Category Archives: Americas

Mark Carney laments Canada’s lost friendship with US in visit to 9/11 town

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Canadian PM makes remarks on visit to Newfoundland town that sheltered US airline passengers after attacks

Mark Carney has lamented Canada’s lost friendship with the United States as he visited the town that sheltered thousands of stranded American airline passengers after the 9/11 attacks.

The Canadian prime minister’s visit to Gander, Newfoundland, on the second day of a national election campaign comes against the backdrop of a trade war and sovereignty threats from Donald Trump.

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Canada to head to polls as Mark Carney calls snap election for 28 April

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Prime minister launches contest expected to focus on US relations, as Liberals enjoy lead over Conservatives

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has called a snap election on 28 April, firing the starting gun on a contest that is widely expected to focus on the strained relationship with the US amid threats to Canada’s economic and political future.

“We are facing the most significant crisis of our lifetime because of President [Donald] Trump’s unjustified trade actions and his threats to our sovereignty,” he said. “He wants to break us, so America can own us. We will not let this happen. We’re over the shock the shock of the betrayal, but we can never forget the lessons. We have to look out for ourselves. We have to look out for each other.”

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Mark Carney to announce Canadian election and will run in Ottawa’s Nepean riding

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Recently installed prime minister expected to confirm 28 April ballot as he seeks to keep Liberal party in government

Mark Carney will run for election in the Ottawa riding of Nepean as the new Canadian prime minister seeks to join parliament for the first time, his Liberal party has announced.

Carney on Sunday is predicted to trigger an early general election on 28 April. The Liberals said on Saturday that Carney would run to represent the suburban riding, or district, of Nepean, noting in a social media post that Ottawa is where he raised his family and devoted his career to public service. He previously served as the head of Canada’s central bank and before that as deputy.

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Scientists identify ‘tipping point’ that caused clumps of toxic Florida seaweed

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Giant blobs along 5,000-mile-wide sargassum belt has killed animals, harmed human health and discouraged tourism

Scientists in Florida believe they have identified a “tipping point” in atmospheric conditions in the Atlantic Ocean they say caused giant clumps of toxic seaweed to inundate beaches around the Caribbean in recent summers.

Previous theories for the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt that has killed marine animals, harmed human health and plagued the tourism industry in several countries include a surfeit of nutrients in the water, such as nitrogen and phosphorus in runoff from intensive farming and carried into the ocean in the Congo, Amazon and Mississippi rivers.

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Trump revokes legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans

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Move takes effect on 24 April as president weighs also stripping parole status from some 240,000 Ukrainians in US

Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday, in the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration.

It will be effective on 24 April.

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Three people die attempting to cross US-Mexico border amid California storm

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Authorities found two men and one woman dead in Otay Mountain wilderness due to harsh terrain and cold weather

Three people died last week as they attempted to cross the US-Mexico border near San Diego, California, amid a storm that brought near freezing temperatures to the challenging mountain terrain, according to the US border patrol.

Border patrol agents responding to two separate distress calls – that came within less than an hour of each other on 14 March – discovered two men and one woman deceased in the Otay Mountain wilderness area, the agency said in a statement. The following evening authorities responded to another call from someone stranded in the mountains with a broken ankle, according to the statement.

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US rejects Mexico’s request for water as Trump opens new battle front

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State department turns down special request to supply city of Tijuana in drought-affected north for first time ever

The United States has refused a request by Mexico for water, alleging shortfalls in sharing by its southern neighbor, as Donald Trump ramps up a battle on another front.

The state department said on Thursday it was the first time that the United States had rejected a request by Mexico for special delivery of water, which would have gone to the border city of Tijuana.

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Foreign minister ‘strongly condemns’ China’s executions of four Canadians

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Mélanie Joly says Ottawa would ask for leniency for other Canadians facing the same fate

Canada has strongly condemned the execution of four of its citizens who were put to death in China on drug-smuggling charges, amid lingering diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

The minister of foreign affairs, Mélanie Joly, said on Wednesday that all four were dual citizens and were executed earlier this year. She added that Ottawa would ask for leniency for other Canadians facing the same fate.

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Ontario’s police force using ‘growing ecosystem’ of Israeli spyware – report

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Findings raise questions about extent and scope of Canadian authorities’ use of cyberweapons

Researchers have uncovered “possible links” between Ontario’s provincial police force and an Israel-based military-grade spyware maker called Paragon Solutions, raising questions about the extent and scope of Canadian authorities’ use of cyberweapons.

The new findings were published by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which tracks and identifies digital threats against civil society, and come three years after a parliamentary committee in Canada called for Ottawa to update the country’s privacy laws in the wake of press reports that the national police force had been using spyware to hack mobile phone devices. No laws were ever passed to address the controversy.

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Farmer’s house in danger from climate change, court told in RWE case

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German coal giant is one of world’s biggest polluters and should contribute to flood defences, says farmer in Peru

A Peruvian farmer’s home is in “concrete danger” from climate change, a court has heard, in the resumption of a decade-long legal battle to get German coal giant RWE to contribute to flood defences in the Andes.

Lawyers for Saúl Luciano Lliuya, who say his home is threatened by rapidly melting glaciers, told the upper regional court in Hamm on Wednesday that the risk of extreme flooding represented a breach of civil law.

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Mexico City introduces ‘bloodless bullfighting’ in win for animal rights activists

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Activists celebrate move, but note that ‘a bull event without violence does not mean one without suffering’

Mexico City’s congress has voted to ban traditional bullfights and replace them with a new form of bloodless spectacle, marking the latest episode in a years-long legal battle to outlaw the practice in the capital.

Animal rights activists celebrated the move on Tuesday – even if it wasn’t the total ban on bullfighting they had been pushing for.

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Trump waging ‘sickening’ psychological war, deported Venezuelan’s lawyer says

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One detained man’s lawyer says he is gay artist who had fled persecution in his home country, not a gang member

A lawyer for one of the Venezuelan immigrants sent from the US to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador has accused the Trump administration of waging a “sickening” campaign of psychological warfare against asylum seekers and migrants.

“In my 15 years of representing people in removal proceedings in the United States, this is the most shocking thing that I’ve ever seen happen to one of our clients,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, a California-based lawyer for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) group.

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Canada’s Liberals on course for political resurrection amid trade war, polls show

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Mark Carney-led ruling party projected to form majority months after political wipeout seemed inevitable

In January, Canadian pollsters and political pundits struggled to find fresh ways to describe the bleak prospects of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party, musing whether it would be a wipeout of existential proportions, or merely a catastrophic blowout.

But fresh polling released by three companies this week shows a stunning reversal of fortunes for the party: newly minted prime minister Mark Carney’s Liberals are projected to secure a majority government.

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Family of girl recovering from brain surgery describes ‘serious abuses’ while detained in US

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US citizen girl deported with mixed-status family, who filed complaint over denied healthcare and poor conditions

A family that was recently removed from the United States to Mexico has filed a complaint seeking an investigation into what they describe as “serious abuses” they say they faced during their detention in the US prior to their removal.

The mixed-status family includes two undocumented parents and six children, five of whom are US citizens. On 4 February, five of the children, including four who are US citizens, and the two parents were removed from Texas and sent to Mexico after they were stopped at an immigration checkpoint.

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Leading Garifuna musician reportedly among 12 dead in Honduras air crash

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Aurelio Martínez believed killed after plane crashed while taking off from Roatán island in Caribbean

At least 12 people, including a prominent member of the Garifuna music scene have died after a small plane crashed into the sea while taking off from a Caribbean island off Honduras, officials said.

The Lanhsa airlines plane departed at nightfall on Monday from Roatán, one of the Central American country’s main tourist destinations, heading for the port of La Ceiba, on the mainland.

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‘Cataclysmic’: environmentalists fear effects of Trump cuts on Great Lakes

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Advocates warn firings and funding freezes already risk poisoning drinking water and decimating fish population

Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s attacks on federal agencies and funding freezes will be “cataclysmic” for the environment of the sensitive Great Lakes region if not reversed, industry and environmental advocates in the region warn.

Initial actions taken since Trump returned to the White House in January – and put Musk in charge of slashing the federal government – already risk poisoning drinking water, decimating fish populations, and risking the jobs and health of tens of millions of people who rely on the lake system, they add.

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White House’s defense for not recalling deportations ‘one heck of a stretch’, says judge

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Administration claims it didn’t stop flights despite judge’s instructions because he did not write it in the formal order

The Trump administration claimed to a federal judge on Monday that it did not recall deportation flights of hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gang members over the weekend despite his specific instructions because that was not expressly included in the formal written order issued afterwards.

The administration also said that even if James Boasberg, the chief US district judge in Washington, had included that instruction in his formal order, his authority to compel the planes to return disappeared the moment the planes entered international airspace.

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Second body identified in Canada landfill amid search for serial killer’s victims

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Marcedes Myran’s remains found in search mission after Jeremy Skibicki preyed on Indigenous women in 2022

Canadian police have confirmed the identity of a second woman whose body was dumped at a private landfill near Winnipeg by a serial killer who preyed on Indigenous women and left their bodies hidden in trash.

The Manitoba Royal Canadian Mounted police said in a statement on Monday that the human remains found in the Prairie Green Landfill, north of Winnipeg, were those of Marcedes Myran, 26.

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White House denies violating judge’s order with Venezuela deportations

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Trump administration used Alien Enemies Act to deport about 250 alleged gang members to El Salvador

The White House has denied allegations that it engaged in a “a blatant violation” of a judge’s order by deporting about 250 Venezuelan alleged gang members to El Salvador on Saturday, with the US border czar appearing to contradict the denial on Monday by declaring: “I don’t care what the judges think.”

The US district judge James E Boasberg has scheduled a hearing for Monday afternoon to demand an explanation about why his Saturday order temporarily blocking the deportation flights had apparently been ignored.

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Carney visits Macron and Starmer as he seeks alliances amid Trump trade war

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Canadian PM stresses importance of ‘reliable allies’ in Paris before travelling to London where he was received by king

Canada is the “most European of the non-European countries”, Mark Carney said during his first overseas trip as prime minister to France and the UK, where he is seeking stronger alliances to deal with Donald Trump’s attacks on his country’s sovereignty and economy.

Without mentioning the US president by name, Carney and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, made a joint appearance in Paris to show a united stance against what they said were economic and geopolitical crises – a reference to Trump’s trade war and “America first” diplomacy that has left longtime allies scrambling.

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