Category Archives: Americas

‘You shouldn’t work if your kidneys are failing – but people can’t afford not to’

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Global heating is having a deadly impact on Nicaragua’s sugar cane workers, who toil in temperatures of up to 45C

At the Sacuanjoche clinic in Chinandega, the largest city in Nicaragua’s sugar cane-growing region, nephrologist Nelson Garcia does the rounds of his patients. Many are suffering from chronic kidney disease (CKD); most fell ill while working long hours under the beating sun in the nearby sugar cane fields, and now have damaged and failing kidneys.

“People arrive with a host of symptoms here; some are really nauseous, or vomiting, or have severe diarrhoea,” Garcia says, adding that although unsure exactly how many people he has treated for heat stress and related kidney diseases this year, he knows it is a lot. “Others are physically weakened, tired, or have nasty muscular cramps, while others complain about having no appetite or libido – there really are so many symptoms.”

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Solar storm confirms Vikings settled in North America exactly 1,000 years ago

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Analysis of wood from timber-framed buildings in Newfoundland shows Norse-built settlement 471 years before Columbus

Long before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, eight timber-framed buildings covered in sod stood on a terrace above a peat bog and stream at the northern tip of Canada’s island of Newfoundland, evidence that the Vikings had reached the New World first.

But precisely when the Vikings journeyed to establish the L’Anse aux Meadows settlement had remained unclear – until now.

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Bolsonaro should be charged with crimes against humanity, Covid inquiry finds

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Brazilian president savaged for ‘macabre’ and ‘slovenly’ response to pandemic and ‘deliberate neglect’ of indigenous people

Jair Bolsonaro should be charged with crimes against humanity and jailed for his “macabre” reaction to a Covid outbreak that has killed more than 600,000 Brazilians, including a disproportionate number of indigenous citizens, a congressional inquiry has found.

Two of the most dramatic accusations against the Brazilian president – murder and genocide of the country’s indigenous populations – were removed from a previous draft of the report on Tuesday night after talks between opposition senators serving on the inquiry.

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‘Haitians are kidnapped every day’: missionary abductions shed light on growing crisis

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Kidnappings of 16 Americans and a Canadian in Port-au-Prince come as hundreds of local residents face similar targeting, with at least 628 abductions so far this year

Firel Joseph was driving through Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, one evening this year when he noticed a white Toyota Land Cruiser with official license plates trailing close to his rear bumper. Assuming the other driver wanted to overtake him, the 44-year-old development worker gave way. Then things took a hellish turn.

The car skidded to a halt in front of Joseph, while another vehicle appeared behind, boxing him in. Six men, wearing flak jackets and armed with rifles, piled out of the Land Cruiser, moving with military discipline.

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Charge Bolsonaro with murder over Covid toll, draft Brazil senate report says

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Draft text says neglect, incompetence and opposition to science fueled ‘stratospheric’ death toll

The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, should face murder charges for his role in the country’s “stratospheric” coronavirus death toll, a draft report from a senate inquiry into Brazil’s Covid crisis has recommended.

The 1,078-page document, published by Brazilian media on Tuesday afternoon, is not due to be voted on by the commission until next week and could yet be modified by senators.

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Haitian gang demands $17m ransom for kidnapped missionaries and children

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Authorities are negotiating for their release but reluctant to pay money that will be used for ‘more guns and more munitions’

A Haitian gang that kidnapped a group of American and Canadian missionaries has demanded a $17m ransom for their release, according to the country’s justice minister.

Liszt Quitel told the Wall Street Journal the FBI and Haitian police were in contact with the kidnappers from the 400 Mawozo gang, who seized the missionaries at the weekend outside the capital, Port-au-Prince.

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Colombia found responsible for 2000 kidnap and torture of journalist

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Inter-American court of human rights rules Colombia was ‘internationally responsible’ for violation of Jineth Bedoya’s rights

The Colombian state has been found responsible for the kidnap, torture and rape of a prominent journalist who was abducted while reporting on her country’s civil war, in a landmark ruling from the inter-American court of human rights.

Jineth Bedoya, who has been pursuing justice for over 21 years and now campaigns against sexual violence, was recognised by the court on Monday as having suffered “grave verbal, physical and sexual aggressions” for which the state was responsible. Before now, only three of her attackers had faced justice, receiving sentences in Colombian courts in 2019.

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Haitian prime minister forced to flee official ceremony after armed gangs appear

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The incident highlights the deteriorating security conditions in Haiti’s capital

The deteriorating security situation in Haiti was starkly underlined on Sunday when the country’s prime minister and his security detail were forced to flee an official commemoration in the capital by heavily armed gang members who then paraded in the delegation’s place.

A day after a dozen US missionaries and their children were kidnapped in a brazen attack to the east of the capital Port-au-Prince, video circulating on social media and reports in the Haitian media showed the country’s most notorious crime boss, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, officiating at the ceremony to commemorate the assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of Haiti’s revolutionary founding fathers.

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A nurse’s journey from treating Covid in Brazil to death in the US desert

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Lenilda dos Santos left her home in rural Amazonia, part of a South American exodus driven by a coronavirus-era depression

As coronavirus tore through the Valley of Paradise, a farm-flanked backwater in the Brazilian Amazon, Lenilda dos Santos, a nurse technician, stood on the frontline clutching hands most feared to touch.

“She was a warrior during the pandemic,” said Lucineide Oliveira, a friend and colleague at the town’s small, understaffed hospital. “She’d say: ‘If we have to die, we’ll die. But we must fight.’”

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Chinese military condemns US and Canada over warships in Taiwan Strait

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Countries ‘colluded to provoke and stir up trouble’ in region that China claims as its territory

The Chinese military has condemned the United States and Canada for each sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait last week, saying they were threatening peace and stability in the region.

China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory, and has mounted repeated air force missions into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) over the past year, provoking anger in Taipei.

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Kidnap of foreign missionaries confirms the power held by gangs in Haiti

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Analysis: about half the capital, Port-au-Prince, is controlled by criminals, many of whom do dirty jobs for business and politicians

The kidnapping of 17 foreign missionaries in Haiti marks the latest escalation in a wave of criminality in the impoverished and politically fragile Caribbean state, which has long seen waves of gang-related crime coincide with heightened political turmoil.

According to some estimates, Haiti’s powerful gangs, numbering about 90 criminal organisations in total, control territory amounting to half of the sprawling capital of Port-au-Prince and cost the country over $4bn a year.

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Group of 17 missionaries and family members kidnapped in Haiti

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Five children were among group of 16 US citizens and one Canadian abducted by gang members after orphanage visit

A group of 17 missionaries, including five children, have been kidnapped by an armed criminal gang in Haiti.

The group – 16 Americans and one Canadian citizen – were on their way home from building an orphanage, according to a statement from the Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries, which supports 9,000 children in Haitian schools and sent out a message asking supporters to pray for its members.

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‘Brutal aggression’: Venezuela halts talks with opposition after envoy extradited to US

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Alex Saab, an ally of president Nicolás Maduro, was extradited to face money laundering charges after a 16-month legal battle

Venezuela’s government is halting negotiations with its opponents in retaliation for the extradition to the US of a close ally of president Nicolás Maduro, who prosecutors believe could be the most significant witness ever about corruption in the South American country.

Jorge Rodríguez, who has been heading the government’s delegation, said his team wouldn’t travel to Mexico City for the next scheduled round of negotiations.

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A herd of ‘cocaine hippos’ from Pablo Escobar’s private zoo are being sterilized

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The 80-strong bloat, originally part of the Colombian drug lord’s estate, present an environmental concern as an invasive species

A group of rampant hippopotamuses, introduced by the late Colombia drug lord Pablo Escobar to his private zoo, are being sterilized by the country’s wildlife services, after mounting concern that the 80-strong herd presented a potential environmental disaster as an invasive species.

The so-called “cocaine hippos”, whose number has more than doubled since 2012, were sterilized after worries have mounted over their environmental impact, including a threat to human safety.

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Canada army commander pick is latest to be accused of sexual misconduct

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Trevor Cadieu is the latest senior military officer to be embroiled in a misconduct investigation

The Canadian military has delayed the appointment of its next army commander after allegations of sexual misconduct were made against the man chosen for the role – the latest in a string of senior officers to be investigated for misconduct.

Lt Gen Trevor Cadieu was to be sworn in as the head of Canada’s army at a ceremony in early September. But that event was cancelled after the military learned of “historical allegations” against Cadieu.

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Azor review – eerie conspiracy thriller about the complacency of the super-rich

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Andreas Fontana’s debut feature is an unnervingly subtle drama about a Swiss private banker visiting clients in Argentina during the period of the military junta and ‘disappearances’

Pure evil is all around in this unnervingly subtle, sophisticated movie; an eerie oppression in the air. Andreas Fontana is a Swiss director making his feature debut with this conspiracy drama-thriller, shot with a kind of desiccated blankness, about the occult world of super-wealth and things not to be talked about. The title is a Swiss banker’s code-word in conversation for “Be silent”.

It is set in 1980 in Argentina, at the time of the junta’s dirty war against leftists and dissidents, and you could set it alongside recent movies including Benjamín Naishtat’s Rojo (2018) and Francisco Márquez’s A Common Crime (2020), which intuited the almost supernatural fear among those left behind when people they knew had vanished and joined los desaparecidos, the disappeared ones. But Azor gives a queasy new perspective on the horror of those times, and there is even a nauseous echo of the Swiss banks’ attitude to their German neighbours in the second world war.

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President of Brazil says it ‘makes no sense’ for him to be vaccinated

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Jair Bolsonaro’s comments called ‘stupid and selfish’ in country where 600,000 people have died of Covid

More than 600,000 of his citizens have lost their lives to a Covid-19 outbreak he once pooh-poohed as a “little flu”, but Brazil’s science-denying president, Jair Bolsonaro, has announced he will decline to be vaccinated, saying “it makes no sense” for him to do so.

“With regard to the vaccine, I’ve decided not to have it any more,” the 66-year-old populist told a right-wing radio station on Tuesday. “I’ve been looking at new studies … Why would I get vaccinated?”. He said his antibody levels were already “sky high” because of a past infection. “It would be the same as betting 10 reais (£1.30) on the lottery to win two. It makes no sense.” Bolsonaro said he was not anti-vaccination, but did oppose what he called the vaccine-buying “frenzy”.

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Don’t drink from tap, Canadian city says, as gasoline suspected in water supply

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State of emergency in Iqaluit, capital of Nunavut territory, as officials say they are testing water for petroleum hydrocarbons

Officials in Canada’s northernmost capital have declared a local state of emergency after finding possible evidence of gasoline in the city’s tap water.

Residents of Iqaluit, the capital of the Arctic territory of Nunavut, have been told not to drink, boil or cook with the city’s water.

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