Category Archives: Americas

Gang members locked women in cells before Honduras prison riot fire

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Armed people went into rival gang’s cell block, opened fire and doused survivors in flammable liquid, officer says after 46 killed

Gang members at a women’s prison in Honduras slaughtered 46 other female inmates by spraying them with gunfire, hacking them with machetes and then locking survivors in their cells before dousing them with flammable liquid, a senior police officer has said.

The carnage in Tuesday’s riot was the worst atrocity at a women’s prison in recent memory; the intensity of the fire left the walls of the cells blackened and beds reduced to twisted heaps of metal.

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‘The signs aren’t good’: Bolsonaro may face ban on running for office in 2026

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Judges to decide whether to impose eight-year ban on Brazil’s former president, after attack on electoral system

The political future of one of the big names of the global populist right is on the line this week as Brazilian judges prepare to decide whether Jair Bolsonaro should be banned from running for office.

Members of Brazil’s superior electoral court will gather on Thursday to consider the first of 16 cases being brought against the far-right former president, who failed to win a second term after losing last October’s election to leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

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Billionaires and the Titanic: the allure of extreme expeditions

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The more adventurous of the world’s wealthiest take trips to the edge of space and Antarctica in their stride

The disappearance of the submersible en route to the wreck of the Titanic has highlighted the businesses that offer extreme expeditions – and their clienteles.

Among the five people on the missing Titan submersible are two billionaires – Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old businessman who made his fortune selling private jets and holds three Guinness world records for previous extremetrips, and the British-based Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, who is onboard with his 19-year-old son Suleman.

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‘Monstrous murder’: 41 women killed in Honduras prison riot

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Some women were burned to death in uprising blamed on crackdown on illicit activities inside of the country’s prisons

At least 41 women have been killed – some of them burned to death – after an outbreak of violence between gangs at a prison in Honduras.

Authorities found dozens of bodies after the violence on Tuesday at the prison in Tamara, about 30 miles (50km) north-west of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, said Yuri Mora, spokesperson for the national police investigation agency.

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Missing Titan sub’s air supply dwindling as search yields no results

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Rescue teams race to find crew of the submersible Titan, which went missing during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic

US Coast Guard officials said on Tuesday afternoon that the crew of the submersible Titan, which went missing in the Atlantic during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic, had about 40 hours of breathable air remaining, if they are still alive.

Capt Jamie Frederick also told reporters at a media briefing that a massive sea and air search that began on Sunday night for the vessel and five men aboard, and which has so far covered 7,600 sq miles of a remote area of the ocean, had “not yielded any results”.

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Best and worst case scenarios to explain Titan’s loss of contact with surface

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The missing submarine had enough oxygen to sustain those onboard for four days, but limited air is far from the only hazard

For an expedition as hazardous as the Titan’s descent to the Titanic, there is a long list of onboard systems that need to be checked and a host of environmental hazards that must be identified and assessed before the voyage begins.

“When you are putting people in a potentially dangerous position like this you want to be absolutely sure everything’s checked through before getting under way,” said Stefan Williams, a professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney. “We have an extensive checklist before we put anything in the water.”

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Tropical Storm Bret forecast to strengthen into hurricane

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Storm approaching eastern Caribbean Leeward and Windward Islands in aggressive weather pattern early in the season

Tropical Storm Bret is forecast to strengthen into a hurricane as it approaches the eastern Caribbean’s Leeward and Windward islands, with meteorologists noting that the weather pattern is unusually early and aggressive for the Atlantic cyclone season that formally began on 1 June.

It is only the second hurricane to form in the tropical Atlantic in June since record keeping began, according to forecasters. The previous June hurricane was the 1933 Trinidad hurricane.

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Advocate for separate Sikh state in India shot dead in Canada

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Hardeep Singh Nijjar, president of temple in British Columbia, found fatally injured in car park

A campaigner for a Sikh nation to be carved out of India’s Punjab state who was wanted by Indian authorities has been shot dead in Canada, police have said.

Federal police said a man was found in his pickup truck in the car park of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple in Surrey, British Columbia, at about 8.30pm on Sunday, with apparent gunshot wounds.

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Missing Titanic submarine: US and Canadian teams search for tourist vessel

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Race against time to find craft that went missing on Sunday with five people onboard, including British billionaire

US and Canadian rescue teams are scrambling to search for a tourist submarine that went missing during a voyage to the Titanic shipwreck with a British billionaire among the five people onboard.

Hamish Harding is the chair of the private plane firm Action Aviation, which said he was one of the mission specialists on the OceanGate Expeditions vessel reported overdue on Sunday evening about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland.

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Brazil: 11 dead and 20 missing after cyclone strikes in south

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Authorities warn of landslides after conducting several thousand flood rescues in two days

At least 11 people were killed in Brazil’s southern state of Rio Grande do Sul after an extra-tropical cyclone struck the region, according to the state’s authorities.

The storm on Friday caused torrential rains and helicopter searches were under way in flooded neighbourhoods to find 20 others who were missing, the government of Rio Grande do Sul said.

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Ecuador: ‘dead’ woman who was found alive in her coffin dies in intensive care

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Bella Montoya, 76, who knocked on her coffin during her wake, has died seven days later from a stroke

A 76-year-old woman who had been declared dead and surprised her relatives by knocking on her coffin during her wake earlier this month has died after seven days in intensive care.

Ecuador’s health ministry confirmed in a statement that Bella Montoya died from an ischemic stroke after spending a week in intensive care. It added that Montoya had remained under “permanent surveillance” but didn’t provide further information on the medical investigation surrounding the case.

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Germany’s return of sacred Kogi masks to Colombia may have health risks

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Wooden artefacts dating from 15th century and bought from indigenous people were treated with pesticides while in museum

Germany has returned two wooden masks of the indigenous Kogi community to Colombia but conceded that wearing the sacred artefacts in ceremonies may come with a health risk because they were treated with toxic pesticides during their time in German museums.

The masks, which date back to the mid-15th century and have been held in ethnological collections in Berlin for over a century, were handed over to Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, by his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier at a ceremony in Berlin on Friday.

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Canada’s supreme court upholds pact with US restricting asylum claims

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Safe Third Country Agreement does not infringe refugee claimants’ rights to liberty and security of the person, court rules

Canada’s top court has ruled that an agreement with the United States aiming to control the flow of refugees across the shared border is constitutional, ending a lengthy legal challenge by advocacy groups who argue the deal violates the rights of asylum seekers.

In a unanimous judgment released on Friday morning, the supreme court found the controversial Safe Third Country Agreement did not infringe refugee claimants’ rights to liberty and security of the person.

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Canada police rush to identify 15 victims of deadly highway collision

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Crash involving a truck and a bus carrying mostly elderly people in Manitoba was one of the country’s worst in recent years

Police in the Canadian province of Manitoba are trying to identify the 15 people killed when a truck and a bus carrying mostly elderly people collided in one of the country’s worst recent road crashes.

Flags at the legislative building flew at half-mast to mark the victims of Thursday’s collision near the town of Carberry in south-western Manitoba, 170km (105 miles) west of Winnipeg.

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Peru violated rights of 13-year-old girl repeatedly raped by father, UN rules

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Authorities denied pregnant Indigenous girl her legal right to an abortion and ‘re-victimised’ her, UN child rights committee says

Peru violated the rights of a 13-year-old girl who had been repeatedly raped by her father by denying her an abortion after she became pregnant, the UN has ruled.

The United Nations child rights committee found this week that the Peruvian authorities had violated the rights to health and life of the girl, known by the pseudonym Camila, by failing to provide her with information and access to legal and safe abortion.

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‘Horrific’ Canada highway crash leaves at least 15 dead

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Incident involving semi-trailer truck and vehicle used to transport elderly and disabled people sparks huge emergency response

At least 15 people are dead in Canada after a crash between a semi-trailer truck and a vehicle used to transport elderly and physically disabled people, according to multiple media reports, as crews mount one of the largest-ever emergency responses in the region.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in the province of Manitoba said as of Thursday evening, 15 people had been killed in the crash and 10 others taken to hospitals with injuries.

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US midwest braces for smoky skies as Canadian wildfires rage on

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Air quality alerts issued in Minnesota and Wisconsin with winds expected to blow airborne pollution from Ontario blazes south

The smoke-filled skies seen across US cities last week are set to make another appearance, as Canadian wildfires rage on and winds are bringing the airborne pollution south and again triggered fears over risks to health.

Air quality alerts were issued on Wednesday for the entire state of Minnesota and large parts of Wisconsin. This time, the culprit is a series of wildfires from the Canadian province of Ontario.

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Colombian police officer in hospital after swallowing extorted banknotes

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Grey-faced officer pleaded his innocence after anti-corruption police allegedly caught him in the act of extorting businessman

A Colombian police officer has been admitted to hospital after swallowing a wad of banknotes he extorted from a businessman.

The officer had demanded payments in return for not arresting his victim on trumped-up charges – but did not know that the businessman had already reported the shakedown to Colombia’s anti-kidnapping and extortion unit.

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Outrage in Guatemala as crusading journalist given six-year prison term

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José Rubén Zamora, 66, convicted and sentenced on money-laundering charges press freedom groups say were trumped up

A veteran journalist and founder of one of Guatemala’s oldest newspapers has been sentenced to six years in prison for money laundering, in a case widely condemned as politically motivated.

José Rubén Zamora, 66, was convicted on Wednesday by a three-judge panel in Guatemala City, who ruled that there was “no doubt” the outspoken critic of government corruption masterminded the laundering of almost $40,000 in 2022. The court absolved Zamora of blackmail and peddling influence charges.

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Canada man who allegedly yelled anti-trans hate at girl banned from school sports

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Nine-year-old, who is not transgender, left in tears by incident at shot put final as anti-trans hate on the rise across the country

A Canadian man who allegedly shouted at a nine-year-old girl and questioned whether she was transgender has been banned from attending elementary school athletics competitions, after an incident that activists say reflects a broader rise in anti-trans hate across the country.

Kari Starr told the Guardian that her nine-year-old daughter was preparing for a shot put competition in the British Columbia city of Kelowna when a man attempted to halt the competition, alleging Starr’s daughter was either a boy or transgender.

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