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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Fernando Báez Sosa, son of Paraguayan immigrants, was attacked outside nightclub in what family see as racially motivated attack
Eight amateur rugby players have been found guilty over the murder of an aspiring law student in Argentina, in a case that has outraged the public and shone a harsh light on racist attitudes in the country.
Five of the attackers were sentenced to life in prison – which in Argentina is a maximum of 35 years – for their part in the murder of Fernando Báez Sosa, 18, the only son of two Paraguayan immigrants.
Continue reading...Fires have burned 270,000 hectares and killed 24 in south-central region as mega drought fuels second worst fire year on record
Chilean firefighters are battling to hold back forest fires as authorities warned that persistent hot and dry weather could potentially exacerbate what are already the deadliest blazes in the country’s recent history.
The fires, which have consumed 270,000 hectares (667,000 acres) of land, have killed 24 people so far in south-central Chile and already made 2023 the second worst year in terms of hectares burned after the so-called “fire storm” that hit the country in 2017.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Environment minister calls for ex-president to be held to account as she prepares to tackle illegal gold miners
Former president Jair Bolsonaro should be investigated for genocide, Brazil’s environment minister, Marina Silva, has said, as she prepares an operation to drive illegal goldminers from the site of a humanitarian disaster on Indigenous land.
In the coming days, armed police and environmental protection agents will launch the first of a series of operations by plane and helicopter to expel thousands of miners, who proliferated in Brazil’s Yanomami Indigenous territory during Bolsonaro’s administration, contaminating Amazonian rivers, wrecking the rainforest and spawning Brazil’s worst health crisis in living memory.
Continue reading...Company rebuts claims by scientists that ‘uncontrolled and unscientific’ practices highlight dangers of going ahead with seabed mining
Video footage from a deep-sea mining test, showing sediment discharging into the ocean, has raised fresh questions about the largely untested nature of the industry, and the possible harms it could do to ecosystems as companies push to begin full-scale exploration of the ocean floor as early as this year.
The Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian mining firm that is one of the leading industry players, spent September to November of last year testing its underwater extraction vehicle in the Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone, a section of the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawaii.
Continue reading...Conditions in parts of South America up to 10C above average as US records its coldest ever temperature
Unrelenting and record-breaking heat is expected to continue across parts of South America this week. Temperatures are forecast to reach the mid-to-high 30s celsius for Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay, with maximum temperatures possibly hitting 40C across northern Argentina.
These temperatures are at least 5-10C above the climatological average, with the extreme heat expected to continue at least until the middle part of February.
Continue reading...Police still looking for Jericho Labonte of British Columbia after he was released from hospital after ‘odd 48 hours’
A man saved by a US coast guard rescue swimmer at the mouth of the Columbia river as a massive wave rolled the yacht he was piloting on Friday was wanted for a bizarre incident in which police said he left a dead fish at the Astoria, Oregon, home featured in the classic 1985 film, The Goonies.
Officers had been looking for the man since Wednesday, when an acquaintance alerted them to a video he posted on social media of himself leaving the fish at the house and then dancing around the property, said the Astoria police chief, Stacy Kelly.
Continue reading...Sixty-six people hurt and 1,500 seeking refuge in shelters after 800 homes were destroyed
Record summer temperatures of more than 40C (104F) are hampering efforts to tackle dozens of wildfires across central Chile that have killed at least 23 people, destroyed 800 homes and prompted the declaration of a state of emergency in three regions.
Sixty-six people have been hurt in the fires, while almost 1,500 others are seeking refuge in shelters, according to an update on Sunday from the national forestry agency, Conaf. The state body said 87 fires were being still fought and 148 had been brought under control.
Continue reading...Juliette Lamour, a student from Ontario, makes history with £30m prize after taking part ‘for fun’
An 18-year-old Canadian has made history by winning C$48m (£30m) after buying a lottery ticket for the first time.
Juliette Lamour, from Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, was announced as the winner on Friday by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLGC), making her the youngest person to win tens of millions of Canadian dollars.
Continue reading...The Trevelyans were shocked to see their name in a slavery database and a journey to Grenada confirmed the continuing impact of their grim history
An aristocratic British family is to make history by travelling to the Caribbean and publicly apologising for its ownership of more than 1,000 enslaved Africans. The Trevelyan family, which has many notable ancestors, is also paying reparations to the people of Grenada, where it owned six sugar plantations.
Last weekend, the family met online and agreed to sign a letter of apology for its enslavement of captive Africans. Forty-two members of the family have so far signed and more signatures are expected.
Continue reading...Environmental activists had sought to halt the planned scuttling of the warship, warning that it could pollute the marine food chain
Brazil has sunk a decommissioned aircraft carrier despite environmental groups claiming the former French ship was packed with toxic materials.
The “planned and controlled sinking occurred late in the afternoon” on Friday, 350km off the Brazilian coast in the Atlantic Ocean, in an area with an approximate depth of 5,000 meters (16,000 feet), the navy said in a statement.
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