Category Archives: Americas

Ottawa protests: ‘strong ties’ between some occupiers and far-right extremists, minister says

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Public safety minister speaks after arrest of extremists accused of plotting to kill police officers in Canada border town of Coutts

Canada’s public safety minister has warned of ties between protesters occupying the country’s capital and a group of far-right extremists who were charged earlier this week in the border town of Coutts, Alberta, over an alleged plot to kill police officers.

“Several of the individuals at Coutts have strong ties to a far-right extreme organization with leaders who are in Ottawa,” the minister, Marco Medicino, told reporters on Wednesday.

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Devastating floods and mudslides leave at least 58 dead in Brazil

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Heavy rains bring destruction to Petrópolis and surrounding mountainous areas in Rio de Janeiro state

At least 58 people have died after heavy rains sent devastating mudslides and floods through a mountainous region of Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state.

The city of Petrópolis was slammed by a deluge on Tuesday, and Mayor Rubens Bomtempo said the number of dead could rise as searchers picked through the wreckage. Twenty-one people had been recovered alive.

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Ex-president arrested in Honduras as US requests extradition on drugs charges

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  • Juan Orlando Hernández cuffed and taken away in Tegucigalpa
  • Arrest marks spectacular fall for man who was once key US ally

Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández has been arrested, a day after the US Department of Justice requested his extradition over drug trafficking and weapons charges, culminating a spectacular fall from grace for a man who was once considered one of Washington’s top allies in Central America.

On Tuesday afternoon Hernández left his home in a wealthy neighborhood in the country’s capital, Tegucigalpa, where he was cuffed at the hands and feet and provided a bullet-proof vest before being taken away in a police caravan to a special forces base. He will appear before a judge for his first hearing within 24 hours.

According to the extradition request submitted to Honduras, Hernández was part of a “violent drug-trafficking” conspiracy that trafficked roughly 500,000 kilos of cocaine since 2004.

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Cuba protesters sentenced to up to 20 years as hundreds more await verdicts

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Courts sentenced 20 people in eastern Holguín province for sedition after last July’s anti-government protests

Cuban courts have handed out sentences of up to 20 years in prison to a group of people accused of taking part in protests that swept across the island in July.

The 20 defendants sentenced in the eastern province of Holguín were convicted after trials last month on charges of sedition. Hundreds of other people await verdicts following trials elsewhere.

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Saunas, haircuts, hot meals: Ottawa protesters set up for the long haul

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Protesters against Covid-19 rules seem unfazed by possible police action as prime minister invokes emergency powers

A day after Canada’s prime minister announced a dramatic escalation in his government’s fight against blockades across the country, protesters in the nation’s capital were scheduling haircuts and receiving massages, apparently unfazed by the prospect of ramped-up police enforcement.

Hundreds of semi-trucks which have been parked out front of Canada’s parliament since late January have become emblematic of the protests, but planning and logistics for the occupation is run from a second site in a hotel parking lot on Coventry Road, 5km east of the downtown area.

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Seven dead and 17 missing as Spanish fishing boat sinks off Canada

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Three crew rescued from life raft as international mission combs icy seas for survivors

At least seven people have died and 14 are missing after a Spanish fishing boat sank in bitterly cold seas off the north-east coast of Canada early on Tuesday morning.

Spain’s maritime rescue service said an international operation was under way to locate the crew of the Villa de Pitanxo, a boat from the north-western Galicia region that went down 280 miles (450km) off the Newfoundland coast.

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Canada: Justin Trudeau invokes emergency powers amid trucker blockades – video

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The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced the government would invoke the Emergencies Act as the country goes into a third week of 'illegal and dangerous' blockades.

 'We are not preventing the right of people to protest legally,' said Trudeau, adding that the military would not be deployed as part of the measures


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Trudeau invokes rare emergency powers in attempt to quell protests

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Emergencies Act gives government broad powers for 30 days, but prime minister is not expected to call in the military

The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has invoked legislation that gives his government sweeping powers to fight a growing number of “illegal and dangerous” blockades across the country.

The first prime minister to invoke the Emergencies Act, Trudeau said the measures would be time-limited and only apply to specific geographic regions. “We are not preventing the right of people to protest legally,” he said, adding that the military would not be deployed. “The act is to be used sparingly and as a last resort.”

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Foreign money funding ‘extremism’ in Canada, says hacker

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Exclusive: leak shows more than half of donations to convoy protest through GiveSendGo came from US

A hacker who leaked the names and locations of more than 90,000 people who donated money to the Canadian trucker convoy protest has said it exposed how money from abroad had funded “extremism” in the country.

In an exclusive interview, the hacker told the Guardian that Canada was “not safe from foreign political manipulation”. “You see a huge amount of money that isn’t even coming from Canada – that’s plain as day,” said the hacker, who belongs to the hacktivist group Anonymous.

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Second of five whales brought from Canada to US aquarium dies

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Female was receiving intensive care for multiple health issues but died early Friday morning, and a male beluga died in August

The second of five whales brought from Canada to Connecticut’s Mystic aquarium last year for research purposes has died.

The aquarium announced on its website that the female had been receiving intensive care for the past several months for multiple health issues but died early Friday morning. A necropsy was to be performed to determine the cause of death.

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Key US-Canada border bridge to reopen after police clear blockade

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Ambassador bridge linking Detroit and city of Windsor to reopen on Sunday, official says, as numbers swelled to about 4,000 demonstrators

Canadian police have cleared protesters from the Ambassador bridge linking the country to the United States, ending a six-day blockade and allowing North America’s busiest trade route to reopen.

Police moved in to clear and arrest the remaining protesters on the border bridge early on Sunday, trying to end one of the main demonstrations that have broken out across Canada against Covid-19 vaccine mandates and other restrictions to bring the pandemic under control.

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Former Nicaragua guerrilla who helped free Daniel Ortega dies in jail

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Hugo Torres, 73, was among 46 opposition figures jailed by Ortega last year to clear way for his re-election

A former Sandinista guerrilla who once led a raid that helped free Daniel Ortega from prison has died, eight months after the now-president jailed him and dozens of other Nicaraguan opposition leaders.

Government prosecutors said Hugo Torres, 73, died at a hospital in Managua, the capital, “of illnesses he had”. It was unclear if his death was hastened by conditions in prison, according to a statement by government prosecutors.

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The rumba radio station, the DJ … and 110,000 albums looking for a noisy new home

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The unique Gladys Palmera archive may cross the Atlantic from Madrid to secure a permanent base

On a hillside an hour from Madrid, not far from the sepulchral splendour of the Escorial monastery, with its royal tombs, imperial maps and sacred relics, lies another, rather less austere, treasure house.

The Gladys Palmera collection, kept in a sprawling, tropical-hued complex crammed with 1950s Mexican film posters and prowled by the odd decorative monkey and jaguar, is the largest private archive of Latin American music in the world.

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Freedom convoys: legitimate Covid protest or vehicle for darker beliefs?

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The blockade of Ottawa has sparked copycat action around the globe, and such disparate demonstrations of grievance may prove hard to shut down

It only took six dozen trucks, and a few hundred protesters to bring Canada’s capital to a standstill and close a critical border crossing with the US, throttling the car industry that straddles the line between both countries and relies on a constant flow of trade.

On Saturday, Canadian authorities finally began taking action to clear the Ambassador Bridge into the US, the busiest land crossing in North America, which had been blockaded by just over a dozen trucks and smaller vehicles, and a crowd a few hundred strong.

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US-Canada border standoff dissolves peacefully as police move in

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Many demonstrators drove away from Ambassador Bridge as scores of police approached shortly before dawn

A tense standoff at a US-Canadian border crossing crucial to both countries’ economies appeared to be dissolving peacefully Saturday as Canadian police moved in to disperse the nearly weeklong blockade and demonstrators began leaving without resistance.

Many demonstrators drove away from the Ambassador Bridge spanning the river between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, as scores of police approached shortly after dawn.

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Protesters defy order to clear bridge connecting Canada and US

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Hours after the injunction order to end the blockade, protesters opposing pandemic restrictions stayed at the bridge entrance

Protesters opposing pandemic restrictions were still occupying a vital Canada-US trade corridor hours after an injunction order to end the blockade that has disrupted North America’s auto industry took effect.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau has promised president Joe Biden quick action to end the crisis and earlier on Friday a Canadian judge ordered an end to the four-daylong blockade of the Ambassador Bridge, North America’s busiest land border crossing.

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Ontario declares state of emergency, threatening fines and jail time to end blockade

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Court grants an injunction to remove protesters from the bridge between Windsor and Detroit

The province of Ontario has invoked a state of emergency and says it will use the threat of hefty fines, jail time and vehicle licence seizures to end a blockade that has crippled trade between Canada and the United States.

Border traffic at the Ambassador Bridge, which links Windsor to Detroit, has been shut down since Monday as part of a nationwide protest against pandemic restrictions, snarling nearly C$300m (US$235m) of trade each day.

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US urges Canada to end trucker border blockade as mayor says protesters could be removed by force

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Authorities work on alternative travel routes as protest hits auto production and injunction sought to remove Ambassador Bridge demonstrators

The US government has urged Canada to use federal powers to ease the growing economic disruption caused by the blockade of the vital Ambassador Bridge by protesters opposed to coronavirus mandates.

The closure of North America’s busiest international land border crossing, a vital supply route for Detroit’s carmakers, has halted some auto output and left officials scrambling to limit economic damage.

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Havana syndrome has ‘dramatically hurt’ morale, US diplomats say

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American Foreign Service Association chief Eric Rubin says syndrome, which remains a mystery, has affected recruitment

The spread of Havana syndrome has “dramatically hurt” morale in the US diplomatic corps and affected recruitment, according to the head of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA).

Eric Rubin, whose association represents nearly 17,000 current and former diplomats and foreign aid workers, said it was getting harder to find young people to work abroad, because of concerns about Havana syndrome – and about whether the government would look after them if they got sick.

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‘Loophole’ allowing for deforestation on soya farms in Brazil’s Amazon

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Satellite data shows rainforest cleared for cattle and maize on farms growing soya, undermining claims crop is deforestation-free

More than 400 sq miles (1,000 sq km) of Amazon rainforest has been felled to expand farms growing soya in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso in a 10-year period, despite an agreement to protect it, according to a new investigation.

In 2006, the landmark Amazon soy moratorium was introduced banning the sale of soya grown on land deforested after 2008. From 2004 to 2012, the clearing of trees in the Amazon fell by 84%.

But in recent years deforestation has climbed steeply, reaching a 15-year high last year – encouraged, campaigners say, by President Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-conservationist rhetoric and policies.

With the moratorium applying only to soya, farmers have been able to sell the crop as deforestation-free, while still clearing land for cattle, maize or other commodities.

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