Brazil-based giant paid ransom in bitcoin after ransomware attack shut down operations across world
JBS, the world’s biggest meat processor, has paid an $11m (£7.8m) ransom after a cyber attack shut down operations, including abattoirs in the US, Australia and Canada.
While most of its operations have been restored, the Brazilian-headquartered company said it hoped the payment would head off any further complications including data theft.
Continue reading...Misjudged comments to prime minister of Spain sought to play up the South American country’s ties with Europe
Argentina’s president, Alberto Fernández, has triggered a Twitter storm and a regional race debate with misjudged comments to visiting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain that sought to play up the South American country’s ties with Europe.
“The Mexicans came from the Indians, the Brazilians came from the jungle, but we Argentines came from the ships. And they were ships that came from Europe,” Fernández said, referring to the many European migrants who arrived in the country. He later apologized for the comments and said his country’s diversity was something to be proud of.
Continue reading...‘When I first visited the Yanomami tribe, they were completely isolated – they hadn’t seen a camera and didn’t know what photography was’
It was 1971 when I photographed the Yanomami tribe of Brazil for the first time. I knew that it would take time to build our relationship, but I wanted to see if we could become friends. For me, the best photographers are those who are truly interested in their subjects.
The Yanomami is a big population of indigenous people who live in the Amazon rainforest in northern Brazil and southern Venezuela; several thousand live in Brazil alone. A small village can be as few as 40 people, or a big one as many as 200. When I first went to the Yanomami villages, the tribe was completely isolated – some still are today. At that time, 50 years ago, they hadn’t seen a camera and didn’t even know what photography was.
Continue reading...Activists fear that an increase in attacks on the country’s LBGT community is fuelled by a culture of homophobia at the very top
An act of “barbaric” violence where a 22-year-old gay man was gang-raped and tortured has prompted fierce reaction in Brazil and is evidence of a growing tide of hate crime in the country, according to human rights campaigners.
The man, who has not been named, was attacked last week in Florianópolis by three armed men who used sharp objects during the assault and forced him to carve homophobic slurs into his legs, said activists.
Continue reading...Fifty-eight people have died in six weeks of unrest, but demonstrators say they are more determined than ever to fight for change
Protests in Colombia that began in late April over a proposed tax hike have morphed into a generational outcry over the country’s deep-rooted inequalities.
Related: ‘They can’t take it any more’: pandemic and poverty brew violent storm in Colombia
Continue reading...Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls comments ‘disappointing’ after vice-president says migrants will not find solace at US border
The progressive New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has criticized Vice-President Kamala Harris for saying undocumented migrants from Guatemala should not come to the US.
On her first foreign trip as vice-president, Harris visited Guatemala on Monday. At a press conference with Guatemala’s president, Alejandro Giammattei, the former California senator spoke about investigating corruption and human trafficking in Central America and described a future where Guatemalans could find “hope at home”.
Continue reading...Relatives of the four Canadian Muslims killed in what police describe as “a hate attack” have described them as a “model family” and called on the country to stand against hate and Islamophobia.
The victims – three generations of the same family who migrated from Pakistan 14 years ago – died on Sunday after a 20-year-old man drove his pickup truck at them in what the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, described as a “terrorist attack, motivated by hatred”.
Continue reading...Sister punched crocodile in head after it attacked in a lagoon where they had been swimming
A British woman is in a medically induced coma in Mexico after she was attacked by a crocodile in a lagoon where she and her twin sister had been taken by a tour guide.
Melissa and Georgia Laurie, 28, from Berkshire, had been swimming in the lagoon, about 10 miles from Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, on the south-east coast of the country, when Melissa was attacked.
Continue reading...Two women, a man and a girl were killed on Sunday when Nathaniel Veltman drove a pickup truck into pedestrians, police say
A 20-year-old Canadian man has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder after driving his pickup truck into a Muslim family in what police described as “a premeditated attack”.
Two women, aged 74 and 44, a 46-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl – a grandmother, mother, father and their teenage daughter – were killed on Sunday night when Nathaniel Veltman ploughed his black pickup truck into a group of pedestrians in the city of London, Ontario, police said.
Continue reading...Critics question whether push against corruption and human trafficking marks genuine change amid growing poverty
Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, has announced a new anti-corruption drive, economic aid and tougher enforcement against human trafficking during a visit to Guatemala.
But Harris, on her first foreign trip as vice-president, faced sceptical questions over whether the measures she announced would represent a real change in US policy in the region, at a time of worsening poverty and corruption.
Continue reading...But president’s Morena party keeps its majority in the lower house of congress
Mexican voters have denied President Andrés Manuel López Obrador a mega-majority in midterm elections, though his Morena party kept its majority in the lower house of congress with the support of a controversial ally.
Voters also showed little enthusiasm for Mexico’s rightwing opposition, which remains reviled after its decisive 2018 defeat by López Obrador, who swept to power promising to curb corruption and put the poor first.
Continue reading...Pedro Castillo is about 0.2% ahead of his far-right opponent, Keiko Fujimori, with more than 94% of the vote counted
The scion of a jailed autocrat and the son of illiterate peasant farmers are fighting vote by vote for the presidency of Peru, in an election which has thrown into sharp relief the Andean country’s deep fault lines of class and geography.
Related: Peru faces poll dilemma: a leftist firebrand or the dictator’s daughter?
Continue reading...Data shows increased danger for those on the frontline in the pandemic, with misinformation, scarce vaccines and fragile health systems blamed
Hundreds of healthcare workers treating Covid patients around the world have experienced verbal, physical, and sometimes life-threatening attacks during the pandemic, prompting calls for immediate action from human rights campaigners.
Covid-related attacks on healthcare workers are expected to rise as new variants cause havoc in countries such as India and rollouts of vaccination programmes belatedly get under way in some countries, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to health.
Continue reading...From Brazil to Myanmar, five doctors and nurses treating coronavirus patients share their experiences
Since the pandemic began, healthcare workers have been venerated for treating patients with Covid-19, but they have also been attacked for doing their job.
Five doctors and nurses treating coronavirus patients, some of whom asked to be kept anonymous, recount their experiences.
Continue reading...Pontiff fails to issue direct apology for church’s role in residential schools where children were abused
Pope Francis has said he was pained by the discovery of the remains of 215 children at a former Catholic school for indigenous students in Canada and called for respect of the rights and cultures of native peoples, but stopped short of the direct apology some Canadians had demanded.
Speaking to pilgrims and tourists in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican during his weekly blessing, Francis urged Canadian political and Catholic religious leaders to “cooperate with determination” to shed light on the finding and to seek reconciliation and healing.
Continue reading...Novelist Carlos Dávalos says his homeland has an unenviable choice in bitterly divisive presidential election
“Peru has always been a gloomy country; it’s not the Caribbean,” says the writer and journalist Carlos Dávalos as the traffic rolls down the Gran Vía in Madrid on a sunny June morning. “There’s that sense of a kind of Andean melancholy.”
Although Dávalos’s debut novel, La Furia del Silencio (The Fury of Silence), has drawn comparisons with both The Catcher in the Rye and Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning Roma, the coming-of-age tale is profoundly, and inescapably, Peruvian.
Continue reading...Generations of First Nations children were abducted to institutions to solve the country’s ‘Indian problem’. Thousands never returned
When they came to take Jonnish Saganash away, he was only five years old.
It was 1954, and the Canadian government had decided he was to be sent to a residential school in Ontario – hundreds of kilometers from his Indigenous community in Quebec.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China
Continue reading...Nine experts call for ‘full-fledged investigations’ after discovery of remains of 215 Indigenous children at former residential school
UN human rights experts have urged the Canadian government and the Vatican to hold swift and thorough investigations into the discovery of unmarked graves at a former residential school in British Columbia.
The unmarked graves of up to 215 Indigenous children were discovered at the Kamloops Indian Residential Schools last week, using ground-penetrating radar.
Continue reading...Discontent simmers over police handling of investigation as Canadian Jasmine Hartin awaits bail hearing
A late-night stroll in the moonlight, then a sudden and fatal gunshot. What exactly happened between the socialite partner of the son of a billionaire Tory donor and a senior police officer in the early hours of last Friday in the resort of Mata Rocks has gripped the small Caribbean nation of Belize and turned into an international drama. It is now a major test for the country’s legal and criminal system.
This week a 32-year-old Canadian woman, Jasmine Hartin, was accused of the negligent manslaughter of a local police superintendent, Henry Jemmott. The case has attracted attention because Hartin is the partner of Andrew Ashcroft, son of Michael Ashcroft, the Conservative party donor and Belize’s most influential resident. Lord Ashcroft is a former Tory party deputy chairman, a one-time member of the House of Lords, and a billionaire.
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