Category Archives: Americas

‘I thought I was a goner’: survivors detail harrowing stories of Canada mudslides

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Emergency crews continue search for victims after flash floods tear through region

Emergency crews in western Canada continued searching on Friday for victims of flash floods and mudslides which tore through the region this week, as survivors described harrowing escapes from the disaster.

British Columbia declared its third state of emergency in a year on Wednesday after a month’s worth of rain fell in two days, swamping towns and cities, blocking major highways and leaving much of the province under water.

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18,000 people stranded after floods and landslides in British Columbia – video

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Authorities and emergency crews in Canada are trying to reach 18,000 people stranded by major floods and landslides. The province of British Columbia declared a state of emergency with concerns over further falls in coming days. Some grocery store shelves in affected areas have also been stripped bare while floods and mudslides destroyed roads, houses and bridges, hampering rescue efforts

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Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon at highest level since 2006

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Increase comes despite Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to show his government is taking environmental preservation seriously

Deforestation in Brazil‘s Amazon rainforest soared 22% in the past year to the highest level since 2006, the government’s annual report has shown, undercutting president Jair Bolsonaro’s assurances that the country is curbing illegal logging.

Brazil‘s space research agency, INPE, recorded 13,235sq km (5,110 square miles) of deforestation in the world’s largest rainforest in satellite data, the report showed on Thursday, an area nearly 17 times the size of New York City. The official deforestation data covers a period from August 2020 through to July 2021.

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Canada floods: 18,000 people still stranded in ‘terrible, terrible disaster’

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Alarm grows about climate change in British Columbia after summer wildfires wiped out vegetation that could have slowed flooding

Emergency crews in western Canada were still trying to reach some 18,000 people stranded by landslides and struggling to find food among bare grocery store shelves after devastating flooding.

With communities in the region braced for more torrential rain in already inundated areas next week , the premier of British Columbia province declared an emergency and gave an emotional address in a press conference on Thursday.

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Canada storm: floods could lead to country-wide shortages as air force deployed to British Columbia– live

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Latest updates: Canadian Armed Forces deployed to help residents after massive disruption around Vancouver and rest of province

It might seem trivial compared to the devastation caused, but Reuters is reporting that the floods could mean the US might suffer a Christmas tree shortage this year.

Canada is the world’s top exporter of natural Christmas trees, exporting about 2.3 million trees per year, with some 97% going to the US.

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Aerial footage shows aftermath of catastrophic floods that hit British Columbia – video

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Aerial footage shows the extent of catastrophic floods in mountain areas of Canada's British Columbia province. A powerful storm dumped a month’s worth of rain in two days across parts of the Pacific north-west in Canada and the US. Concerns are rising over remote mountain areas that have been hit with freezing temperatures

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Pacific north-west grapples with floods as troops deployed to British Columbia

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Water levels show signs of dropping in Washington state while at least one dead in Canada and more fatalities feared

Troops have been deployed to British Columbia to help stranded residents and search areas hit by landslides and floods after a powerful storm dumped a month’s worth of rain in two days across a swath of the Pacific north-west in Canada and the US.

South of the border in Washington state, water levels showed signs of dropping on Wednesday after floods damaged three-quarters of the homes in the border town of Sumas, leaving 1,600 residents without power and forcing hundreds to flee.

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‘I thought I’d never hear applause again’: Brazilian sambistas rejoice at the return of music

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Renowned singer Zeca Pagodinho is back performing after Covid-stricken nation carries out one of world’s largest vaccination drives

“If I want to smoke, I’ll smoke. If I want to drink, I’ll drink,” the legendary Brazilian singer Zeca Pagodinho proclaims in one of his best-known sambas.

Coronavirus robbed Zeca of an even greater pleasure: performing the songs that have made him one of Brazil’s most successful and universally adored stars.

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Brazil’s Amazon beef plan will ‘legalise deforestation’ say critics

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The beef industry hopes a planned deforestation-free farming zone will tempt buyers back but many fear it will drive up illegal tree felling

For many, the overriding image of agriculture in the Amazon is one of environmental destruction. About 80% of deforestation in the region has been attributed to cattle ranching, tainting beef exports.

Brazil’s beef industry hopes to tempt buyers back to the Amazon region, which covers about 40% of the country’s total area, with a new deforestation-free pledge. But critics are concerned it could effectively legalise deforestation in the region.

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Heavy rains in west of Canada and US cause ‘devastating’ floods and spark evacuations – video

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At least one person has been killed and several more are feared dead after a huge storm hit the Pacific north-west, destroying highways and leaving tens of thousands of people in Canada and the US without power.

Canada’s largest port was cut off by flood waters, as emergency crews in British Columbia announced on Tuesday that at least 10 vehicles had been swept off a highway during a landslide.

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Mysterious neurological illness haunts Canadian Atlantic region

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The cases have prompted a row between health officials who deny the sicknesses form a true ‘cluster’ and medical experts looking for a link

When Roger Ellis fell ill two years ago, his family rushed to the hospital, fearing he was having a heart attack. Doctors quickly ruled that out, but days later, he suffered from a seizure.

In the following weeks, the retired industrial mechanic, 64, who lived in the east Canadian town of Bathurst, New Brunswick, grew increasingly anxious and disoriented, and often repeated himself.

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Mexican environmental campaigner missing after attack on villagers

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Irma Galindo Barrios, a member of the Mixtec people, was defending indigenous lands from illegal logging

A Mexican environmental campaigner has been declared missing barely a week after a savage attack on indigenous villagers displaced from the lands she was defending against illegal logging.

Irma Galindo Barrios, a member of the indigenous Mixtec (ñuù savi) people who worked to protect forests in southern Oaxaca state, was last heard from on 27 October. She was scheduled to attend a virtual meeting so she could join a state mechanism for protecting journalists and defenders, but did not attend, according to Rosi Bustamante, a US-based activist who had been in close contact with Galindo.

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Canada: floods prompt evacuations in region hit by summer wildfires

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Communities forced to flee homes again after record downpour as pounding storms also take toll on US Pacific north-west

Communities in western Canada who were forced to flee their homes this summer by wildfires and extreme heat are once again under evacuation orders after overwhelming floods across the region.

Helicopters were dispatched on Monday to Highway 7, more than 100 kilometres (62 miles) east of Vancouver, to rescue about 275 people, including 50 children, who had been stranded on the road since it was blocked by a mudslide late on Sunday.

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Argentina’s far right and far left make big gains in congressional elections

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Ruling Peronist party lost majority as Javier Milei turned notoriety into votes and a Trotskyist party got third largest vote share

Argentina’s political system is braced for an earthquake after parties on the extreme left and right made big gains in weekend midterm congressional elections, putting an end to decades in which the country’s populists and conservatives wrestled for power.

Sunday’s vote saw the Peronist Front for Everyone coalition of President Alberto Fernández lose its majority in Congress for the first time in almost 40 years and lose its stronghold of Buenos Aires province to the center-right coalition Together for Change.

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Canada: First Nation exposed to high levels of cancer-causing chemicals

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Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Ontario finally wins access to data charting pollution from local petrochemical facilities

A First Nations community in Canada has learned that levels of a cancer-causing chemical in its air are 44 times higher than is considered safe, after years of fighting for the data.

Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Ontario is surrounded on all sides by petrochemical facilities, and members have long suspected that the facilities in “Chemical Valley” have exposed them to potentially dangerous substances. .

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Ecuador: 68 inmates killed and 25 injured in latest prison massacre

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Deaths at Litoral penitentiary part of wave of prison violence that has claimed more than 280 lives

At least 68 prisoners have been killed and 25 injured in a jail in the city of Guayaquil in Ecuador after bloodletting between rival gangs broke out on Friday night, the attorney general’s office said on Saturday.

The latest massacre occurred in the Litoral penitentiary, the same jail where at least 119 inmates lost their lives a little more than a month before in the country’s deadliest ever prison riot.

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Transform approach to Amazon or it will not survive, warns major report

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Panel of 200 scientists tells Cop26 Indigenous people, business, governments and scientists must collaborate

The world’s approach to the Amazon rainforest must be transformed to avoid an irreversible, catastrophic tipping point, according to the most comprehensive study of the region ever carried out.

More than 200 scientists collaborated on the new report, which finds that more than a third of the world’s biggest tropical forest is degraded or deforested, rainfall is declining and dry seasons are growing longer.

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Revealed: the luxury BVI villa Geoffrey Cox stayed in while working second job

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The exclusive property by the sea, with infinity pool, where the Tory MP stayed to conduct his lucrative side-hustle

Most days, there is a cool breeze. The private villa is located above a secluded rocky bay and set in a tropical garden of palms and exotic fruit trees. From the balcony you can gaze at the sea below and the green humps of nearby islands – a “scattered Pleiades”, as the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor put it.

There is an infinity pool. And a terrace, perfect for cocktails against a pink Caribbean sunset. Tavistock it isn’t. Yet the villa on the north shore of Tortola, the biggest of the British Virgin Islands, was where Sir Geoffrey Cox ended up staying earlier this year as he juggled the responsibilities of his first and second jobs.

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Newly translated letters offer indigenous take of Brazil’s bloody birth

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Dutch-Portuguese war of 1645 split the Potiguara people but their leaders’ correspondence across battle lines has finally been translated from Tupi

In 1645, a bloody war raged between Dutch settlers and the Portuguese empire over the sugar plantations of north-east Brazil.

Trapped on either side of the conflict were the Potiguara, a powerful indigenous nation whose leaders penned a series of letters in the Tupi language, enticing their relatives to defect across enemy lines.

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