Hunt for mysterious object shot down in remote Yukon faces daunting odds

The Canadian territory is an aircraft graveyard – now the difficult search is on for a downed unidentified craft in its vast environs

The rugged, “unpeopled” landscape of Canada’s Yukon territory is a graveyard for aircraft, with more than 500 planes crashing in its forests, mountains and lakes over the years.

Now, Canada’s military and police, alongside their US counterparts, are searching the unforgiving landscape in midwinter for a mysterious object recently shot on Saturday by a fighter plane.

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US officials arrest four more people over assassination of Haitian president

Suspects include the owner of a Miami-area security company that hired ex-Colombian soldiers for the mission, DoJ says

US authorities have arrested four more people in the assassination of the Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, including the owner of a Miami-area security company that hired ex-Colombian soldiers for the mission, the justice department announced on Tuesday.

Antonio “Tony” Intriago, owner of CTU Security, is charged with conspiracy to kill or kidnap a person outside the US among other charges, along with company representative Arcangel Pretel Ortiz.

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Forensic study finds Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned

The toxin clostridium botulinum was in his body when he died in 1973, days after Chile’s military coup

One of the most enduring mysteries in modern Chilean history may finally have been solved after forensic experts determined that the Nobel prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda died after being poisoned with a powerful toxin, apparently confirming decades of suspicions that he was murdered.

According to the official version, Neruda – who made his name as a young poet with the collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair – died from prostate cancer and malnutrition on 23 September 1973, just 12 days after the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of his friend, President Salvador Allende.

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‘I felt kidnapped’: Canada police sued for arresting photographer covering protest

Environmental publication the Narwhal argues Amber Bracken’s rights were violated for being detained while working

A Canadian environmental publication has announced plans to sue the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), arguing it violated the rights of a photojournalist after she was arrested and detained while on the job.

The lawsuit, if successful, could have significant implications for Canadian journalists reporting in areas where police try to limit both public and media access.

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‘It’s surreal’: search for mystery flying object rocks quiet Canadian lakeside

Military aircraft patrol above Lake Huron, on the US-Canada border, as a Canadian coast guard icebreaker searches for debris

• What do we know about the four flying objects shot down by US?

It was a mild, sunny winter afternoon when Tara Shannon learned all the airspace above her community in south-eastern Ontario had been closed.

Soon after, she and her neighbours began receiving scattered reports of a high-flying mystery object had been spotted in the area.

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How one Derbyshire museum took initiative in returning Indigenous artefacts

Buxton Museum returned entire collection of Native American and First Nation artefacts to their original communities

When Taa.uu ‘Yuuwans Nika Collison first opened the email from Buxton Museum, she was, she says, “sort of in shock”.

Collison is a member of the Haida nation, the Indigenous inhabitants of a remote archipelago called Haida Gwaii off the very far north-west coast of Canada. For 25 years she and others had been lobbying museums and collectors around the world to return items made by her people back to their homeland, often with very little success. Here was a curator from a small town in Derbyshire she had never heard of, saying it had some Haida items in its collection, and it wanted to send them back.

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US shoots down ‘octagonal’ flying object near military sites in Michigan

Military general says he will not rule out any explanation as fourth object is downed over North America this month

The US military has shot down a third flying object over North American airspace in three days, as the air force general overseeing the airspace said he would not rule out any explanation for the objects yet.

The high-altitude unidentified object, described as an “octagonal structure” with strings attached to it, was shot down over Lake Huron in Michigan on Sunday.

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Schumer says Chinese ‘humiliated’ after three flying objects shot down

‘Chinese were caught lying',’ says Senate majority leader as US and Canadian military scramble to recover pieces

US and Canadian military are continuing to search by sea and land amid hostile weather conditions in a scramble to recover portions of three flying objects shot down over North American airspace in the past week.

The Democratic majority leader of the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that he had been briefed by the White House and that officials were now convinced that all three of the flying objects brought down by air-to-air missiles this week were balloons. He put the finger of blame firmly on China.

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New ‘unidentified object’ shot down over Canada, says Trudeau

Canadian prime minister says he has spoken to US president Joe Biden about the object

A US warplane shot down an unidentified object over North American airspace, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said on Saturday. It was the second day in a row in which the US military shot down an unidentified airborne object.

“I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace,” Trudeau tweeted on Saturday afternoon. A US F-22 fighter plane with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which protects Canadian and American airspace, shot down the object over Yukon, Canada.

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Frida Kahlo’s husband may have helped her die, reveals Diego Rivera’s grandson

The revered Mexican artist’s suffering was so great, she ‘probably’ asked her soulmate to assist in ending her life, documentary is told

People’s love of Frida Kahlo’s vibrant art is matched by fascination with her colourful private life. Now the battle to win greater attention for her talent – above and beyond her extraordinary, painful personal story – faces another potential knock.

A documentary about the Mexican artist is to reveal a secret suspicion that endures within the family of her husband and great love, the renowned muralist Diego Rivera.

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Toronto mayor quits after admitting affair with former staffer

John Tory acknowledged relationship in a statement and apologised to his wife and family, and ‘all those hurt by my actions’

The mayor of Toronto has resigned, shortly after the Toronto Star newspaper reported he had an affair with a former staff member.

John Tory, 68, acknowledged the relationship in a statement announcing his departure, saying it had ended earlier this year and the employee had left city hall.

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Crackdown on ‘birth tourism’ as pregnant Russians flock to Argentina

South American country has seen rise since Ukraine invasion in Russian women arriving to have children and thus gain citizenship

Immigration authorities in Argentina are cracking down on Russian women who since the invasion of Ukraine have started travelling to Buenos Aires to give birth in order to gain Argentinian citizenship for their children.

The director of Argentina’s immigration office, Florencia Carignano, said on Friday that a judicial investigation has been launched into what she described as a lucrative business that promises Argentinian passports for the Russian parents.

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‘Finch-smuggling kingpin’ sentenced to prison for bird trafficking into US

Insaf Ali smuggled songbirds in hair curlers from Guyana to New York when JFK airport authorities discovered the ruse

A man who repeatedly admitted scheming to smuggle finches from Guyana into New York for birdsong competitions was sentenced on Thursday to a year and a day in prison.

It was Insaf Ali’s second time being sentenced in a Brooklyn federal court for a crime related to bird trafficking, and he vowed it would be his last.

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‘This is huge’: Nicaragua frees 222 political prisoners and flies them to US

Daughter of former foreign minister Francisco Aguirre-Sacasa says he is among detainees released, adding: ‘Everybody is on the plane’

More than 200 prisoners jailed by Nicaragua’s authoritarian regime during a ferocious two-year political crackdown have been freed and flown to the United States.

“This is huge,” Georgiana Aguirre-Sacasa, the daughter of one of the prisoners – the elderly former foreign minister Francisco Aguirre-Sacasa – said on Thursday morning as she digested the news of her father’s release.

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Driver of bus that crashed into Montreal daycare center charged with murder

Pierre Ny St-Amand charged with first degree murder after two children died and six were injured in incident

Police have charged a bus driver with first-degree murder after he drove his vehicle at a high speed into a daycare center north of Montreal, killing two children, injuring six and leaving authorities searching for a motive.

Witnesses say that after Wednesday’s crash, the 51-year-old driver, identified as Pierre Ny St-Amand, stepped out of the bus, stripped off his clothes and started screaming.

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‘Deliberate’ bus crash into Montreal daycare center kills two children

Six more children injured in suburb of Laval, as driver arrested for homicide and reckless driving

Two children have died and six others were injured when a city bus ran into a daycare center in the Montreal suburb of Laval.

The bus driver, a 51-year-old employee of the Laval municipality’s public transit system, was arrested for homicide and reckless driving, police said on Wednesday.

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Peru calls on citizens to report ‘acts of terrorism’ on social media

Rights groups say the move is a threat to freedom of expression in a country currently facing deadly anti-government protests

Peru has called on citizens to report social media users suspected of supporting or inciting “acts of terrorism”, as the country reels from two months of violent anti-government protests which have claimed at least 59 lives.

In a move widely condemned by human rights organisations, the country’s interior ministry said on Monday that the criminal definition of “apology for terrorism” was being modified to include the use of social media, after the first jail sentences for the alleged crime last month.

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Brazil launches operation to drive illegal miners from Yanomami lands

Special forces destroy aircraft and seize weapons in effort to protect largest Indigenous reserve from mining mafias

The Brazilian government has launched its campaign to drive tens of thousands of illegal miners from the country’s largest Indigenous reserve, with special-forces environmental operatives destroying aircraft and seizing weapons and boats during an operation deep in the Amazon’s Yanomami territory.

Members of Brazil’s environmental protection agency Ibama – with support from the Indigenous agency Funai and the newly created ministry for Indigenous peoples – launched the long-awaited operation on Monday, with troops establishing a base along the Uraricoera river. Wildcat tin ore and gold miners use the waterway – as well as dozens of illegal airstrips – to reach and supply their illegal outposts in Yanomami lands.

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Canada announces plans to protect vast marine zone with Great Bear Sea project

Political and Indigenous leaders hope to replicate success of British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest conservation area

Nearly a decade ago, Canadian political leaders, environmental activists and Indigenous nations came together to shelter a sprawling 6.4 million-hectare area of trees, sea wolves, salmon and grizzly bears – a project that was named, with some branding acumen, the Great Bear Rainforest.

The plan has since been hailed as a triumph for protecting swathes of old-growth cedar and spruce and drawing global attention to an area of pristine forest the size of Ireland.

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Gangs, cholera and political turmoil leave half Haiti’s children relying on aid

Triple threat sees Caribbean country in worst crisis since 2010 earthquake, with young people bearing the brunt, warns Unicef

An escalation of gang violence, political instability and a deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti has left half its children relying on humanitarian aid to survive, Unicef says.

At least 2.6 million are expected to need immediate lifesaving assistance this year as the overlapping crises leave Haiti’s children in the worst position since the earthquake of 2010, Unicef’s Haiti representative, Bruno Maes, told the Guardian.

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