Civil lawsuit was filed against Iran and other officials the family members believe were to blame for the incident
A court in Ontario, Canada, has awarded C$107m ($83.94m), plus interest, to the families of six people who died when the Iranian Revolutionary Guards downed a Ukraine International Airlines plane near Tehran two years ago.
Iran shot down the airliner in January 2020. All 176 people on board were killed, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.
Continue reading...Leader admitted with intestinal blockage but is in stable condition, hospital says
The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been taken to hospital with an intestinal blockage but is in a stable condition, according to the hospital.
Bolsonaro said in a Twitter post that his doctors were evaluating potential surgery on his intestine, adding that he was using a nasogastric tube.
Continue reading...Brigitte Baptiste has a high profile as a transgender Colombian woman and an ecologist – in a country where both are targeted
When Brigitte Baptiste walks on to the 10th floor of Bogotá’s Ean University at 9.45am in a plunging dress, knee-high cheetah-print boots and a silvery wig, the office comes to life. She examines some flowers sent by the Colombian radio station Caracol to thank her for taking part in a forum, her co-worker compliments her on her lipstick, and she settles in for a day of back-to-back meetings, followed by a private virtual conversation with the UN secretary general, António Guterres. Later that evening, she flies to Cartagena for a conference on natural gas.
The 58-year-old ecologist is one of Colombia’s foremost environmental experts, and one of its most visible transgender people, challenging scientific and social conventions alike. An ecology professor at the Jesuit-run Javeriana University for 20 years, she has written 15 books, countless newspaper columns, and won international prizes for her work. Most recently, she was appointed chancellor of Ean University, a business school, as part of its push for greater sustainability.
Continue reading...In one of the world’s most dangerous regions for environmental and human rights activists, La Siguata offers a safe space for women suffering trauma as a result of their work
A milky-white and sky-blue stone hangs from a red string around Ethels Correa’s neck, and every so often she rubs it between her fingers.
“When I feel anger, I grab this stone and I begin to relax, because they taught me how to breathe, to relax the body and to relax the mind,” she says. “I carry it with me all the time.”
Continue reading...Until 1984, the prison on the island of Gorgona off Colombia’s Pacific coast was a place where political prisoners and dangerous criminals served their sentences. Now it is a national natural park of coral reefs, dense jungle and exuberant fauna
Continue reading...Sharing soup joumou on 1 January represents what Haitians bring to the world – but remembering that inequality prevails is arguably more important
Whispers. Curfews. Never-ending military parades and shows of arms. Opponents’ bodies exposed for children to see as some sort of macabre art. And always, that nasal voice of “Papa Doc”, François Duvalier, chanting on all radio stations. Those were the days of my childhood under a dictator in Haiti.
But on 1 January, Independence Day, there were three things that made a difference.
Continue reading...Nicaragua trumpets ‘ideological affinity’ with Beijing and seizes Taipei’s former embassy and diplomatic offices
China has opened an embassy in Nicaragua for the first time since 1990, less than a month after the central American country cut ties with Taiwan.
The Nicaraguan foreign minister, Denis Moncada, said there was an “ideological affinity” between the two countries and thanked China for donating 1m doses of the Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine.
Continue reading...Canadian province’s government says measure will be required if staffing levels become too low during Covid surge
Quebec healthcare workers exposed to Covid-19 may have to go to work sooner than expected if staffing levels in the Canadian province’s facilities reach a critical point.
Quebec’s health minister, Christian Dubé, made the announcement earlier this week, explaining that in a worst-case scenario the province would have no choice but to insist that isolating employees return to work.
Continue reading...Mahé Elipe captures the visceral anger as International Women’s Day protests turned into a violent clash with police
On 8 March 2021, women across the world took part in protests to mark International Women’s Day. In Mexico, there is an added poignancy to the annual event, as at least 10 women are murdered in the country each day; in 2021 the date was was marred by additional violence.
In the runup to the day fences were erected around the national palace in Mexico City’s main square, where thousands of women were due to gather.
Continue reading...Declared extinct in the wild in 2003, species has been reintroduced to its native river after being bred in Chester
A “charismatic little fish” declared extinct in the wild has been reintroduced to its native Mexico after being bred in an aquarium at Chester zoo.
The tequila fish (Zoogoneticus tequila), which grows to no bigger than 70mm long, disappeared from the wild in 2003 owing to the introduction of invasive, exotic fish species and water pollution.
Continue reading...Coastal communities in Mexico, Bangladesh and Somalia are struggling to adapt to the climate crisis. Many people have already lost livelihoods and homes to rising waters
Continue reading...In a country dominated by gangs, photographer Rodrigo Abd’s images show both armed gangsters and the residents they terrorise
The two images are as stark as what they represent: the cause and effect of Haiti’s increasing woes. In one, a masked and armed gangster keeps lookout on a Port-au-Prince rooftop, just a few blocks from the presidential palace. In the other, a family recently displaced by gang violence takes shelter in a school that now houses dozens of families, a stone’s throw from their homes.
“Port-au-Prince is almost entirely controlled by gangs, and we wanted to show the efforts of people that are running businesses to survive,” says Rodrigo Abd, 45, an Argentinian staff photographer with the Associated Press who took the images. “But I was also trying to show another side to Haiti, to avoid the stereotypes that we always repeat, to show the violent without the violence, or the poor without the poverty.”
Continue reading...This year’s appeal has already raised over £500,000. We report on an organisation supporting Indigenous communities against wealthy vested interests
José Méndez walked up the mountain behind his rural Ch’orti’ Mayan community of Corozal in eastern Guatemala. He pointed towards an abandoned home of the plantation owner who used to run this hillside. “Right outside that house they killed our three compañeros, the exact same day the county government recognised us as an Indigenous community with rights to the land.”
Further up the mountain, in the mist of corn and coffee fields, Méndez shows off a large water reservoir that irrigates the community’s crops as well as small household gardens of nutritious and medicinal herbs. “This is what we sacrificed for. To recover our land and our water to have a chance to survive here.”
Continue reading...Two dozen conspirators forced workers to pay fees for travel and housing while forcing them to work for little to no pay
In June, a farm worker from Mexico, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, was transported through a trafficking network from Monterey to work on farms in Georgia.
They paid the traffickers 20,000 pesos, about $950, loaned from their mother, taking frequent trips back and forth to Monterey, before being told it was safe to leave. Then they were finally transported across the border.
Continue reading...In Peru’s remote villages, farmers have used diverse crops to survive unpredictable weather for millennia. Now they are using this knowledge to adapt to the climate crisis
In a pastoral scene that has changed little in centuries, farmers wearing red woollen ponchos gather on a December morning in a semicircle to drink chicha, made from fermented maize, and mutter an invocation to Pachamama – Mother Earth – before sprinkling the dregs on the Andean soil.
Singing in Quechua, the language spread along the vast length of the Andes by the Incas, they hill the soil around plants in the numerous small plots terraced into a patchwork up and down the Peruvian mountainside.
Continue reading...From a Somali love story to a deep dive into Congolese rumba, Guardian writers pick their favourite recent world cinema releases
The Great Indian Kitchen
Continue reading...The US once helped destroy Chilean democracy. Now, a constitutional reform movement in Chile could teach the US how to fix its own
Chile always gave the lie to the cold war claim that the United States stood for democracy. When its voters in 1970 showed the temerity (“irresponsibility”, Henry Kissinger called it) to elect socialist Salvador Allende as president, Washington helped orchestrate the coup that toppled him, and backed the resulting dictatorship.
It seems those “irresponsible” Chilean voters are at it again – on Sunday, they elected leftist Gabriel Boric as president by a 12-point margin, on the back of a campaign for a new constitution. But if Chilean democracy seems on the road to recovery from its Washington-backed disfiguration, prospects for democracy in the United States look rather bleak.
Tony Karon is a South African-born journalist and former anti-apartheid activist. He is currently the Managing Editor of AJ+
Continue reading...US conservatives’ campaign to undermine the landmark ruling threatens progress in reproductive freedom in Latin America
As the US supreme court prepares to decide a case that could deny women the right to abortion in much of the US, Latin American activists like me are holding our collective breaths.
The continent has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, in spite of recent progressive reforms in the past decade in countries including Uruguay and Argentina.
Continue reading...Boric envisions a greener, fairer and more inclusive country, reflecting the generational shift underway in Chile
Chile’s future as a greener, fairer country, depends on the success of efforts to rewrite the country’s dictatorship-era constitution, president-elect Gabriel Boric said on Tuesday.
After a meeting with the delegates elected last year to rewrite the 1980 constitution which enshrined the ideological legacy of General Augusto Pinochet, Boric called for Chileans to unite behind the project.
Continue reading...The indigenous activist was opposing the construction of a dam being constructed by Roberto David Castillo’s company
When Roberto David Castillo graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point, the Honduran cadet was confident he’d leave behind a legacy.
“He will be remembered by all as being a fearless leader committed to God, his family and serving others,” read the caption under his yearbook portrait.
Continue reading...