conditioning for several hours; Nuevo León, the Mexican state where she lives, had reached 109F that day.
The doctor confirmed Rubio’s suspicions that the heat was driving her son’s temperature, and instructed her to bathe Liam and keep him hydrated. But Rubio couldn’t go back home; she had been dealing with power shortages for the past two weeks and didn’t want to take her son back into the blistering heat.
Continue reading...James Cleverly says global south deserves more powerful voice at top table and review needed into five permanent members’ veto
The global south deserves a more powerful voice at the world’s top table by expanding the UN security council, the UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said.
Cleverly also called for a review of the use of the veto by the council’s five permanent members, adding that the world’s poorest countries feel their voice is not heard even on issues of direct concern to them.
Continue reading...William O’Neill says ‘survival of a nation’ is at stake and also calls for deployment of an international force
A UN official has called for an immediate arms embargo for Haiti and an intervention force to combat endemic gang violence in the Caribbean state, after the killings of more than 200 gang members in recent months.
William O’Neill, who was appointed in April as an expert on human rights in Haiti, added his voice to growing calls for an international intervention in the country, which has descended into crime-fuelled anarchy since the murder of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021.
Continue reading...Lesions found on 99% of southern resident orcas studied on Pacific north-west coast
Scientists studying an endangered population of orcas resident off the Pacific north-west coast of Canada and the US have recorded a “strong increase” in skin lesions on the animals’ bodies, which they believe is owing to the decreasing ability of their immune systems to deal with disease.
The lesions appear on the whales as grey patches or targets, or black pin points. Some resemble tattooed skin. Their presence on the animals’ graphically black and white bodies is “increasing dramatically”, according to Dr Joseph K Gaydos of the SeaDoc Society at the school of veterinary medicine at the University of California, lead author of the scientific paper.
Continue reading...Assailants threw explosives at police station in state of Chiapas, following abduction of employees at gunpoint on highway
Assailants have thrown explosives at a police station in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas, as a massive search continued on Wednesday for 14 police employees abducted at gunpoint on a local highway.
The attacks highlight a new turf battle between cartels for control of drug and immigrant trafficking in the state, which borders Guatemala.
Continue reading...Widow of great Argentinian writer did not leave a will, which put the rights in limbo
A court has granted the rights to the works of the late Jorge Luis Borges, considered Argentina’s most internationally significant author of the 20th century, to five nephews of the author’s widow, who died in March.
Borges’s wife, María Kodama, had devoted much of her life to fiercely protecting his legacy and it surprised many in Argentina’s literary circle that she did not leave a will, even though she had breast cancer.
Continue reading...Brazilian government warning comes as UN report says that flourishing organized crime groups are driving a boom in environmental devastation
The Brazilian government’s drug policy chief has admitted that the rapid advance of drug factions into the Amazon rainforest has produced a “a very difficult situation” in the region, as a UN report warned that flourishing organized crime groups were driving a boom in environmental devastation.
Marta Machado, the national secretary for drug affairs, said the previous administration’s intentional dismantling of Brazil’s environmental and Indigenous protection agencies had created a dangerous vacuum in the Amazon which had been occupied by powerful crime syndicates from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Continue reading...This year’s wildfire season is already worst on record as nearly 600m tonnes of carbon has been released since early May
Wildfires raging across Canada, made more intense by global warming, have released more planet-warming carbon dioxide in the first six months of 2023 than in any full year on record, according to the EU’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service.
This year’s wildfire season is the worst on record in Canada, with some 76,000sq km (29,000sq miles) burning across eastern and western Canada. That is already greater than the combined area burned in 2016, 2019, 2020 and 2022, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
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