It will be illegal to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in country, Justin Trudeau says
The Canadian government has introduced legislation that would put a freeze on importing, buying or selling handguns.
“We are capping the number of handguns in this country,” said the prime minister, Justin Trudeau. The regulations to halt the growth of personally owned handguns is expected to be enacted this autumn.
Continue reading...Analysis: Hurricane Agatha kicks off what is forecast to be another busy period of Atlantic storms
The first hurricane of 2022 for the eastern Pacific has made landfall in southern Mexico. Agatha has been slowly moving north towards the Mexican Pacific coast, strengthening before making landfall late on Monday. The storm has produced damaging tropical-force winds and heavy rain.
Winds are easing but heavy rain will continue through Tuesday as the storm moves inland. It is forecast to cause flash flooding and mudslides that could pose a threat to life.
Continue reading...Officials in Nunavut say there are 31 cases of active tuberculosis in the hamlet of Pangnirtung, a community of 1,500
A tuberculosis outbreak in the Canadian Arctic has prompted frustration in a remote Inuit community and highlighted the persistence of an illness that has largely been wiped out in the rest of the country.
The outbreak also lays bare the dismal living conditions and overcrowding in many Arctic communities, despite Canada’s status as one of the world’s wealthiest nations.
Continue reading...Arkansas-born showman – known as ‘The Hawk’ – cut his teeth on the South’s tough 50s circuit but settled in Canada where he nurtured local talent
Ronnie Hawkins, the Arkansas-born rock’n’roll legend who mentored the young Canadian and American musicians later known as the Band, has died.
Hawkins, described in tributes as the most important rock’n’roller in Canadian history, died at the age of 87 after an illness, his wife, Wanda, said on Sunday.
Continue reading...Rivals Gustavo Petro will face Rodolfo Hernández on 19 June amid growing discontent over inequality and inflation
Colombia’s election will go to a runoff between two opposing anti-establishment candidates on 19 June after voters on Sunday were unable to pick a president outright.
Gustavo Petro, a leftist former guerrilla and onetime mayor of Bogotá, won the largest share of the vote, with 40%, but fell short of the 50% required to win outright and prevent a second round. Petro’s rival in the runoff will be Rodolfo Hernández, a business magnate and social media firebrand, who is viewed as a conservative, populist outsider.
Continue reading...Presidential frontrunner is former leftist guerrilla Gustavo Petro in country ruled for decades by the right
Colombians head to the polls today in a presidential election that may give the conservative South American country its first ever leftwing leader and first black vice-president.
Frontrunner Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla fighter and senator, faces several rivals, but his main challenger is Federico Gutiérrez, the former mayor of Medellín – Colombia’s second city – who leads a rightwing coalition with close ties to the incumbent government of President Iván Duque.
Continue reading...Downpours batter two cities on Atlantic coast in country’s fourth major flood in five months
At least 35 people have died amid heavy rainfall in north-eastern Brazil on Friday and Saturday, as downpours lashed two major cities on the Atlantic coast, in what is the South American nation’s fourth major flooding event in five months.
In the state of Pernambuco, at least 33 people had died as of Saturday afternoon, as rains caused landslides that wiped away hillside urban neighbourhoods, according to the state’s official Twitter account. Another 765 people were forced to leave their homes, at least temporarily, according to the state government.
Continue reading...Video shows incident in which driver says he had to kick his way out because the doors and windows wouldn’t open
Canadian authorities are investigating an incident in which a Tesla caught fire in Vancouver, reportedly forcing the driver to smash his way out of the vehicle.
Transport Canada, the Canadian auto safety agency, said in a statement on Friday that it had learned of the incident in Vancouver on 23 May and that it had “notified Tesla … and is currently making arrangements for a joint inspection of the vehicle in an effort to determine the cause of the fire”.
Continue reading...Five local schools were placed under lockdown after several 911 calls about a man walking with a rifle in Canadian city
Investigators have recovered a pellet gun from the scene where Toronto police shot and killed a man suspected of carrying a rifle, an incident that prompted five nearby schools to be placed under precautionary lockdowns.
Police went to the Scarborough neighbourhood on Thursday after receiving several 911 calls about a man walking with a rifle and located him shortly after, Ontario province’s special investigations unit (SIU) said in a statement on Friday. The man, 27, was pronounced dead about 20 minutes later.
Continue reading...Researchers estimate the city, which features the Mayan Puuc style of architecture, to have been occupied from AD600 to 900
Archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city filled with palaces, pyramids and plazas on a construction site of what will become an industrial park near Mérida, on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.
The site, called Xiol, has features of the Mayan Puuc style of architecture, archaeologists said, which is common in the southern Yucatán peninsula but rare near Mérida.
Continue reading...Decision setting parole eligibility at 25 years could give hope to at least 18 mass killers serving multiple life sentences
Canada’s supreme court has ruled that life sentences without the chance of parole are both “cruel” and unconstitutional, in a landmark decision that could give more than dozen mass killers who committed “inherently despicable acts” the faint hope of release in the future.
The court unanimously determined on Friday that sentencing killers to lengthy prison terms with little hope of freedom risked bringing the “administration of justice into disrepute”.
Continue reading...Officers responded to reports of a man in his late teens or early 20s carrying a firearm in Scarborough’s Port Union area
Police in Toronto have shot and killed a man after he was spotted carrying a rifle near an elementary school, prompting an emergency lockdown for hundreds of students.
Officers responded to reports of a man, described as being in his late teens or early 20s, carrying a firearm in Scarborough’s Port Union area of the Canadian city about 1pm.
Continue reading...Doctors performed procedure in 2002 without consent while Francisca was under anesthesia because she was HIV positive
The Chilean state has apologised to a woman who was forcibly sterilised by doctors because she was HIV positive.
The woman, known only as Francisca and then 20, was diagnosed with HIV in March 2002 while pregnant with her first child. But while she was under anaesthesia during a Caesarean section, doctors at a public hospital performed a surgical sterilisation on the grounds that it would be irresponsible for an HIV-positive woman to have more children. When Francisca woke up after the operation, she was informed by a nurse that she had been sterilised without her consent.
Continue reading...Genivaldo de Jesus Santos dies of asphyxiation as video shows officers forcing him into vehicle then releasing gas grenade
Brazilians have responded with outrage to the death of a mentally ill Black man who was bundled into the back of a police car by officers who then released a gas grenade inside the vehicle.
Genivaldo de Jesus Santos, 38, was stopped by the federal highway police in the city of Umbaúba on Wednesday. Video footage of the incident shows two officers in helmets holding the car boot closed on his thrashing legs, as clouds of gas billow out of the vehicle.
Continue reading...The tree, in Chile’s Alerce Costero national park, is known as the Great Grandfather and could be more than 5,000 years old
Scientists in Chile believe that a conifer with a four-metre-thick trunk known as the Great Grandfather could be the world’s oldest living tree, beating the current record-holder by more than 600 years.
A new study carried out by Dr Jonathan Barichivich, a Chilean scientist at the Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory in Paris, suggests that the tree, a Patagonian cypress, also known as the Alerce Milenario, could be up to 5,484 years old.
Continue reading...Region has two-thirds of world’s most dangerous cities, with Bogotá, Rio, Mexico City and San Salvador also named in study
When police found the body of Marcela Graciano, a 31-year-old Colombian DJ, last Thursday, the brutality of the crime shocked even them. Her body, found in a house in a suburb of Medellín – Colombia’s second city – revealed signs of torture and her hands had been tied behind her back.
“The body was in an advanced state of decomposition,” the local police chief, Col Rolfy Mauricio Jiménez, said. The Valle de Aburrá municipality has had 11 murders this year, authorities said.
Continue reading...Group includes children and pregnant women as exodus from crisis-hit Haiti grows
A ship carrying more than 800 Haitians who were apparently trying to reach the US has landed instead in central Cuba, in what is thought to be the largest group yet in a swelling exodus of people from the crisis-stricken Caribbean countr.
The Communist party newspaper Granma quoted Red Cross officials in the province of Villa Clara as saying the 842 people crammed on to the vessel had been given medical attention and were being housed at a tourist campground.
Continue reading...Premier says ‘we are proud to be a francophone nation in North America’ but English-speaking critics threaten legal action
Quebec’s government has successfully passed sweeping French language protections that critics warn will reshape all aspects of public life.
Bill 96, which passed on Tuesday afternoon in the province’s national assembly, will require new immigrants and refugees to communicate with provincial officials exclusively in French six months after arriving or face a loss of services. The bill also limits the use of English in the legal system and caps enrolment at the province’s English-language schools.
Continue reading...Death toll puts the incident among Rio’s deadliest police operations in recent history
At least 21 people have been shot dead and seven wounded during a police raid on a Rio de Janeiro favela to capture the leaders of a drug-trafficking organization.
The deaths included a woman who was hit by a stray bullet in the exchange of gunfire between gang members and police in the Vila Cruzeiro favela.
Continue reading...Experts say 35% rise in acreage covered by migratory insects my reflect adaptation to changing climate
Mexican experts have said that 35% more monarch
butterflies arrived this year to spend the winter in mountaintop forests, compared with the previous season.
Experts say the rise may reflect the butterflies’ ability to adapt to more extreme bouts of heat or drought by varying the date when they leave Mexico.
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