Four men traveled about 5,600km before being rescued by Brazilian federal police in south-eastern port of Vitória
On their 10th day at sea, the four Nigerian stowaways crossing the Atlantic in a tiny space above the rudder of a cargo ship ran out of food and drink.
They survived another four days, according to their account, by drinking the sea water crashing just meters below them, before being rescued by Brazilian federal police in the south-eastern port of Vitória.
Continue reading...Move comes in response to Canadian legislation requiring internet giants to pay news publishers
Meta has begun the process to end access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada, the company said on Tuesday.
The move comes in response to legislation in the country requiring internet giants to pay news publishers.
Continue reading...Fines of up to £55,000 could be imposed on musicians who sing songs deemed to promote violence against women
Authorities in the north-western Mexican state of Chihuahua have banned artists from singing misogynist lyrics in live music venues.
Chihuahua, the capital city of the state, which borders the US, has passed a measure to prohibit musicians from performing songs that promote violence against women.
Continue reading...Brazil authorities call for investigation after hundreds of police officers were deployed in response to the killing of an officer
Authorities in Brazil have called for an investigation after a police operation on the coast of São Paulo state left at least eight people dead, in an apparent act of retaliation.
About 600 police officers have been deployed across the Baixada Santista region in response to the killing of an officer by drug traffickers in the city of Guarujá last Thursday.
Continue reading...Nicolás Petro held as part of investigation into funds he allegedly collected from drug traffickers during 2022 election campaign
The son of the Colombian president has been arrested as part of a high-profile money-laundering investigation into funds he allegedly collected from convicted drug traffickers during last year’s presidential campaign.
The president, Gustavo Petro, a former rebel who rose through Colombia’s political ranks as an anti-corruption crusader, said he would not interfere with the investigation.
Continue reading...Data counts 1.3m quilombola, historically excluded population whose communities were founded by fugitive enslaved people
More than 1.3 million Brazilians who identify as descendants of Africans who escaped slavery have finally gained recognition in official statistics, marking a victory for this historically excluded population.
The groundbreaking data was released on Thursday as part of Brazil’s 2022 census, during which the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) for the first time counted and mapped the country’s quilombola population – members of often remote Afro-Brazilian communities that were traditionally founded by fugitive slaves.
Continue reading...Congress passes bill that could allow 900 people to be tried together if they are accused of being in the same criminal group
Nayib Bukele’s government has already locked up 2% of El Salvador’s adult population and built the largest prison in the Americas to house the 70,000 alleged gang members he has imprisoned.
Now the populist leader has cleared the way for mass trials of hundreds of people at a time as he steps up his year-long crackdown on the country’s gangs which critics say is eroding the rule of law and leading to many innocent people being wrongly jailed.
Continue reading...Country failed to collect and share data, masking issues and inequalities, according to editorial in British Medical Journal
Prominent public health experts have called on Canada to launch an inquiry into its Covid response, arguing that the country’s failure to collect and share data masked issues and inequalities that – if properly addressed early on – could have saved lives.
The call to action came alongside a scathing editorial in the British Medical Journal, titled “The world expected more of Canada”, which argues that Canada’s “overall impression of adequacy” conceals important inequalities.
Continue reading...President Lasso imposes 60-day order and authorizes armed forces to retake control of country’s violence-plagued prisons
Ecuador’s president, Guillermo Lasso, has declared a 60-day state of emergency throughout the country’s prisons and authorized the armed forces to retake control of jails, following violence in the country’s most notorious prison that left 18 dead and a string of protests in which inmates took nearly 100 guards hostage.
The measure – the second state of emergency that Lasso has ordered in less than 24 hours – will be in effect for 60 days and orders the immediate mobilization of the military and police in an effort to regain control of the prisons.
Continue reading...Report finds army, navy, police and intelligence agencies knew, minute by minute, where the student teachers were
Mexican security forces at local, state and federal level were complicit in the 2014 abduction of 43 student teachers and concealed documents which showed where some of them were taken, a report prepared by an independent investigatory panel has concluded.
The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) tasked with investigating the case said in their findings that the Army, Navy, police and intelligence agencies knew, minute by minute, where the students were.
Continue reading...Salvatore Mancuso, who is imprisoned in US, is responsible for more than 300 killings and is accused of about 75,000 crimes
Salvatore Mancuso is one of the most notorious figures in Colombia’s six decades of conflict, responsible for some of the most heinous of crimes during the darkest chapters in the country’s history.
As a senior commander of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) – the country’s largest rightwing death squad – he ordered forced disappearances, sexual violence and massacres of civilians.
Continue reading...Two children among the missing when vehicles were submerged on road after more than 200m of rain pummeled some regions
The body of a 52-year old man and other human remains have been discovered by emergency teams searching for four people who went missing in historic flooding after more than 200mm (7.87in) of rain pummeled some regions of Nova Scotia at the weekend.
The man’s body was found near West Hants in Nova Scotia, on the south-eastern coast of Canada, where search and rescue teams were looking for two children, a youth and a man who were in two vehicles which became submerged in flood water.
Continue reading...Brazil federal police say Maxwell Simões Corrêa helped plan 2018 assassination; two former police officers are already awaiting trial
Brazilian police have arrested a new suspect over the killing of the Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco, the first major development for some years in a murder case that shocked Brazil and prompted international outcry.
Franco, an outspoken defender of marginalised populations, was killed with her driver Anderson Gomes in a drive-by shooting in March 2018. Two former police officers accused of carrying out the murders were arrested a year later – but they are yet to stand trial by jury and an investigation into who ordered the assassination has dragged on slowly ever since.
Continue reading...Government claims 98% success rate for cloud seeding but critics urge improving irrigation and water supply systems
Amid a historic heatwave and months of drought, Mexico’s government has launched the latest phase of a cloud seeding project it hopes will increase rainfall.
The project, which began in July, involves planes flying into clouds to release silver iodide particles which then, in theory, will attract additional water droplets and increase rain or snowfall.
Continue reading...Twenty-five centimetres of rain fall on Nova Scotia in a day and state of emergency declared, but risk of dam breach recedes
The heaviest rains in more than 40 years badly damaged a city in Canada’s Atlantic region on Saturday but authorities are no longer concerned a dam may breach, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said.
Police reported that four people were missing, including two children.
Continue reading...Virus has spread around the world, with 200,000 wild birds dead in Peru alone and concerns Australia could be next
Millions of wild birds may have died from bird flu globally in the latest outbreak, researchers have said, as the viral disease ravages South America, with 200,000 deaths recorded in Peru alone.
The highly infectious variant of H5N1, which gained momentum in the winter of 2021, caused Europe’s worst bird flu outbreak before spreading globally. The disease reached South America in November 2022, and has now been reported on every continent except Oceania and Antarctica.
Continue reading...Semilla’s Bernardo Arévalo, who came second in June election, condemns ‘flagrant demonstration of the political persecution’
The Guatemalan presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo has denounced a police raid on his party headquarters as a “corrupt” show of “political persecution” just a month before the high-stakes runoff election.
Police raided the headquarters of Arévalo’s Semilla party on Friday, saying it was carrying out a 12 July court order that had canceled the party’s legal status.
Continue reading...William Majcher arrested and facing two charges under the Security of Information Act
A retired police officer in Canada has been arrested and is facing rare charges under the country’s national security laws, police said on Friday.
William Majcher, 60, “allegedly used his knowledge and his extensive network of contacts in Canada to obtain intelligence or services to benefit the People’s Republic of China”, the Royal Canadian Mounted police said in a news release.
Continue reading...Experts believe numbers partly reflect effects of lockdowns and trickling down of Jair Bolsonaro’s ultra-conservative views
Brazil saw a disturbing increase in sexual violence against women and children in 2022, according to new figures which paint a worrying picture of a country that is failing to protect its young and female population, particularly in their own homes.
The data, published on Thursday by the Brazilian Public Security Forum showed that reported rapes increased 8.2% to an all-time high of 74,930 last year, while rape cases among minors grew 15.3%. Females make up 88.7% of rape victims, and a staggering 61.4% are children aged 13 or younger.
Continue reading...Columbus wrote the letter to King Ferdinand of Spain in 1493 about his findings after the ‘discovery’ of the Americas
The US has returned a rare 15th-century original edition of a letter written by Christopher Columbus to Italy, the federal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency has announced.
The letter, valued at over $1.3m, was revealed to have been stolen some time between 1985 and 1988, likely from the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, the historic public library in Venice.
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