Celebratory wakes, lavish funerals, fanfare bands and dramatic displays are just some of Haiti’s death rites, which, like its weddings, are often extravagant social events despite the country’s poverty
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A nurse’s journey from treating Covid in Brazil to death in the US desert
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.’”
Continue reading...Chinese military condemns US and Canada over warships in Taiwan Strait
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.
Continue reading...Kidnap of foreign missionaries confirms the power held by gangs in Haiti
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.
Continue reading...Group of 17 missionaries and family members kidnapped in Haiti
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.
Continue reading...‘Brutal aggression’: Venezuela halts talks with opposition after envoy extradited to US
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.
Continue reading...A herd of ‘cocaine hippos’ from Pablo Escobar’s private zoo are being sterilized
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.
Continue reading...Canada army commander pick is latest to be accused of sexual misconduct
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.
Continue reading...Azor review – eerie conspiracy thriller about the complacency of the super-rich
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.
Continue reading...President of Brazil says it ‘makes no sense’ for him to be vaccinated
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”.
Continue reading...Don’t drink from tap, Canadian city says, as gasoline suspected in water supply
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.
Continue reading...Chile president Piñera faces impeachment after Pandora papers leak
Opposition politicians launch proceedings against Sebastián Piñera over possible irregularities in mining company sale
Opposition politicians have launched impeachment proceedings against Chile’s president, Sebastián Piñera, over possible irregularities in the sale of a mining company, after new details about the deal were revealed in the Pandora papers.
Lawmakers cited an “ethical duty” to hold the president accountable for the alleged irregularities in his involvement in the controversial Dominga project.
Continue reading...Killing of two boys for alleged shoplifting shocks Colombia
Pair were taken away by armed men on motorbikes and later found shot dead on edge of town
The murder of two boys for allegedly shoplifting in Colombia has evoked memories of some of the country’s darkest days of armed conflict.
The pair, who were 12 and 18, were allegedly trying to rob a clothing store in Tibú, a small town near the Venezuelan border, last Friday when they were apprehended by bystanders who taped their hands together, according to witnesses quoted by local media.
Continue reading...‘Who wouldn’t want out?’: migrants deported to Haiti face challenge of survival
Many returned to a country they had not seen for years, and many are already plotting another escape as gang violence has left Haiti on the brink of civil war
When Reynold Joseph was deported from the US back to Haiti after five years in South America, he was unprepared for just how bad things had become in his homeland.
Outside a ramshackle guesthouse near downtown Port-au-Prince, where he and a dozen other deportees are staying, some goats were grazing on burning piles of rubbish, while drivers honked and cursed in a queue for petrol that snaked round the block. Each night, Joseph’s three-year-old son stirs in the sweltering heat, and bursts of gunfire ring out in the distance.
Continue reading...Local Covid vaccines fill gap as UN Covax scheme misses target
India, Egypt and Cuba among first states to develop and make their own vaccines as Covax falls behind
Developing countries are increasingly turning to homegrown Covid vaccinations as the UN-backed Covax programme falls behind.
While western countries roll out booster jabs to their own populations, Covax, which was set up by UN agencies, governments and donors to ensure fair access to Covid-19 vaccines for low- and middle-income countries, has said it will miss its target to distribute 2bn doses globally by the end of this year.
Continue reading...Mexico City to replace Columbus statue with pre-Hispanic sculpture of woman
The statue is a replica of a mysterious carving of an Indigenous figure unearthed in January known as the Young Woman of Amajac
A replica of a mysterious pre-Hispanic sculpture of an Indigenous woman has been chosen to replace a statue of Christopher Columbus on Mexico City’s most prominent boulevard.
The statue was unearthed in January in the Huasteca region, near Mexico’s Gulf coast. It’s known as the Young Woman of Amajac, after the village where she was found buried in a field. But nobody really knows who the stone sculpture was supposed to depict.
Continue reading...The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmāo review – sisters fight the pain of patriarchy
This gorgeous and moving melodrama finds two women in 1950s Rio under suffocating family expectations – and sees what happens when they are defied
‘What do you want from life?” a husband drunkenly yells at his wife in Karim Aïnouz’s gorgeous and very moving melodrama set in 1950s Rio de Janeiro. The man’s wife is Euridice (Julia Stockler) and what she wants is to be a classical pianist. Her husband is angry and hurt: why can’t she just be happy in the kitchen? Adapted from a novel by Martha Batalha, this is the story of Euridice and her sister Guida (Carol Duarte): their inner conflicts and rebellion against the suffocating patriarchy of home.
The film beings a few years earlier: Euridice is 18 and applying to study music in Vienna. Her heart is broken when boy-mad Guida runs away with a no-good sailor to Greece, promising to write when she is married. Predictably, she returns with a baby bump and no wedding ring. There’s an appalling homecoming scene when their dad, a baker, violently shoves Guida out of the house; she’s nine months pregnant at the time (and the film never lets us forget that violence can be done to these women at any time of a man’s choosing). Unforgivably, Guida’s dad says that Euridice has left Rio and is living in Vienna. The truth is she’s up the road, married to an insightless oaf.
Continue reading...Canada drops charges against man who claimed to be IS executioner
Shehroze Chaudhry, who featured in New York Times podcast, had been charged under terrorism hoax laws
Canadian prosecutors have dropped charges against a man who claimed to be an Islamic State executioner after he admitted fabricating his tales of violence.
In September 2020, Shehroze Chaudhry was charged under Canada’s rarely used terrorism hoax laws, which carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Prosecutors withdrew those charges on Friday, after Chaudhry admitted that his account of travelling to Syria was fictitious. His trial was due to begin in February.
Continue reading...Bolsonaro blocks free tampons and pads for disadvantaged women in Brazil
Campaigners say president’s veto is ‘absurd and inhumane’ in country where period poverty keeps one in four girls out of school
President Jair Bolsonaro’s decision to block a plan to distribute free sanitary pads and tampons to disadvantaged girls and women has been met with outrage in Brazil, where period poverty is estimated to keep one in four girls out of school.
Bolsonaro vetoed part of a bill that would have given sanitary products at no charge to groups including homeless people, prisoners and teenage girls at state schools. It was expected to benefit 5.6 million women and was part of a bigger package of laws to promote menstrual health, which has been approved by legislators.
Continue reading...Agony of Ecuador’s brutal prison massacre endures for bereaved relatives
At least 119 inmates died in a Guayaquil jail after local gangs’ links with Mexican cartels brought a new level of horror
It was in mid-morning when María Elena Villacís got a WhatsApp message from her brother Darwín, who was jailed in the Litoral penitentiary, a notorious prison in the coastal Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil.
“They’re starting a war in [Wing] 5,” it read. “Call the law, tell them to get into [Wing] 5.”
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