Category Archives: Americas

Glacial lakes threaten millions with flooding as planet heats up

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More than 12,000 deaths have already been attributed to glacial lake outburst floods worldwide

An increasing number of people are being threatened by flooding caused by glacial lakes bursting, scientists have warned.

As the planet warms and glaciers recede, meltwater accumulates and forms lakes, often as a result of ice or moraine acting as a dam. Since 1990, the volume, area and number of these glacial lakes has increased by 50% globally. When these lakes become too full there is a risk that they may breach or overflow, releasing huge volumes of water and causing catastrophic flooding.

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Mexico expects US to send 5m more Covid vaccine doses, president says

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  • Mexican production of AstraZeneca jab suffers setbacks
  • López Obrador: “it’s probable that they’ll help us with a loan’

Mexica’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said on Friday the US will probably send his country 5m more doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, as the company admitted production in Central and South America had suffered multiple setbacks.

Related: US cites Indian variant in implementing travel ban from Tuesday

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Two pandemics: as we ease up, virus sweeps the world’s poor

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Latin America and Africa face new wave as politicians and scientists urge rescue packages

World leaders have been warned that unless they act with extreme urgency, the Covid-19 pandemic will overwhelm health services in many nations in South America, Asia, and Africa over the next few weeks.

Only billions of pounds of aid and massive exports of vaccines can halt a humanitarian catastrophe that is now unfolding rapidly across the planet, scientists and world health experts said.

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Dozens of Canada’s First Nations lack drinking water: ‘Unacceptable in a country so rich’

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Indigenous leaders are suing the Canadian government for not providing clean water – and ministers admit they have failed

Curve Lake First Nation, a forested community in southern Canada, is surrounded on three sides by fresh water.

But for decades, residents have been unable to safely make use of it. Wary of crumbling infrastructure and waterborne illness, the community instead relies on shipments of bottled water. The community’s newly elected chief, aged 34, has lived her whole life without the guarantee of clean water flowing from the tap.

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White House investigating ‘unexplained health incidents’ similar to Havana syndrome

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Two US officials experienced symptoms similar to ones suffered abroad that were probably result of directed energy device

The White House has said it is investigating “unexplained health incidents” after a report that two US officials in the Washington area experienced sudden symptoms similar to the “Havana syndrome” symptoms suffered by American diplomats and spies abroad.

Related: CIA file on Russian ESP experiments released – but you knew that, didn't you?

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Amlo calls decision to disqualify candidates ‘a blow to democracy’

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Mexico’s electoral tribunal upheld ruling barring two candidates, including one accused of rape, for failing to file expense reports

Mexico’s president has blasted a decision to disqualify two of his party’s gubernatorial candidates – including one accused of rape – describing the decision by Mexico’s electoral tribunal as “a blow to democracy”.

“Democracy is respecting the will of the people,” said Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as Amlo, at his morning press conference on Wednesday. “In a democracy, it’s the people who decide. It’s the people who give orders.”

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Brazil begins parliamentary inquiry into Bolsonaro’s Covid response

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Opponents hope investigation will torpedo chances of re-election for far-right president

Brazil’s congress has launched a parliamentary inquiry into what critics call Jair Bolsonaro’s disastrous and potentially criminal response to a Covid pandemic that has killed nearly 400,000 Brazilians.

The politically charged investigation, which rivals of Brazil’s far-right president hope will torpedo his chances of re-election, will be conducted by 11 of the country’s 81 senators, including several of Bolsonaro’s fiercest opponents.

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Identifying Features review – horror and heartbreak in Mexico’s borderlands

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First-time director Fernanda Valadez conjures up a vision of real evil in her story of the terrors faced by migrants into the US

There is unbearable heartbreak in this migrant drama from first-time Mexican film-maker Fernanda Valadez – and also a vision of real evil. At times, it looks something like social-realist folk horror. Mercedes Hernández plays Magdalena, a middle-aged woman from Guanajuato in central Mexico whose teenage son Jesús left home three years before, with a friend, on a bus bound for the border, where he’d hoped to take his chances on disappearing into the US as an illegal. But the body of Jesús’s friend has been found on Mexican territory, in an unspeakably grim holding area where the corpses of teen runaways are routinely kept in container boxes awaiting identification – though there is still no proof that Jesús himself is dead.

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Global alliance for phasing out coal not fit for purpose, says NGO

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Powering Past Coal Alliance accused of failing to follow up on pledges as many countries expand use of coal

An attempt by the UK government to encourage countries and businesses around the world to quit coal for power generation is failing to make an impact, and in danger of being used as “greenwash”, an assessment has found.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance, led by the UK and Canada, with 111 members including 24 governments, local governments and businesses, is a key plank of Boris Johnson’s strategy for vital UN climate talks to be hosted in Glasgow in November.

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‘Shortsighted’: UK cuts aid to project preparing cities for natural disaster

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From Quito to Kathmandu, millions will be endangered by cuts affecting planning for floods, earthquakes and fires, experts say


UK aid cuts to a programme working to reduce the disaster risk to poor communities around the world could endanger millions of lives and slam shut a brief window of opportunity to build safer cities for centuries to come, experts have warned.

Professor John McCloskey, from Edinburgh University, said the 70% cut to this year’s budget for the Tomorrow’s Cities project was an act of “vandalism” that had wrecked the past two years of collaboration with scientists, NGOs, authorities and communities in Ecuador’s capital Quito, Nairobi, Kathmandu and Istanbul.

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‘An indescribable moment’: Indigenous nation in US has right to lands in Canada, court rules

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Canada’s supreme court decision on the Sinixt people could affirm hunting rights for tens of thousands

For decades the Rick Desautel had been told by courts and governments that his people no longer exist in Canada.

But Desautel and others in his community in Washington state have long argued that they are descendants of the Sinixt, an Indigenous people whose territory once spanned Canada and the United States.

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It’s inspiring hope and change – but what is the IUCN’s green list?

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The red list of species at risk is well-known, but the list for protected sites is quietly helping to ‘paint the planet green’

When Kawésqar national park was formed in the Chilean part of Patagonia in 2019, just one ranger was responsible for an expanse the size of Belgium. Its fjords, forests and Andean peaks are a precious wilderness – one of the few remaining ecosystems undamaged by human activity, alongside parts of the Amazon, the Sahara and eastern Siberia.

Chilean officials hope that Kawésqar will, one day, meet the high standards for protected areas laid out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and make it on to the organisation’s “green list”.

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Yemen, Myanmar and George Floyd: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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

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Latin America’s lack of a united front on Covid has had disastrous consequences | Andre Pagliarini

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The regional coordination of the pink tide era has given way to various governments, left and right, going it alone

A terse report filed from São Paulo, Brazil, appeared in the 17 March 1919 edition of the New York Times. It read: “Influenza again has appeared here in epidemic form. The Government is taking steps to prevent the spread of the disease.” Just over one hundred years later, faced with another pandemic, the Brazilian government has taken a different approach. President Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right extremist elected in 2018, has repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus, urging citizens to suck it up and get back to work so that the economy can once again get moving.

The president has frequently appeared in public places without a mask, stopping to greet supporters, creating potential super-spreader events as a matter of course. Bolsonaro’s recklessness has had terrible consequences: Latin America’s largest nation has been ravaged by the pandemic, with more than 13m cases.

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Brazil’s ‘rapid and violent’ Covid variant devastates Latin America

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Expert says global leaders must not ignore Brazil, which is ‘brewing variants left, right and centre’

As a coronavirus variant traced to the Brazilian Amazon marauded through Peru’s coastal capital last month, Rommel Heredia raced to his local hospital to seek help for his brother, mother and father.

“I said goodbye and promised I’d come back to take them home,” said the 47-year-old PE teacher, his voice muffled by two black masks pulled tightly over his face.

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Sharon Matola obituary

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The founder of Belize Zoo and a champion of native species including the tapir and the scarlet macaw

In 1983, after a wildlife film-making project she was working on fell apart, Sharon Matola found herself in Belize, Central America, with a menagerie of homeless native creatures. She scrounged some land, wrote a sign on a piece of wood, and the Belize Zoo was open for business. Suddenly, she became “the zoo lady”, responsible for housing, feeding, cleaning and maintaining the health of the 20 animals.

The “office cat” was a jaguar, and there was a baby tapir in the bedroom on several occasions. It looked chaotic, but Matola, who has died aged 66 of a heart attack, was scrupulous about animal husbandry and determined that Belizeans would have a chance to learn about their tiny nation’s biodiversity.

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Canada judge delays extradition hearings in win for Huawei executive

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Meng Wanzhou’s team had sought more time to review new documents after Hong Kong settlement with HSBC

A Canada judge has agreed to delay Meng Wanzhou’s US extradition hearings for three months, according to a ruling read in court on Wednesday, handing the Huawei chief financial officer’s defense team a win.

Meng, 49, was arrested at Vancouver international airport on charges of bank fraud in the US for allegedly misleading HSBC about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, causing the bank to break US sanctions.

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Trump-era policy forces families to make life-altering decisions at US-Mexico border

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Families with older children are turned around under Title 42, invoked last year by Trump due to supposed health risk from Covid

Dazed and dejected, Mimi was sitting on a park bench in the Mexican city of Reynosa, Mexico, not far from the border with Texas. Clinging to her side was her six-year-old daughter.

The young Honduran mother seemed shocked by how close they had come to their American dream – and the realization that her own words had pushed it out of reach.

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Quebec court strikes down part of contentious religious symbols ban

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Ruling removes limits on some teachers and provincial politicians but maintains ban for police, judges and other civil servants

A Canadian court has struck down part of a disputed Quebec law against public employees wearing religious symbols, removing limits on some teachers and provincial politicians but maintaining the ban for police officers, judges and other civil servants.

The 2019 law, which the Quebec government said was designed to preserve secularism in the mainly French-speaking province, prohibits many civil servants, including police officers, from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs and turbans on the job.

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