Category Archives: Americas

Nicaragua police arrest six opposition leaders under sweeping ‘treason’ laws

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Daniel Ortega’s continuing crackdown targets farmer activists, student leader and potential presidential rival

Nicaraguan police have arrested a half dozen more opposition figures, including the sixth presidential hopeful to have been detained in a crackdown that started last month.

Among those arrested on Monday was Lesther Alemán, a former student leader who returned to Nicaragua after exile but stayed in safe houses. Those detained also included the presidential contender Medardo Mairena and Max Jerez, another student leader.

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‘Historic’ step as Trudeau appoints Canada’s first Indigenous governor general

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Mary Simon takes post at time of strained relations between Canada and First Nations after discoveries of unmarked graves

Canada will have its first ever Indigenous governor general after prime minister Justin Trudeau appointed Inuk leader Mary Simon as the Queen’s representative in Canada.

Describing the move as a “historic” step, Trudeau announced Simon’s appointment on Tuesday after coming under mounting pressure to choose a new viceregal. His previous selection resigned after allegations of bullying in January.

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‘I didn’t eat for days’: hunger stalks Venezuelan refugees

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Colombian health workers struggling to cope as malnutrition and dirty water ravage new arrivals in Maicao’s swelling shanty towns

A seemingly endless lake of cardboard and tin shacks surrounds the perimeter of a former airport runway in Colombia’s desert-like city of Maicao. Known locally as La Pista, the area is home to more than 2,000 families, and is one of 44 informal settlements to have emerged around the city in the past two years.

The old airport has become a landing strip for desperate migrants and bi-national indigenous Wayuu people fleeing the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the basic essentials of life are hard to come by.

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Berta Cáceres assassination: ex-head of dam company found guilty

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Roberto David Castillo, former Honduran army intelligence officer, found to be co-collaborator in ordering murder

A US-trained former Honduran army intelligence officer who was the president of an internationally-financed hydroelectric company has been found guilty over the assassination of the indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres.

Caceres, winner of the Goldman prize for environmental defenders, was shot dead two days before her 45th birthday by hired hitmen on 2 March 2016 after years of threats linked to her opposition of the 22-megawatt Agua Zarca dam.

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Tropical Storm Elsa to make landfall in Cuba after 180,000 evacuated

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Florida governor declares state of emergency in 15 counties, including site of collapsed condo

Tropical Storm Elsa was expected to make landfall in Cuba on Monday afternoon, after 180,000 people were evacuated from southern regions amid fears of heavy flooding.

Elsa is expected to bring tropical storm conditions to Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including Miami-Dade county, where the partially-collapsed Champlain Towers condominium was demolished with explosives on Sunday night.

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Corruption allegations increase pressure on Bolsonaro

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Reports claim Brazilian president, already accused of mishandling Covid, was involved in embezzlement scheme

The Brazilian president has come under further pressure after being personally implicated in an alleged corruption racket involving the supposed misappropriation of his workforce’s wages.

Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist who admires Donald Trump, took office in January 2019 vowing to “forever free the fatherland from the yoke of corruption”.

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‘Eye of fire’ after underwater gas leak in Gulf of Mexico – video

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An underwater gas leak caused a whirling vortex of fire to spew out of the ocean surface west of Mexico's Yucatán peninsula on 3 July. The fire began in an underwater pipeline connected to a platform owned by the state oil company Pemex. The fire took more than five hours to put out and no injuries were reported

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Malawi Pride and press freedoms in Palestine: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia

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Cuba evacuates 70,000 as Tropical Storm Elsa threatens heavy flooding

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  • Storm leaves three dead after battering Caribbean
  • State of emergency declared in Florida

Cuba evacuated 70,000 people in its southern region on Sunday, amid fears that Tropical Storm Elsa could unleash heavy flooding after battering several Caribbean islands and killing at least three people.

Related: Miami condo collapse: death toll at 24 as search pauses for demolition

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Cheek to cheek: keeping the tango alive during Covid in Buenos Aires | photo essay

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The dance that depends on what Covid prevents – close physical intimacy – is not only a cultural passion but also now a threatened source of income for many workers. Photographer Anita Pouchard Serra, with support from the National Geographic Society, has been documenting how dancers are surviving the crisis

In a pretty little plaza next to a railway track, there is proof that not even a pandemic can keep us apart.

Five couples lean in, cheek to cheek, marking steps that mirror the circuitous route of life. If there is a map, it rises out of a portable speaker, and the melancholic poetry of a tango.

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Burned churches stir deep Indigenous ambivalence over faith of forefathers

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After hundreds of unmarked graves were found at Canada’s former Catholic-run residential schools, churches in First Nations territories have been destroyed by suspected arson

For more than a century, the clapboard church set amid rolling hills in western Canada has been a spiritual home to the Upper Similkameen Indian Band.

To build St Anne’s, residents of Chuchuwayha Indian Reserve #2 travelled 40 miles to the closest town, hauling lumber back to their community by horse and wagon.

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Three people dead as Tropical Storm Elsa nears Cuba

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Storm kills one person in St Lucia and a 15-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman in the Dominican Republic

Cuba prepared to evacuate people along the island’s southern region on Sunday amid fears that Tropical Storm Elsa could unleash heavy flooding after battering several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people.

The government on Sunday opened shelters and moved to protect sugarcane and cocoa crops ahead of the storm, whose next target was Florida, where governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 15 counties, including in Miami-Dade County where the high-rise condominium building collapsed last week.

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Private plane crash in Haiti kills all six on board, including two Americans

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Six people on board a private plane were killed when the aircraft crashed in Haiti, the identities of the other four people are not known

All six people on board a private plane, including two American missionaries, were killed when the aircraft crashed in Haiti, southwest of capital Port-au-Prince, according to media reports and a missionary group.

The plane went down on Friday evening en route from an airport in Port-au-Prince to the southern coastal city of Jacmel, typically a short flight, reported the Miami Herald, citing a statement by the National Civil Aviation Office (NCAO). Reuters could not independently confirm the report.

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Brazilians take to streets to demand removal of Jair Bolsonaro

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Calls for president’s impeachment grow amid claims government sought to profit from Covid jabs

Huge crowds of protesters have returned to the streets of Brazil’s biggest cities to demand the removal of a president they blame for more than half a million coronavirus deaths.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators hit the streets of Rio de Janeiro on Saturday morning as calls for Jair Bolsonaro’s impeachment intensified after allegations that members of his government had sought to illegally profit from the purchase of Covid vaccines.

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‘We thought it wouldn’t affect us’: heatwave forces climate reckoning in Pacific north-west

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Left-leaning states had focused on how global heating would affect others. Then the ‘heat dome’ arrived

The record heatwave in the Pacific north-west is forcing a reckoning on the climate crisis, as many living in the typically mild region consider what rising temperatures mean for the future.

A “heat dome” without parallel trapped hot air over much of the states of Oregon and Washington in the United States, and southern British Columbia in Canada, in past days, shattering weather records in the usually temperate region.

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‘Eye of fire’: Gas leak sparks huge blaze on ocean surface off Mexico

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Flames that raged near a Pemex oil platform took more than five hours to extinguish

A fire on the ocean surface west of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula has been extinguished, state oil company Pemex said, blaming a gas leak from an underwater pipeline for sparking the blaze captured in videos that went viral.

Bright orange flames jumping out of water resembling molten lava was dubbed an “eye of fire” on social media due to the blaze’s circular shape, as it raged a short distance from a Pemex oil platform early on Friday.

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Record heatwave may have killed 500 people in western Canada

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British Columbia reports jump in number of ‘sudden and unexpected deaths’ and links them to extreme weather

Nearly 500 people may have been killed by record-breaking temperatures in Canada’s westernmost province, as officials warn the grim toll from “heat dome” could rise again as more deaths are reported.

On Friday, British Columbia’s chief coroner said that 719 “sudden and unexpected deaths” had been reported over the past week – triple the number during a similar period in a typical year.

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Deadly British Columbia heatwave sows wildfires across Canada’s west

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Residents recovering from record-breaking temperatures face a new threat, with more than 100 fires burning

On the heels of an unprecedented heatwave that left hundreds dead in British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province is now battling a fresh threat.

More than 100 wildfires are burning across the province, as of late on Thursday, 86 of which started in the past two days. Evacuation orders and alerts have gone out in a dozen communities. The province’s premier, John Horgan, suggested that the crisis could become dire enough to see the Canadian military deployed.

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Canadian inferno: northern heat exceeds worst-case climate models

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Scientists fear heat domes in North America and Siberia indicate a new dimension to the global crisis

If you were drawing up a list of possible locations for hell on Earth before this week, the small mountain village of Lytton in Canada would probably not have entered your mind.

Few people outside British Columbia had heard of this community of 250 people. Those who had were more likely to think of it as bucolic. Nestled by a confluence of rivers in the forested foothills of the Lillooet and Botanie mountain ranges, the municipal website boasts: “Lytton is the ideal location for nature lovers to connect with incredible natural beauty and fresh air freedom.”

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Brazilian presidential hopeful Eduardo Leite comes out as gay

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But governor who hopes to challenge Jair Bolsonaro next year backed the far-right leader in 2018

One of Brazil’s leading politicians, the presidential hopeful Eduardo Leite, has announced he is gay – a rare move celebrated by many as a triumph over prejudice in a country whose president has declared himself a proud homophobe.

Leite, the 36-year-old governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, made the announcement on Thursday night during an interview with the country’s top broadcaster, TV Globo.

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