Category Archives: Americas

Unseen Gabriel García Márquez novel to be published next year

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Colombian author’s En Agosto Now Vemos (We’ll See Each Other in August) had been just a rumour but now fans will get to read it

Rumours had long circulated that an entire literary masterpiece, never seen by the public, could still be lying in a dusty safe held by the late author’s family or under lock and key at his archive at the University of Texas.

On Friday Penguin Random House confirmed that an unpublished Gabriel García Márquez novel – titled En Agosto Nos Vemos, (We’ll See Each Other in August) – not only exists, but will be on shelves across Latin America in 2024.

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Federal workers tell Trudeau to step in to pay and work-from-home dispute

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Largest strike in decades enters 10th day with workers enjoying public support despite disruption to government services

Striking federal workers in Canada are calling for the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to get involved in stalled negotiations, as the largest job action in decades enters its 10th day and key government services grind to a halt.

More than 100,000 employees with Canada’s largest public sector union have been on strike since last week in a battle over wages and the ability to work remotely.

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Two more journalists killed in Haiti as gang violence continues to rage

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Ricot Jean found dead after reportedly being kidnapped and Dumesky Kersaint reportedly killed by a stray bullet

Two more journalists have been killed in Haiti in the past month as rampant gang violence has gripped the capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas.

Ricot Jean, who worked for Radio-Tele Evolution Inter was found dead on Tuesday, a day after he was reportedly kidnapped by men wearing police uniforms. Jean was a prominent cultural activist in the Haitian capital and hosted a weekly radio show.

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Jair Bolsonaro questioned by police investigating Brazil coup attempt

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Former president of Brazil says he shared video ‘by mistake’ while on morphine in US hospital

Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been ridiculed by his political opponents after he was questioned by federal police as part of a criminal investigation into January’s alleged coup attempt and claimed he had shared a video questioning last year’s election result “by mistake”.

Bolsonaro spent more than two hours in the company of police investigators on Wednesday morning, nearly four months after thousands of hardcore supporters ran riot in the capital, Brasília, in what the new administration called a botched coup intended to reinstall the far-right former army captain as president.

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Mexico army ignored cartel warnings before mass student kidnapping, emails show

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Months before 43 Ayotzinapa students vanished, army was repeatedly warned of criminal gang presence

The Mexican military received nearly a dozen complaints about cartel activity in the region where 43 students were abducted in September 2014, emails hacked from the country’s defense ministry reveal, but the armed forces apparently did little to tackle organized crime in the area.

The students’ kidnapping and disappearance, which took place in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state, was one of the most horrific and high-profile human rights abuses in Mexico’s recent history, and remains unsolved despite years of protests and a relentless pursuit of justice by the students’ parents.

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Portugal should apologise for role in slave trade, says its president

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Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa makes rare acknowledgement of centuries of forced transportation of millions of Africans

Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has said his country should apologise and take responsibility for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, the first time a leader of the southern European nation has suggested such a national apology.

From the 15th to the 19th century, 6 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported across the Atlantic by Portuguese vessels and sold into slavery, primarily to Brazil.

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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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