Category Archives: Americas

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó ejected from Colombia

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Guaidó lands in Miami after failed bid to attend summit hosted by leftwing president, with return to Venezuela looking unlikely

Venezuela’s best-known opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, has touched down in the United States after being unceremoniously ejected from Colombia while attempting to gatecrash a summit about the political future of his crisis-stricken homeland.

Guaidó shot to fame in early 2019 and for a brief moment looked poised to topple Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, with the support of dozens of foreign governments including the US, UK and Brazil.

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EU firms accused of ‘abhorrent’ export of banned pesticides to Brazil

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BASF among firms selling chemicals to sugar industry despite links to human health risks

Pesticides banned in the EU because of their links to human health risks are being exported and used on farms in Brazil supplying Nestlé, an investigation has revealed.

Europe is home to some of the world’s biggest and most profitable chemical companies, including the Swiss-based Syngenta and the German multinationals BASF and Bayer.

This article was amended on 25 April 2023. Although fipronil and triflumuron have been banned in the EU they have not been identified as potential carcinogens.

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Haiti: at least 12 suspected criminals beaten to death and burned in capital

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Footage shows men forced to lie on street by police before being killed and set on fire in broad daylight

Haiti’s tailspin into humanitarian crisis and bloodshed has racked up its latest moment of horror after at least a dozen suspected criminals were beaten to death and burned in broad daylight on the streets of its capital, Port-au-Prince.

Horrifying footage of the incident showed the bloodied men being forced to lie on the asphalt by rifle-wielding police before bystanders piled tyres on top of them, doused them with petrol and set them alight.

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Mexican navy seizes tequila bottles containing nearly 10 tons of liquid meth

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Intercepted over the weekend, the 11,520 bottles were bound for export before sniffer dogs alerted the authorities to the liquid

Mexican navy inspectors have intercepted 11,520 tequila bottles bound for export that actually contained nearly 10 tons of concentrated liquid meth.

In total, the bottles – intercepted over the weekend at the Pacific coast seaport of Manzanillo, contained approximately 8,640kgs (about 19,000lbs) of meth.

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2023 Goldman environmental prize winners include Texas Gulf coast defender

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Diane Wilson took on Formosa Plastics and won a $50m settlement to help clean up decades worth of toxic plastic waste

Grassroots activists who took on British mining giants and a serial plastics polluter – and won – are among this year’s recipients of the world’s most prestigious environmental prize.

The environmental campaigns led by the six 2023 Goldman prize winners highlight the hurdles faced by some local activists, who are often on the frontlines confronting the toxic mix of corporate greed and systemic corruption that is fuelling the climate emergency, biodiversity collapse and increasingly forced displacement.

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Scientists discover why sea urchins are dying off from US to the Caribbean

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A research team has discovered a parasite that’s been killing off sea urchins, but there’s no method to eliminate it yet

Marine biologists at a Florida university say they have solved the mystery of a mass die-off of long-spined sea urchins from the US to the Caribbean.

The scientists blame a microscopic, single-cell parasite for the die-off, which took hold early last year. Affected Diadema antillarum urchins lose their spines and suction, then succumb to disease.

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Peru: former president Alejandro Toledo arrives to face corruption charges

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Leader from 2001 to 2006 extradited from US after judge dismisses appeal

The former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo arrived in Lima on Sunday after his extradition from the United States, the latest in a string of ex-leaders to face corruption charges in the country.

Images showed Toledo, 77, wearing a green jacket and red jumper, being escorted by Peruvian police and US Marshals down the stairway from a commercial flight at Lima’s international airport.

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Taiwan Strait: top EU diplomat calls for European navy patrols

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Josep Borrell says safeguard would show Europe’s commitment to the ‘absolutely crucial’ area

European navies should patrol the disputed Taiwan Strait, the EU foreign policy chief has said, echoing earlier comments stressing how crucial Taiwan is to Europe.

Josep Borrell wrote in an opinion piece in the Journal Du Dimanche that Taiwan “concerns us economically, commercially and technologically”.

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Senior Mexican official to stand trial over fire that killed 40 migrants

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Judge cites evidence that state immigration chief failed in duty to protect detention centre occupants in Ciudad Juarez blaze

A judge has ordered the immigration director of Mexico’s northern border state of Chihuahua to stand trial on charges of homicide, injuries and failure to perform his duties over a deadly fire at a migrant detention centre.

Juan José Chávez ordered the director, Salvador González, to be held in prison pending trial.

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Mexican president finally offloads unwanted luxury jet … to Tajikistan

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Leader widely known as Amlo called predecessor’s plane an ‘insult’ but now Tajikistan government pays $92m to take it off his hands

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has finally found a buyer for a luxury presidential jet that he once called an “insult” to the people: the government of Tajikistan.

López Obrador said that the agreed sale price for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner used by his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto – but never by him – was about 1.66bn pesos, or about $92m.

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Canada’s decision to expand container port is ‘death sentence’ for marine life

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Environmentalists decry move but natural resources minister says doubling of Vancouver terminal’s size is needed to meet demand

Canada’s federal government has approved a controversial container terminal expansion in Vancouver that would double the port’s current size but could have damaging effects for maritime species already on the brink of extinction, environmental groups warn.

The country’s natural resources minister announced support for the Port of Vancouver’s plan – which would effectively double the size of the Roberts Bank Terminal – framing the decision as a way of preventing future backlog.

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How an Arctic snow school aims to respond to climate crisis with Inuit help

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Canadian project plans to strengthen understanding of Arctic environment by drawing on Indigenous knowledge

Alexandre Langlois was surprised to learn that snow that has stayed on the ground for a couple days in the Arctic can be heard even before it is felt.

Margaret Kanayok, an Inuk elder from Ulukhaktok, an Inuit community in the neighbouring Northwest Territories, had come to speak to a group of scientists who had gathered to attend the world’s first Arctic snow school, being held in Nunavut, Canada.

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Canada gold heist: police investigating $20m of ‘high-value’ cargo stolen from Toronto airport

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The cargo was reported missing on Monday after arriving on an aircraft early in the evening, police say

Police in Canada are investigating a brazen heist of nearly C$20m (US$14.8m) in gold and other “high value” items at Toronto’s Pearson airport.

On Thursday evening, Peel Regional Police said the gold and other goods were stolen on Monday after containers were offloaded from an aircraft.

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Arrest warrant issued for YouTuber for illegally fishing in Canada national park

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Greg Ovens’s popular outdoor survival videos used as evidence against him in case centred on Alberta’s Banff national park

An arrest warrant has been issued for a US YouTuber for illegally fishing in a Canadian national park, and his partner has been fined $6,000, after a judge condemned their “reckless” outdoor survival videos.

The popularity of the videos highlights an increasingly lucrative online niche, with millions tuning in to watch avid outdoors people test their skills and mettle in harsh conditions. A number of television shows have further popularized the genre and inspired a growing share of the public to venture into the hinterlands.

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Falklands war art installation given ‘fitting place’ in Portsmouth

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Standing With Giants, created for 40th anniversary, commemorates troops and islanders who died

Lifesize silhouetted figures representing the 255 British military personnel and three civilians who lost their lives in the Falklands war have been installed on the parade ground and ramparts at Fort Nelson in Portsmouth.

The art installation, Standing With Giants, was created to mark the 40th anniversary of the conflict and its arrival in the Hampshire port is regarded as particularly poignant as so many of the British ships left and returned there.

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Brazil: Lula security chief resigns after leaked footage of far-right palace riot

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Video shows Gonçalves Dias inside presidential palace as supporters of Bolsonaro went on the rampage in January

A key member of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s new administration has been forced to resign after the emergence of security footage showing him inside the presidential palace during the 8 January far-right assault on Brazil’s democratic institutions.

After his election last year, president Lula made the retired army general Gonçalves Dias head of Brazil’s Institutional Security Bureau (GSI), which advises the president on defense and security matters and handles presidential security.

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Judge dismisses youth climate crisis lawsuit against Ontario government

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Judge says weak climate plans will increase risk of death for Canada’s young people but do not violate Charter rights

A judge has warned that Ontario’s weak climate plans will “increase the risk of death” for Canada’s young people – but dismissed a lawsuit brought by a group worried that government inaction on global heating threatens their futures.

Justice Marie-Andrée Vermette of Ontario superior court issued a decision on Tuesday that found that while both young people and Indigenous peoples bear the brunt of climate change, government failures to react were not a breach of their rights.

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El Salvador news outlet relocates to Costa Rica to avoid Bukele’s crackdown

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El Faro moves its headquarters to avoid ‘fabricated accusations’ after 25 years reporting on drug wars, crime and corruption

El Faro has survived many pressures in its 25 years reporting on El Salvador’s bloody drug wars, crime and institutional corruption.

“We’ve been harassed. We’ve received death threats from drug cartels, requiring us to contract armed security guards. And we’ve had the police coming to our houses after we revealed their corruption scandals,” said Óscar Martínez, editor of the online investigative outlet. “Some of our journalists have been exiled, but we have managed to continue reporting from San Salvador.”

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Ukraine criticises Brazil’s peace efforts and invites Lula to see invasion’s effects

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Kyiv accuses Brazilian president’s initiative for giving equal weight to ‘the victim and the aggressor’

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has condemned the “violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity” by Russia and again called for mediation to end the war, as he came under fire for his previous comments on the conflict.

Speaking at a lunch on Tuesday with Romanian president Klaus Iohannis, Lula said a group of neutral nations must come together to help broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

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UK company mining gold in Amazon on disputed land

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London-listed Serabi Gold extracting gold without approval of Brazilian land registry and Indigenous communities

A London-listed company has been mining gold in the Amazon rainforest without approval from the Brazilian land agency or the consent of nearby Indigenous communities, according to an investigation by the Guardian and partners.

Serabi Gold has been blasting 4.5 metre-wide tunnels and trucking ore from the Coringa project site in Pará state. But interviews with land agency officials and documents seen by the Guardian, Unearthed and Sumaúma indicate that ownership of the area is disputed and the land was allegedly occupied by illegal land-grabbers.

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