Category Archives: Americas

Rightwing ‘parents’ rights’ groups gain ground in Canada as Alberta book bans target LGBTQ+ titles

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Two such groups claim they persuaded Alberta to institute sweeping public school book ban

Socially conservative “parents’ rights” groups that have emerged as powerfully political lobbying groups in the US are quickly gaining ground in Canada, academics and free speech advocates say, after two such groups claimed they had persuaded Alberta to institute a sweeping public school book ban.

Alberta recently directed schools to purge library books from shelves that fit its definition of “explicit sexual content” by 1 October. If the policy is applied precisely as outlined, a host of books face being purged, including George Orwell’s 1984 due to passages in the text that discuss sexual intercourse and rape.

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Deforestation has killed half a million people in past 20 years, study finds

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Localised rises in temperature caused by land clearance cause 28,330 heat-related deaths a year, researchers find

Deforestation has killed more than half a million people in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related illness, a study has found.

Land clearance is raising the temperature in the rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia because it reduces shade, diminishes rainfall and increases the risk of fire, the authors of the paper found.

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Brazil judge orders round-the-clock surveillance of ‘flight risk’ Bolsonaro

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Pre-trial monitoring ordered after police reported former president had drafted request for asylum in Argentina

Jair Bolsonaro must be under constant police surveillance, a supreme court justice has ruled, to prevent Brazil’s former president from fleeing days before the start of the trial that could see him jailed for more than 40 years.

The far-right leader has been wearing an electronic ankle tag since mid-July and has been under house arrest since early August. But last Monday, the prosecutor general asked the supreme court to tighten surveillance of the 70-year-old, after federal police reported he had even drafted a request for political asylum in Argentina.

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Old master painting looted by Nazis spotted in Argentinian property listing

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Dutch newspaper AD says it has traced Giuseppe Ghislandi’s Portrait of a Lady to house near Buenos Aires

More than 80 years after it was looted by the Nazis from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam, a portrait by an Italian master has been spotted on the website of an estate agent advertising a house for sale in Argentina.

A photo shows the painting, Portrait of a Lady (Contessa Colleoni) by the late-baroque portraitist Giuseppe Ghislandi, also known as Fra’ Galgario, hanging above a sofa in the living room of the property, in a seaside town near Buenos Aires.

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Mexican drug lord ‘El Mayo’ pleads guilty to racketeering in New York

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Ismael Zambada was co-founder of Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, now imprisoned in US

The Mexican drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges as well as running a criminal enterprise on Monday, more than a year since he was arrested in Texas after what has been described as a kidnapping.

“I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people in the United States and Mexico,” the 77-year-old Zambada said in court through a Spanish-language interpreter. “I apologize for all of it, and I take responsibility for my actions.”

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First human case of flesh-eating screwworm parasite confirmed in US

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HHS told Reuters patient had returned from El Salvador but beef industry said person had traveled from Guatemala

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Sunday reported the first human case in the US of travel-associated New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite, from an outbreak-affected country.

The case, investigated by the Maryland department of health and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was confirmed by the CDC as New World screwworm on 4 August – and involved a patient who returned from travel to El Salvador, an HHS spokesperson, Andrew G Nixon, said in an email to Reuters.

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Canada to drop counter-tariffs on some US goods one day after call with Trump

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Mark Carney says change will go into effect on 1 September but tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos will remain

Canada will drop its counter-tariffs on some American goods in the coming days, Mark Carney has said, as the country’s prime minister looks to end a protracted trade war with longtime ally the United States.

From 1 September, the Canadian government will remove some levies on US goods that comply with the North American free-trade pact, a move meant to “match” how the White House treated Canadian goods. Levies on steel, aluminum and autos will remain in place.

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Bolsonaro given 48 hours to explain alleged plans to flee to Argentina

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Brazilian supreme court judge sets ultimatum after police claim far-right populist sought to flee to avoid punishment over failed coup

A supreme court judge has given Brazil’s ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, 48 hours to explain police claims he was planning to flee to Argentina to avoid punishment for allegedly masterminding a failed coup after losing the 2022 election.

Bolsonaro’s trial for the alleged attempt to seize power is scheduled to conclude early next month. The far-right populist faces more than four decades in prison if found guilty.

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Brazil police file court documents accusing Bolsonaro of planning to flee to Argentina to seek asylum

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Brazil’s former president is accused of allegedly plotting a military coup, but he denies the charges

Brazilian police have claimed in court documents that they have found a document on the mobile phone of former president Jair Bolsonaro suggesting he had planned to flee to Argentina ahead of his judgment for allegedly plotting a military coup.

The far-right populist is facing a jail term of over 40 years when Brazil’s supreme court convenes next month to decide whether he is guilty of conspiring to overturn the result of the 2022 presidential election, which Bolsonaro lost to his leftwing opponent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

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US court allows Trump officials to end protected status for 60,000 migrants

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Administration officials given legal right to move towards deportation of people from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua

A federal appeals court on Wednesday sided with the Trump administration and halted for now a lower court’s order that had kept in place temporary protections for 60,000 migrants from Central America and Nepal.

This means that the Republican administration can move toward removing an estimated 7,000 people from Nepal whose temporary protected status designations expired on 5 August. The TPS designations and legal status of 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are set to expire 8 September, at which point they will become eligible for removal.

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Conservative leader wins Canada byelection, regaining parliament seat

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Pierre Poilievre returns to House of Commons after shock April loss and narrower margin in Tory stronghold

Canada’s Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, has won a closely watched byelection in the province of Alberta, giving him a chance to return to parliament after suffering a shock defeat in April’s federal election.

Poilievre finished with 80.4% of the vote after Monday’s election in the riding of Battle River-Crowfoot, in the deeply Conservative western province.

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Flight attendant union leaders ‘ready to go to jail’ as Air Canada strike outlawed

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Arbitrator orders 10,000 striking staff back to work after government intervenes – unconstitutionally, union says

Union leaders representing 10,000 striking flight attendants have said they would be willing to go to jail rather than comply with an order to return to work, as Canada’s federal government seeks to end a bitter contract dispute that has halted hundreds of summer flights and stranded travellers around the world.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, the national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees said members would remain on the picket lines as part of a work stoppage that has halted Air Canada’s national and international operations during its busiest season.

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Conservative leader runs for safe seat in parliament after Canada election defeat

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Pierre Poilievre has chance of winning House of Commons seat after losing riding he had held for more than 20 years

Canada’s federal conservative leader will have a second chance of winning a seat in parliament when residents of a rural Alberta district cast their ballots in a closely watched byelection on Monday.

Pierre Poilievre’s bid to take the safe seat of Battle River-Crowfoot comes four months after the Conservatives’ defeat in April’s federal election, in which the party leader lost the riding he had held for more than 20 years.

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‘Pray for rain’: wildfires in Canada are now burning where they never used to

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Canada’s response to the extreme weather threat is being upended as the traditional epicentre of the blazes shifts as the climate warms

Road closures, evacuations, travel chaos and stern warnings from officials have become fixtures of Canada’s wildfire season. But as the country goes through its second-worst burn on record, the blazes come with a twist: few are coming from the western provinces, the traditional centre of destruction.

Instead, the worst of the fires have been concentrated in the prairie provinces and the Atlantic region, with bone-dry conditions upending how Canada responds to a threat that is only likely to grow as the climate warms.

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Air Canada flight attendants to defy back-to-work order and remain on strike

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Union to challenge order issued less than 12 hours after start of action that has left more than 100,000 travellers stranded

Air Canada’s flight attendants plan to remain on strike, their union has said, defying government efforts to force them back to work and into binding arbitration over a dispute that has left more than 100,000 travellers stranded around the world during the peak summer travel season.

About 10,000 flight attendants who work for Canada’s largest airline walked out on the job early on Saturday amid a bitter dispute over what the union has described as “poverty wages” and unpaid labour.

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Blackwater founder Erik Prince to send hundreds of fighters to strife-torn Haiti

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Critics say Vectus Global’s presence – including snipers – will undermine Haiti’s police and UN security force

Hundreds of combatants from the US, Europe and El Salvador will reportedly be deployed to Haiti in the coming weeks to battle the country’s gangs as part of a mission led by the controversial Blackwater founder and Donald Trump backer Erik Prince.

According to Reuters, Prince’s new security firm, Vectus Global – which has been operating in the violence-ravaged Caribbean country since March – is preparing to intensify its activities there to help authorities win key roads and territories back from heavily armed criminal groups.

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FBI returns stolen document signed by conquistador Hernán Cortés to Mexico

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US officials did not say who had the 16th-century page that was missing from Mexico’s archives for decades

Nearly five centuries after Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés signed it and decades after someone swiped it from national archives, a priceless manuscript page has been returned by the FBI to Mexico.

The document contains a detailed accounting of the logistics related to Cortés’s journey to what eventually became New Spain – a territory that stretched from Central America to modern-day Washington state.

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Ice deported boy with cancer and two other US citizen children to Honduras, suit alleges

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Suit filed in Louisiana says agency didn’t give parents choice as to whether children should be deported with them

A lawsuit filed in Louisiana on behalf of two mothers and their four minor children, including one with cancer, claims the two families were unlawfully denied due process and deported by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to Honduras in April 2025.

The lawsuit, which names the attorney general, Pam Bondi, Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, and various Ice officials as defendants, alleges Ice violated its own policies, and multiple federal laws, when officers secretly detained the families, denied access to counsel and swiftly deported them to Honduras, ignoring legal filings.

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Sheinbaum’s expulsion of criminals is more about placating Trump than keeping Mexico safe

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Perhaps not coincidentally, the timing of tariff discussions was closely followed by the transfer of wanted criminals

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has denied that the transfer of 26 alleged cartel members to the United States was part of any kind of deal with Washington and was instead about her country’s own security priorities.

This week’s expulsion marked the second time Mexico had sent top criminals to the US this year: in February, Mexican authorities handed over 29 cartel members, including druglord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was responsible for the murder of a DEA agent in 1985. The latest transfers took place after US authorities vowed that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty in any of the cases.

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Argentina rocked as contaminated medical fentanyl kills up to 96 patients

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Dozens of hospital patients treated with opioid for unrelated conditions suffered serious bacterial infections

As many as 96 people are now thought to have died in Argentina after being treated with medical-use fentanyl that was tainted with bacteria.

The official death toll stands at 87, and a judicial source has told the Buenos Aires Herald that nine further deaths are under investigation.

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